Impressum Autor_in Pascal Lefèvre (Brüssel) Aufsatztitel An Empirical Study of the Publication Format and Beginnings in the Belgian Francophone Weeklies, Sprirou and Tintin, in the 1950s Journal Closure. Kieler e-Journal für Comicforschung 4 (2017) – www.closure.uni-kiel.de Empfohlene Zitierweise Name: Titel. In: Closure. Kieler e-Journal für Comicforschung 4 (2017), S. 47–67. <http://www.closure.uni-kiel.de/closure4/lefevre>. 21.11.2017. Herausgeber_innen Cord-Christian Casper, Chris Ullrich Cochanski, Yanine Esquivel, Kerstin Howaldt, Julia Ingold, Gerrit Lungershausen, Susanne Schwertfeger, Simone Vrckovski, Rosa Wohlers Redaktion & Layout Victoria Allen, Cord-Christian Casper, Chris Ullrich Cochanski, Sandro Esquivel, Yanine Esquivel, Constanze Groth, Jana Hanekamp, Kerstin Howaldt, Julia Ingold, Gerrit Lungershausen, Marie- Luise Meier, Susanne Schwertfeger, Simone Vrckovski, Dennis Wegner, Rosa Wohlers Technische Gestaltung Sandro Esquivel, Simone Vrckovski Kontakt Homepage: http://www.closure.uni-kiel.de – Email: [email protected] www.closure.uni-kiel.de An Empirical Study of the Publication Format and Beginnings in the Belgian Francophone Weeklies, Spirou and Tintin, in the 1950s Pascal Lefèvre (Brussels) As argued before (Lefèvre 2000 & 2013), the the manner of publication influence the way ›publication format,‹ i.e. the way a comic is new comics series started? Traditionally, in fan initially published, can influence the creation discourses the importance of the individual art- of a graphic narrative – and thus the final ist is overestimated and the role of the context product that the consumer buys – on various underestimated. Such romantic conceptions of levels. Different publication formats not only the artists and their creations must be, at least, impose strict formal constraints (like the for- tempered by an analysis of the contextual fac- mat of the page, the number of pages, etc.) on tors. An additional research question thus con- the authors, but also regulations regarding the cerns the relation between the individuality of content or the genre. Compare for instance the artist, the possibly shared conventions and the serial publication of graphic narratives in the editorial guidelines. Japan, the U.S.A. and France: they differ both The 1950s was a crucial period for the devel- in their material look and in the way the stories opment and expansion of francophone com- are drawn and told. While a fan of a French ics production in Belgium. With the start of series has to wait about a year to read the next the Tintin series in 1929, the Belgian comics album of 46 pages of a continuing story, a industry saw a first boom at the end of the Japanese fan can often read installments of 1930s (including the 1938 launch of the chil- about 20 pages per week in a weekly. For this dren’s weekly Spirou). This development of the contribution, we will zoom in on the implica- comics industry was, of course, interrupted by tions of a particular publication format (the the occupation of Belgium in 1940; but after comics weekly) for the beginning of a new the Liberation the comics industry outgrew comics series by taking the two dominant Bel- its initial success of the 1930s. For instance, gian comics weeklies of the 1950s, Tintin and in 1946 the weekly Tintin was launched as an Spirou, as our case studies. To what extent did important competitor to Spirou. Furthermore, 47 CLOSURE 4 (2017) lefèvre – Publication Format and Beginnings in contrast to the 1930s and 1940s when Methodology imported comics from other countries still made up the bulk of the comics published in Few comics scholars study comics in their the small kingdom (Lefèvre et al. 2011), in the original publication format. However, for our postwar period local Belgian artists increas- research question it is crucial to see how comics ingly got their chance to enter the field. Both were actually published in the 1950s, because weeklies would grow in the following decades, that context is by definition lost in later repub- especially the 1950s and 1960s, not only in cir- lications of these comics in album format. culation figures (cf. Lesage, 205) but also in Unfortunately, few written documents con- the number of pages per issue. As the weekly cerning the editorial policy of the weeklies have issues became thicker over time, consequently survived or are accessible for external research- more new series (or other editorial content) ers. Nevertheless in published artist’s interviews could be included per issue. Table 1 presents sometimes a brief reference to the editorial pol- some technical data about the dimension and icies may be noticed, but these rather fragmen- number of pages of both weeklies. tary remarks by individual artists do not suffice to provide adequate, comprehensive insight Spirou Tintin into the internal functioning of these publish- Format dimensions 28 x 20 cm 29,5 x 21 cm ers (moreover