| Agent 212 | |
|---|---|
Agent 212, Cover of the first album (1981)
| |
| Author(s) | Raoul Cauvin |
| Illustrator(s) | Daniel Kox |
| Current status/schedule | Running |
| Launch date | 1981 |
| Publisher(s) | Dupuis |
| Genre(s) | Humor comics, Satire |
Agent 212 is a humorous Belgian comic about a rotund police officer who usually suffers as a result of the people and situations he encounters.[1] Created by writer Raoul Cauvin and illustrator Daniel Kox, the comic debuted in Spirou magazine on 12 June 1975.[2] The first album of the series was published in 1981 by Belgian publishing house Dupuis. To date, 30 comic albumsofAgent 212 have been published by Dupuis in French and Dutch. Agent 212 is among the best selling French comics, with 66,000 copies for the 25th album in 2006.[3] The series is also popular in Indonesia.
The Agent 212 albums are usually about 48 pages. Unlike other Franco-Belgian comic titles such as Tintin, Asterix and Lucky Luke, the Agent 212 albums do not comprise single stories spanning the length of the book. Instead, each album comprises a number of short and usually unrelated stories, ranging in length from one to five pages, though the lead story in Volume 4 spans 12 pages.[4]
The Agent 212 comics have been translated into Indonesian under the series title Agen Polisi 212. The first 16 albums were released in standard large format (11 x 8.3 inches) by now-defunct publishing company PT Midas Surya Grafindo (Misurind) from 1987 to 1995.[6][7] In 2011, new Indonesian translations were commissioned by PT Bhuana Ilmu Populer (BIP, a unit of the Gramedia publishing group), which began releasing the entire series in a smaller format (8.6 x 6.2 inches).[8]
