This article focuses on the relatively little-known editorial context of children’s
French-language comics serials at a time when they constituted the
main distribution channel of the bande dessinée medium (before the album
became the dominant format), from the immediate post-war years to the
mid-1950s. I examine the importance given to the adaptation of films into
bande dessinée by studying the editorial strategy to which this practice of
adaptation contributes (focusing on the magazine L’Intrépide [The daredevil],
which, at the time, specialised in adaptation) and the narrative and
figurative aspects of the adapters’ approaches. I show in particular how
bandes dessinées are inscribed in genres that structure the periodical publications,
where these were previously established in the cinematographic
domain such as the swashbuckler and the western. The processes of condensation
or amplification of the narrative, as well as the use of the feuilleton,
are at the centre of the case studies.