French Comics Research Articles

Postcolonialism and Migration in French Comics. By Mark McKinney

<i>Postcolonialism and Migration in French Comics</i>. By Mark McKinney

:Postcolonialism and Migration in French Comics

:<i>Postcolonialism and Migration in French Comics</i>

Interview with Translator Edward Gauvin

Abstract In this interview, award-winning translator and author Edward Gauvin reflects on his practice as a translator of over four hundred graphic novels, including works by major French comics artists, illustrators, and scriptwriters, such as Gébé, Marjane Satrapi, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Emmanuel Guibert, Joann Sfar, Lewis Trondheim, Zeina Abirached, Christophe Blain, Philippe Druillet, Enki Bilal, Blutch, and so on. He discusses how he approaches the theoretical and practical problems he has encountered as a translator—from well-trodden topics like speech balloon fit to his dynamic understanding of genre fiction. He also offers an insider's perspective on translators’ (often precarious) position within the larger the comics industry and talks about his favourite translations, as well as his current and future projects.

Two strategies for adapting a novel narrative in French comics: Philippe Druillet’s Flaubert and Stephane Heuet’s Proust

Two strategies for adapting a novel narrative in French comics: Philippe Druillet’s Flaubert and Stephane Heuet’s Proust

Personified illness in french comics: friend or foe?

Personified illness in french comics: friend or foe?

Aziz against la zizanie 1

In the 1980s, Farid Boudjellal, José Jover and Larbi Mechkour published “Aziz Bricolo,” a humor-based comics series, in Pif, a children’s periodical associated with the French Communist party. The series marked a postcolonial turn in French comics featuring multicultural groups of children as protagonists, a genre with a history reaching far back into the colonial period. “Aziz Bricolo” broke with the previous dominant paradigm, in which white middle-class characters were the main protagonists, while the history and cultural heritage of their sidekicks of color were often erased through assimilation. The technological wizardry, humanism, and good humor of Aziz Bricolo, the series’ primary character, constitute him as a young superhero and empower him to defend the disadvantaged, and to foster harmonious relations between different sociocultural or ethnic groups in postcolonial France, in clever and amusing ways.

Female Images of French Comics (Bande Dessinée)

The article analyzes the history of female characters of French comics (bande dessinée). The study covers the period from the beginning of the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st century, from the creation of albums telling about the history of Bécassina to the albums devoted to the adventures of Laureline. Analyzing the history of the development of female characters, the authors noted that the feminization of the French bande dessinée coincides with the chronology of the three stages of development of feminism. This circumstance is reflected in the specifics of female characters of comics, their nature, manner of action and gender relations. Moreover, the stories of female characters in the bande dessinée were a reflection of the social and cultural situation of a certain time, the change in the legal and civil status of a woman, the transformation of her role in society and the desire for real equality. The Bécassina’s character, although it fits into the framework of traditional gender relations and the social role of women in France at the beginning of the 20th century, at the same time reflects the beginning of a “rebellion”, an attempt to go beyond the assigned role, to know the outside world. The image of Lili in this context is more modern and more reflective of the post-war spirit of the “beautiful era” marked by the process of female emancipation. In any case, both characters have a choice to play a social role reserved for them by society, or to go beyond the patriarchal framework. In fact, this is the first bright characters bande dessinée, embarked on the path of emancipation. The second wave of feminism contributes to the evolution of female characters bande dessinée. The heroines of the comic books of the 1960—1970s reflect the results of the sexual emancipation of the post-war decades. This can be seen in the Barbarella way, but also in the behavior and lifestyle of Adèle (despite placing her in a completely different historical context). Unlike Bécassina and Lili, they are no longer constrained by the framework of traditional patriarchal relations, social and cultural conformism, expressing a desire to change the world. Finally, to the period of the third wave of feminism, we can attribute two albums telling about the adventures of Isa and the cosmic adventures of Laureline. As in the case of Adèle, the modern character of Isa, transferred to the context of the 18th century, introduces a modern interpretation of the issues of slavery, sexism and male domination. In the albums of the series “Valerian and Laureline”, the female character Laureline first becomes the central figure of the series, which allows us to speak about the end of the feminization of bande dessinée.

