Claude Moliterni (1932-2009) was a French publisher, journalist, scriptwriter and comics historian. A tireless champion of the medium, he founded the specialist magazine Phénix in 1966 and helped establish comics as a subject of serious study. In 1974 he became one of the founders of the Angoulême International Comics Festival. The author of numerous reference works and anthologies, he collaborated regularly with Pierre Couperie, notably on La Lune (1969), for which he provided the layout, the captions to the space-conquest section and the chronology of the lunar imaginary in fiction and film. His work blends documentary erudition with polished popularisation.