Production in France (Edimonde-Loisirs)

General information

The first art with Disney characters produced for a magazine written in French was done in 1950 by Tenas (October 1950) who was a Belgian artist, actually called Louis Saintels. This art was the cover of the first issue of the Belgian Mickey Magazine.

The first story drawn with Disney characters specially for a French magazine was "Le Tour de France de Mickey" that started with the first issue of the post-war Journal de Mickey, the 1st of June 1952. This story was again drawn by Tenas and scripted by Pierre Fallot. It was published 1 page at a time (each week) for 14 weeks.

The first series written and drawn by Frenchmen was "Mickey A Travers Les Siècles" for Le Journal de Mickey. It lasted for 1338 pages (!!), 171 episodes (+1 intro and 1 conclusion) and started with no. 15 of Le Journal de Mickey in 1952 (7th of September). The first 9 pages were drawn by Tenas. All of the others by the great Pierre Nicolas who actually created the "Disney comic books studio" (unofficial title, of course) in 1952.
The story were scripted by Pierre Fallot till his death in 1974. In 1974, nobody was able to replace him. Michel Mandry and Raymond Calame (from the editorial staff of Edi-Monde) asked Juliette Benzoni and Claude Yelnick (from the magazine "Lecture pour Tous") to write stories but the result was not satisfactory. Michel Mandry also wrote a "Mickey à travers les siècles" adventure that was never published. Finally, Didier le Corfec was choosen and scripted the series till the end, in 1978. His first story was "corrected" by Calame and Mandry.
The series is considered by many French Disney comic books enthusiasts as The French Cult Series. It was full (really FULL) of puns impossible to translate. A delight.

Recent French stories are e.g. about the Disney Babies, Sport Goofy and a super-hero version of Black Pete.

Also Ducktales, Rescue Rangers, Talespin, many "normal" Mickey and Goofy stories, James Goof (Goofy as James Bond), Taran (from "The Black Cauldron"), Fethry, and Ellsworth stories.

Story codes

French codes have 5 parts: title of mag / year / series of comics / story number / type of story.
E.g.: F-92002-C = /F/ - /92/ /0/ /02/ - /C/
The type of a story can be:

C = Complete Story
D = "Divertissement" (Entertainment) or activity
E = Episode of a Story
G = Gag

(Also various letters for "limited" series of gags like "P" for "Préhistoire".
The "E" was used very few times.)

The series of comics depends on the magazine title:

Journal de Mickey (F-JM):
0 = Mickey enigme
2 = Creation of several pages
3 = Genius gags
4 = Disney Babies

The digit 1 was also used for special one-shot gags in the late 80s. Later, Disney-Hachette added other series 6, 7, 8 (their meanings can be easily understood in the French index).


P'tit Loup (F-PL):
0 = Creation of several pages
1 = Li'l Wolf gag
4 = Game comics

Picsou Magazine (F-PM):
1 = Flagada Jones gag (Launchpad)
2 = Fethry Duck gag

Winnie (F-W):
0 = Creation of several pages

The following is a theory, by François W., based on his index of all the French stories. October, 1999.

The text below is only a personal (and probably inaccurate) theory about early F-codes.

Between 1980 and 1985 the codes where F JM YYnnn for a story published (not written) in 19YY. "nnn" means nnnth story written since 1980. So after e.g. F JM 83023, there is F JM 84024. And after that, it can be F JM 82025. Which means that story #25 was published 2 years before story #24.

Actually, the first story has no number, and the second starts by "001" (F JM 81001). Note that I'm only talking about stories here. Some special gags (not meant for reprint outside France) were not coded.

The French simply started to count the stories 001, 002 etc. At the request of someone (maybe Disney in Burbank?), they added a year to the codes, following Studio codes.

When a series of new Sport Goofy gags were produced, around 1984, they were included in the middle of other codes, because these were meant for publication in all Europe (and were published in Holland).

But when new riddle gags were produced every week, they didn't want to include these in the middle of long stories (partly because the riddle gags were not produced by the same persons in the same dept).
So they used F JM 85001, F JM 85002 etc. for the riddle gags. This was possible because story #99 was F JM 84099, and not F JM 85099.

Around 1985, the coding system changed, and the absolute nnn system was abandoned. The last story with the old system possibly is F JM 85143.

Hachette decided to use a range (001-099, 101-199, etc.) for any new series of stories or gags, starting at n01 each year. The latest story was #123 (or something like that), so range 101-199 could not be used, nor 001-099 (the range of Riddle gags). So they used the range 201-299. Today, stories still have codes between 201 and 299.

When new Ellsworth gags were produced, they gave these the range "301-399". Then "401-499" for the Disney Babies. Recently, they have used 601-699, 701-799 and 801-899. I have no clue why 501-599 was never used.

What is important to notice is that between 1980 and 1985, Hachette gave a number to any new story produced, in the order they were written. But after 1985, the stories get a number only when they are scheduled for a particular issue. So you can't tell if stories were rejected, or if a particular story was written before or after another one. Also, the persons who add numbers sometimes make mistakes, and use the same code twice. So the codes are wrong but there are no "correct" codes at all!

I think this is also the reason why "F JM 84121" is printed in a Dutch issue (instead of F JM 85121). For the French, the story is #121, but when they sent it to Burbank they didn't know in which "year" it would be published. Indeed they had to send each new story to Burbank for approval (also translation and redistribution in all Europe), months before, but without any definitive code.
When other countries got the stories from Burbank, they likely copied a wrong code made up by Hachette.

This also happened in Denmark. Even in France, I have seen the same stories with different codes (the same nnn but not the same year).

Story codes in the INDUCKS

In the INDUCKS, we omit the final letter of the printed story code (it adds no information). The general syntax therefore is:

"F" + space + 1 or 2 letters + 2 or 1 space(s) + 5 digits

1 or 2 letters indicate the comic series (JM, PL, PM, W).

We have normalised the codes, adding an additional space after W so as to have the digits always at the same position.

The French did not give most of their covers and illustrations a code. We use our own codes for them, starting with FC. The rest of the code is based on the first French publication.

contributions: Didier Ghez, François W., David G., Copywrite 5 (fall 1992), Harry F.

This page was generated on 2008-02-13 by DVEGEN 4.8d © Harry Fluks 2003.
For more information contact Harry Fluks (hfl at inducks.org - replace the at)