In France, between 1964 and 1973, Éric Losfeld developed a collection of comic books for adults in his publishing house Le Terrain Vague. This approach was very unusual at the time, when comics were mainly published in magazines and mostly for a young audience. The decision to create this collection, inaugurated by Barbarella by Jean-Claude Forest, was favoured by various circumstances that this article will examine. The nineteen books published in this new editorial space, although unknown today, opened up unexpected artistic possibilities that contributed to the emergence of a different kind of comics.