It's also a French habit of pretending things are french. Specifically in the context of comics, it's at least Franco-Belgian (there's also a large culture of comics published in Dutch, which warrants its own genre these days).

Anyway, I leave it to the Germans to set the record straight on the smart-card. (and to the Polish to set the record straight about Marie Skłodowska)

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_comics
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_card
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie