Bande dessinée
Likewise, despite the shared language, Flemish BDs do not do that well in the Netherlands and vice versa, save for some notable exceptions, such as the Willy Vandersteen creation Suske en Wiske (Spike and Suzy) which is popular across the border.
Due to its relative modesty, both in size and in scope, and despite the close historical and cultural ties, no German-Belgian artists are as of 2018 known to have created BDs specifically for the German comics world, when discounting commercial translations of their original Francophone creations.
[8] In recent decades the English "graphic novel" expression has increasingly been adopted in Europe as well in the wake of the works of Will Eisner and Art Spiegelman, but with the specific intent to discriminate between comics intended for a younger and/or general readership, and publications which are more likely to feature mature content, literary subject matter or experimental styles.
During the 19th century, there were many artists in Europe drawing cartoons, occasionally even utilizing sequential multi-panel narration, albeit mostly with clarifying captions and dialogue placed under the panels rather than the speech balloons commonly used today.
Even though Les Pieds Nickelés, Bécassine and Zig et Puce managed to survive the war for a little while longer, modernized in all three cases and all of them continued by artists (the most notable one being Belgian Greg for the latter in the 1960s)[24] other than the original creators, none of them succeeded to find a readership outside France itself and are consequently remembered in their native country only.
The criticisms regarding the early stories notwithstanding and even though the format still had a long way to go, Tintin is widely considered the starting point and archetype of the modern Franco-Belgian comic as currently understood, and as amply demonstrated in the vast majority of treatises and reference works written on the subject since the 1960s, and the first to find a readership outside its originating country.
Coeurs Vaillants started to publish The Adventures of Tintin in syndication from 1930 onward, constituting one of the earliest known French-Belgian comic world cross-fertilizations, only reinforced when Abbot Courtois, editor-in-chief of Coeurs Vaillants, asked Hergé to create a series about real children with a real family as opposed to Tintin's ambiguous age and family (and thus more in line with the Catholic norms and values on which the magazine was founded), which resulted in the 1936 comic The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko.
A lot of the publishers and artists who had managed to continue working during the occupation were accused of being collaborators and were imprisoned after the liberation by the reinstated national authorities on the insistence of the former French resistance, although most were released soon afterwards without charges being pressed.
Le Lombard went on to become one of the three great Belgian publishing houses to produce comics in French (and in Dutch as well for that matter due to the bi-lingual nature of the country), alongside Dupuis and Casterman, and like them as of 2017 still in existence.
Successful series Charlier himself created in this period were the educational short series Les Belles Histoires de l'oncle Paul (serving as proving ground in order to develop the talents and skills of young aspiring artists like Belgians Mitacq, Arthur Piroton [fr], Hermann, Dino Attanasio and the Frenchman Jean Graton among others, several of whom switching over to industry competitor Lombard at a later point in their careers, most notably Hermann), Buck Danny (with Hubinon), La Patrouille des Castors (with Mitacq after his apprenticeship on L'oncle Paul) and Jean Valhardi (with Paape and Jijé).
As such, he was responsible for introducing the two Frenchmen René Goscinny (who also starting out his comics career at the agency) and former Bravo artist Albert Uderzo to each other in 1951 at the in that year opened Paris, France, office of World Press, in the process creating one of Franco-Belgium's most successful bande dessinée partnerships.
With the addition of artist Willy "Will" Maltaite, who took over the series Tif et Tondu from original creator Fernand Dineur, the group that became known as "La bande des quatre" (Gang of 4), consisting of Jijé, Franquin, Morris and Will, was complete and constituted the foundation of what was coined the "Marcinelle school"-style.
A famous example concerned the two Korean War volumes of the popular aviation comic series Buck Danny, created by Belgians Charlier (who as spokesperson for World Press/Spirou was actually summoned to appear in person for a board of inquiry at the French Ministry of Information to account for himself) and Hubinon, which were prohibited in 1954 as article 2 expressly forbade any mentioning of an actual, current armed conflict in a children's publication – but also because communist members of the commission had issues with the strong anticommunist sentiment expressed in the comic according to writer Charlier.
[48] It has been observed that, unlike the Belgian publications, these mostly secular native magazines were largely left alone by the Commission de Surveillance,[49] save for one notable exception; Pierre Mouchot, creator and editor of American inspired comic magazines in the immediate post-war era, was on recommendation of the Commission persecuted for his likewise American (and Italian) inspired comic series Big Bill le Casseur and P’tit Gars, having to appear in court no less than eight times in the period 1950 - 1954, actually winning most of his cases in the lower courts.
While both he and his creations are likewise forgotten, Mouchot became the only French comics artist to be legally persecuted, and ultimately convicted by the highest court of appeal (though only receiving symbolic punishment) under article 2 of the 1949 law for real.
However, the conviction did serve as an effective deterrent for other native artists – and thus firmly establishing the Commission as a force to be reckoned with, even though they had a tough time becoming so as Mouchot kept winning his lower court cases – who continued to create their comics while erring on the side of caution for the next decade.
