La Patrouille des Castors (The Beaver Patrol) is a series of Belgian comics drawn by MiTacq and written by Jean-Michel Charlier. 30 albums were published between 1955 and 1993, by Dupuis, all relating the adventures of a Scout patrol. This series, which was first published in Spirou magazine on November 25, 1954, relates the fictional adventures of a Scout patrol. In the first album, the patrol consisted of six Scouts, although one of them, Lapin (rabbit) disappeared quickly from future stories after the team decided five main characters was a more suitable number for the series. The artist, Michel Tacq (MiTacq), had himself been a Scout during a large part of his life. It was his idea to create a series with Scouts as the main characters, but he needed a script to realise the project, which was provided in 1954 by Charlier, already a very active scriptwriter.
The Beaver Patrol is a group of scouts who are taken on adventurous situations provided, most of the time, by their Scout camp during their holidays in foreign countries. As all Scouts should, they act honourably and charitably, but they face enigmas and puzzles in each region they visit in the best traditions of boys own adventures. Each character of the patrol has a very distinct profile, which makes it possible for them to have all the qualities needed in difficult situations. The series was parodied by the author himself in a story written with Yvan Delporte with the series La Patrouille des Zoms.
