Marvel #10

History

Éditions Lug, the Lyon-based publisher founded in 1950 by Marcel Navarro and Auguste Vistel (its name derived from Lugdunum, the Gallo-Roman name for Lyon), launched the Marvel magazine in April 1970 in the wake of Fantask's censorship-forced closure — itself shut down partly because the French censorship commission found the Thing's monstrous appearance disturbing for children. To preempt further objections about 'violent colors,' the first seven issues were deliberately printed in two-tone bichromie rather than full color, and the original American pages were drastically re-cropped to fit a small digest format; fan complaints eventually forced a shift to the standard 17×24 cm format and full color beginning with issue #8, making #10 part of this improved presentation run. Three months after issue #10 appeared in the January 1971 collected album, the magazine was banned for readers under eighteen — a ruling that raised the applicable VAT rate and killed its commercial viability — and issue #13 in April 1971 was the last.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Marvel (Éditions Lug) was a 13-issue French anthology magazine running from April 1970 to April 1971, functioning as the second attempt by Lug to bring Marvel Comics to France after the censorship-driven end of Fantask.
• Issue #10 falls within the series' improved production era: beginning with issue #8, the magazine moved from a small digest format with bichrome printing to a full-color 17×24 cm format, giving these later issues significantly better presentation of the original art.
• The issue's character catalog spans four major Marvel feature strips in French translation — the Fantastic Four (Les Quatre Fantastiques), Spider-Man (L'Araignée), the X-Men (including Cyclope, Le Fauve, L'Ange, Iceberg, and Professeur X), Daredevil, and Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell, Carol Danvers, Yon-Rogg, Una) — making it one of the most character-dense single publications in early French Marvel history.
• The Lug 'Marvel' series as a whole marks the first sustained French-language publication of Spider-Man, predating his later long-running home in Strange.
• French character localization throughout the series introduced the now-classic French aliases still recognized by collectors: L'Araignée (Spider-Man), La Chose (the Thing), La Torche Humaine (the Human Torch), L'Invisible (the Invisible Girl), Le Fauve (the Beast), Le Fléau (the Juggernaut), Docteur Fatalis (Doctor Doom), and Le Caméléon (the Chameleon).
• Issues #8 through #10 were subsequently collected and republished as Album #3 of the Lug recueil series, dated January 1971.
• The magazine was banned for readers under eighteen shortly after issue #10, a ruling partly attributed to the censorship commission's objections to the Thing's appearance; issue #13 (April 1971) was the final number, and counterfeit issues purporting to be #14, #15, and possibly #16 later circulated among collectors.
• The original American pages were subjected to significant re-cropping ('redécoupage') throughout the series to fit the French format, a practice criticized by purist collectors as a 'mutilation' of the source material.

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