Bandes dessinées, abbreviated BDs and also referred to as Franco-Belgian comics, are comics that are usually originally in French and created for readership in France and Belgium. These countries have a long tradition in comics, separate from that of English-language comics. Belgium is a mostly bilingual country, and comics originally in Dutch are culturally a part of the world of bandes dessinées, even if the translation from French to Dutch far outweighs the other direction.
Gaston is a Belgian gag-a-day comic strip created in 1957 by the Belgian cartoonist André Franquin in the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Spirou. The series focuses on the everyday life of Gaston Lagaffe, a lazy and accident-prone office junior who works at Spirou's office in Brussels. Gaston is very popular in large parts of Europe and has been translated into over a dozen languages, but except for a few pages by Fantagraphics in the early 1990s, there was no English translation until Cinebook began publishing English language editions of Gaston books in July, 2017.
Pierre Culliford was a Belgian comics writer and artist who worked under the pseudonym Peyo. His best-known works are the comic book series The Smurfs and Johan and Peewit, the latter in which the Smurfs first appeared.
Jean Van Hamme is a Belgian novelist and comic book writer. He has written scripts for a number of Belgian/French comic series, including Histoire sans héros, Thorgal, XIII and Largo Winch.
Spirou is a weekly Franco-Belgian comics magazine published by the Dupuis company since April 21, 1938. It's an anthology magazine with new features appearing regularly, containing a mix of short humor strips and serialized features, of which the most popular series would be collected as albums by Dupuis afterwards.
The Prix de la critique is a prize awarded by the Association des Critiques et des journalistes de Bande Dessinée to the best comic album released for a year in France. Previously, from 1984 to 2003, it was called Prix Bloody Mary and awarded at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. Concerned at first with albums of the Franco-Belgian comics school it was eventually interested in works coming from the comic book tradition of more distant lands.
Les Tuniques Bleues is a Belgian series of bandes dessinées, first published in Spirou magazine and later collected in albums by Dupuis. Created by artist Louis Salvérius and writer Raoul Cauvin, the series was taken up by artist Lambil after Salverius' death. It follows two United States Army cavalrymen through a series of battles and adventures. The first album of the series was published in 1970. The series' name, Les Tuniques Bleues, literally "the bluecoats", refers to the uniforms of the Union Army during the American Civil War. Cinebook has started to print the comics in English as "The Bluecoats", releasing Robertsonville Prison in 2008. It is one of the best-selling series in French-language comics.
Éditions Dupuis S.A. is a Belgian publisher of comic albums and magazines.
Belgian comics are a distinct subgroup in the comics history, and played a major role in the development of European comics, alongside France with whom they share a long common history. While the comics in the two major language groups and regions of Belgium each have clearly distinct characteristics, they are constantly influencing one another, and meeting each other in Brussels and in the bilingual publication tradition of the major editors. As one of the few arts where Belgium has had an international and enduring impact in the 20th century, comics are known to be "an integral part of Belgian culture".
Roger Leloup is a Belgian comic strip artist, novelist, and a former collaborator of Hergé, who would rely upon him to create detailed, realistic drawings and elaborate decoration for The Adventures of Tintin. He is most famous for the Yoko Tsuno comic series.
Michel Régnier, best known by his pseudonym Greg, was a Belgian cartoonist best known for Achille Talon, and later became editor of Tintin magazine.
Le Petit Spirou is a popular Belgian comic strip created by Tome and Janry in 1987. The series developed from La jeunesse de Spirou (1987), a Spirou & Fantasio album in which Tome and Janry set to imagine Spirou's youth. It was developed into a spin-off series shortly afterwards and the authors have focused on it ever since the controversy created after their final Spirou et Fantasio album, Machine qui rêve (1998). New albums are among the bestselling French-language comics, with 330,000 copies for the latest one.
Boule et Bill is a popular comic, created in 1959 by Belgian writer-artist Jean Roba in collaboration with Maurice Rosy. In 2003, the artistic responsibility of the series was passed on to Roba's former assistant Laurent Verron. The stories center on a typical family: a man and his wife, their young son Boule and Bill the cocker spaniel.
Raoul Cauvin was a Belgian comics author and one of the most popular in the humorist field.
Luc Cromheecke, is a Belgian comics artist best known for the comic series Tom Carbon, Taco Zip, Roboboy and Plunk.
André Geerts was a Belgian comics creator best known for his series Jojo.
Cédric is a Franco-Belgian comics series written by Raoul Cauvin, illustrated by Laudec, and published by Dupuis.
Maryse Dubuc is a Canadian comics writer, known particularly for The Bellybuttons which she created with Marc Delafontaine ("Delaf").
Daniel Kox is a Belgian cartoonist and comics artist, best known for his comics series Agent 212.
Emmanuel Lepage is a French comics artist. He has won numerous awards in his native country and his albums have been published throughout Europe and also in the United States, Nicaragua, Japan, South Korea and China.
