Oncle Paul

"Les Belles Histoires de l'oncle Paul"
Oncle Paul, as drawn by Victor Hubinon, from the small strip situated at the top of each story
Author(s)	Jean-Michel Charlier, Victor Hubinon
Current status / schedule	Terminated.
Launch date	1951
End date	1982
Genre(s)	Educational comics, Historical comics

Les Belles Histoires de l'oncle Paul, and later Les Plus Belles Histoires de l'oncle Paul, is a Belgian comics series of historical stories created by Jean-Michel Charlier and Eddy Paape and published in the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Spirou from 1951 to 1982.

The series consists of various short stories relating the historical character's life, an invention, an historical event, or a story taking place in the past. A wise and learned man, the uncle Paul, use a pretext to tell a story to his two nephews, most of the time following a foolish remark or deed of the nephews. The purpose of the series was entirely educational and didactic, and served as a kind of illustrated history lessons for the young Spirou readers.

The first strip appeared in the issue 668 of Spirou at the beginning of 1951, named Cap plein Sud. The series was first drawn by Eddy Paape, who at that time was drawing the series Valhardi. In 1952, Octave Joly became the main writer of the series. This series, very popular, made it possible for a lot of newcoming authors to hone their skills and make themselves well-known, among them Paape, Attanasio, Jean Graton, Mitacq (La Patrouille des Castors), Hermann (Jeremiah) and Gérald Forton (Bob Morane). Several albums grouping the strips were published between in the 1950s. In the 70s, the series appeared less frequently, and finally disappeared in the 80s. L'oncle Paul was parodied many times in Spirou as well as in other magazines. An album of parodies was published.

Les Histoires vraies de l'Oncle Paul is a series of comics albums published by Dupuis grouping the Belles Histoires de l'Oncle Paul stories previously published in Spirou.

In 1986, Les Histoires merveilleuses de l' Oncle Paul were published by Vents d'Ouest () and EDS (). This was a pastiche and hommage album, featuring stories by a.o. Yves Chaland, Will, Frank Pé, Dany, Serge Clerc and Philippe Bercovici.