‘I don’t see any limitations when it comes to comics’: An interview with Simon Lamouret

In this interview, Ritam Sarkar and Somdatta Bhattacharya talk to the French comics artist Simon Lamouret, to discuss his comics The Alcazar. Lamouret is a graphic novelist and illustrator based out of Toulouse, France. He has produced two graphic novels: Bangalore (part of the Angouleme International Comics Festival selection) and L’Alcazar (Winner of the debut award ADAGP/Quai des Bulles, France, 2021). L’Alcazar was published in India in 2022 as The Alcazar. In this conversation, Lamouret talks about his creative process, his experiences of living in Bangalore and the relationship comics share with cities. The interview was conducted on 3 July 2022 via Microsoft Teams. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Postcolonialism and Migration in French Comics by Mark McKinney

Postcolonialism and Migration in French Comics by Mark McKinney

Barbarella: Sexual Revolution or Editorial Revolution?

In the history of French comics, Barbarella is usually perceived as a turning point towards "adult" bande dessinée. Released as an album by avant-garde publisher Éric Losfeld in 1964, Barbarella plays a key role in the Bildungsroman narrative that structures the history of the Ninth Art. Whereas Astérix plays on the ambiguities and multilayered readings of both children and their parents, Barbarella is unquestionably targeted for an adult, male audience: the sexualized space opera created by veteran comics artist Jean-Claude Forest leaves no doubt on the matter. A closer reading of Barbarella allows us to nuance this simplistic interpretation of French comics history. The 1964 album republishes a story previously released in the pornographic V Magazine, in serial installments. When published as a book, Barbarella is deeply transformed by the materiality of the format, allowing for a new narrative rhythm, structured in chapters. The monumentality of the book enables an auteur-driven approach to comics. Barbarella, then, represents a key moment in comics publishing, and a crucial model for a literary turn in comics. Its reception, both by the then-emerging fan culture and by the Commission de surveillance et de contrôle in charge of comics censorship, enables a better understanding of the difficult rise of an "adult" comics scene. Roger Vadim's problematic adaptation (and the new version of the book released alongside the movie) plays an important part in the canonization of Barbarella as a pop icon.

УДОСКОНАЛЕННЯ ЛІНГВІСТИЧНОЇ КОМПЕТЕНТНОСТІ НА МАТЕРІАЛІ ТЕКСТІВ КОМІКСІВ

Creolized or semiotically complicated texts are an integral part of our modern life that can be found everywhere – public places, home, office, transport, so their purpose cannot be underestimated. The comic is considered an effective means of teaching foreign linguistic competence, the basis for improving oral speech skills. Since we live in the era of the media space of information, we mainly perceive it comprehensively. Visualized information is interesting and effective for learning. The comic is a multifunctional didactic material that promotes a number of methodological tasks – overlearning grammatical/lexical competence, improvement of speech/linguo-regional studies competence, improving the quality of knowledge/motivation, development of cognitive activity, diversification of forms of work, interactivity of the educational process, development of creative abilities. The linguo-didactic potential of a French comic is determined by reading skills (understanding the authentic text, searching for the necessary information, highlighting meaningful/requested information of the text storyline), monologic/dialogic speech (short/detailed report based on what has been read, discussion, clarification of information, statement of one’s own point of view, providing arguments), writing (keeping notes of the main events/ characters of the previously read comic, reproducing the story from the first person, creation of verbal components of the comic, writing a critical message, expressing one’s own judgment, thoughts, performing written creative projects). Alongside linguistic competence, sociocultural competence also develops, namely: the accentuation/ interpretation of linguo-regionally marked units contained in authentic French comics, a comparative analysis of various aspects of the cultural life of the Ukrainian/French ethnic group. The use of comics in practical classes increases the motivation of students to study foreign languages, improves the skills of the main types of speech activity in the context of teaching social interaction, the ability to conduct a dialogue of cultures and tolerance.

Postcolonialism and Migration in French Comics by Mark McKinney

Reviewed by: Postcolonialism and Migration in French Comics by Mark McKinney Benjamin Sparks McKinney, Mark. Postcolonialism and Migration in French Comics. Leuven UP, 2021 ISBN 978-94-6270-241-7. Pp. 399. Comics as a form of popular culture derive from highly influential cartoonists like Hergé and Saint-Ogan, whose works were foundational to the ninth art. Colonialism played a significant role in these cartoonists’ works and inspired the development of this art form in aesthetics, genre, and serialization. Evidence of colonialism’s role in the works of Hergé is displayed in his depiction of Africans in Tintin au Congo and his critique of communism in Tintin au pays des Soviets, wherein he openly disseminates far-right ideologies. McKinney’s previous works, The Colonial Heritage of French Comics (FR 86.2) and Redrawing French Empire in Comics (FR 88.1), discuss the colonial themes of comics, including an emphasis on Indochina and Algeria. This work focuses on the postcolonial era in France since the end of the Algerian War, focusing on migration and postcolonial ethnic minorities. McKinney begins by creating a historical framework for understanding the transition in comics toward the postcolonial with cartoonists like Mœbius, who transformed the field with a new realistic approach in his socially engaged Cauchemar blanc. This work ushered in a tradition of antiracist, postcolonial comics through reworkings of his pivotal comic by future generations. McKinney then looks at major artists through a dialogical approach to analyze the mutation from colonial to postcolonial, emphasizing ethnic minorities and migration. Arguing that postcolonialism and migration have played a more significant role in these new realist comics than previously acknowledged, McKinney then considers the comics of Boudjellal and the role of migration of Algerians to France in his works. The following chapter examines pastiche and working-class migration in the comics of Baru. McKinney moves on from counter narratives of Mœbius’s work to the concept of citadel culture formulated by Werckmeister to understand the relationship between poor ethnic minorities and wealthier white inner-cities. Continuing the analysis of ethnic minorities, the author looks at how far-right cartoonists represent these migrants and foreigners in France with an example of Chard and Faye, whose comics satirize the attempted assassination of Jacques Chirac by a far-right activist in Chirac contre les fachos. McKinney argues that this and other far-right comics provide a helpful window into the ideologies of this group in France today. The author also looks at avant-gardism and how art and comics engage with the issues of postcolonial minorities. This work ends with an analysis of the situation of les sans-papiers and their representation in comics, drawing attention to their condition in order to humanize and gather support for them and to discourage governmental repressive anti-migrant policing. This is an engaging text for all readers interested in French comics. [End Page 232] Benjamin Sparks University of Memphis (TN) Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of French

Face as Landscape: Refiguring Illness, Disability, and Disorders in David B.'s Epileptic

