Titans #56
Titans #56 (Éditions Lug, September 1983) is the French-language vehicle for the concluding half of Dazzler #21, one of Marvel's rare double-sized origin-recap issues, which gathered an extraordinary cross-section of the Marvel Universe — the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, Daredevil, Spider-Man, Iron Fist, Power Man, and more — into a single story retelling Alison Blaire's rise from mutant performer to reluctant superhero. For French readers who had no access to the American originals, this was the definitive 'who is Dazzler?' chapter, delivered in one sweeping instalment split across two consecutive monthly issues. Titans #56 also continued the unbroken Star Wars serialisation and the home-grown Mikros strip, making it a representative cross-section of the anthology at the height of Éditions Lug's creative and commercial peak in the early 1980s.
Find on ebay
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸History
Éditions Lug — founded in Lyon and guided editorially by Marcel Navarro and Claude Vistel — launched Titans in March 1976 as a youth-market anthology that quickly became its flagship Marvel reprint vehicle after the first few issues of Atlas Seaboard material. By the time issue #56 appeared on newsstands in September 1983, Titans had been running monthly since January 1982 (having converted from a bimonthly schedule with #36) and was one of the most visible channels through which French readers encountered mainstream American superhero comics. The editorial team at Lug routinely split longer American issues across two consecutive French numbers to maintain page-count consistency, which is why the double-sized Dazzler #21 — 38 pages in the original — was divided between Titans #55 and #56.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published by Éditions Lug (Lyon, France) on 10 September 1983 as part of the 'Collection Super Héros Lug' imprint; the issue ran 80 pages.
- The centrepiece reprint is the concluding 19 pages of Dazzler (Marvel, 1981 series) #21 — a double-sized origin special written by Danny Fingeroth with art by Frank Springer and inks by Vince Colletta — whose opening 19 pages had appeared in Titans #55 the month before.
- Dazzler #21 features one of the most densely populated guest-star rosters in the character's solo series, including the Fantastic Four (Mister Fantastic, Invisible Girl, Human Torch, Thing), the Avengers (Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hawkeye, She-Hulk, Wasp, Wonder Man, Beast, Vision), Daredevil, Spider-Man, Iron Fist, Power Man, Misty Knight, Angel, and Quasar — accounting for the majority of the character index catalogued for this issue.
- A continuing instalment of the Star Wars (Marvel, 1977 series) strip also appeared in this issue, part of the unbroken run of that serialisation in Titans from #18 through #95.
- Mikros, the original French strip by Jean-Yves Mitton about a microscopic hero (Mike Ross / Bobby Crabb / Saltarella / Priscilla Conway), ran concurrently in Titans #35–87; the episode in #56 continues that homegrown science-fiction subplot that gave Lug readers content unavailable anywhere else.
- The series was edited under the oversight of Claude Vistel (directrice de publication) and Marcel Navarro (rédacteur en chef), the two figures who had guided Éditions Lug's Marvel licensing since the Fantask era of 1969.
- Titans became a monthly magazine from issue #36 (January 1982) onward; issue #56 falls squarely in this mature monthly phase, which French comics historians regard as the apex of the Lug Marvel anthology format.
- Titans #56 falls within the collected album Recueil #19, which bundled issues #55–57 and was released in October 1983, giving readers a near-simultaneous hardcover option for the full Dazzler origin arc split across those three numbers.
Cast · 40 characters
Full credits
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.