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In France, Comic Books Are Serious Business
- thomasfl 8y agoThe name "comic" is totally wrong. The french name "bande dessine" illustrates better what it's all about. Take Pyongang by Guy Deslisle for instance. Since no one is allowed to take photos in many places north Korera, he created a "comic" book instead.
- klmr 8y agoYou forgot the translation: “bande dessinée”, literally, means “drawn strip”, or, equivalently, graphic novel. The latter term exists and matches the French wording pretty closely. “Comic”, by contrasts, really only describes a subset.
- dgellow 8y ago“Graphic novels” are called “Romans graphiques” and are their own category of “bande dessinée”. And yes, it’s a quite important thing, not only in France but in Belgium and Switzerland too (at least in Romandie, the French speaking part). I’m in Berlin since a few years now and one of the main thing I miss are places where I can go and read good comics, that’s not really something as developed here, majority of people I meet don’t even know that’s a thing. As a contrast, in Switzerland or France I can go to any Fnac store and spend a Saturday afternoon reading comics from a huge set of artists.
- klmr 8y agoHmm. I spent my late teens in France, was/am an avid graphic novel reader, and I have never heard the term “roman graphique”. Is it a recent term? It actually sounds like a back-translation of “graphic novel”. The term BD is ubiquitous. If you’re in Berlin check out Dussmann if you haven’t already (it’s hard to miss …). It’s nowhere near as well stocked as an average book shop in France but it does probably have the largest collection of BDs of any shop in Berlin.
- cgrand-net 8y agoYes, "roman graphique" is a rather recent term (whose usage has slowly grown over the last 15 years, generally applied to BDs with more "serious" topics; it allowed some people to say they don't read plebeian BDs, they read romans graphiques). Speaking of broadening people conception of BDs, I highly recommend people to have a look at La Revue Dessinée, a quarterly news magazine in BD https://www.larevuedessinee.fr https://www.larevuedessinee.fr
- dgellow 8y ago> it allowed some people to say they don't read plebeian BDs, they read romans graphiques I don't know, that's not the way I see it personally. I see roman graphiques as more experimental concerning the narration, art, even how the actual book is produced (experimenting with different type of paper, different format) where traditionnal bandes dessinées have more strict codes they follow. So yes it can feel a bit more serious in some way but you also find weird and funny things.
- klmr 8y agoAt least for the English term this is explicitly the reason it was created: to avoid the bad reputation “comic strips” (and the term has been criticised for precisely this, because it’s seen as pretentious).
- bunderbunder 8y agoIf the goal was distancing oneself from mainstream comic strips and books, that fell apart pretty quickly. I'm pretty sure the term was popularized by Marvel's Graphic Novels series of books.
- yesenadam 8y ago"Fan historian Richard Kyle coined the term "graphic novel" in an essay in the November 1964 issue of the comics fanzine Capa-Alpha. The term gained popularity in the comics community after the publication of Will Eisner's A Contract with God (1978) and the start of Marvel's Graphic Novel line (1982) and became familiar to the public in the late 1980s after the commercial successes of the first volume of Art Spiegelman's Maus in 1986 and the collected editions of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns in 1986 and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen in 1987. The Book Industry Study Group began using "graphic novel" as a category in book stores in 2001." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphic_novel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphic_novel I read A Contract with God and some other of Eisner's stuff lately, e.g. The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the version of the "To be, or not to be" speech in Comics and Sequential Art - just awesome.
- Xylakant 8y agoWhile there’s certainly nothing that compares to a well-stocked French bookstore in Berlin, you could try “Grober Unfug” (groberunfug.de) or Modern Graphics (modern-graphics.de)
- dependsontheq 8y agoSadly it’s only every second year, but take the train to Erlangen next year and visit the https://www.comic-salon.de/de/home https://www.comic-salon.de/de/home
- realusername 8y agoI feel using the original word is better since it represents a different format & art culture, the same way 'manga' is still used in English.
