Belgium and France have a long tradition in comics. They have a common history for comics (see Franco-Belgian comics) and publishing houses.
The first publishing houses were established in the 1930s and 1940s, especially in Belgium, with Casterman, Dargaud, Dupuis and Le Lombard as the most famous ones.
From the 1970s and the "adult" turn of the comics, new publishing houses rose, especially in France, like Les Humanoïdes Associés, Glénat and Delcourt.
In the 1990s, several new small independent publishers emerged, such as l'Association, Amok, Fréon. While some of these new publishers have gained a popular success and succeeded to impose a new look on the comics (their authors often moving to bigger companies), others have kept a more intransigent approach. Nevertheless, the success of these new publishers has forced the old ones to react and to propose new editorial lines with more alternative content.
During the last decades, the mythical publishers have been strongly restructured. While keeping their brand names, most of them have been bought, included or gathered in larger conglomerates, such as Média-Participations.