frbd1-6, Exercise 1: Why artists left Pilote

Model answer (check the details):

Why they left:
- The readers had grown up, and the artists wanted to make comics about adult subjects (sex, politics, everyday life) that a magazine for young people could not carry.
- They wanted more freedom and ownership: to control their work, sign it and choose what to publish.
- Pilote was run as a commercial weekly with an editor-in-chief, and some artists felt its tone had become cautious (check).
- The social climate after May 1968 favoured questioning authority, including in the arts.

What the new ventures offered:
- L'Écho des savanes (1972): adult humour and satire of daily life, with the founders' own series, outside editorial control.
- Métal hurlant (1975): large-format, full-colour science fiction and fantasy with a fine, adult line, and a place for experiment, with a visual ambition the weeklies lacked.

Care: the departures had different personal reasons, and the founders tell the story in different ways.