Supermarkets in France have one extensive aisle that always seems to draw plenty of interest – that of la bande dessinée or strip cartoon albums or graphic novels. There are volumes of them, the majority of a French-Belgian flavour: Tintin, Gaston, Titeuf to name but a few. France is a nation of BD lovers, as bande dessinée is commonly referred to over here.

Huge Interest

Astérix, the comic-strip Gaulois heroes created by Goscinny and Uderzo in 1959, sells 3,500 to 4,000 of each of its titles a month. In view of such public demand, Hachette, the publishers have decided to give the first eight adventures a new look, including new covers and new colours. The comic strip has even inspired Pare Astérix, the popular theme park 30 kilometres north of Paris, which celebrated its 15th birthday in 2004. A stroll along Via Antiqua reveals architecture and souvenirs from Astérix’s journeys, while the Astérix Village and Roman camp are reconstructions from the cartoons.

Not Just Kids’ Stuff

How wrong I was to assume that the followers of the bande dessinée were only the younger generation. Naturally, children read them and BD albums seem to be the standard birthday gift at parties. I remember when eight of my son’s invited friends arrived in turn, each one of them bearing an adventure of Spirou or Cédric.

Serious Reading Matter

My own childhood memories of the stocking-filler Beano Album can be blamed for lulling me into the illusion that I knew what a comic strip album was! It came as some surprise to discover that French BD fans include a great number of adults as well as children. I blush to think that I once made the terrible faux-pas of laughing at a middle-aged man when he proudly told me about his vast collection of ‘Les Adventures de Blake et Mortimer’. These hardback copies are full-length stories which are as much about science and history as pure escapism. They are educational with settings in far away places like Egypt and Mexico and far off times like pre-history. Go into any FNAC or large bookshop and sensible and serious people of all ages will be propping up the shelves, devouring the album they are reading; attracted by the colourful designs, unable to put it down until they get to the end of the gripping storyline.

Homage To The Grand Masters

The Festival International de la Bande Dessinée d’Augoulême takes place every year and 2006 saw its 33rd year, attracting young and old, amateur and professional collectors alike. The Centre National de la Bande Dessinée et d’Image – also in Angoulême – pays homage to the Grand Masters of the strip cartoon. It houses almost all of French strip cartoon production from 1946 onwards and its large stock of material (video cassettes, cartoon albums, magazines and so on) may be freely consulted. The Centre has recently become the new home to the complete collection of Marvel comics, which include the superheroes Spiderman and X-Men.

In its ambitions to satisfy BD audiences all year round, the festival has even reached its tentacles to the capital – to the prestigious surroundings of the Musée de l’Homme in Paris. It devoted an exhibition to Edgar P. Jacobs and his characters Blake and Mortimer in 2004, marking Jacob’s 100th anniversary. The exhibition honoured the man – often considered a visionary – who is one of the principal icons of the European strip cartoon world. The exhibition drew on the favourite images of the stories of the two English detectives, which first appeared in 1946 in Belgium. It was organised by theme in 19 rooms, covering a total of 1,000 square metres. Further evoking the atmosphere and decor of the series, the Musée de l’Homme contributed Egyptian artefacts, Indian totem poles, tiger skulls and even 1950s electric machines.

The Manga Mania

Younger bande dessinée fans have been particularly hooked on the Japanese inspired manga mania. Manga is a BD in black and white, which you read from right to left. A Japanese person would take about 20 minutes to read the 320 pages of a manga – a time that corresponds to the commute from work to home. These stories are published on recycled paper and once finished with are thrown into special waste bins.

Here in France, the manga was not actually received with open arms by parents at first, even though they themselves may well have been brought up reading BDs. In the 1980s, the children’s show ‘Club Dorothée’ first showed the Japanese animated cartoons like ‘Goldorak’, ‘Albator’ and ‘Chevaliers du Zodiaque’ which exasperated parents. At the time, parents considered these cartoons violent and consequently the manga had a bad press. Directors of children’s programmes today closely regulate these series before they appear on the screen so that fewer parents worry about the time and pocket money their children spend on mangas.

Hot Off The Press

Nowadays, it is a common sight in bookshops to see recently delivered mangas – not even on the shelves – being sold to queues of youngsters already lining up at the counter. They know – thanks to the Internet – that a new adventure of their favourite hero has just come out in French. Fans have been known to even buy the Japanese version without being able to speak a word of the language itself just in order to get to know the end of the story before their friends.

The reason why ten- to 15-year-olds are seduced by heroes answering to puzzling names like Naruto, Yuyu Hashusho, Sakura, Imakodi, Kimengumi is that the reader finds in them stories that mirror their own problems: themes like love and bravery. In Japan the production of the manga is vast and segmented. There are mangas for 4- to 6-year-olds, for 6- to 8-year-old boys, for housewives, university students, bachelors, and so on. It is a powerful industry that employs hundreds of authors and publishes several millions of copies every week.

What is particularly appealing though, is that in the Japanese culture the distinction between good and bad is not as clear-cut as in our own. The goodies are not all good and the baddies are not all bad and teenagers like this absence of stereotypes. Thanks to their magic powers, the characters might seem like Spiderman or Superman but they are not model heroes. They do not evolve in a rigid manner and graphically nearly anything is possible.

It is true that not every Frenchman would elevate the strip cartoon to the heights of great literature. Nevertheless, Le Figaro Magazine serialised the original 1948 version of ‘Tintin au pays de l'or noir’ throughout the summer months in 2004, which just goes to show the high esteem in which the BD is held as reading matter.