The French are invading! (And they’re bringing comic books!)
Delcourt Group, the leading independent comic book publisher in France, launched an exclusive line of English language, digital-first comics and graphic novels on comiXology July 6. ComiXology, for those who haven’t tried it yet, is the cloud-based digital platform that offers thousands of U.S. comics, manga and now “bandes dessinées” — as the French call their comics — on Android, iOS, Kindle, and Windows 8.
If you’re a comics fan, this is tres magnifique, for a variety of reasons. One is that the Franco-Belgian tradition in comics is one of the most famous in the world for its quality, giving us such classics as The Adventures of Tintin, Asterix the Gaul and Lucky Luke. Another is that European comics cover a much broader spectrum of content than American comics, which largely restrict themselves to action/adventure.
But one of the main reasons to be enchanté at this development is the driving force behind Delcourt Group: Guy Delcourt. A respected veteran of the business — 29 years and counting — Delcourt came by his love of comics naturally:
“I grew up in the north of France, near Belgium,” Delcourt said in a trans-Atlantic interview. “Belgium is the, how do you say, the treasure place for comics. So I grew up becoming more and more passionate about them. I was quite an avid collector of comics when I was a teenager. That was in the ’70s, at a time when comics were getting much more diversified and adult, in all senses of the word — political, sexual, whatever. So it was very exhilarating. From then on, I kept that in mind. I never believed I would make it my profession, but that’s what happened.”