AERONAUTS
The Mirage fighter aircraft series is featured in the popular French comics Tanguy and Laverdure, primarily authored by Jean-Michel Charlier and illustrated by a few different but named illustrators. The two protagonist, Michel Tanguy and Ernest Laverdure, are two fighter pilots in the French Air Force and member of the elite White Stork Squadron (escadrille des cigognes).
In the beginning of their story, they start as two student pilots flying T-33s, it is not until their fourth adventure when they finally sit in the cockpit of a Mirage IIIC. Later on their fighters are upgraded to Mirage IIIE's and the last adventure saw them flying Mirage 2000s. Tanguy and Laverdure's adventure preceded Top Gun by at least one generation. Their adventures are full of political intrigues, espionage, and the romance of aviation. Until today, there is no English translation of their adventures, the aspiring English reader has to learn French to read the originial French comics. However, the comic has been translated into other languages, such as Indonesian.
The stories were made into the 1967-1969 French TV series Les Chevaliers du Ciel, starring Jacques Santi as "Lt Tanguy" and Christian Marin as "Lt Laverdure". The series was made by ORTF and a version of the show dubbed into English and titled The Aeronauts was shown in the UK by the BBC and in Canada on the CBC in the early 1970s.