Topic summary
Comic albums
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Bande dessinée.
Formats
Before the Second World War, comics were almost exclusively published in tabloid newspapers. Since 1945, the "comic album" (or "comics album", in French "album BD" for short) format gained popularity, a book-like format about half the former size. The albums, usually coloured all the way through, are almost always hardcover for the French editions and softcover for the Dutch editions—though the hardcover format has steadily gained ground from the late-1980s onward as customer option alongside the softcover format, contrary to Francophone Europe, where the hardcover format is the norm. When compared to US comic books and trade paperbacks (such as the later US graphic novel format), the European albums are rather large (roughly A4 standard). Comic albums started to receive their own individual ISBNs from the mid-1970s onward all over Europe solidifying their status as books.