frbd1-1, Exercise 2: Describing a comic with the vocabulary

Model answer (check the details), using The Beano as the example of a British comic, with a note on a graphic novel:

- Album: not applicable to the weekly paper, but its annual book is the nearest British counterpart to a collected volume.
- Planche: a page of The Beano is usually a single self-contained strip, drawn as one designed unit.
- Case: each page has around six to ten panels, in a loose grid.
- Bulle: speech balloons with large lettering, plus sound effects drawn into the panels.
- Scénariste and dessinateur: in British weeklies the writer and artist were often the same person or a house team, and credits were not always printed.
- Strip or gag en une page: the dominant form, a gag or short episode on one page.

For a graphic novel (for example Persepolis, which the course reaches in Chapter 7): a roman graphique, one author who writes and draws (auteur complet), published as a single book and not serialised.

Point: the vocabulary lets you compare formats, not only content.