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Xx1st Century Graphic Novels Belphégor Dominique Le Duc XX1st Century Graphic Novels 'Help save a dying, irrelevant art today... Please donate... before it's too late!' Ware, C. 2002. Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth (back cover) Winner of the 2001 Guardian's First Book Award Introduction European 'Bande dessinée', American comics, Japanese manga, have become a worldwide phenomenon in the cultural landscape. The long-standing view that held comic art as purely children's illustrated tales has changed since comics started to address a more sophisticated adult - and sexually explicit - content in the sixties. In the Hexagon, the cultural recognition - sustained by substantial state support and media coverage - during Mitterrand's presidency in the eighties imposed this art form as a 'média à part entière' (Peeters, 2003:15). Indeed, 'comics aren't just for kids anymore'. In the nineties small Francophone independent collectives ( L'Association, Les Requins Marteaux, Ego comme X, Amok, Cornélius, Atrabile, Bamboo) or American comics publishers (Kitchen Sink, Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly, Top Shelf, Highwater) promoted strong editorial lines. Seminal to the production of graphic literature alongside the mainstream, the latter have pioneered innovative shifting graphic styles and controversial content. Thus, with their own stylisation and narrational specificities, a handful of ambitious idiosyncratic authors have revolutionised the comics' discipline, profoundly reshaping and bringing new inspiration to the field of comic art. Just as new wave used cinema as a political weapon, the independent graphic literature has become a springboard for social (homosexuality, Aids...) and political comments (war-torn countries). Together, comic creators are engaged in addressing realism through more adult subject matter, using "all the resources of their medium to break down such preconceived ideas of what comics should do" (Cioffi, F.L. in Varnum, 2001:121). The new movement has raised interest amongst scholars with the creation of research groups1, the growing number of conferences worldwide, and landmark publication of books - i.e. McCloud's Understanding Comics or Groensteen's Système de la bande dessinée. Headlines, shelving and reviews of 'graphic novels' have become a regular feature in our mainstream bookstores, libraries, and literary reviews in the national press. Whilst it is not possible here to embrace the whole history of graphic literature, this paper looks at the characteristics that have marked the new movement, focusing on the growing interest of the media and publishing industry, and the stance of comic creators and independent publishers. Graphic literature: autobiography and reportage 'The graphic novel is not literary fiction's halfwit cousin but, more accurately, the mutant sister who can often do everything fiction can, and just as often, more.' Dave Eggers, New York Times (in The Observer, David Thompson, Sunday June 22, 2003) http://etc.dal.ca/belphegor/vol5_no1/articles/05_01_Leduc_graphnov_en_cont.html[12/2/2013 1:49:07 PM] Belphégor The nineties are marked by the exploration of innovative stylistic features, i.e. non- conventional formats and monochromatic techniques. Along with documentaries and literary adaptations, innovative narrative features include autobiography and reportage. Even though autobiography has been an integrated part of emerging American Underground creations since the sixties, it is more recent in the Francophone field. The first autobiographical novel Passe le temps is credited to Edmond Baudoin, the spiritual father of contemporary Bande Dessinée, in 1982. Autobiographical comics like French mangaka Frederic Boilet's L'Epinard de Yukiko or American Craig Thompson's Blankets (Times magazine's graphic novel of the year and Harveys Award winner 2004) address serious subject matter, from alienation to child abuse, including intimate relationships. Interestingly a number of manga are gradually made available in their translated form to a Western readership - in their original reading format (from right to left). Indeed in Japan, a specific term equivalent to 'graphic novel' ('gekiga') was initiated as early as the fifties by mangaka Yoshihiro Tatsumi (in 1957) (Asakawa: 2004:63). The term refers to darker, more realistic themes to differentiate it from manga, and means 'dramatic pictures' (Schodt, 1996:34). Leading figures of watakushi manga ('comics about me') and jiden manga (autobiography), i.e. Tatsumi, Tsuge Yoshiharu2, Kazuichi Hanawa, Jiro Taniguchi... Another worldwide phenomenon is the exploration of the comic art form by cartoonist/reporters as a 'graphic memoir' with accounts on political and armed conflicts. The medium is used to convey serious subject matter through