Archibald Higgins


Archibald Higgins is the main character of the scientific comics series of "The Adventures of Archibald Higgins", created by the French astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Petit as a translation of his French series "Les Aventures d'Anselme Lanturlu" first created in 1980.
The series was initially published by Editions Belin. Curious and candid, Archibald's adventures are a pretext for the popularization of science in fields ranging from physics to computer science, helped in this by the charming Sophie who guides him in his efforts while letting him search, as well as by three very learned animals: Leon the pelican, Max the bird and Tiresias the snail. The albums are filled with encounters with characters from well-known scientists from different periods.
This series is the first example in the history of real science education through comics. It is not a comic strip that would take place in the scientific community: the objective is to acquire scientific knowledge. It was born from many drawings that the author had to create in order to teach physical sciences and geometry to philosophy students at the Faculty of Aix-en-Provence.
The scientific level of the target readership is very diverse: some albums can be understood by high school students, most by science graduates, some require a first university level in mathematics.
This science comics series explains mainly highly advanced scientific concepts : cosmology, general relativity, topology, anatomy, MHD, fluid mechanics, astrophysics, geometry, economy, aeronautics...
Since 2005, the association Savoir sans Frontieres organises the professional translation and the free download of all the albums as webcomics in PDF format.

Dissemination of the series

Editions Belin has published fourteen hard cover albums. Four others rejected by Belin were published by Editions Présence.
From 1980 onwards, the series was marketed in several languages:
Since 2005 Jean-Pierre Petit drawn others Archibald webcomics. Archibald appears now in up to 28 albums. The full series of Archibald albums is distributed free of charge since 2005 on the website of the association Savoir Sans Frontières, which has set itself the goal, among other things, of professionally translating these albums into as many languages as possible. Archibald series thus joins the webcomics movement, and by the way of translations financed by crowdsourcing, it added another innovation in this field.
As of November 2018, a total of 536 albums, books, videos other original productions were available in 39 languages, with the website regularly adding new translations.
The languages that know the most albums downloaded from the association's website are: French, Spanish, German, English, Italian. By way of comparison, the Lucky Luke and Corto Maltese series are translated into some twenty languages, and the most widely distributed Asterix and Tintin series are translated into more than a hundred.
In 2011, Editions Astropress published a new edition compiling most of the albums in several languages. Each language is the subject of 3 volumes, each volume comprising more than 600 pages:
A few albums are an opportunity for Jean-Pierre Petit to present in some pages his own scientific results that have previously been the subject of scientific peer-reviewed publications or other books. This is the case with:
  1. Euclid rules OK?, John Murray, Londres, 1982
  2. :Here's looking at Euclid , W. Kaufmann, Los Altos, 1985
  3. Flight of fancy, John Murray, Londres, 1982
  4. :Flight of fancy, W. Kaufmann, Los Altos, 1985
  5. Informagic, John Murray, Londres, 1982
  6. :Computer magic, W. Kaufmann, Los Altos, 1985
  7. The black hole, W. Kaufmann, Los Altos, 1985
  8. Everything is relative, W. Kaufmann, Los Altos, 1985
  9. Big bang, W. Kaufmann, Los Altos, 1986
  10. Run, robot, run, W. Kaufmann, Los Altos, 1985
  11. The silence barrier, W. Kaufmann, Los Altos, 1986

    Receipt of the series by the public

Archibald and the academic scientific community