My first thanks go to the late Professor Ginette Castro, who passed away prematurely in September 2004. She is remembered by all those who knew her as an exceptional Americanist and her guidance proved invaluable when I started working on a topic that was then largely terra incognita in the cultural history of the United States.
I would also like to warmly thank the Centre National du Livre and Professors Christian Lerat and Yves-Charles Grandjeat, codirectors of the American Studies research group CLAN (Cultures et Littératures d’Amérique du Nord) for the grant that they provided in support of the original publication of this work by the Nantes-based Editions du Temps.
I undertook the substantive bibliographic research necessary for this work at the library of the University of British Columbia where I was a graduate student on a Canadian government scholarship between 1989 and 1991. Two other research trips helped me to complete that work later: one to the University of California at Berkeley in July 1998, the other to Michigan State University in East Lansing in July 2002. It is with great gratitude that I thank the librarians of the Comic Art Collection, particularly Randall W. Scott and Jerry Paulins. These two trips to the United States (and the excursions to Canada that accompanied them) would not have been possible without the financial and moral support of CLAN and the Center for Canadian Studies at Bordeaux 3. Finally, this work was completed thanks to a sabbatical semester granted me by the National Council of Universities in 2003.
To my Americanist colleagues and friends with whom I have had exchanges on this and other topics for several years within the Association Française d’Études Américaines: John Atherton, Claude Chastagner, Marc Chénetier, Catherine Collomp, John Dean, Nathalie Dessens, Divina Frau-Meigs, Bernard Genton, Jean Kempf, Liliane Kerjan, Vincent Michelot, François Pitavy, Jacques Portes, Bernadette Rigal-Cellard, François Weil. Special thanks to my colleague Dr. Virginia Cox-Ricard for her assistance in revising the text of the translation.
To those who have allowed me to ask myself the right questions and (arguably) find the right answers to my questions: in France, Thierry Crépin, Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle, Jean-Matthieu Méon, Jean-Yves Mollier, Pascal Ory; in the United States, Robert Beerbohm, Richard Case, Al Feldstein, Jeffrey Howard-Lindsey, Richard Kyle, Bill Schelly.
To my best friend in comics, Henri Pajot, an inexhaustible source of comic book lore and fond memories, and his “spiritual son,” David Fournol.
I would like to finish by dedicating this work to my family: my parents, my brother Philippe (who one day in March 1977 put Amazing Spider-Man 180, Avengers 159, and Captain America 210 in my hands without thinking of the long-term impact of his gesture), and my sister Sylvie. But my principal dedication is to my wife Lila Verley and our daughter Cléa, a Lawrence Durrell heroine and the princess from another dimension who has been the longtime companion of Doctor Stephen Strange.