by Philippe Capart
Translated by Annick Pellegrin
Original publication: Capart, Philippe. “École de Marcinelle.” Capart, Philippe. “École de Marcinelle.” La Crypte tonique nov/déc 2012: 21-27. Print.[1]
In 1998, I was thousands of kilometres away from Belgium, poring over a light table in an animation studio under the Californian sun. I had brought with me issues of the magazine Spirou from the late 50s. The magazine contained in its pages some of the most beautiful creations by Franquin, Morris, Tillieux, Roba, Peyo, Jijé. I was trying to share my enthusiasm for these works with my US colleagues. Flipping through the pages of one issue, one of them had this naively violent reaction: ‘Did the same artist illustrate the whole issue?’. Appalled, I went through the magazine with him, trying to explain the profound originality of the authors of my childhood… only to gradually perceive, insidiously, the accuracy of his remark. The noses, the eyes, the ears, the attitudes, the mouths, the speech bubbles, the lettering, the framing, the colours all plotted to reinforce this appearance of uniformity. I was discovering the automatic graphic processes scattered in the pages of the magazine Spirou and that swarmed and gratified us with the famous ‘école de Marcinelle’ (Marcinelle School).[2]
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Tags: bande dessinée, Belgium, Comics Forum 2016, Franco-Belgian Comics, La Crypte Tonique, Marcinelle School, Translations
by Véronique Sina
In France Enki Bilal may be one of the most popular comics artists who specialised in the genre of science fiction during his lifelong career. Since the mid 1970s his work has been characterised by the presentation of bleak visions of the future in which ruthless conglomerates reign and governments as well as ecological systems tend to collapse[1]. Most often the protagonists of these dystopic visions are disillusioned and broken heroes whose adventures Bilal manages to capture with the help of his surrealistic artwork. In the following I would like to focus on one of those broken heroes – namely Alcide Nikopol, the protagonist of Bilal’s comic book series La Trilogie Nikopol (1980-1992) – in order to analyse the construction of masculinity[2] in Bilal’s work by showing how performative discourses of gender and media go hand in hand in La Trilogie Nikopol[3]. In this respect, ‘masculinity’ is understood as a performative concept, i.e. as doing masculinity. As the American gender theorist Judith Butler elaborates
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Tags: brokenness, Charles Baudelaire, discontinuity, duplication, Enki Bilal, fragmentation, France, Franco-Belgian Comics, Gender, hybridity, identity, linearity, masculinity, mental health, Paris, Trilogie Nikopol
A report on the Symposium at the Ohio State University on Charlie Hebdo and the terrorist attacks of January 7th 2015
The Charles Schulz auditorium, just above the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library at the Ohio State University (OSU), served as the venue of a mini-symposium on 19 February 2015 on the attack against Charlie Hebdo. This is a place where comics is in the air, and so is the need for dialogue: as event organizer Jared Gardner, professor at the Department of English & the Film Studies Program, highlighted, the symposium was called into being by the need to have a conversation and to share learned opinions on events that have stirred debates in society, in academia, and in the comics community. Conversation is what makes universities necessary, added Gardner, and it was in this spirit that he invited scholars with different perspectives and backgrounds to discuss the events of January 7th.
The symposium started with a lecture by Mark McKinney, professor of French at Miami University, co-editor of European Comic Art, and author of The Colonial Heritage of French Comics and Redrawing French Empire in Comics. The subsequent roundtable helped us to see the magazine and the terrorist attack as complex cultural phenomena that can be approached and interpreted very differently between disciplines. The participants were Daniele Marx-Scouras, from the Department of French and Italian, OSU; Youssef Yacoubi, from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, OSU; Erik Nisbet, School of Communication, OSU; and Caitlin McGurk, Billy Ireland Cartoon Library.
