Editions Lug - History

History

When it started, Editions Lug only reprinted old French and Italian comics in digest-sized magazines.

Among its most popular Italian imports were:

• Tex Willer (which it began publishing in 1951, then moved to its eponymous magazine in 1952), from Sergio Bonelli Editore
• Il Grande Blek (which it began publishing in Kiwi in 1955)
• Capitan Miki (which it began publishing in Nevada in 1958)
• Alan Mistero (renamed Ombrax) (which it began publishing in an eponymous magazine in 1967)

The latter three from Studio EsseGesse.

Another notable non-French comic book series published by Editions Lug at the time is Dan Dare (in 1962).

However, early on, Navarro decided that his company needed some original characters. He enlisted a number of French and Italian studios to script and draw original series and began experimenting with a wide variety of genres. The look and feel of these series was often evocative of 1960s DC Comics.

Editions Lug's first major original success was a Tarzan-like jungle lord named Zembla (1963); its eponymous title was an immediate hit. Among other notable characters created at the times were Rakar, a masked Lakota chief, Tanka, another jungle lord, Gun Gallon, a John Carter of Mars-type hero lost on a parallel world with three moons, World War II hero Rick Ross aka Baroud, kung-fu cowboy Jed Puma, Barbary Coast corsair Dragut and superhero Pilote Noir.

In 1968, Claude Vistel, Auguste Vistel's daughter, returned from a trip to New York and convinced Navarro to publish the first translations of Marvel Comics in France, in a magazine entitled Fantask (1969), which featured Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and the Silver Surfer.

Sensing that he was on to something, Navarro followed suit with his own creations. Wampus was launched the same year; it featured the eponymous alien monster sent by an evil cosmic intelligence to destroy the Earth, and the exploits of a S.H.I.E.L.D.-like organization named C.L.A.S.H.. Unfortunately, Editions Lug had run-ins with French censorship, and both Fantask and Wampus were cancelled after only six issues.

The following year, Navarro re-launched the Marvel characters, first in a magazine called Strange, then in Marvel (which also fell victim to censorship a year later). At the same time, he continued to introduce more new French characters in magazines such as:

• Futura (1972), which published Jaleb, Homicron, Brigade Temporelle, L'Autre (The Other, a toned-down version of Wampus), Aster, Jeff Sullivan and Sibilla
• Waki (1974)
• Kabur which also published Le Gladiateur de Bronze (The Bronze Gladiator) (1975).

The late 1970s and early 1980s were arguably the best years of the company. Its line of French-language Marvel editions thrived with titles such as Titans (1976), Nova (1978), Spidey (1979) and graphic novels of The Fantastic Four (1973), Conan the Barbarian (1976), etc.

A number of new original titles were added, including a revamped version of Mustang (1980), which published Photonik, Mikros and Ozark. Other characters introduced during this period included Phenix (1978) and Starlock (1980). It even licensed its own creations to Spanish and Italian companies, where they sold with great success.

Around this time, a shared universe began to emerge. It wasn't nearly as tightly integrated as the Marvel Universe. While the titles made references to each other, characters from different titles never interacted directly.

In the mid-80's, Auguste Vistel died. This was the beginning of the end for Editions Lug. Eventually, Marcel Navarro chose to retire. The company was sold to the Semic Group, a Scandinavian comic book publisher, and later became a French company, Semic Comics.

In 2004, a group of former Lug writers and artists reclaimed the rights to their characters and reorganized under the banner of Hexagon Comics.