Judge Bao

Judge Bao comic is a bande desinee oriental created by Scenario: Patrick Marty. Drawing: Chongrui Nie in 2009.

In China, under the dynasty of the Northern Song Dynasty (960 - 1126), the Empire saw a tremendous growth, both from a hardware point of view intellectually. A powerful market economy was born. But if the very strong central power promotes stability in the country, however it must constantly fight against endemic and rampant corruption. The country is rich and temptations of men who run it are great. Notables from remote provinces, administrators, military officials, governors abusing their powers to enrich themselves, bandits of all kinds work shamelessly. To fight against this scourge, Emperor Ren Zong gives full powers to a judge whose reputation extends to the borders of the Empire, the Judge Bao (999-1062). Mandated by the highest authority of the Empire, it therefore legitimately. Even the court and the immediate entourage of the Emperor fear. What historical figure would become almost mythical over the stories of the oral tradition, and the novel is still today for the Chinese people, a symbol of inflexible justice can judge and condemn indiscriminately from offenders common people, like those in the highest echelons of the state. His aversion to corruption, his legendary wrath against those who oppress the poor, make it an extremely popular hero.

Sammy

Sammy is a popular humour Belgian comics series. It first started in 1970 in the weekly comic Spirou magazine, it has been published in book form, and even been the subject of several omnibus editions by Dupuis. Raoul Cauvin wrote the series while artist Berck (aka Arthur Berckmans) drew the first thirty or so adventures before being succeeded by Jean-Pol (aka Jean-Pol Van Den Broeck).

Set mainly in 1920s Chicago, the series centres on freelance bodyguards Jack Attaway and his sidekick Sammy Day. Their assignments have them protecting people from all walks of life, from young children to celebrities, fighting gangsters both at home and abroad and even facing elements of fantasy and science-fiction. The real-life gangster Al Capone and his sworn enemy Eliot Ness of the "Untouchables" are also regular characters. Although occasionally violent, the emphasis of the series is on humour. The 40th book in the series was published in 2009 and it was announced that it would be Sammy's final adventure. The series is based in 1920s Chicago at the height of Prohibition. 

Jack Attaway runs a bodyguard agency with his sidekick Sammy Day and their adventures take them all over the world. Although their main (and rarely lucrative) activity is protecting people, the pair have occasionally worked with the police. Jack calls Sammy "p'tit" ("kid"), while Sammy addresses him as "patron" ("boss"), but they are close friends who stick by each other through thick and thin.
Their clients have varied from the average to the bizarre: ordinary people threatened by gangsters, movie stars, eccentric millionaires, mad scientists and even a 200-year-old skeleton back from the dead. Also requesting their help are actual crooks and gangsters like Al Capone or law-enforcers like Eliot Ness. The series has delved on a number of themes ranging from Hollywood to the Ku Klux Klan, the Mafia, espionage and protection rackets, and also more fantastic elements like robots, the undead and the elixir of youth.

The Beaver Patrol

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.

Chick Bill

Chick Bill is a Franco-Belgian humorous Western series created by Tibet. It was first published in the Franco-Belgian comics magazines De Avonturen van Koenraad and Chez Nous Junior in 1953, and began serial publication on October 19, 1955 in Tintin magazine under the title Les aventures de Chick Bill le cow-boy. In the very first Chick Bill adventures, the characters were portrayed as animals, rendered in a manner similar to the Disney style and directed at a younger audience, before the series gradually evolved to feature human characters. Chick bill appear from 1953 in Junior, Youth Weekly published by Editions du Lombard. 

In the earliest adventures of Chick Bill, like the cartoon characters, and contrary to the advice given him by Hergé, Tibet made ​​his characters humanized animals: Chick Bill was a lion, a dog Bull Dog, Kid Ordinn a pig and a ... Small Poodle course poodle. The series then joined Le Journal de Tintin, flagship publication of Éditions du Lombard, but must significantly change its style. To make his most expressive hero, give a little more serious in the series and especially comply with the style clear line wanted by Hergé then artistic director of the newspaper, Tibet must abandon animal traits of his characters.
Small Poodle always accompanied by a small Indian and the sheriff of Wood City, Bull Dog and Kid Ordinn, deputy sheriff, Chick Bill has resulted in crazy adventures.