- klmr 8y agoI don’t disagree, I just wanted to point out that there’s a close equivalent in the English language that’s a much better fit than the word “comic”.
- vidarh 8y agoSimilar thing in Scandinavia. E.g. "tegneserie" in Norwegian => "drawn series". In modern usage "tegneserie" can refer to a magazine or graphic novel, but you can also explicitly distinguish between "tegneseriestripe" and "tegneserieblad" (strip vs. magazine), and nothing really prevents anyone from making the similar distinction with novel ("tegneserieroman" is not used much, but it's a reasonable extension; some also use "grafisk roman" as a more direct translation of "graphic novel" but it's a misleading translation as using "grafisk" suggest something much wider than "tegneserie", e.g. anything built around a visual presentation would fit)
- alex_duf 8y agoTo be honest as a French, I don't mind everyone talking about "comics" when referring to French and Belgian graphic novels. It might not capture all the depth of what it really is but at least everyone understands.
- agumonkey 8y agoThey both started as comic strips, but now comics mostly means DC / Marvel from the US culture, while in Europe, Franco Belgian went into another flave of comics, and the name B.D.
- webmobdev 8y agoIn India, my generation grew up on Tintin, Asterix, Archie comics, Phantom, Mandrake, Superman, Spiderman etc. and local indian comics dealing with Indian freedom fighters and leaders and indian mythology. Somehow I still prefer those kind of comics and korean / japanese comics than those by DC / Marvel (they look technically marvellous, with their computer graphics, but still pale compared to the non-US ones).
- agumonkey 8y agoDidn't know european comics were famous in India. Cool. Also never seen an Indian comics. It's interesting to see how US evolved very different from European. Tiny anecdote, France was quite aware of US comics (including Disney) and I read that there was some anti US reactions to this. Some magazines started as an effort to make more french stories (leftist, ecology). See PIF Magazine, which was funded by the French Communist Party (no joke). Even Asterix is said to be influenced a bit by US super heroes, hence the magic potion giving super powers. The style and humor was different though.
- bunderbunder 8y agoI'm curious, has the US exported much of its non-Disney, non-superhero comics? There's quite a bit more to American comics than that stuff.
- invaliduser 8y agoThe french typically call «bande dessinée» the french-belgian comics, while using the words «comics» for US comics (typically Marvel/DC/etc, and «Manga» for asian (manga/manhwa/etc). The word «bande dessinée» is also the hyperonym for all the comics genres, although connoisseurs usually don't use it for «Comics» or «Manga».
- johnchristopher 8y agoI am pretty sure bandes dessinées comes from "comic strips". Or it's the other way around.
- simias 8y agoThat sounds a bit pointlessly pedantic to me. "Bande dessinée" is aptly translated as "comic strip", I'm not sure why you couldn't call them "comic books". Of course there are massive cultural differences between American-style comics and the Belgian/French kind but it's also true for many other art forms and we don't feel the need to come up with a different name every time. I suppose there's a precedent with Japanese comics that are usually called "mangas" but at least that's short and easily pronounceable by your average anglophone. "Bande dessinée" will be painful both to pronounce and to write (as you showcase yourself, you forgot the accent and the feminine -e at the end of dessinée). I guess you could borrow the common shorthand "BD" (pronounced bédé).
- egypturnash 8y agoThe literal translation is "drawn strip", which doesn't have the continued implication that everything in the media must be comedy that "comic book" does. Americans seem to have mostly settled into accepting this contradiction, with some incredibly unfunny and serious stuff being published as "comics". There's also the term "graphic novel", which sometimes only applies to stories first published as a book , rather than a series of monthly pamphlets, and also still sometimes has people saying "are they full of explicit porn or something?" as a misinterpretation of the "graphic" part.
- amyjess 8y agoInterestingly enough, Stan Lee always preferred the term "comicbook" on the grounds that writing it as one word made it more clear that it was its own thing and not just a book that's comedic. Another term I've seen bandied around is "sequential art".
