Peter Conroy

Chicago Literary Club

11 October 2010

French B(ay) D(ay)

My title is French Bay Day, which is an accurate phonetic rendering of BD, bande dessinée, which is French for comic strip or the funny pages or comic book. My topic this evening is the moment of transition when in France the comics or funnies stopped being an exclusively juvenile entertainment and began to evolve toward a more serious genre that could attract adult readers. Since this was a long and involved process, I can discuss here only two of the most important BDs that initiated this make-over, Tintin and Astérix.

Unlike American comics, BD is taken seriously in France and has been called the Ninth Art. University professors have been writing books and articles on BDs for decades. Several influential scholarly journals have devoted full issues to the BD, most notably Communications (1976), Degrès (1989), Europe (April 1986), and Le Français dans le Monde (April 1986). In August 1987, one of France’s most prestigious annual literary conferences, the Colloque de Cerisy, was entirely devoted to BD (Ann Miller, p. 39).

As a further proof of its serious status, BDs have benefited from governmental financial support. Can you imagine the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) funding comic books? In Europe there are two centers for the study of BDs, one in France (CNBDI: Centre Nationale de la Bande Dessinée et de l‘Image = National Center for BD and the Image, 1990 in Angouleme), the other in Brussels (CBBD: Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinéee = The Belgian Center for BD in 1989), both heavily subsidized by their respective governments. In Angouleme, a museum dedicated solely to BDs opened in 1974, which was the inspiration and basis for the CNBDI. Since then the city has hosted an annual comics festival that attracts a large crowd of BD fans, collectors, and critics.

The French BD (the abbreviation) differs from bandes dessinées (full spelling) principally on technical criteria. Bande dessinée refers to any comic strip, but primarily those that appear as serials in periodicals or newspapers. A BD, on the other hand, is a large slim volume containing a complete story. An over-size format, approximately 12" x 9", it has a hard-cover, is usually printed in color on heavy stock paper, and contains about 48 pages. In contrast, American comic books retain their original layout: they continue to be printed on cheap, loose leaf size paper (9" x 6") with glossy paper covers. BDs have three, occasionally four frames or panels in a horizontal strip (the bande) with four strips to a page. Occasionally, for special effects, panels can be smaller or expanded to fill an entire page.

These albums have proved popular even as styles and subjects have changed enormously, ranging from science fiction through crime and fantasy to war, horror, and humor. Right from the outset, the BD was considered a hybrid creation, using elements of the cinema (reliance on images to tell the story) and of the novel (dialogue among the characters plus a narrative text to set the scene or to recapitulate the action).

Here I must back-track and sketch a very brief history of early comics. Comics began, according to different historians, either in 1896 with the American Richard Outcault's The Yellow Kid, or in 1827 with the Swiss Rodolphe Topffer's L'Histoire de Monsieur Vieux Bois. In either case, by the end of the century comics were enormously popular and were carried extensively in the newspapers, especially the color Sunday editions. They burgeoned after 1900. The Katzenjammer Kids began in the newspaper in 1897 and had passed into book form by 1905. Popeye and Flash Gordon all debuted in the 1920s, Buck Rodgers in 1934, Blondie and Lil Abner in the 30s and 40s. In France, the comics were just as popular although we do not recognize as easily their early heroes and heroines. A young peasant girl from Brittany, Bécassine, was one of them, as were the Pieds Nickelés, a trio of “petits filous, à la fois escrocs, hableurs, et indolents” (Wikipedia) [three little rascals, fast-talking and lazy cheats]. They resembled the Katzenjammer kids but were a good bit nastier. American comic book figures were well known in France; Flash Gordon was naturalized and Frenchified as Guy Léclair.

The funnies were aimed squarely at an audience of children and their sole aim was entertainment. American comics and their heroes dominated the field throughout the first half of the century, especially during the Golden Age, which runs through the 30s. The pantheon of these heroes remains with us today: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Captain Marvel, and the never to be underestimated Mickey Mouse who moved from pictures to comics in 1931.

After the end of WW II French and American comics parted company. American comic books continued to focus on adolescents with their superheroes and fantastic adventures, while the French comics started to seek an additional audience, adults who were amused by the comic and even caricatural presentation but who also appreciated its more sophisticated subject matter and the authors’ ironic attitude. During the war, France had lost touch with American comics, not least because its superheroes were all enlisted in the military effort against the Nazis. Now, after 1945, when Superman and company returned in force, they encountered a mixed reception.

In 1949, an unlikely combination of left-wing Communists and ultra-conservative Catholics in France reacted to what they considered the dangers of foreign comic books. They passed the “Law of 16 July” in order to protect French children from contamination by American pop culture. This law forbade any positive presentation of criminal or immoral behavior. It also prohibited the display of violent or licentious material in publications destined for children or in places where children might be exposed to it. Which is to say, wherever comics were sold. Good-bye American comics and all their super heroes who were drenched in crime and violence.

Other motives might lurk behind this legislation, most particularly the desire to protect French artists from foreign competition. American comics were again dominating the French market as exchanges and importation became easier after the war (Ann Miller, p. 19). One proposal, not included in the final legislation of 1949, would have required all comics to contain at least 75% French material (Wendy Michallet, p. 86). As surprising as this last consideration might seem, it is not the only time France has had recourse to it. In the 1990s, in an attempt to protect the domestic film and music industries from American domination, France enacted legislation that required a certain percentage of French content in those fields and even tried to fix the percentage of American music played on the radio. That effort was largely unsuccessful.

The same phenomenon was repeated in England. The "Childrens' and Young Persons Harmful Publication Act” (May 6, 1955) banned the publication and sale of American comic books because of their violent content and because they lacked any educational value, being entirely given to gratuitous entertainment. In remarks that led to this eventual legislation, which is still on the books even if largely unenforced, Sir Hugh Lucas-Tooth denounced the language in American comics as "a crude and alien idiom to which we all take exception" (Paul Gravett, p 184). Not only did the comics debase the Queen’s English, but they presented a real cultural menace. The sun was setting on the British empire, there was not much else but trouble east of Aden, American English had replaced its British cousin as the lingua franca in airline transport, international business, and the sciences. Still the House of Commons had time to inveigh against children’s comic books.

While facetious in many respects, these efforts show that comics were no longer beneath contempt. Both the British and the French legislation identified grave failings: the feckless violence, the debasement of language, and the absence of any redeeming educational element. Comics were still for kids but adults were worrying about their content.

We should not be overly surprised by these European reactions. In the mid 1950s, the American Senate held hearings on juvenile delinquency. No legislation was passed, but in fear of the same, a voluntary Comics Code Authority was established. As part of the "moral crusade against the excess of crime and horror titles" (Gene Kannenberg Jr, p 249), --we are in Joe McCarthy country now-- the Comics Code “banned all but the most innocuous content” (Roger Sabin, p 183). Gone were violent images, and most specifically vampires and zombies. The Code gave its seal of approval only to those comics whose content was deemed acceptable through pre-publication vetting, which is to say censorship. Comics without the seal could not be displayed on the open racks or sold in the usual venues. At this point, American comics turned down the road toward comix and went underground where they “joyfully and anarchically celebrated sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll” (Kannenberg, p 6). Free of constraints, these comix became totally adult in theme and subject matter as they morphed into what we now call graphic novels. Robert Crumb is perhaps the best known of these “underground” comix authors. In 2009 he published his comix version of Genesis to positive and even laudatory reviews.

But back to France where indigenous French heroes were graduating from their success in children’s magazines like Spirou and Pilote to the higher echelon of full-length adventures in hard-cover albums.

The first and perhaps most famous French BD is not really French at all. Like moules and French fries, Tintin is Belgian. This adolescent adventurer was created in 1929 in the pages of a Brussels newspaper, Le Petit Vingtième, by Georges Rémi whose initials read backwards give RG, pronounced and rendered phonetically as Hergé. Tintin’s success has been phenomenal: he has been translated into 50 languages and his albums have sold over 200 million copies.

Tintin is a young Belgian journalist, always accompanied by his dog Milou. With his characteristic blond hair combed up into a wave and always wearing his distinctive knickers, this journalist-sleuth travels around the world to solve crime.

His adventures are, at least in the comics universe, mild. Pratfalls and brickbats, surprises and impossible coincidences, rocks dropping on various heads all advance the contrived plots. His enemies are transparently evil, and several of them appear in multiple albums. Tintin is himself captured, imprisoned, and injured, but never for long or seriously. He always escapes from his predicament in some unforeseen manner: a fortuitous circumstance, a lucky event, a brilliant stratagem. Tintin doggedly tracks his opponents until he discloses their dastardly conduct and rights the wrongs.

