Les Tuniques bleues

The Bluecoats Les Tuniques Bleues
The two main characters: Sergent Cornélius M. Chesterfield and Corporal Blutch
Publication information
Publisher	Dupuis (French and Dutch) Cinebook (English)
Format	Ongoing series
Number of issues	58 (in French) 6 (in English)
Main character(s)	Sergent Cornélius M. Chesterfield & Caporal Blutch
Creative team
Writer(s)	Raoul Cauvin
Artist(s)	Willy Lambillotte
Creator(s)	Raoul Cauvin & Louis Salverius

Les Tuniques Bleues (Dutch: De Blauwbloezen) is a Belgian series of bandes dessinées (comic books in the Franco-Belgian tradition), first published in Spirou magazine and later collected in albums by Dupuis. Created by artist Louis Salverius and writer Raoul Cauvin, the series was taken up by artist Willy Lambillotte after Salverius' death. It follows two United States cavalrymen through a series of battles and adventures. The first album of the series was published in 1970. The series' name, Les Tuniques Bleues, literally "the bluecoats", refers to the Northern (union) army during the American Civil War. One English edition of the comic was published in 2004 as "The Blue Tunics: The Blues in Black and White" by Reney Editions. Since then Publisher Cinebook has started to print the comics in English as "The Bluecoats" releasing Robertson Prison in 2008. It is one of the best-selling series in French-language comics.

Cauvin has written the stories for all the volumes thus far. The first book, Un chariot dans l'Ouest (French for "A Wagon in the West"), was published in 1972. The 58th book in the series, Les bleus se mettent au vert, was published in 2014.

Six of the first volumes were illustrated by Louis Salverius, with Lambil taking over after Salverius' death.

The stories appear first in Spirou in 1968, before being published as an album. The French editions are published by Dupuis. New albums are among the top ten best selling comics in French each year, with 184,800 copies for the 50th album alone in 2006.Les Tuniques Bleues spawned a 1989 computer game called North and South.