- msbarnett 8y ago> The literal translation is "drawn strip", which doesn't have the continued implication that everything in the media must be comedy that "comic book" does. There is no implication that "comic books" are comedic in modern American culture. You're over-focusing on the etymology of a term that has since come to mean something quite different. > Americans seem to have mostly settled into accepting this contradiction, with some incredibly unfunny and serious stuff being published as "comics" This is merely how language evolves. We park on driveways. "Fat chance" indicates, in fact, a very slim one. Suitcases are a thoroughly incorrect way to store or transport suits, unless you like creasing them. Civil wars, aren't. Comic books are rarely comedic. We speak in customary meaning, not based on overly literal analysis of component words.
- the_af 8y agoAs an aside -- and this is not a disagreement with your comment! -- I found Pyongyang by Guy Deslisle horribly condescending. I really disliked it, especially because I also recently read a similar book* about Japan by Igort (who is Italian), Japanese Notebooks, and fell in love with it and its sequel. I really recommend them, in case you haven't read them. * Obviously not similar in political terms, but similar in that it's about a Western man who writes comics, trying to work in an Asian country and fit in a sometimes impenetrable culture. But if you want political, there's also Igort's Russian Notebooks.
- chimeracoder 8y agoThe premise was great - given that it's prohibited to take unbiased photojournalism in North Korea, the idea of getting a firsthand account from a graphic novelist and artist instead is an amazing idea! It could have been a great chance to show stories about Pyongyang, including accounts by people living there, that otherwise are literally impossible to show. Unfortunately the book was terrible. Deslisle was so condescending and disrespectful to the people he was covering that it was painful to read. And he clearly had no concept of how to broach, well, journalism. For example, there's one scene where he essentially interrogates a woman who works for him about whether she really believes "all the propaganda". She nervously agrees, then politely excuses herself from the room, and the author uses this to "show" how brainwashed and uncritical these people are, not realizing that this is a completely inappropriate setting for the conversation given the power imbalance, and not bothering to consider that she may not have been telling him the truth.
- amyjess 8y agoYeah, for all she knows, he may very well have been a spy for the Kim regime, or there might be a hidden microphone present or something, and she and her whole family could end up sent to gulags for answering him. I'm honestly struck by the sheer awfulness of Deslisle's tactics here. He put a woman and three generations of her entire family at risk just for his own personal greed.
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- goto11 8y agoI'd say "comic" is a better translation, since the term BD encompass both self-contained stories (like Poyangang) and album series like Tintin, and newspaper strips. You wouldn't call Asterix a graphic novel. The term Graphic Novel was invented in the US initially to describe comic books which contained a single self-contained story - as opposed to newspaper comic strips and superhero periodicals with never-ending storylines. So it is a subset of comics, which are marketed differently.
- baby 8y agoIt sounds weird to me as a french, I much prefer the term BD. Everybody calls that a "BD" in french, as opposed to comics and mangas.
- babayega2 8y agoFrench, and Belgian. I have a big collection of French comics I enjoyed in my childhood and other new ones.
- walkingolof 8y agoSame here, my favorit is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Giraud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Giraud aka. Moebius, also very popular among other comic book artists. http://comicsalliance.com/jean-moebius-giraud-art/ http://comicsalliance.com/jean-moebius-giraud-art/
- ivanhoe 8y agoAnd Italian, don't forget Italy... Hugo Pratt's Corto Maltese, Milo Manara, Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri, and less known in the West Luciano Secchi aka Max Bunker with his Alan Ford... even Sergio Bonelli's pulp book comics are actually great...
