Comics emerged and thrived in fragile print material that is often poorly conserved since it was destined for rapid consumption. It is nevertheless in these daily, weekly and monthly publications that comics thrived: giving life to serial characters, experimenting with visual and narrative possibilities. A considerable, often unknown section of comics history, in all its exuberant diversity and transnational travels, through authorized and unauthorized copying, unfolds in these pages that have often been relegated to waste and forgotten.

Focusing on the French- and English-language comics collections of Alain Van Passen, Emile Laga and Georges Dumbruch at the Faculty Library of Arts and Philosophy, this project seeks to offer a first mapping of the historical connections, transnational itineraries and visual aesthetics and innovations of the comics appearing in newspapers, digests and magazines from the twentieth century.