Spécial Strange

Several readers wrote to inform us that Marvel Trois-Dans-Un was not a french comic, but was actually published in Canada.  Patrick from Montreal took the time to write to us with a lot of detailed information about Canadian and French X-Men comics:

X-MEN in French

The reprint series «X-Men, Marvel Trois-dans-un» may have found its way through some buyers or collectors in France with the years, but, like a blogger has written before, it was printed, and mostly sold, in the province of Québec, Canada, where I grew up. The publishing house Héritage has closed its super-heroes division in 1987 and X-Men was one of the last titles they have published.  Two years ago, 4 collectors have written a very detailed guide of the super-heroes titles but this guide is out of print. In the guide they explained that, sometimes, copies of the covers were late in the shipping from Marvel and that Héritage had to use panels from the inside to make their deadline. That can explain that some X-Men Héritage issues have a different cover than the original. At first, the Triple feature offered Defenders and Nova issues as back-ups. That's why some issues have a Defenders cover.

Before the Marvel Essentials were launched, Héritage copies offered the chance to appreciate the art in black and white (color came later in the reprint run, starting with the double issue 27/28, the first issue where the Triple feature was abandoned). They reprinted Giant Size #1 and X-Men #94-162 in 66 issues of Héritage. Some can be found on ebay by using the names «Héritage» and «X-Men».
You may know that FRANCE has it own version of the X-Men in french. A part of the Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne saga was put together in a kind of graphic novel format (mostly 4 comics in one "album" - sometimes:  2 X-Men stories and 2 back ups)  by:   Éditions LUG.    This series of color albums were named "Spécial Strange" and X-Men started to appear in the #6.  (Silver Age X-Men were reprinted before in a comic called simply "Strange").

Interesting fact for you: new covers versions were painted (probably all by an artist named Jean Frisano) for Lug in a style sometimes close to Bob Larkin (like the cover of Dazzler #1). The mag Comic Book Marketplace #54 has a good feature on Frisano with some of its covers.

This would make a good feature of Unpublished X-Men.

Have fun. Regards,

- Patrick (from Montreal)


References for all:

-  Héritage fansite and forum:

http://www.comicsheritage.ca



- For the Lug «Special Strange» issues (you can take a look at the covers. Note that they are not ALL  X-Men covers):

http://www.comics-france.com/18.editeur.lug.collection.special-strange.html



- For a few X-Men Silver Age covers of the comic «Strange», like Strange #40:

http://www.comics-france.com/22.editeur.lug.collection.strange.html


- An analysis of a Steranko cover recreated by Frisano:

http://ripjaggerdojo.blogspot.ca/2012/09/an-uncanny-homage.html


- A good ebay store run by a nice collector, with comics from France and Québec:

http://stores.ebay.ca/IMAGINE-COMICS