testimonies can contradict each Total Number 24 20 other on some issues). Therefore, the chosen Pages in 1950 method will be a kind of ›reverse engineering‹: Total Number 40 32 Pages in 1959 the underlying conventions of the beginnings will be inferred by an empirical analysis of the Table 1: Dimension and number of the pages of the weeklies. comics as they were published in the (original) weekly format, sometimes (where relevant) Both journals targeted more or less the same supplemented by an additional analysis of the age group, especially children between 7 and original drawings. These are then interpreted as 14 years old, but readers could, of course, con- symptoms of the editorial policy of the stud- tinue to read comics when they grew up. Both ied period, taking into account, however, that genders, boys and girls, read the weeklies. In not every individual case is a perfect example fact, there were almost no comics magazines of the editorial guidelines. Such a methodology aimed at girls only in Belgium. An exception obviously runs the risk of ›Hineininterpretie- was Line (1955–1963) by the same publisher ren‹, but this problem can be reasonably con- as the Tintin weekly. It has been often sug- tained by focusing especially on formal features gested that there was a difference in social that are quite easily deducible, like the amount classes: Spirou was mostly read by members of of pages per installment, the number of tiers the lower classes and Tintin by members of per page, the use of color versus black and the somewhat higher classes. But real statistics white, and the type of framing. Such features about the readership are not available. can be quantified simply, but further qualitative 48 CLOSURE 4 (2017) lefèvre – Publication Format and Beginnings analysis is necessary for a better understand- We might expect to find some kind of group ing of their uses and goals for the narration. style for each weekly (historians like Groen- This is in line with what formalist film scholars steen 2009 have often pointed out the differ- like David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin ences between both magazines), but possibly Thompson have done in their study of a group also some common features for both weeklies style like Classical Hollywood Cinema, which (see for example Groensteen 2009, 75–76 and takes the purely statistical approach of Barry 84). Bordwell and colleagues (1988, 5) in their Salt one step further by also paying attention study of the Classical Hollywood style stress to the narrative strategies underlying the use of that one should not think of a group style as a particular technical devices. Like these formal- monolith but as a complex system of specific ist film scholars I assume that some kind of forces in dynamic interactions. Individual film- aesthetic system characterizes features of indi- makers working in the heyday of Hollywood vidual products, in our case of the comics pub- still had some liberty, but the paradigm surely lished in those two weeklies: offered bounded alternatives. Given the context of a regular weekly pub- The system cannot determine every minute detail of the work, but it isolates preferred practices and sets lication, one could expect that already by the limits upon invention. […] My emphasis on norms 1950s some practices were regarded as con- should not be taken to imply an iron-clad technical ventional by publishers, artists and readers formula imposed upon filmmakers. Any group style offers a range of alternatives. Classical filmmaking is alike. The early pioneer years were over and not, strictly speaking formulaic; there is always an- various famous series1 already functioned as other way to do something. You can light a scene a model to follow, or newcomers learnt the high- or low key, you can pan or track, you can cut rapidly or seldom. A group style thus establishes what tricks of the trade from already seasoned semiologists call a paradigm, a set of elements which authors like Joseph Gillain (Jijé).2 In excep- can, according to rules, substitute for one another. tional cases also an important collaborator Thinking of the classical style as a paradigm helps of a famous artist might have functioned as us retain a sense of the choices open to filmmakers within the tradition. At the same time, the style re- an inspirational model: Evany (Eugène Van mains a unified system, because the paradigm offers Nijverseel) has not left any memorable comic bounded alternatives. If you are a classical filmmaker, himself, but he was the first assistant of Hergé you cannot light a scene in such a way as to obscure the locale entirely (cf. Godard in Le gai savoir); you in the 1930s and he later became the head of cannot pan or track without some narrative or ge- the Studio Hergé; in this last function he took neric motivation; you cannot make every shot one over the task of forming many youngsters like second long (cf.