by Andrea De Falco
‘Fluid Images – Fluid Text’ was the title of an interdisciplinary conference that took place at Cardiff University (Wales) on 23-24 January 2020. The conference, organised by Dr Tilmann Altenberg (School of Modern Languages) and Dr Lisa El Refaie (School of English, Communication and Philosophy), hosted eighteen speakers from twelve institutions spread across seven different countries, featuring a wide range of backgrounds and approaches. The conference received financial support from Institute of Modern Languages Research (London), University Council of Modern Languages, Cardiff Comics Storytelling Network, Cardiff School of Modern Languages and Cardiff School of English, Communication and Philosophy.
The aim was to investigate from a transdisciplinary perspective three different and interlinked dimensions underpinning comics’ mobility: time, space and artistic media. The chronological dimension covers a broad field including the relationships between comics and history and the transformations investing their editorial and reading practices. Translation is the key word to understand how comics have been able to transcend national borders, by means of transmission in different languages and cultures. The last dimension leads us to comics’ adaptation in other media, investigating their relationships with different forms of artistic expression.
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Tags: A Borrowed Life, A Distant Soil, adaptation, Aka B, Alessandro Tota, Alison Bechdel, Ana Penyas, art, Asterix, autobiography, Ángel de la Calle, Bea Enriquez, biography, Caterina Sansone, classroom, Colleen Doran, dictatorship, digital comics, Disney, Edgar Clement, family, film, Fumettibrutti, Fun Home, Gender, Graphic Novels, Greece, heritage, History, humour, identity, Il tempo materiale, intermediality, intertextuality, Italy, Je est un autre, Kobane Calling, Luigi Ricca, Martin Lemelman, memory, Mendel’s Daughter, Mexico, nationalism, Núria Tamarit, Non-fiction Comics, Operación Bolívar, P. La mia adolescenza trans, Palacinche, Paperinik, Phoebe Gloeckner, Photography, Pinturas de guerra, place, Politics, Race/ethnicity, social conflict, Spain, Storia di una madre, Taiwan, The Adventures of Tintin, The Diary of a Teenage Girl, The Story of a Mother, theatre, time, Tintin, Translations, transmediality, Transphobia, transsexual abuse, UK, Wales, Women, Zerocalcare
by Philippe Capart
Translated by Annick Pellegrin
Edited by Lise Tannahill
Original publication: Capart, Philippe. “La Culture de la bande dessinée, une culture physique ? MUSCUDERZO !” TONIQUE avril 2017. Print.[1]
A School for Unlearning
Bande dessinée gives one the impression of reading without thinking. Like a laxative that transforms the literate person into a savage and the illiterate person into a criminal. After the industrial and methodical pulverisation of millions of people—World War II—Western educators, be they Communist, secular or Christian, agreed on the source of juvenile delinquency: THE ILLUSTRATED PRESS FOR CHILDREN.[2] They worked hand in hand, fighting to control, restrain or ban the series of little figures on paper. For many of those literate men and women, only single-panel illustrations, the statue-like figure firmly attached to its textual pedestal allowed one to preserve the model, the exemplary and the ideal. But a sequence of images was the victory of the trivial over the sacred. Thus, in their eyes, bande dessinée became a manual leading the pseudo-reader to mimic a series of figures. When they were noble actions, no problem, but when they were burlesque exaggerations, violent actions, sex, they were veritable manuals for troublemaking, guides to lust and crime.
“En ce temps, la bédé était un divertissement pour minus !” [At the time, comics were a form of entertainment for wimps!] Morris[3]
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Tags: Albert Uderzo, Asterix, bande dessinée, Body-building, Franco-Belgian Comics, Goscinny, Negative Perceptions of Comics, Physical Culture, Translations, WWII
(Geste hypergraphique by Roberto Altmann, 1967)
by Antoine Sausverd
Translated by Annick Pellegrin
Edited by Lise Tannahill
Original publication: Sausverd, Antoine. “« À mort les bandes dessinées ! Vive l’hypergraphie ! » (Geste hypergraphique de Roberto Altmann, 1967)” TONIQUE avril 2017. Print.
