 Jean Pol Yves Jacques Mabire was born in Paris on 8 February 1927, to a bourgeois family originally from Vire, Normandy.He attended the Collège Stanislas, where he earned a "baccalauréat" in literature and philosophy.In 1949, at the of age 22, Mabire created the regionalist magazine "Viking" and in 1951 left Paris to settle in Cherbourg, Normandy, where he founded a graphic arts workshop.