Jules Verne

Jules Gabriel Verne was born on 8 February 1828 in France and died on 24 March 1905. Though primarily celebrated as a novelist, poet, and playwright rather than a comics creator, his work has had an extraordinarily long afterlife in the medium — appearing across 206 issues in the catalog, spanning adaptations published between 1946 and 2023, under titles including *Classics Illustrated* and its various international counterparts in German, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian editions.

Verne built his literary career through a defining partnership with publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel, whose imprint gave shape to the *Voyages extraordinaires* — a series of scientifically grounded adventure novels set against the technological landscape of the late 19th century. The most enduring of these, *Journey to the Center of the Earth* (1864), *Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas* (1870), and *Around the World in Eighty Days* (1872), became the titles most frequently adapted into comics form. His fiction blended rigorous engagement with contemporary science and exploration with propulsive storytelling, a combination that translated naturally to sequential art.

Verne has ranked as the second most-translated author in the world since 1979, behind Agatha Christie. Sometimes called the "father of science fiction" — a distinction also claimed for H. G. Wells and Hugo Gernsback — his literary reputation, long undervalued in the English-speaking world due to poor translations, has steadily recovered since the 1980s.