A nice set of two phonebook-sized collections of this French newspaper strip which ran between September 1959 and December 1972. This continuity strip about the adventures of a young girl living in a Paris suburb was inspired by Stan Drake's The Heart of Juliet Jones. Gillon, the award-winning artist of numerous bande dessinee including the bestselling French SF series Les Naufrages du temps, used a sleek photo-realistic style for this contemporary strip.

These two collections contain the entire 13-year run of the strip: 4139 black & white strips! (Four strips are printed per 8.25 x 10.75 inch page.) The second collection won the Grand Prize at Angouleme in 1982.

These fragile volumes are quite scarce and much sought after. Text in French.

From the backcover:

France, the sixties...

In the heart of the Paris suburbs, at 13 rue Hope...

There is the concierge, the brave Madam Menard, and her son Bibi, a sarcastic, resourceful kid.

On the ground floor, the shop of cabinetmaker Mr. Morel, a widower raising his daughter, Francoise, the heroine of '13', imaginative, attentive, sensitive and enthusiastic.

In the second, the couple Boulais. He is a sales representative. She has an Avenue Montaigne fashion boutique. All is not well in their household...he, lazy, weak, vain... she, passionate, but frustrated.

In the attic, an apartment with secretive tenants...

One morning, tragedy: M. Morel is taken to the hospital. Francoise abandons her studies at the Sorbonne to become a Paris tour guide...where she meets Bernard, the first in a long line of suitors.