Bessy

Bessy was a long-running Belgian comics series created by Willy Vandersteen and Karel Verschuere in 1954. Together with Suske en Wiske and De Rode Ridder it was once one of his most popular and best-selling series, with successful translations in Dutch, French, German and Swedish. It was terminated in 1997. "Bessy" was first published in the French-language Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique on December 24, 1952 and translated into Dutch a year later, when the comics were published in De Standaard and De Katholieke Illustratie. The series were also a tremendous succes in Germany, where they were published in the youth magazines Pony and Felix. So much in fact, that Vandersteen's studio had a separate team drawing new titles, many of which where never translated in Dutch. With 992 different titles, reissues included, "Bessy" has the most album titles of all of Vandersteen's series. 164 albums of these were Dutch, 151 were French. The series was also published in Sweden under the name Bessie, which spawned 92 albums.

The high production unfortunately also had an effect on the quality of the stories and drawings. As a result, the German editions were discontinued by 1985. One of Vandersteen's assistants, Jeff Broeckx, then created a reboot "Bessy Natuurkommando" ("Bessy Nature Commando") (1984-1992), where Andy and Bessy were reimagined as present-day conservators of animals and nature. Andy received a love interest, Aneka, and a little street boy named Kid, who travelled along with them on their missions. The scripts were written by Marck Meul. Twenty-three albums were drawn before the series was terminated in 1992. Broeckx tried a new reboot and redrew the first seven stories of the original series, as well as the twelfth story from the first series. By 1997 the series came to a definite halt.

Quick and Flupke

The exploits of Quick and Flupke (French: Quick et Flupke, gamins de Bruxelles, Deutsch: Stups und Steppke) is a comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Serialised weekly from January 1930 to 1940 in Le Petit Vingtième, the children's supplement of conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle ("The Twentieth Century"), the series ran alongside Hergé's better known The Adventures of Tintin. It revolves around the lives of two misbehaving boys, Quick and Flupke, who live in Brussels, and the conflict that they get into with a local policeman.

The English version of Quick & Flupke was produced in the early-1990s, and consisted of only two books, published by Mammoth Publishing. The books were translated by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner, who had previously translated The Adventures of Tintin. The text in the English volumes is not lettered in the same way as other Hergé books in English. The two English volumes are direct translations of strips in the French volumes Jeux Interdits and Tout va Bien. The English edition comics are all coloured, and named Double Trouble and Two of a Kind. Under Full Sail and Fasten Your Seatbelts were also published by Egmont.

Marsupilami

Marsupilami is a fictional comic book species created by André Franquin, first published on 31 January 1952 in the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Spirou. Since then it appeared regularly in the popular Belgian comic book series Spirou et Fantasio until Franquin stopped working on the series in 1968 and the character dropped out soon afterward. In the late 1980s, the Marsupilami got its own successful spin-off series of comic albums, Marsupilami, written by Greg, Yann and Dugomier and drawn by Batem, launching the publishing house Marsu Productions. Later, two animated shows featuring this character, as well as a Sega Genesis video game and a variety of other merchandise followed. The asteroid 98494 Marsupilami is named in its honour. The name is a portmanteau of the words marsupial, Pilou-Pilou (the French name for Eugene the Jeep, a character Franquin loved as a kid) and ami, French for friend.

Marsupilami's adventures had been translated to several languages, like Dutch, German, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese and several Scandinavian languages. More than three million albums of the Marsupilami series are claimed to have been sold by Marsu Productions.
One album of Spirou and Fantasio featuring Marsupilami, number 15, was translated to English by Fantasy Flight Publishing in 1995, although it is currently out of print. Plans on releasing number 16 ended halfway through the translation process, due to bad sales. In 2007, Egmont's subsidiary Euro Books translated albums number 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 14 for the Indian market.
In 2013, Dupuis bought Marsu Productions and its characters, thereby allowing a new production of Spirou and Fantasio adventures including Marsupilami.