The Georges Dumbruch Collection
The Collection
In 2024, Georges Dumbruch donated an extensive collection of petits formats to the Faculty Library of Arts and Philosophy. The collection comprises approximately 150 banana boxes filled with small-format comics. It primarily contains Francophone publications from the 1950s to the 2000s. While its core focus lies on science fiction, other popular genres are also well represented, including fantasy, adventure, romance, and detective stories. The collection features, among others, series and characters such as Conan, Zorro, and Félix le Chat.
Petits formats were designed for quick and highly accessible consumption and are generally associated with popular pulp fiction. They served as ephemeral reading material intended for one-time use and were rarely preserved. This very ephemerality makes such publications relatively scarce today, turning the Dumbruch Collection into a particularly valuable corpus for research on popular reading culture, genre conventions, and distribution practices in the second half of the twentieth century.
Dumbruch donated the collection with the explicit intention of making it accessible for academic research. The material constitutes a significant addition to the Faculty Library’s existing comics collections and provides relevant source material for students and researchers, particularly within the research network that emerged around the ERC project COMICS (no. 758502), led by Prof. Dr. Maaheen Ahmed.
The Dumbruch Collection is currently in the processing phase.
Zorro; no. 8, 1956; SFP, Paris
Conan Super / Mon Journal; album no.1 (du no.1 au no. 3), 1985; Editions Aventures et Voyages, Paris
Felix le Chat - Miaou voilà; no.2, 1964; SFPI, Paris
Georges Dumbruch (1951- )
Georges Dumbruch developed a strong interest in comics culture from an early age, partly through magazines such as Tintin and Spirou. During visits to his family in Etterbeek, he discovered science fiction comics in local kiosks—an experience that sparked a passionate and lifelong interest in science fiction and other genre literature, especially in comics form. Although Alain Van Passen also grew up in Etterbeek, the two collectors did not meet until adulthood.
After completing his engineering studies, Dumbruch continued to expand his collection systematically, purchasing works regularly at local markets and specialised retailers both in Belgium and abroad. Over several decades, he built a large and coherent collection of petits formats. The collection reflects not only personal collecting practices but also broader patterns of production, circulation, and consumption of popular comics in the second half of the twentieth century. Today, it constitutes an important record of this often overlooked segment of comics culture.
Susy / Collection Primevère; album no. 942 (du no. 87 au no. 89), 1980; Arédit,
Charlot se débrouille; Les beaux albums de la Jeunesse Joyeuse no. 29, 1958; SPE, Paris
Dinamite Jane; no. 3, 1976; Edizional, Milano
Literature and Documentation
- Ahmed, Maaheen en Beatrijs Goegebuer. “Comics in a University Library: (Un)boxing, Cataloguing, Diffusing." Archives et bibliothèques de Belgique / Archief- en bibliotheekwezen in België, vol. 94, 2024, p. 17-28.
- Dumbruch, Georges en Petra Steyaert. “Interview met Georges Dumbruch.” Ongepubliceerd, podcast studio Faculteitsbibliotheek Letteren & Wijsbegeerte, Universiteit Gent, 2024.