Editions Lug

Editions Lug was a French comic book publisher created in 1950 by writer/editor Marcel Navarro and businessman Auguste Vistel.

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

Among its most popular Italian imports were:

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.

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