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Did you know that the comic strip is the Ninth Art?

(Plastic Art list: 1st-Architecture; 2nd-Painting; 3rd-Sculpture; 4th-Engraving; 5th-Drawing;6th-Photo; 7th-Cinema; 8th-Television; 9th-Comic books)

With sales of 43.3 million, comic strips represented more than one in every eight books sold in France in 2004.

CINEBOOK is the British publisher of the Ninth Art. For educational purposes, our books are translated from the original French for British children in order to be faithful to the language of the United Kingdom .

Into the enriching wonders of the 9th Art

By Paul Gravett

Asterix and Tintin are hugely popular heroes around the world. So if you love all their stories, what others are there to read? Luckily, there is much, much more waiting for you to discover in French and Belgian comics than potion-enhanced, ancient Gauls and quiffed, big-hearted boy reporters, and Cinebook is carefully selecting and translating some of the finest bestsellers for readers of every age to enjoy in English.

You'll find René Goscinny, the original writer and co-creator of Asterix, showing all his genius for comedy again with the cartoonist Morris on Lucky Luke, the coolest, fastest-shooting cowboy in a very wild and crazy West. And you'll soon see why Hergé picked Edgar P. Jacobs to be his first great collaborator on Tintin, when you step into Jacobs's gripping, meticulously drawn thrillers starring Blake and Mortimer, as dynamic a British detective duo as Holmes and Watson.

Another equally British investigator is the moustached, Bristol-born Colonel Clifton, who finds himself embroiled in cases as zany as they are exciting. And welcome back to Britain's most celebrated fictional fighter pilot, Biggles, who takes to the air in a thoroughly researched account of the Falklands War. Toad, Ratty, Badger and Mole from Kenneth Grahame’s perennial Wind in the Willows also return in a faithful, beautifully drawn four-volume adaptation.

Aficionados of sweeping Tolkienesque fantasy will be swept up in the powerful epic of Thorgal, while the human saga of real French history comes to exquisite life in Queen Margot.

For the young and young-at-heart, Ducoboo's classroom catastrophes are as hilarious as the best in The Beano, while little Yakari's wide-eyed discoveries teach us the lessons of growing-up and living in harmony with nature. Fans of Charmed, Sabrina or W.I.T.C.H. are sure to come under the spell of magical Melusine.

Each Cinebook series can be your ticket to another storyworld that is almost familiar, yet also delightfully unexpected. Like your favourite Tintin and Asterix, these are comics to keep and treasure, to read and re-read again and again. Why wait? Start your voyage into the enriching wonders of the 9th Art today!     

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Paul Gravett is the author of Graphic Novels: Stories To Change Your Life, Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics and Great British Comics.

www.paulgravett.com