Face as LandscapeRefiguring Illness, Disability, and Disorders in David B.'s Epileptic Erin La Cour (bio) Signifying/Signifiance: L'Ascension du Haut Mal/Epileptic In 1996 French comics artist Pierre-François Beauchard, known professionally as David B., published the first of what would become a six-volume chronicle of the personal and interpersonal, emotional, and medical effects of his brother's epilepsy. In titling the series L'Ascension du Haut Mal (The ascension of the high evil), from the outset he draws attention to the connotation of the antiquated term for epilepsy: a supernatural evil taking possession of the body.1 While many reviewers of the work in both French and English have noted that le haut mal, along with its English counterpart "the falling sickness," fell out of use by the nineteenth century due to advancements in neurology, few have gone further in their examination of David B.'s use of the term as a paratext. In its English translation, first published as a collection of three volumes in 2002 and then in its entirety in 2005, the term le haut mal was abandoned in favor of, "simply," Epileptic. Perhaps one might conclude that the awkwardness of "the ascension of the falling sickness" (or the confusion of the literal translation from French, which might escape the reader) is the reason for the English title, but this easy assumption does not fully account for the connotations of "epileptic." In a review of the collected English translation of Epileptic for The Guardian, Ian Sansom commented on the title: "with epilepsy the disease defines the sufferer, the 'epileptic' as a human type. … In English, it seems, we allow the language to do the work of stigmatisation for us." While the label "epileptic" is problematically still used today (also in French: epileptique), as with many other illnesses, disabilities, and disorders, there has been a movement, at least since the World Health Organization's 1997 press release "Bringing Epilepsy Out of the Shadows: A Global Campaign is Launched," to clarify the difference between "epileptic" as a type of seizure and "epilepsy" as a neurological disorder. People are not defined as "epileptics," but rather "have epilepsy"—a significant and important difference.2 What Sansom does get right, however, is that the neurological disorder has been used to justify the creation of a human type, a fact that clearly did not escape David B. or his long-standing translator Kim Thompson.3 Epileptic is not a direct translation of language or cultural reference, but it speaks to the implied meaning of the original title: an othering upheld by binary conceptions of health and illness, ability and disability.4 Indeed, David B.'s reinscription of le haut mal into the contemporary imaginary, as well as his equation of a person having epilepsy and being epilepsy via the use of "epileptic," are instrumentalized to [End Page 71] engage in a discourse on the stigmatization of epilepsy as a "high evil" and of its sufferers as reduced to their disorder. But Epileptic is not a straightforward story of advocacy, solidarity, or support; much less is it instructional in terms of the ins and outs of prognosis, diagnosis, and treatment. While throughout the narrative we do get a sense of what David B.'s brother Jean-Christophe suffered because of his epilepsy, his diverse treatments, and the communities in which he lived, the comic does not seamlessly fit within the established aim of graphic medicine to give voice to the experience of illness, disability, or disorders.5 Instead, Epileptic is primarily a critically self-reflective memoir about David B.'s experiences living alongside and outside of Jean-Christophe's epilepsy. As French comics artist Appollo suggests in his review of the fifth installment of L'Ascension du Haut Mal, David B.'s choice of genre and representation come with significant risks: self-service in the face of another's disorder, and so, even worse, to the detriment of another. Appollo writes: David B. has definitely decided to go to the end of his story, at the risk of repetition, suffocation, complacency, and, perhaps, boredom. How many readers will follow him in his descent into the depths of his...

Особенности текстообразующей функции онимов во французском комиксе

The article follows the line of thinking adopted in the earlier study of the onym system in the text of the French comics. The purpose of the study is to identify features of its text-forming function. The work is novel in that it is the first to use the material of a creolised text to determine the plot-compositional role of its onomastic units. As a result of the study, it is found that the genre feature of this literary text, characterised by high density of onomasticon, is use of anthroponyms as background of the narrative. The work also made it possible to determine that the onyms denoting the main characters guarantee temporary development of the plot, background onyms create local-temporal unity, and optional onyms, which do not participate in the text coherence, are meant to specify the context, bringing artistic, symbolic and comic effects.

Views of the city in French sci-fi comics and graphic novels

This article looks at important French comics and graphic novels from the small but highly influential tradition of French science fiction in order to assess their distinctive formal and narrative contributions to the genre. Taking cues from theoretical definitions of bandes dessinées formulated by Thierry Groenstein and Thierry Smolderen, it identifies specific ways two major works, Futuropolis and L’Incal, reshaped the narrative range and scope of French sci-fi comics and graphic novels and recast their artistic possibilities. We also draw comparisons to Valérian et Laureline. The ways in which cityscapes are depicted in each serve as the privileged focus for measuring the similarities and differences among these works, both ideologically and formalistically.

Between Territories and Borders

The work is built around an essay on the use of comics in the debate of historical notions about the conflicts between the US and Mexico, the installation of the republic in Mexico, and geographic: with the perception of notions of limit, territory and frontier . It emphasizes how the geographical notions are built around a debate between nature and social behavior, historically constructed. Based on two albums of the character Lieutenant Blueberry of the French comics. Methodologically applies content analysis and hermeneutical critique to associate images and concepts. He concludes by suggesting that by way of the reading exercise and historical setting of these HQs can become an important ally in the hands of teachers who are interested in developing knowledge and skills of both geographical and historical aspects in their students.