- eih 8y ago> even Sergio Bonelli's pulp book comics are actually great I am from Turkey. I learned reading and writing before my school age, with the help of graphic novels. Me and many people I know, literally grew up with different Bonelli series. A great number of graphic novelists and artists from Turkey would easily refer to them as "inspiration" or "reason" to start drawing/writing. Zagor, Mister No, Tex and Martin Mystere (or with its Turkish printing title Atlantis) has been really popular, and in more recent years we had the chance to read Julia, Dylan Dog, Nathan Never, La Storia and many other one shot series from Bonelli. I believe, until the mid-1990s, when you mentioned the term comic (or "çizgi roman", meaning graphic/drawn/illustrated novel), people would come up with those titles rather than Spider Man, or Batman. They have been available along with Italian titles but for a very long time, they were never as popular and widespread. I am not sure about the usage of term "pulp" (mostly due to English not being my native language), but I'd consider those titles as important and serious as big auteurs' (Pratt, Manara etc...) creations.
- ivanhoe 8y ago
- Fnoord 8y agoMy childhood favourites were Buck Danny, Tin Tin (Kuifje)
- 2ion 8y ago> Buck Danny Now that is a title I haven't heard mentioned in a long time.
- Fnoord 8y agoIn case you don't have them anymore and you want a nostalgia trip you can actually download these on the Internet from various sources.
- kakwa_ 8y agoFrom the same authors, as a child, I loved "Barbe Rouge". Who wouldn't? Pirates, age of sail (XVIII century), impossible missions, etc. Now, I see it's a bit too black and white but at the time I loved it ^^.
- crocal 8y agoI wonder how many Americans know about Buck Danny. This is after all a 50 years old Belgian graphic novel starring a US Navy pilot! « Fire from the sky » trilogy by Charlier and Bergese is unbelievably cool.
- _pmf_ 8y agoDoes the NYT really have to turn every headline into a bad pun?
- klmr 8y agoHave to? No. But it’s kind of a sport amongst copy editors. Some of the good reputation of The Economist stems from the fact that they elevated puns (not only in titles) to an art form.
- Hoasi 8y ago> But in France, at least, comic books were taken seriously as an art form, Peeters said. “When I was a young author I came from a more literary world,” he said. “People said, ‘What are you doing with comics? You are a clever person. You should work with movies or literature.’ Now, nobody would say that.” Contrast this with a petition initiated and signed by a collective of authors, including Benoît Peeters: https://collectifartistesauteurs.tumblr.com/post/170044076551/la-hausse-récente-de-la-csg-pour-lensemble-des https://collectifartistesauteurs.tumblr.com/post/17004407655... Maybe the art form is taken seriously, yet over half of the comic books, authors cannot make a decent living off this profession in France today.
- 2ion 8y agoThe golden age of Belgo-French comic artists and authors may have been 1960-1990, at least all my favourite series are from this time. They are incredible to this day and always a pleasure to reread. Like Yoko Tsuno by Leloup, Gaston by Franquin, Spirou & Fantasio (esp. the books my Tome and Janry), Valerian and Veronique by Mézières and Christin, Asterix and Obelix, and many more. I'm pretty content that for the length of my childhood, I could read through an entire treasure trove of works that already existed, and wait more the latest ones. Except for the Disney Duck universe, all the other American comic books look very much subpar in quality in direct comparison, regardless of whether in print or as movies, esp. the super hero ones. Sad to see the industry turn this way.
- pbalau 8y agoHow could you miss Tintin?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- 2ion 8y agoWe call it "Tim and Struppi" here. Never liked it very much. Though I also forgot e.g. Lucky Luke which I liked very much. There are quite a lot good series. I'm trying to remember the name of one specific comic or series though: sci-fi theme, floating city in space, many different races live there, there is an elite humanoid alien race with blue skin and 6 eyes in 2 columns, with blue blood wearing skin-tight shiny armor, with psycho-kinetic powers, human male poses as one of them and kills a female alien possibly to steal her power, steals also her space ship, IIRC a chase through the space city ensues. Maybe somebody knows the book, I absolutely cannot remember if this is from Valerian or something else, any hint would be grately appreciated. I think I read it last 20 years ago. Text was in German. Typical Carlsen/Egmont comic book format. Edit: It's NOT Yoko Tsuno "City of the Banished Ones". Different series or one-shot.
