Belgique francophone, terre de B.D.

Abstract

The history of the comic book begins in Switzerland in 1827, when Rodolphe Töpffer created what he termed "the graphic novel". The principle was simple: he told a story by drawing it and then adding captions to explain it.

Twenty years later, a German called Wilhelm Bush created Max und Moritz, a humorous comic with extremely dynamic drawings.

Later on, comic strips appeared mainly in newspapers. As the written press gained in popularity, comics became common throughout Europe. For newspapers, having good comic strips was very important, since they attracted a large number of readers. In the United Kingdom, comics became very popular, and before long, new colour publications began arriving from the United States, with speech bubbles replacing captions.

In Belgium, comics really began to take off in 1929, thanks to the children's supplement Le petit vingtième. The editor-in-chief, a highly conservative priest, asked a young artist, Hergé, to invent a character to help instil in children a fervent hate for communists. Thus, Tintin was born, whose first adventure was called Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. Hergé was obliged to write two more ideology-filled adventures (Tintin in the Congo and Tintin in America) before finally being able to choose his reporter's destinations.

Following the new wave prompted by Tintin, many other comic books were produced in Belgium, including the Bravo! magazine.

But it was from 1940 onwards that Belgian comics really made a name for themselves in the French-speaking world, thanks to two magazines, Le Journal Tintin and Le Journal de Spirou, spearheaded respectively by Hergé and Franquin. Both weekly magazines took on talented young artists and provided them with a chance to shine, and together, they marked a turning point in the history of comic books, establishing a kind of classicism.

Le Journal de Spirou, created in 1938 by the Dupuis publishing house, focused mainly on humour. The characters were very appealing, thanks to their rounded portrayal (hence the name "fat nose" style). Moreover, everything was highly visual, with little written text. The most important artist was André Franquin, the creator of the Champignac world and, above all, of Gaston Lagaffe, the first antihero in the history of European comics. His drawings were full of movement, thanks to his frenetic graphic style.

In response to Le Journal de Spirou, in 1946 Raymond Leblanc created Le Journal Tintin, which earned itself a much more serious reputation. The aim of the magazine was educational; it was rigorous and had numerous pieces of written text. The style used is known as the ligne claire or "clear line" style, characterised by black outlines, monochrome colours and a total absence of shading and cross-hatching. The objective is always the same: to make the comic more legible. The most important author of Le Journal Tintin was, without doubt, Hergé, the father of the clear line style.

From the 1960s onwards, Belgian comics began to lose out to French magazines, especially Pilote, in which the first adventures of Asterix were published. Comics became a legitimate genre, and no were longer targeted only at children and teenagers. With this gain in prestige, a certain classicism was established, centred around the works published by the first Belgian authors. Then a new generation of authors came along, forming an avant-garde school in opposition to the classic comic.

After 1968, the world of the comic book underwent a period of moral and aesthetic protest. Publications were marked by experimentation and search for new angles and approaches. Legibility was no longer a top priority.

Finally, between 1980 and 1990, authors returned to their more traditional roots and legibility once again became a vital element in their work. However, thanks to that earlier period, which can be described as a time of crisis, they were freed from their former obligations. Today, the majority of comics are located somewhere in between the old, classic style and the modern avant-garde one.