non-fictional characters who express themselves through speech bubbles and narratives are expressed in moving and realistic black and white panels. For American cartoonist Art Spiegelman, 'pictures like that are a kind of language, and they function as a form of carrying ideas' and 'many images will continue lingering in the reader's consciousness'3. Thus, a number of comic creators provide first-hand visual accounts of the reality of conflict (in Rwanda, Afghanistan, Romania, Burma, Iraq, Iran, China, North Korea...) putting their cartooning skills at the service of political reportage. While Art Spiegelman delivers a powerful account of the Holocaust in Maus, cutting-edge journalist Joe Sacco gives intimate testimonies of the lives of war-trapped civilians in the Occupied Territories in his work Palestine. Sacco also documents the Balkan war-zone in Safe area Gorazde and the aftermath of the Bosnian war in The Fixer - A Story from Sarajevo. French comic creator Philippe Squarzoni stands out in asserting a strong political engagement through both his authorial expressivity and his paratextual identity as a militant. Indeed, his commitment to document the reality of war has taken him to Croatia ("The war in Yugoslavia haunted me since 1991 and I really wanted to 'do something'") or the Occupied Territories4. Iranian Marjane Satrapi depicts in Persepolis an intimate account of the effects of the war on the lives of her countrymen, exploring concerns of identity and memory, alienation and the sense of belonging. It is interesting to note at this point the growing presence and true integration in this art form of female authors since the nineties. Debbie Drechsler explores recollections of moving childhood traumas/adolescence memories; Julie Doucet portrays intimate self-representation5 and Phoebe Gloeckner deals with autobiographical issues of sexual child abuse. Format In France, thanks to the publishing house Futuropolis and the monthly magazine (A Suivre)6 issued by Casterman, cartoonists were able to break away from the http://etc.dal.ca/belphegor/vol5_no1/articles/05_01_Leduc_graphnov_en_cont.html[12/2/2013 1:49:07 PM] Belphégor limitations of the mainstream format and produce longer narratives. Thus, between 1972 and 1994, Futuropolis brought a number of cartoonists (Enki Bilal, Edmond Baudoin, Jacques Tardi ...) to a wider audience. American cartoonist Craig Thompson noted an' obvious reaction to the "slow-poke" style'7 as, freed from editorial and commercial constraints, cartoonists went 'through a much more dramatic overhaul from the traditional approach of spending a year on a meticulously rendered, 48-page album to the Trondheim revolution of churning out over 500 pages in a year'.8 Thus, a format relevant to each individual project is a necessity for the graphic novelist's 'intent' (Campbell, 2004:169). Baudoin used an oversized format for Le Chemin de St-Jean, Vanoli opted for a thin one for his Contes de la désolation. Others like Neaud or Thompson adopt a heavy-weighted format, as shown in their respective 800-page Journal and 600-page Blankets. The constraining format is a thread in Le Journal d'un Album (1994: 69)9, an autobiographical account of the making of volume 4 of their Monsieur Jean series. Cartoonists Dupuy & Berberian10 depict their concern at having to comply with the rigid 48-page format - indeed with six volumes to-date; the narrative had grown in complexity. Intertextuality and screen adaptations The independent Bande dessinée production of the nineties underpinned the emergence of new narrative and stylistic features, all the while clearly mandating references beyond the world of comics itself. The seventies had generated a more eclectic approach to the comic art form with works including Moebius (Fer de Lance), Tardi (Ici-même) or J-C Forest (Barbarella). Since the nineties, references from the world of literature (Stevenson, Schwob, Georges Arnaud, Pierre Mac Orlan, Max Jacob, Joyce, Beckett, Boulgakov) or from painting (Dufy and Matisse, expressionists Pascin, Otto Dix, Grosz and Kokoschka) can be found in the works of cartoonists David B., Nicolas de Crécy, Pascal Rabaté or Edmond Baudoin... Comics are one of the most popular forms of our increasingly visual age. The need for more realism is also apparent in other art spheres, including cinema with the new documentary genre and true-life stories including Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, Nicolas Philibert's Etre et Avoir or Kevin McDonald's Touching the Void... As comic creators like Frederic Boilet draw references from the world of cinema (new wave film directors Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard), live action adaptations on screen - i.e. Ghost World by American graphic novelist Daniel Clowes - bring the comic art form to the attention
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