- probably_wrong 8y ago> Rumiko Takahashi won the Grand Prix, the festival’s lifetime achievement award. Takahashi began publishing manga comics in 1978 and her books, including “Inuyasha”, (...) Interesting choice by the NYT. In my corner of the world, she was well known for writing "Ranma 1/2", while "Inuyasha" flew pretty much under the radar. I'm assuming it must have been the other way around in the US.
- mikekchar 8y agoRanma 1/2 is probably technically child porn in the US. Do they sell it there? Even Inuyasha has a full nude picture of 14 year old of Kagome in the first book. I was going to send the Japanese version to my niece in Canada (I live in Japan) and quickly scanned it first to be sure... It's funny though, Rumiko Takahashi is probably my favourite mangaka (all of her manga was easy enough for me to read when I was first learning Japanese). But when I mentioned her to my wife, the first thing that came to her mind was Urusai Yatsura, which I had never heard of :-) She's written a lot of popular manga!
- 2ion 8y agoBoth Inuyasha and Ranma 1/2 were sold en masse and broadcast as anime in Germany between 1999-2009, even with reruns, during times when most of us children came home after school (4pm or so) targetting probably 10-18 year olds, which is why these programs were quite popular. People didn't care much about the nudes, the books were full of it (was also a theme of jokes IIRC).
- yardie 8y agoRanma 1/2 was available in the US for a long time at book and music stores. Not sure if that is still the case. Most of those stores are shuttered. Manga then wasn’t nearly as popular as it is now.
- samspot 8y agoThere was also a NA release of a SNES game, so it was popular enough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranma_%C2%BD:_Hard_Battle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranma_%C2%BD:_Hard_Battle
- jsemrau 8y agoFrench artists have influenced modern culture through their artwork intensively. I would even say without Valerian and Laureline [1]. Star Wars and many other science fiction movies would not exist. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val%C3%A9rian_and_Laureline#Legacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val%C3%A9rian_and_Laureline#Le...
- elcomet 8y agoIn France, I often hear comic books (bande dessinées) refered as "Le 9ème art", ie the 9th art. It is taken quite seriously, and we have some wonderful authors.
- fvdessen 8y agoIMHO the 'Seriousness' of the industry is killing it. What the article doesn't really touch on, is that the popularity of 'Bande-Dessinée' itself is actually plumetting, Manga now comprise the majority of the sales. 'Bande-Dessinée' used to be aimed at kids, but now it's mostly artsy circle-jerk that does not interest much people outside the artist scene; young people play video games instead. Another big problem contributing to the popularity decline of the medium is the publication rate. The weekly publication of Manga is much more suited at keeping the reader engaged, and is better suited at animated adaptation that create a lot of additional revenue for publishers.
- draw_down 8y agoIn the US, it feels like 50% of the movies released at a given time are based on comic books. Also “Glass” is pretty much a direct comment on how comics are structured. Basically I don’t understand the notion they’re not taken seriously here.
- C4stor 8y agoFrance regulates books prices very heavily (a.k.a it's a single price for every single distribution point), meaning there's little to no interest buying books online / at a mall (except convenience sometimes). In contrast, it allows a dense network of specialized libraries to maybe not thrive, but at least survive. In turn, those libraries create events, participate to the cultural life of their neighbourhoods, create social links. In the end, it makes it very easy to find a book store, get good advice, create links with sellers (I spend hours talking with the shopkeeper at my comics place), and take an interest in the medium. So it's not really a random singularity happening there, but also in part the result of a very specific books policy. And of course, the cultural legacy is also super strong !
- elcapitan 8y agoGermany has regulated book prices too ("Buchpreisbindung"), but Amazon thrives and the small book shops do not really. If anything, that must be more the culture.
- threatofrain 8y agoI fear long form reading is dying anyway. I wonder how many Amazon kindles are actually used, or how many purchased books are actually consumed.
- justtopost 8y agoI have 2 kindles and have yet to read a book on them. (One is a digital remote, the other in a drawer somewhere) I strongly prefer paper, and settle for my phone or pc otherwise. Toting a kindle is as big a pain as a book, and much more fragile. Unless I needed a refrence of hundreds, whats the point? I seldom if ever read 2 books at once. Books don't need charging, or a 3rd party. Its a solution in search of a problem to me.
