Spirou Album #174

This chunky 600-page hardcover from Dupuis packs four complete albums into one satisfying volume — Archie Cash, XIII (by Vance and Van Hamme), Papyrus, and Gully — making it a genuinely generous sampler of Belgian comics at their mid-1980s best. The bold red cover spotlights Sammy, "un héros explosif," caught mid-scramble in a wonderfully chaotic scene with hats flying and a trench-coated figure being dragged along for the ride. At 174 albums into its celebrated run, the Spirou collection series showed in 1985 that it still knew how to pack both quantity and personality into a single irresistible package.