Aria #1
The 1998 Dupuis edition of Aria Tome 1 — La Fugue d'Aria — marks the formal consolidation of one of Belgian heroic-fantasy comics' most durable female-led series under a single publisher's roof for the first time. When Dupuis brought the entire back-catalogue over from Le Lombard that year and established Aria's own dedicated slot within its Repérages imprint, it signalled an editorial bet that a female warrior protagonist could anchor a long-running, all-ages album series in the Franco-Belgian tradition — a bet that ultimately ran to 40 volumes over four decades. The character of Aria herself — a resourceful, independent woman who subverts the male-warrior default of heroic fantasy by using strategy and wit as readily as a sword — placed her alongside Barbarella and Laureline as a notable precursor to the wave of capable female protagonists that would follow in European comics. The 1998 Dupuis reissue gave a new generation of readers their first access to that origin story in a uniform, colour-enhanced format aligned with Dupuis's contemporary production standards.
Aria #1 (1998) from Dupuis features the character Aria in "De omzwervingen van Aria," a story written, drawn, and inked by Michel Weyland, with coloring by Nadine Weyland. The cover was also created by Michel Weyland.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Michel Weyland conceived the character of Aria in August 1979 while still working as a retoucher at a Brussels printing plant, and left that job the following month to commit to comics full-time. The opening serialised adventure ran in the Belgian weekly Tintin magazine beginning in 1980 before being collected and published in album form as La Fugue d'Aria by Éditions du Lombard in 1982 — the true first appearance of the character in collected format. After producing 15 albums with Le Lombard through the early 1990s, Weyland moved to Dupuis in 1994 when the Tintin / Hello Bédé magazine ecosystem was collapsing; new Aria stories entered Dupuis's Repérages collection, aimed at a slightly older readership. In 1998, Dupuis completed the transition by reprinting and re-cataloguing all the earlier Le Lombard albums under its own imprint, with refreshed layouts and colour enhancements — the 1998 Tome 1 (released 26 January 1998) being the first fruit of that effort, carrying ISBN 9782803600281.
Trivia · 8 facts
- The 1998 Dupuis Tome 1 is a reprint/reissue of La Fugue d'Aria, the first album in Michel Weyland's heroic-fantasy series, originally published by Éditions du Lombard in 1982.
- Written, drawn, and (in the Dupuis editions) coloured by Michel Weyland, with colouring contributions credited to his wife Nadine Weyland across the album run.
- La Fugue d'Aria introduces the title character: a female warrior disguised under armour who serves as a military adviser to Lord Suryam against the invader Galbec — her gender concealed to gain the respect of male soldiers.
- The Dupuis 1998 edition was released on 26 January 1998 under the Repérages collection, running to 48 pages in the standard Franco-Belgian album format (approximately 30 × 21.8 cm).
- The series originally debuted in the pages of the Belgian weekly Tintin magazine beginning in 1980, initially in black-and-white serialisation before transitioning to colour for the collected albums.
- Le Lombard published the first 15 albums (1982–1993); Dupuis took over in 1994 for both new stories and, from 1997–1998, progressive reprints of the entire Le Lombard back-catalogue.
- The series ran to 40 albums in total (1982–2021), with later stories also serialised in Spirou magazine (2002–2004 and 2010–2015); Dupuis discontinued the series in June 2019 citing shifting market conditions, with the final volume Carnet de Voyage appearing in September 2021.
- Aria is noted by Belgian comics historians as part of a second wave of independent female protagonists in the Franco-Belgian tradition, following pioneers such as Yoko Tsuno (1970) and Natacha (1970).
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