It’s been quite the year for comics bankruptcies. While Diamond is The Big One, the October Chapter 7 filing for Humanoids is another notable one, especially in France. The original company Les Humanoïdes Associés is quite a fabled publisher, with some of the greatest names in French language comics published there. While the US branch filed in the fall, the French division had already filed for receivership over the summer.
The outline of the downfall of Humanoids seems fairly clear – the entire French publishing world is on shaky ground these days due to many factors, and US Humanoids were hit hard by the Diamond bankruptcy – but there are sure to be many juicy details. And now reporter Antoine Oury has a two part investigation into what went down, published at ActuaLitté, a French journal of publishing news. You can read Part One here and Part Two here. They are in French so I’ve read them using Google translate, and a few things may have literally been lost in translation. However it’s a well researched and reported story so here’s an outline.
Much of it revolves around Fabrice Giger, a self-made publishing magnate who purchased Humanoids in 1988 at the tender age of 23. While Giger kept the company running and opened the US branch 10 years later, bankruptcy filings reveal the usual web of investors and shell companies.
Reading these stories, at least in translation, a big factor behind the Humanoids implosion seems to be Giger’s quest to become a film producer, and his dogged pursuit of The Big Lie (translation via Google):
At Les Humanoïdes Associés, a different direction is emerging: “ In recent years, publishers were forced to choose comics with strong audiovisual potential, which led to many low-quality publications: the focus was on adaptation potential rather than the intrinsic qualities of the comic ,” explains a former Les Humanoïdes Associés employee. This strategy was reportedly slightly modified with the arrival of Marie Parisot, formerly of Dargaud, as CEO in 2024.
In case you are not familiar with our theory of The Big Lie, it’s the idea that making movies from comics is more profitable than just having a strong backlist. Unless you somehow become a producer and get dollar one participation on a project that becomes an international blockbuster…..it isn’t that easy. Giger learned that the hard way.
Perhaps inspired by the cult status of the original Heavy Metal animated film, Giger pursued Hollywood deals without much to show for it until 2021, when Humanoids made headlines for a deal with Taika Waititi to direct a film based on The Incal, the classic comic by Alejandro Jorodowsky and Moebius. Although some of it is an unfilmable acid trip of a story, it has been the subject of many adaptation attempts over the years and Waititi is definitely a director you think of when the term “unfilmable acid trip” arises. But Waititi was in the middle of his own troubles, and this is one of many projects that he was connected to that never happened.
Meanwhile, back in France, according to Oury, Humanoids projects were getting some airtime, but without much success, all under the mantle of Sparkling, a production company also owned by Giger. Cannes Police Criminelle (Cannes Confidential) , (not based on a comic) aired in the US on Acorn and in France on TF1, but had terrible ratings. Another show, Whiskey on the Rocks, is on Hulu, but it’s obscure, to put it kindly. In comics based media, an adaptation of The Zombies Who Ate the World, by Jerry Frissen and Guy Davis, came out in 2024, under the title We Are Zombies, but only played film festivals. As you can see from the above, just making several movies and TV shows will still not save your company from bankruptcy. They have to be hits.
The pursuit of Hollywood success led Giger to team up with David Jourdan who runs Primer Entertainment, which took a 20% ownership in Humanoids US, and here we find another sadly familiar tale: The US bankruptcy includes a dispute between Giger and Jourdan, with Jourdan claiming $10 million is owed to him. That case is now in arbitration.
There’s a lot more to the downfall of Humanoids in France. Giger travelled to the Paris office over the summer, calling a sudden meeting, where he told shocked employees that he couldn’t meet payroll and the company was being liquidated. La Boîte à Bulles, a smaller publisher that Humanoids acquired in 2017, had its own financial troubles earlier in the year, but appears to have been put into something more akin to the US chapter 13, where it is still reorganizing.
There’s a lot to this story that involves French labor laws (which tend to be stronger than in the US) and bankruptcy proceedings. For instance, Humanoids skirted stricter labor laws by never having more than 11 employees (which would have triggered more oversight), and never had a human resources dept.
Meanwhile, according to the US bankruptcy filings, Humanoids US has debts of $18,311,623.72 and assets of $0. These debts include the $10 million owed Jourdan, an additional loan of $1,252,654.09 from Giger himself and $7,009,547.72 owed to Humanoids Holding Sarl, which Oury describes as “a Luxembourg-based company within the Giger group, which is majority-owned by Melissa Giger, Fabrice’s own daughter.” Essentially, Humanoids US is going bankrupt because they poured too much of their own money into the company.
It’s a little unclear in the translated version but apparently, Humanoid’s France’s debts include two other loans: one from Giger for $411,685 and another from his mother, Claudine Giger for $84,321. French creditors include
Among them are several French printers, such as Aubin ($5275 owed), Pollina ($48,855) or Rotofrance ($10,344), but also a Spanish player, Estellaprint ($24,468) — it should be noted that the magazine Métal hurlant is now printed by Roularta, in Belgium.
Among the many other creditors, we can mention the Bureau international de l’édition française ($3510), the Humensis group ($5850 in royalties), Mosquito publishers ($24,438) or La Chope ($8893), the catering company of La Bellevilloise, a Parisian cultural center where Les Humanoïdes associés celebrated their 50th anniversary in March 2025.
The matter of La Boîte à Bulles is similarly tangled. Last year founder Vincent Henry, who continued to run the company under Humanoids Fr, sold his remaining shares in the company back to Humanoids for €467,400. Henry now alleges that he has never been paid for this, nor for another €49,440 that was to be paid for the acquisition. These show up in bankruptcy filings as a $620,000 debt to Henry.
However, in June La Boîte à Bulles was transferred to Sparkling, which is now a separate company owned by Humanoids Holding SARL. If you’ve been following the Diamond Bankruptcy, you know all about the holding company shell game that corporations engage in. The similarity in names between Sparkling and Sparkle Pop is a startling coincidence – but the efficiency of this type of arrangement is not. La Boîte à Bulles continues to operate, shielded from Humanoids liabilities.
Also continuing, amazingly, is the successful relaunch of Métal Hurlant, the F/SF anthology which started this all, and was spun out into the US version, Heavy Metal. Our own RM Rhodes has covered the relationship between the companies at length here.
Métal Hurlant is being produced by Fiction Labs, a separate Paris based publisher just recently founded by Guillaume Lubrano-Lavadera. Oury again (via Google translate:)
While this name may not seem particularly linked to Humanoids, its shareholders are, as they include Thierry Frissen, aka Jerry Frissen, a close collaborator of Fabrice Giger, as well as Guillaume Nougaret, Humanoids’ financial manager and the American group’s representative in France.
I’m not quite clear on how many different version of Metal Hurlant are continuing, but the Humanoid’s US store still claims to be selling subscriptions for the US edition for $110. Placing an order probably isn’t a great idea.
Meanwhile, what of the rights to all the books that Humanoids published in English? We’ve heard of several creators attempting to get their rights back, but that is never going to be an easy business, even with reversion clauses.
So there you have it, another tangled comics bankruptcy case. But don’t count Giger out: given his other existing companies and assets, don’t be too surprised if he pops up somewhere again.
