These early editions were published in 1939 in the COLLECTION AVENTURE. The Doc Savage specific series within the collection was called Franck Sauvage, L'Homme Miracle. The names of Doc's aides were also "francised": for instance Monk is named Le Gorille (the gorilla)! 

The author is referred as Guy d'Antin. It is not known whether this name refers to the actual translator name or was invented because it sounded more french than Kenneth Robeson. The name Guy d'Antin appears on another series mentioned on the back cover of the first edition (adventures of Jacques Barnès), as well as on other translations published during the late 30's (like some Tarzan novels), so I presume it must be the translator's name. Guy d'Antin is mentioned on this page.

"Collection Aventure" also published other action series like "L'ombre, Le Gentleman des ténèbres" by Marcel Mahaut (The Shadow), "Bill Banco, Détective" by Yves Clairière (??), "Jacques Barnès, Le chevalier de l'air" by Guy D'Antin (Biggles ??) or "Pistol Peter, Le vengeur du Far-West" by Pierre Cobore.

As you can see on the cover scans below, there were different editions. The actual contents is the same, but the front, inside and back covers are different. The editions with the lower price (5 Frs) seem to be the original ones, while the higher priced ones (6 Frs, then 8.50 Frs) seem to be reeditions. Looking at back covers from the different editions, one can gather that there were 3 editions of "La vallée du passé", priced at 5, 6 and 8.50 Frs. As none of the editions lists a publication date, the "Publication" column indicated below is tentative.

Although these editions had the same cover pictures as the US pulps, they already had a paperback format. The word paper in paperback is utterly justified, as the covers and backs were made of a thick paper, not of cardboard like the later Doc paperbacks. This makes these over-50-years old editions very fragile.

Collection Aventure List

Pulp title	French title	Translator	Publication
The Man of Bronze	La vallée du passé	Guy D'Antin	1939 (?)
The Land of Terror	La vapeur du néant	Guy D'Antin	1939 (?)
Quest of the Spider	L'araignée grise	Guy D'Antin	1939 (?)

Note that, contrary to what what published in earlier version of this site, the novel Les oiseaux de foudre by Guy d'Antin was not a Frank Sauvage novel, but a Jacques Barnès one.

The Covers

The 3 covers reused the W. Baumhofer art from the corresponding pulp.