Casterman

Founded in 1776 in Tournai by Donat-Joseph Casterman, the Casterman house established itself as one of the pillars of Franco-Belgian publishing. A bicephalous enterprise, both a publishing house and printing company, run by the same family dynasty until 1999, it managed to evolve from a denominational publisher specializing in religious publications to a major player in comics and children's literature.

The decisive turning point occurred in 1934 when Casterman took over from the Petit Vingtième editions for the publication of Tintin albums with "Cigars of the Pharaoh". The colorization of albums initiated in 1942 transformed Tintin's success into a worldwide phenomenon and definitively repositioned the publisher.

In parallel, from 1954 onwards, Casterman developed a structuring children's catalog notably with the Martine series by Marcel Marlier. Driven by Hergé's albums and then by the Martine series, Casterman established itself as a major player in children's publishing and comics during the Thirty Glorious Years.

The publisher initiated a new transformation in the 1970s by conquering an adult readership with the first albums of Corto Maltese by Hugo Pratt in 1973 and the launch of the magazine (À Suivre) in 1978, which influenced the renaissance of comics in the 1980s. Casterman was acquired by the Flammarion group in 1999.