[43] However, the incident Charlier had experienced with the Commission shook up the editors of Spirou and Tintin, and as France was a too important market to lose, they too henceforth chose to err on the side of caution by screening the creations of their artists before magazine publication, essentially being forced by the French to exercise self-censorship.
[52] With a number of publishers in place, including Dargaud (Pilote), Le Lombard (Tintin), and Dupuis (Spirou), three of the biggest influences for over 50 years, the market for domestic comics had reached (commercial) maturity.
Editor-in-chief Goscinny had at first refused to implement the changes demanded by its artists during the 1968 revolt in the editorial offices, but he now found himself suddenly confronted with the magazine hemorrhaging its most promising BD talents and diminishing sales.
[59] Lagging behind the French for the first time in regard to the more mature BDs, the Belgians made good on their arrear when publisher Casterman launched the magazine (À Suivre) (Wordt Vervolgd for its Dutch-language counterpart, both of which translating into English as "To Be Continued") in October 1977.
It was with the specific intent to expand beyond the somewhat limited Hergé boundaries with other, more diverse high quality work, that the publisher launched (À Suivre), which printed BD creations by Ted Benoît, Jacques Tardi, Hugo Pratt, François Schuiten, Paul Teng and many others from French, Italian and/or Dutch origins, but relatively few from Belgian artist as there were not that many active in the adult field at that time, with Schuiten, Didier Comès – as already stated, one of the very few BD artists of German-Belgian descent, alongside Hermann Huppen – and Jean-Claude Servais [fr] being three of the few exceptions.
It were in these such magazines that a younger, post-war generation of French BD artists like Yves Chaland, Édika and Philippe Foerster [fr] debuted, whereas veterans like Gotlib and Franquin found a home for their later, darker and more cynical work.
Exemplary of the different, older target audience Glénat was aiming at, became the two finite, historical series Bourgeon created; Les Passagers du vent (1979–2009, The Passengers of the Wind, seven volumes, set in 18th-century seafaring and slave trading Europe, becoming one of the first BD series to deal realistically in considerable detail with the dark slavery chapter in human history) and Les Compagnons du crépuscule (1983–1989, Companions of the Dusk, three volumes, set in 13th-century Europe and published by Casterman incidentally).
No such respite was afforded the reader however with Hermann's 11th-century epos Les Tours de Bois-Maury (1984–1994, The Towers of Bois-Maury), whose original ten-volume series was serialized in Vécu in the same era Bourgeon's Passagers was in Circus; Not only did Hermann's stark and uncompromising art style served to reinforce the grim atmosphere of his medieval settings, any and all redeeming optimistic commentary on human nature was also lacking in his narrative, quite the contrary actually, making his Middle Ages truly the Dark Ages where the vast majority of humanity was living short, violent lives in abject squalor, with not a single so-called "hero" in sight anywhere in his series.
With such series driving home the point that real history is made by mere humans and not "super-humans", the Franco-Belgian historical BD had come a long way since their first romanticized and/or idealized appearances in the 1940s–1970s, particularly in Tintin and Pilote as portrayed by such artists as the Fred and Liliane Funcken couple [fr] (Le Chevalier blanc, Harald le Viking, Lieutenant Burton), William Vance (Howard Flynn, Rodric, Ramiro), François Craenhals (Chevalier Ardent) or Victor Hubinon (Barbe Rouge), to name but a few.
[69] Giraud's death was a considerable media event in France, but ample attention was also given to his demise in press releases all around the world in even as faraway places like Indonesia (Jakarta Globe, 11 March 2012), a country not particularly known for a thriving comic culture.
And while their impact and influence have significantly diminished in the wake of the events of 1968, their continued legal existence in the fringes does constitute the proverbial "Sword of Damocles" for the French BD world, despite artists, publishers, politicians and academics having questioned the relevance of both manifestations in a modern world in a public debate during a 1999 national conference organized on the subject by the Centre national de la bande dessinée et de l'image [fr] (CNBDI), France's largest and most important BD organization.
[87][88] This Jijé specific comics style enjoyed a revival in later works from French, Flemish and Dutch artists like Yves Chaland, Ever Meulen and Joost Swarte respectively, the latter of whom incidentally, having actually coined the alternative "ligne clair" designation in 1977.
In particular these include other European publications, from countries such as, most conspicuously, Italy with Guido Crepax, Hugo Pratt and Milo Manara among many others, and to a somewhat lesser degree Spain, with Daniel Torres, and Argentina, with Alberto Breccia, Héctor Germán Oesterheld and José Antonio Muñoz.
Some well-known German (Andreas, Matthias Schultheiss), Swiss (Derib, Job, Cosey [de; es; fr], Zep, Enrico Marini) and Polish (Grzegorz Rosinski) authors work almost exclusively for the Franco-Belgian market and their publishers such as Glénat and, most conspicuously, Le Lombard.
