Lately, when I’m not drawing Strewth! or tending the moonshine distillery in my basement, I’m reading all the comics I can get my hands on for inspiration. It occurred to me today that four of the titles in my stack were of European origin, and that some of you might find these recommendations interesting. This is by no means a revelatory list of obscure overseas titles. These are all relatively well-known, but they’re pretty great and – more importantly – can all be found on shelves in American bookstores. Here we go:

1. The Smurfs by Peyo

OK, let’s get this one out of the way. Yes, I really do like Smurf comics. They’re colorful and fun. Many American viewers were probably not aware that the Saturday morning animated Smurfs were based on a series of Belgian comics from the 60′s, but as a kid I managed to find a volume of the original stories and immediately began to regard my TV-watching American friends as boorish Philistines (nah). In what will surely be the only redeeming consequence of the upcoming release of the marketing gut-punch “The Smurfs Movie,”  Papercutz is releasing small, cheap volumes containing the best of those original stories. The first volume includes the “Purple Smurf” story which became a popular episode of the show (and which had been edited from its original version, “The Black Smurf”). Kudos to the publisher for reprinting the originals and not churning out some hipstified new aberration.

2. Blacksad by Canales and Guarnido

You can’t get much further from The Smurfs in tone and content than Blacksad. I first discovered Blacksad as a damaged French language single issue under a pile of junk at the local comic shop, and I loved it instantly. This is possibly the most beautifully drawn comic I’ve ever read. Created by Spanish artists and released by a French publisher, it deftly combines very adult stories of noir and crime with animal characters that are somewhere between Disney and Will Eisner. There is at least one English language hardcover collection available in the States. Not for kids.

3. Asterix by Goscinny and Uderzo

The French comic Asterix is fairly ubiquitous in American stores, so I’m going to assume awareness is high on this one. These books are just plain fun, though I often wonder if the English translations aren’t doing a major disservice to the writing. The artwork is completely charming, and there’s a quality to the lines in Aseterix and The Smurfs (and Lucky Luke, for that matter) that seems somewhat definitive of European children’s comics. There’s something about it that sets it apart, though I can’t quite put my finger on it. These are cheap, fun books that I would recommend for kids with an interest in comics who are not impressed with the typical American youth titles.  Also, I remember that we watched a dubbed Asterix cartoon in elementary school, and I recall being enchanted by the animation style.  However, I’ve been disappointed on revisiting other childhood favorites, so I wonder how it holds up.

4. Lucky Luke by Morris

I only recently became aware of this, apparently a beloved series in Belgium where it debuted in 1946. Like Asterix and The Smurfs, Lucky Luke is a colorful adventure comic for young people. It does, however, share something in common with Blacksad in that it mines tropes of a uniquely American genre for its subject matter. In this case, it’s the American West, and particularly the idealized version of said from classic movies and television shows.  That makes reading Lucky Luke a fascinating exercise in cultural decryption, as you parse a European cartoonist’s simplified representations of his perceptions of themes and clichés from Hollywood productions which are themselves already riffs on jokes on exaggerations on lies.  Also the pictures are funny.

Those are the European comics on my nightstand  right now. I can say honestly that they’ve all had some contribution, however minor, to the ever-brewing stew of Strewth!. Maybe you have a favorite European comic to tell us about?