Parent company | Média-Participations |
---|---|
Status | Active |
Founded | 1922 |
Founder | Jean Dupuis |
Country of origin | Belgium |
Headquarters location | Marcinelle, Hainaut, Belgium |
Distribution | France, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Canada |
Fiction genres | Comic albums and magazines |
Official website | www |
Éditions Dupuis S.A. is a Belgian publisher of comic albums and magazines.
Based in Marcinelle near Charleroi, Dupuis was founded in 1922 by Jean Dupuis, and is mostly famous for its comic albums and magazines. It is originally a French language publisher, but publishes many editions both in French and Dutch. Other language editions are mostly licensed to other publishers. Dupuis was for a long time a family business but was sold in the early 1980s and has since changed ownership a few times.
The growth of Dupuis towards becoming the leading comic book editor of Belgium started in 1938, when Dupuis added to its portfolio a men's magazine (Le moustique [the mosquito] in French, Humoradio in Dutch), a women's magazine (Bonnes Soirées [good evenings] in French, De Haardvriend [the hearth's friend] in Dutch) and the children's comics magazine Spirou. The latter was originally only in French, and contained a mixture of American comics (e.g. Superman, Brick Bradford, and Red Ryder) and new creations (Spirou et Fantasio and Tif et Tondu). A few months later, a Dutch edition called Robbedoes followed.
After some difficulties during the war (mainly because of the scarcity of paper towards the end of it, but also because American comics weren't allowed to be published anymore), Dupuis started to grow quickly. Le moustique became one of the leading magazines with information on radio and (later) television programs in Belgium, and Spirou was one of the two leading Franco-Belgian comics magazines (together with Tintin magazine).
Dupuis started publishing some books as well, but had real success by republishing the comics that had appeared as serials in the magazine, collected as albums afterwards. Sometimes these were one shots, but mainly they came in series. Dupuis has some of the best-selling European comic series, including Lucky Luke, The Smurfs, Gaston Lagaffe and Largo Winch. Many of these comic albums have been reprinted constantly for thirty or forty years, thereby generating constant revenue for the editor.