While comics are frequently dismissed as frivolous juvenilia in many other parts of the world, their status in France remains nonpareil. Buoyed by state sponsorship, consistently healthy sales and a cultural climate in which they have achieved the exalted status of “the Ninth Art”, Francophone comics, or bande dessinée as they are known locally, offer up a richness, sophistication and diversity not readily found elsewhere.

There are, of course, exceptions – most notably the peerless Franco-Belgian duo of Asterix and Tintin, two series that have conquered minds and markets both regional and global.

So why, given these many strengths, have the products of this industry largely failed to impact in any significant way upon English-speaking markets? An obvious, albeit facile, answer is that they’re “too French”, cut off from Anglophone readers by a linguistic and cultural divide that prevents them from easily resonating and connecting with them.

To that end, Cinebook was founded in 2005, rapidly establishing itself as the premier publisher of translated Franco-Belgian comics for English-speaking markets. Olivier Cadic, founder of the UK-based Cinebook, explains that when they started all the French publishers told them that many had tried and they’d all failed.

The main factors contributing to these previous failures were, he suggests, poor translation coupled with a lack of serious commitment on publishers’ parts.

“When US publishers first started to translate European graphic novels into English,” Cadic says, “the translations were usually really poor. Then after two or three volumes they’d stop. So readers who’d see a new graphic novel series from Europe would think, ‘Oh, after one or two years they’ll stop publishing it so why should I bother?’. Read more.

See: Irish Times