Comics in French The European Bande Dessine in Context [Paperback]

Whereas in English-speaking countries comics are for children or adults who should know better, in France and Belgium the form is recognized as the Ninth Art and follows in the path of poetry, architecture, painting and cinema. The bande dessin?e [comic strip] has its own national institutions, regularly obtains front-page coverage and has received the accolades of statesmen from De Gaulle onwards. On the way to providing a comprehensive introduction to the most francophone of cultural phenomena, this book considers national specificity as relevant to an anglophone reader, whilst exploring related issues such as text/image expression, historical precedents and sociological implication. To do so it presents and analyses priceless manuscripts, a Franco- American rodent, Nazi propaganda, a museum-piece urinal, intellectual gay porn and a prehistoric warrior who's really Zinedine Zidane.

The [volume] is impressive and the reading rewarding: not only does the author situate most of the major works of thebande dessin?eduring the twentieth century, he mentions as well the main scholarly books devoted to the study of this genre...The sources are very well documented&There is nothing missing in this book, or maybe just the bandes dessin?es themselves, which are too numerous to be included even in a dozen volumes.? ??Modern & Contemporary France

&comics, and French comics in particular, are becoming a hot topic in the academic world.&while giving a context to the visual, [the author]? succeeds in keeping close to the comic books and even the specific pictures with which he deals. Hence, the book is full of concrete examples of an incredible variety of styles and themes ofBande dessin?e, beautifully and smartly contextualized. Indeed, the analyses Grove provides throughout the book make it a very good tool for the study of French culture.? ??H-France Rl/