- simias 8y agoI seldom use my Kindle anymore but I bought Infinite Jest a few weeks ago and immediately regretted not having dusted my old Kindle and bought the digital version instead. These large books are cumbersome to handle and carry around. For shorter books I agree that paper is superior, I don't have to worry about damage, battery level or theft, I can easily borrow and lend them (I think you can do that with Kindle nowadays but it can't be as convenient as lending a physical object).
- sametmax 8y agoBD are a perfect example of one the french biggest weakness : we have awesome things, and we don't know how to sell them. We do that all the time. The minitel. The credit card chips. Hell the TGV should have been everywhere, and we struggle to sell it to a few countries. We are a superpower with only 70 millions of people working a mere 35 hours a week and so many occasions to skip work. That's damn impressive. France could really shine more, technologically and culturally. Did you know that the biggest (in term of sheer content mass, quality is more subjective) Python blog is a french one ? I know, because I wrote it. 1k articles, 700 being about python. But it's like being french is a curse that forces you to do great things... And let them stuck in france forever.
- HiroshiSan 8y agoc'est la vie.
- B1FF_PSUVM 8y agoc'est la guerre, c'est la pomme de terre ('les biftecks' don't have an exclusive on silly rhymes)
- dhruvparamhans 8y agoI don't see why you say that french BD follow the same fate as some of the other things you talk about. From personal experience, growing up in India we always had either Astérix or Tintin to read. Even some of the lesser known works such as those by Giroud were available. Now that I have been living and working in France for 6 years, one possible reason for this lack of penetration of french products is the language. There is very little effort to actually make the products accessible to the world at large. Now we may discuss the merits and demerits of this but the fact remains that if we want our products to be known all over the world, we have to make it known to the world. And most of the world speaks English. Mes deux centimes.
- p0nce 8y ago> There is very little effort to actually make the products accessible to the world at large. Exactly, we should stop searching for excuses.
- satysin 8y agoI moved from the UK to France last summer (yes due to Brexit before you ask) and they do indeed take comic book and related things very seriously. You are never far from a place selling comic books, graphic novels, trading card games, action figures and such. Another thing I find different to what I am used to is how they all still buy DVDs and Blurays. Not just the odd one here and there but regularly and have a pretty impressive collection. What I find interesting is that they have good internet here. I got 1Gbit fibre with a whole host of extra (TV package, landline, SIM with 50GB data) for €55/month. And it has been perfect since I got it installed a few months back. I would have thought with such fantastic internet access they would all be using streaming services but nope they love their physical discs! Edit: And not just movies but full TV show boxsets. Those are like €100-200 !! I sat down to work out the value difference between a few streaming sites and how much they pay for physical media and streaming is way cheaper as DVDs and Blurays are not cheap! I know you can sell it on but it seems nobody does. They are often given away! It is quite alien to me.
- seszett 8y agoWell, the difference is when you buy a DVD, you actually have it, you know you can keep it, watch it, give it to friends or family whenever you want. So for your run-of-the-mill blockbuster streaming is fine, but for a movie you really like, nothing beats owning it. I discovered music listening to my parents' vinyl records, now if they had only listened to radio, what kind of cultural legacy could have they passed on? Their music would have "vanished" by the time I was there, and that's what would happen to my music and movies as well if I only used steaming services. Streaming is like the fast-food of media, it allows easy consumption of unremarkable content but it doesn't seem fit for remembering pieces of art.
