The lacking scans might be because you can get them for free in most libraries round here. I borrowed loads of them at my local library in our tiny town, great comics! They were even translated to Swedish so I could start on them very early in life.

And you too, fellow Belgian. But.. what are scans? You mean using a scanner instead of buying them?

What I meant is that there's a large electronic reading scene for both American and Japanese comics. Both have had large pirate scenes for decades, but recently more and more legal avenues have popped up too for reading electronically.

I'm not aware of such a culture around francophone comics.

And to the sibling comment: I'd say in the origin countries the same is true. In Japan, kids buy physical manga at the convenience store. In the US, we go to the comic book store and pick up a batch of new releases. Yet somehow both of those have large communities of people scanning/translating/occasionally licensing the works. I wonder why it's different with French ones!