For bande dessinée, the year 1967 seemed to favour formal and aesthetic experiments. After Les Aventures de Jodelle (1966), Pravda la survireuse appeared in the pages of the monthly Hara-Kiri from January to December, before being published in album format in 1968. The stylisation of shapes and the uniform solid colours were openly inspired from the pop art aesthetic. Similar to the exquisite corpse,[1] Saga de Xam by Nicolas Devil was an epic work that bore the marks of the counter cultures of its time: from chapter to chapter, the work alternated between various graphic styles, challenging established page layout norms.[2] The texts were written in three alphabets, two of which were invented and undecipherable, unless one consulted a correspondence table at the end of the work. Finally, the same year saw the release of the first situationist comics: posters and tracts reproduced bandes dessinées and replaced the content of the speech bubbles with excerpts of revolutionary political theories advocated by the Situationist International, that would play a significant role in triggering May 1968. It was also in 1967 that Geste hypergraphique, a strange album just as original as the previous ones, was published in Liechtenstein. Completely unnoticed at the time and still largely unknown to date, this “hypergraphique narration en 15 chants” [hypergraphic narration in 15 songs] was the work of a young Cuban aged 25, Roberto Altmann, who was at that point part of the lettrist group.
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Tags: bande dessinée, Charlier, Cuba, Franco-Belgian Comics, Goscinny, Guy Peellaert, Hara-Kiri, Hypergraphics, Hypergraphy, Isidore Isou, Jacques Spacagna, Lettrism, Lettrist Movement, Liechtenstein, Maurice Lemaître, Maurice Rosy, May 68, Metagraphics, Morris, Nicolas Devil, Pascal Thomas, Pierre Bartier, Pop Art, Roberto Altmann, Saul Steinberg, Situationism, Spirou, Translations, Yvan Delporte
by Philippe Capart
Translated by Annick Pellegrin
Edited by Lise Tannahill
Original publication: Capart, Philippe. “Natacha : Groom de l’air.” La Crypte tonique nov/déc 2012: 28-34. Print.[1]
Peyo’s Gang
Peyo, Franquin, Will, Tillieux and Roba, the creative nucleus of the magazine Spirou, were buddies. Stuck at their drawing tables for long days, they occasionally needed to get together and often went out as a gang. However, Gos specifies: “But it was their… they were friends amongst themselves, as for us, we were a generation below, hey!”. There were drinking parties that sometimes made Mondays a difficult day for the team. According to Gos,
François [Walthéry] understood psychology better than I did, he had said to me “For God’s sake! Don’t come and show your drawings on Mondays, he may have partied hard on the Saturday and still be headachy, it’s not the right time to show him what we’ve done! I never show him anything on Mondays, I show him on Tuesdays or Wednesdays.” François, he’s a “clever peasant” as Peyo used to say.
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Tags: Étienne Borgers, bande dessinée, Belgium, Bernard Hislaire, Darasse, Dino Attanasio, Franco-Belgian Comics, Frank Pé, Franquin, Gender, Gos, MAD Magazine, Mittéï, Natacha, Peyo, Renoy, Roba, Spirou, Thierry Martens, Tillieux, Translations, Vicq, Walthéry, Wasterlain, Will, Women, Yvan Delporte
17 – 20 May 2017 – Louvain-la-Neuve – Musée Hergé – Collège Érasme, Université Catholique de Louvain
by Olivier Roche
Translated by Annick Pellegrin
Edited by Lise Tannahill
In Europe, the Belgian author Hergé, whose real name was Georges Remi, is considered to be one of the greatest bande dessinée artists of the 20th century, just like Winsor McCay (Little Nemo in Slumberland), Charles Schulz (Peanuts) or Jirō Taniguchi (A Distant Neighborhood). His body of work—mostly The Adventures of Tintin and Quick and Flupke—has become mythical, and the subject of collections, of speculation, of exhibitions, of hundreds of scholarly studies, of thousands of articles and all kinds of artistic and cultural tributes. In France or in Belgium, universities have had a lot of trouble embracing bande dessinée. However, in the last few years, there has been a notable and growing interest for the ninth art, and in particular for Hergé’s work, in higher education and research. From 17 to 20 May 2017, an international conference was held in Louvain-la-Neuve, at Université catholique de Louvain and at Musée Hergé [Hergé Museum], to mark Hergé’s 110th birthday. The conference, organised by a scientific committee representing six universities in Belgium, France and Switzerland, brought together 20 speakers from 8 countries over 4 days, a first, and it was a great success.
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Tags: ACME, bande dessinée, Belgium, Benoît Peeters, Franco-Belgian Comics, GrEBD, GRIT, Hergé, Jacques Langlois, Jan Baetens, Kroll, Les Amis de Hergé, Moulinsart, Musée Hergé, Philippe Goddin, Philippe Marion, The Adventures of Tintin, Thierry Groensteen, Tintin, Translations, Yves Sente
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