17 Facts About Franco-Belgian comics

The potential appeal of the French-language Franco-Belgian comics extends beyond Francophone Europe, as France in particular has strong historical and cultural ties with several Francophone overseas territories.

Likewise, despite the shared language, Flemish Franco-Belgian comics do not do that well in the Netherlands and vice versa, save for some notable exceptions, such as the Willy Vandersteen creation Suske en Wiske which is popular across the border.

Concurrently, the socio-cultural idiosyncrasies contained within many Flemish Franco-Belgian comics means that these Franco-Belgian comics have seen far less translations into other languages than their French-language counterparts have due to their more universal appeal, and the French language's cultural status.

The "ninth art" designation stems from a 1964 article by Claude Beylie in the magazine Lettres et Medecins, and was popularized in an article series about the history of Franco-Belgian comics, which appeared in weekly installments in Spirou magazine from 1964 to 1967.

In North America, the more serious Franco-Belgian comics are often seen as equivalent to what is known as graphic novels—though it has been observed by Belgian scholar Kurt Geeraerts that Americans originally used the expression to describe everything that deviated from their standard, 32-page comic book, meaning that all larger-sized, longer Franco-Belgian comic albums fell under the heading as far as they were concerned.

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One of the earliest proper Belgian Franco-Belgian comics was Herge's The Adventures of Tintin, with the story Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, which was published in Le Petit Vingtieme in 1929.

Simultaneously, by imitating the style and flow of those Franco-Belgian comics, they improved their knowledge of how to make efficient Franco-Belgian comics.

Soon even those homemade versions of American Franco-Belgian comics had to stop, and the authors had to create their own heroes and stories, giving new talents a chance to be published.

Many of the most famous artists of the Franco-Belgian comics started in this period, including the Belgians Andre Franquin, Peyo, Willy Vandersteen, and the Frenchmen Jacques Martin and Albert Uderzo, who worked for Bravo.

Franco-Belgian comics managed to clear his name and went on to create Studio Herge in 1950, where he acted as a sort of mentor for the assistants that it attracted.

The law, called "Loi du 16 juillet 1949 sur les publications destinees a la jeunesse" and passed in response to the post-liberation influx of American Franco-Belgian comics, was invoked as late as 1969 to prohibit the comic magazine Fantask —which featured translated versions of Marvel Comics stories — after seven issues.

On 11 December 2012, one of the buildings on the museum grounds, the futuristic building finished at the end of the 1980s housing the museum and CNBDI administrations, cinema, conference rooms, library and the other facilities for Franco-Belgian comics studies, was rechristened "Le Vaisseau Mœbius", in honor of the in that year deceased Franco-Belgian comics artist.

Since the mid-1980s, many Franco-Belgian comics are published directly as albums and do not appear in the magazines at all, as many comic magazines have disappeared since then for socio-economic reasons, including greats like Tintin, A Suivre, Metal Hurlant, and Pilote.

An effort is made to make the Franco-Belgian comics look as convincing, as natural as possible, while still being drawings.

French Franco-Belgian comics that draw inspiration from Japanese manga are called manfra.

Contrary to their US Comic Con counterparts, where other pop-culture media manifestations are increasingly taking precedence, movie and television productions in particular, continental European Franco-Belgian comics conventions remain to this day largely and firmly grounded in its source medium, the printed Franco-Belgian comics.

Franco-Belgian comics have been translated in most European languages, with some of them enjoying a worldwide success.