In the 1960s, the term bandes dessinées ("drawn strips") came into wide use in French to denote the medium. Cartoonists began creating comics for mature audiences, and the term "Ninth Art"[e] was coined, as comics began to attract public and academic attention as an artform. A group including René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo founded the magazine Pilote in 1959 to give artists greater freedom over their work. Goscinny and Uderzo's The Adventures of Asterix appeared in it and went on to become the best-selling French-language comics series. From 1960, the satirical and taboo-breaking Hara-Kiri defied censorship laws in the countercultural spirit that led to the May 1968 events.

Comics for adults began to be called what?