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Tags: Billy Ireland Cartoon Library, Charlie Hebdo, France, Franco-Belgian Comics, Mark McKinney, Ohio State University
Manga [1] does not easily attract scholarly interest as comics. In the name of manga, the critical focus is usually less on sequential art but rather a certain illustration style or character design, and closely related, fannish engagement in transformative or derivative creations (dōjinshi), up to and including cosplay. In many cases, scholars turn to manga as an entry point for research on girls’ (shōjo) culture and female consumers, gender and sexuality, the subcultures of fujoshi (self-designated “rotten girls” engaged in Boys’ Love, or yaoi)[2] and otaku (geeks). Attempts at elucidating the peculiar role of the comics medium in that regard—for example, by focusing not only on “shōjo” but also “manga” when discussing shōjo manga [3] —remain a distinct minority whenever sociological and anthropological concerns prevail. Be it “fan culture,” “subculture” or “scene,” user communities are given preference over media specificity, texts and individual readings, at least outside of Japan. This applies especially to Japanese Studies, which is still the field yielding most manga research abroad. Here, manga is taken to represent, if not national culture in general, then Japanese popular culture, in the main understood as a youth culture with significant global impact and economic effects. Consequently, the utilization of manga as mere object appears to matter more than methodological diligence.[4] Whether subjected to symptomatic readings of social issues or to sophisticated critical theory, media-specific contexts and manga-related expertise tend to be neglected. This is as much due to specific institutional requirements as it is indicative of a lack within the institution, that is, the absence of a respective field of research and criticism.
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Tags: aesthetics, Alison Bechdel, bande dessinée, Belgium, Benoît Peeters, Boys’ Love, caricature, children readers, CJ Suzuki, comics industry, digital comics, ehon, fandom, formalism, François Schuiten, France, Franco-Belgian Comics, Frederick Schodt, Fujimoto Yukari, Gakushūin University, gekiga, Gender, graphic narratives, Hergé, historiography, humour, Ishiko Junzō, Itō Gō, Japan, Japan Society for Studies in Cartoons and Comics, Japanese manga, jaqueline berndt, Jessica Sugimoto-Bauwens, Kitazawa Rakuten, kodomo manga, komikku, Kyoto International Manga Museum, Kyoto Seika University, manga, manga criticism, manga hyōgenron, manga studies, manhua, manhwa, Meiji University, Miyamoto Hirohito, Murakami Tomohiko, museum, Natsume Fusanosuke, Nicholas Theisen, Nihon manga gakkai, Odagiri Hiroshi, Ono Kōsei, Osamu Tezuka, Paco Roca, ronald stewart, Saitō Chiho, satirical cartooning, Scott McCloud, Shimizu Isao, Takekuma Kentarō, Takemiya Keiko, Takeuchi Osamu, Tezuka, Tezuka Osamu, The Adventures of Tintin, Thierry Groensteen, Tintin, Translations, transmediality, USA, yaoi, Yonezawa Yoshihiro Memorial Library of Manga and Subcultures
The International Bande Dessinée Society (IBDS) was founded in 1999, aiming to encourage scholarly discussion of the French-language comic or bande dessinée, in all its forms. Their journal, European Comic Art, (ECA), is published twice-yearly, with previous issues focusing on national identity, caricature, narration, 19th-century comic art, adaptation and other diverse themes in the European comic medium. IBDS conferences have taken place bi-annually since 1999; the most recent conference was held at the Universities of Glasgow and Dundee in June 2013.
However, English-language bande dessinée scholarship is still in relative infancy, and French-language works are seldom translated. The purpose of this new, twice-yearly column is to draw attention to both recent English-language work on bande dessinée and francophone scholarship which may otherwise go unnoticed in anglophone countries. We do not aim to cover all relevant work; the popularity of bande dessinée in the francophone world means many books on the subject are published every year. Instead we will highlight a selection of the most notable or interesting works which appear throughout the year. In this first edition we will look back at books published in 2013.
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Tags: Albert Uderzo, Algeria, Algerian war, Angouleme, Anne Goscinny, Anthea Bell, Asterix, Asterix and the Picts, bande dessinée, Belgium, Bertrand Pissavy-Yvernault, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Caroline Picaud, Christelle Pissavy-Yvernault, colonialism, Danielle Thom, Dominique Maricq, Dupuis, Elisa Renouil, European Comic Art, Fanny Rodwell, France, Franco-Belgian Comics, Franquin, Frans Lambeau, French colonial experience, Gaston Lagaffe, Gilles Ciment, Hergé, Indochina, International Bande Dessinée Society, Jean-Pierre Mercier, Jewish ancestry, Jijé, Joann Sfar, L'Association, La Crypte Tonique, La Véritable Histoire de Spirou, Laurence Grove, Le Petit Vingtième, Lewis Trondheim, Margaret C. Flinn, Mark McKinney, Michael D. Picone, Michael Gott, Michel Daubert, Moulinsart, Musée Hergé, Nicolas Rouvière, pre-war Belgium, Rob-Vel, Serge Gainsbourg, Spirou, The Adventures of Tintin, The Black Island, Thierry Groensteen, Tintin, Vehlmann, WWI, WWII, Yoann
Comics Forum 