Angoulême and Brussels
Franco-Belgian Comics: Bande Dessinée
Course 1 · Chapter 9 · Angoulême, Brussels and the Wider World
Comics need places as well as publishers: a festival where fans, artists and publishers meet, and cities that decide to show their comics to the public. Two places stand out, Angoulême in south-west France and Brussels. This chapter visits them, looks at how Franco-Belgian comics travel into English and onto the screen, and ends with a question the festivals have themselves had to face: where are the women? Names, dates and figures are from general knowledge and flagged "check".
Angoulême
The festival
The Festival international de la bande dessinée d'Angoulême began in 1974 and is held every January in the small city of Angoulême, in Charente (check). It is now one of the largest comics festivals in the world, with exhibitions, signings, a book fair, and the awards. Entry is by ticket, and the town is filled with temporary pavilions.
The prizes
The festival's most prestigious award is the Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême, given for a body of work, and the Fauve d'or for best album (check). Winners of the Grand Prix then chair the following year's festival. Past winners have included Franco-Belgian classics, Japanese artists such as Katsuhiro Otomo and Rumiko Takahashi, and Americans such as Bill Watterson (check).
The city
Angoulême also has a permanent national comics centre, the Cité internationale de la bande dessinée et de l'image, which opened in its present form in 2009 with museum galleries, a library and residencies, and walls painted with comic murals (check).
Brussels
- Elsewhere in Belgium. A museum devoted to Hergé opened at Louvain-la-Neuve in 2009 (check), and Wallonia has its own comics sites in the Charleroi area, the home of Spirou (Chapter 4).
- Other French festivals. Quai des Bulles in Saint-Malo, and BD Boum in Blois, among many (check).
- Beyond the French-speaking world. Lucca in Italy, Leeds and London in Britain (Thought Bubble, Comica; check), San Diego Comic-Con in the United States, and the huge manga markets of Japan.
Into English
| Route (check each) | Note |
|---|---|
| Classics | Tintin and Astérix in English from the late 1950s and the late 1960s (Chapters 3 and 5), published by British houses. Also Lucky Luke and the Smurfs. |
| Specialist translators | Cinebook, based in Britain, has published English editions of series such as Lucky Luke, Blake et Mortimer and Largo Winch since the mid-2000s (check). |
| Graphic novels | American independents such as Fantagraphics, Drawn and Quarterly and NBM publish Tardi, Sfar, Satrapi and others (check). Persepolis is widely taught in schools and universities. |
| Magazines | Heavy Metal in the 1970s brought the Métal hurlant artists to English readers (Chapter 6). |
Translation can be difficult for comics: the lettering must be reset in each balloon, the text must fit the space, and puns and local jokes have to be rebuilt (Chapter 5). English-language publishers have taken in only a fraction of what is published in French each year (check), so the English view of the tradition is much narrower than the French one.
On Screen
- Animation and live action. Astérix and Tintin films, Luc Besson's Valerian (2017), based on the series of Chapter 5 (check), and the animated Persepolis (2007) (check).
- Blue Is the Warmest Colour. The 2013 film, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, was based on a comic by Julie Maroh (check); it was also controversial for its production and its depiction of its subject, with the author voicing criticism (check).
- The influence goes both ways. The Franco-Belgian artists drew on American strips and, later, Japanese manga, and Moebius was admired by Japanese artists such as Hayao Miyazaki (check).
Where Are the Women?
The history
Women have been creators from early on (the Bécassine illustrator Jacqueline Rivière, Claire Bretécher in the 1970s, Florence Cestac), but they were few in the big classic series (check). Florence Cestac was the first woman to win the Angoulême Grand Prix, in 2000 (check).
The 2016 row
In 2016 the festival's long list of nominees for the Grand Prix included no women, and many artists protested; some men asked to be withdrawn from the list, and a collective of women creators, formed in 2015, campaigned against sexism in the field (check the details). The festival changed its rules for the following years (check).
Now
More women now write, draw and publish comics, including Marjane Satrapi, Pénélope Bagieu, Julie Maroh and Catel, and women are a growing part of the readership (check). Surveys of the industry continue to find gaps in pay and in prizes (check; compare Chapter 8).
Exercises
Plan a three-day comics trip to Brussels or Angoulême: what to see, which chapters of this course each stop relates to, and what you would check before travelling.
Explain three difficulties of translating a comic and give an example of how a translator might solve each.
Summarise the arguments about women creators and prizes in French-language comics, setting out the evidence on each side and what further evidence would help.
Quick Reference
- Angoulême: festival since 1974, every January; Grand Prix and Fauve d'or; national comics centre (2009)
- Brussels: Belgian Comic Strip Center (1989), comic-strip route of murals
- English: Cinebook, Fantagraphics, Drawn and Quarterly, NBM
- Screen: Persepolis, Valerian, Blue Is the Warmest Colour
- Women: Cestac (2000), the 2016 row, growing presence