- satysin 8y agoOh I totally understand the benefits of owning the disc. It is just that they buy everything on disc. I own a few Blurays of some of my favourite films but I think that I have 5 or 6 total. I know people with over 300 movies on Bluray! I mean yes it is cool they can lend it to a friend but that isn't something that happens often in my experience. So yeah I get the benefits for your favourite things but for some generic Hollywood action movie? Dunno man that seems like a waste of €20 to me when you can watch it on Netflix or some other service you already subscribe to. I mean they all have Netflix of course. They don't even seem to check if the film is even available to stream on a service they already pay for. Very strange to me. As a counter point to what you said about music I have found way more music I love thanks to Spotify. I discovered music much like you when I was younger but it wasn't really anything I wouldn't have discovered anyway as it was all popular rock, indie, pop, jazz artists that had wide vinyl/CD distribution. Thanks to Spotify I can listen to some random artist in a small country with close to the same discoverability as Taylor Swift, Jay-Z or Coldplay. Of course that is more to do with the internet that Spotify specifically but I still love Spotify. I listen to so much more music than I did when we had CDs or just the iTunes store. The same is true of TV and movies thanks to Netflix imho.
- AdmiralAsshat 8y agoUnrelated: Why the hell is it so hard to find somewhere in the US that sells an Arzach tradeback? It's the most famous work by arguably one of France's most famous comic books artists, and it's almost impossible to find outside of France. I saw it once at a Virgin Records store in Beirut, Lebanon, and I'm kicking myself that I didn't grab it then.
- cgh 8y agoIt is time for me to brag: I have all of the Moebius books that were released in English by Marvel's Epic imprint in the '80s (Arzach, The Gardens of Aedena, The Airtight Garage, The Incal, Blueberry, and several others). But you are right: all of Moebius's stuff needs to be properly released again, and digitally as well. It's crazy that such a massively influential figure not just in comics but all of pop culture is virtually unknown in the English world these days.
- dragandj 8y agoFor those interested in the breadth of BD titles, there is the great https://www.bedetheque.com/ https://www.bedetheque.com/ "French comics wikipedia". There are literally (tens of?) thousands series and characters. Usually printed in color hardcovers. EDIT: I've checked. They have 49.000 series there!
- scotty79 8y ago> “The market has risen from 700 books per year in the 1990s to 5,000 this year,” he said in an interview. “I don’t know any cultural industry which has had that kind of increase.” Games. Unless he doesn't consider games a cultural industry.
- baby 8y agoWhat I don't understand, is why french BD is losing to comics around the world, both on paper and on the screen, when it has way more diversity. What was the last movie made out of a BD? Valerian? :(
- sametmax 8y agoYeah and it's a so so BD. I mean if you want space, go for sillage, the meta baron, l'incal or belthegueuse (jodorowski and leo are not french born, but the bd are born in france).
- baby 8y agoI like Lanfeust des etoiles :] (Warning: there are some nsfw ads) * sillage (wake): https://readcomiconline.to/Comic/Wake/Issue-1?id=125469 https://readcomiconline.to/Comic/Wake/Issue-1?id=125469 * meta-barron: https://readcomiconline.to/Comic/META-BARON/Issue-1?id=93964 https://readcomiconline.to/Comic/META-BARON/Issue-1?id=93964 * incal: https://readcomiconline.to/Comic/The-Incal/TPB-1?id=77077 https://readcomiconline.to/Comic/The-Incal/TPB-1?id=77077 * beltegeuse: https://readcomiconline.to/Comic/Betelgeuse/Issue-1?id=100113 https://readcomiconline.to/Comic/Betelgeuse/Issue-1?id=10011...
- soapdog 8y agoI grew up in Brazil reading French/Belgian comics. Recently, as an adult, I decided to learn French just to enjoy all the BDs which are never translated into other languages I know. People looked funny at me (and with a bit of pity) when I said I wanted to learn a language to enjoy comics but to me, it is just a medium and the France/Belgium ecosystem around BD is fascinating. Sometimes I dream of moving from IT to work on something BD related... Those books are very good.
- cgh 8y agoIf you want to work on something, then make it English translations. There is still recent work by major figures like eg Enki Bilal that is still unavailable in English. And all of the Moebius material needs to be re-released.
- ericnyamu 8y agoAtleast they perfected the art of kissing and exported it allover the world