Kawaii Aesthetics from Japan to Europe: Theory of the Japanese “Cute” and Transcultural Adoption of Its Styles in Italian and French Comics Production and Commodified Culture Goods

Kawaii culture and aesthetics are a peculiarity of contemporary Japan and move across mass media, impulse goods, creative industries, and juvenile tendencies. The concept, graphic styles, and commodities related to a kawaii culture are composite. This article, in its first part, outlines the theories and general features of this cultural trend in Japan and as it is framed in most western countries. In the second part, it also focuses on whether and how the concept and the related styles and commodities have found a place in Europe, with particular reference to Italy and France. These two countries, in fact, have been since the late 1970s the key markets in the Euro-American region for Japanese contemporary culture for youths, namely Japanese comics (generally called manga) and commercial animation (or anime). Anime and manga are, in effect, an integral part of the theoretical discourse on kawaii in the two markets considered, as it is discussed accordingly in the second part of the article. In its last section, the article addresses the impact of kawaii styles on youth cultures in Europe, which is, although limited, multidimensional: it has involved spontaneous drawings among children, a certain amateur and professional comics production, amateur and commercial animation, toys and a diverse merchandising, street art, and fashion design.

Contra a BD: a nouvelle bande dessinée e sua fuga da cultura de massa

The present article addresses the political feuds and aesthetics in French comic books (bande dessinees) that have passed through and molded editorial models in the last thirty years in the country, influencing authors and capacitating a new base of readership around the world, even if it is the microscopic world of comic books. Many factors of aesthetic order and a new political and editorial desire caused the birth of a new way of comic book criticism. First, I present the debate about the editorial model that was set during the 1980s and the development of the criticism and theory about contemporary comic books to that model in order. Later, I present the way in which a generation of authors that grew up during the said period attempted to deviate from that model, founding a new way of making comic books, the so-called nouvelle bande dessinee. These authors deconstruct the criteria until then considered by tradition as essential in the making of a comic book: the fact that it is sequential art, purely narrative, a mass media.Keywords: contemporaneous French comics, bande dessinee, critics, publishing, aesthetics of comics.

Paradoxes of Innovation in French Digital Comics

The word ‘innovative’ and its lexical field of novelty are often used to market digital comics. This obsession with everything new implies a specific link to the past. Anything which breaks with prior methods or forms of graphic creation becomes innovative. However, the formal evolution of French digital comics does not match with this linear pattern of innovation. This paper presents an analysis of the idea of innovation in relation to the long-term history of French digital comics creation. Whilst the technical means of graphic creation have improved since the 1980s, does that necessarily mean that the form and aesthetics of digital comics have evolved simultaneously? What is the role played by traditional printed comics in the aesthetic evolution of digital comics? Starting with the 1990s, it is not the potentiality but the reality of technological innovation that we will try to understand through time.

Not seeing Auschwitz: memory, generation and representations of the Holocaust in twenty-first century French comics

ABSTRACTWe are reaching a point in history when the generation who experienced the Holocaust as survivors, witnesses or exiles will soon disappear. What happens to our relationship to such a momentous event in global history when our living connection with such a past is broken? To answer this question, this article will explore recent French representations of the Holocaust through the comic book. It will approach such representations from the perspective of the grandchildren of those who were affected by the Holocaust, perhaps the last generation to have personal ties to this wartime past. It will focus specifically on Jérémie Dres’s Nous n’irons pas voir Auschwitz (2011), translated as We Won’t Go and See Auschwitz. As a “third generation” narrative, Dres’s work is attentive to stories of Jewish exile and loss to be found on the margins of Holocaust histories. This perspective translates into an openness towards transnational histories of the Holocaust; a recognition of place as a substitute for living memory and an awareness of comics’ potential to innovate in the transmission of Holocaust memories. Ultimately, this article will argue that the contemporary comic book acts as a privileged vehicle of remembrance, indicative of the reordering of Holocaust representations in an age of cultural memory.