Strip Search: Les bandes dessinnees
In Strip Search, Jennifer M. Babcock reviews and recommends comic strips available in print and on the web.
I’m such a jet setter this summer! Within a week of coming back from Egypt I was back on the plane to Paris, France- ooh la la.
Now, most of what I was doing in Paris was pure vacation fun time but I did some Egyptological research there as well, and of course… comic hunting. Many Americans don’t realize this but the French are quite fond of comics, or “BDs” (short for bande dessinee) as they call them. Go to the Virgin Megastore on the Champs Elysees and you’ll see an entire floor dedicated to them. Fnac, the French equivalent of a Barnes and Nobles, also carries a tremendous supply of comic book albums, and if you take a stroll through the Latin Quarter, you’ll find numerous shops dedicated to comics and cartoon paraphernalia. While I was in Paris, there was an arts magazine that dedicated its cover to R. Crumb and his latest comic Genesis and another one that came out with its annual “BD issue,” which was all about French comic artists.
The French are often seen as cultural snobs so it may surprise many readers to hear that even adults embrace comics as a genuine and legitimate form of art/literature making, but I think if we look at what Francophone countries have in their comics history, it becomes more understandable. Most famously, Belgium, churned out comic greats like Herge (Tintin) and Peyo (Les Schtroumpfs AKA The Smurfs). More recently Americans have come to know the work of the Iranian-French author Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis).