There can be little doubt that Tintin benefited from the legislation directed against mindless and violent comics. Visually unremarkable and physically unimpressive, Tintin nonetheless proves himself more clever and intelligent than the criminals he meets. His popularity with kids needs little explanation: he too is an adolescent, but one who succeeds in the adult world. He bounces back from every adversity, he never looses his cool, and he lives the most extraordinary experiences. Furthermore, he is accompanied by a cast of comic companions. Captain Haddock is always slipping on things or walking into walls. When provoked, he unleashes his earth-shattering invectives: ectoplasms! Troglodytes! Thundering typhoons! Blistering barnacles! Either deaf or a caricature of the absent-minded professor (or both!), Professor Tournesol (Sunflower) mangles any conversation he is engaged in. The twin detectives who share a name they spell differently, Dupont et Dupond, are bumbling incompetents.

Nonetheless, Tintin’s adventures are more sophisticated, informative, and thus “adult” than the usual American comic book. They are educational, providing pedagogically instructive lessons in geography and history. In his travels Tintin meets American Indians and descendants of the Incas. He visits North and South America, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Far East, and Africa. His exotic adventures in foreign lands include a search for buried treasure, Incan mummies, opium smugglers, expeditions into the jungle or over snow-covered mountains in Tibet. He is caught up in nationalistic struggles and boundary disputes in a vague Mitteleuropa that looks a lot like Serbia and Kosovo today. In 1953, Tintin walked on the moon, having traveled there in a atomic powered rocket.

The Blue Lotus, usually regarded as Hergé’s best, was written in 1934-35 but is set in 1931 when the Japanese were occupying parts of China. One incident depicts realistically the sabotage of the South Manchurian railway and how that event was manipulated into a casus belli by Japanese propaganda. Hergé’s sympathies are all with the Chinese, who are depicted as wise, gentle, and kind, while the Japanese are caricatured as ugly, arrogant, and belligerent. Tintin and the Broken Ear (1935-37 as a serial; album in 1943) takes place against a background of insurrection and rebellion in an imaginary South American country, which is an historically accurate allusion to the Chaco war between Paraguay and Bolivia in the 30s. Both sides are ridiculed as equally inept while the general populace proclaims its support for whoever happens to be winning at the time. War between these two countries is fomented by an American businessman who wants to develop a rich oil field that lies on their border. Western arms merchants sell weapons to both sides. Inspired by his right-wing newspaper editor, Hergé set Tintin to Russia in 1929, his first appearance in the comics and the only one in black-and-white. It contains a virulent denunciation of the Communist regime. This is unusual since, at that time, intellectuals and artists were very sympathetic to Russia and communism, a tendency that endured in France until at least the 80s.

While Tintin’s adventures are not the stuff of newspaper scoops or investigative reporting, they are historically engaged and informed especially for a comic strip ostensibly meant merely to entertain children.

Hergé is not without fault, however, and his Tintin in the Congo is particularly troubling. First appearing in the newspaper in 1930-31, it was published in 1946 as an album. Hergé took advantage of this opportunity to eliminate some offensive material. He has admitted that his depiction of the Congolese natives was demeaning and condescending. His defense was that he knew nothing about the Congo when he wrote the comic strip and thus caricatured black Africans according to the prejudices and stereotypes of the 30s that were imbued with paternalistic and colonial ideologies. Despite the corrections made for the 1946 BD, the British Commission on Racial Equality declared in 2007 that the album was “racist” and recommended that it be banned in England. That same year a Congolese student in Belgium filed a suit accusing the BD of racism. What the ultimate effect of these two actions might be, I cannot say. However, I can say that, in Jan 2010, I attempted to purchase this album from the Amazon web site in France twice. Both times I was informed that the book could not be shipped to my address in the US. In addition, this is the only Tintin album you cannot find in English translation.

To compound the accusations of racism, Hergé has been criticized for having published some of his material in the Belgian journal Le Soir during the second world war. That newspaper was a notoriously anti-Semitic collaborator with the Nazis. At the liberation, Hergé was banned from working for a period because of that connection.

According to one scholar, it was thanks to Astérix that “BD graduated from being a legally protected medium for children to become a showpiece promoting French culture in embassies around the world” (Libbie McQuillan, p. 8). This is an enormous claim for a simple comic book, and it demands examination.

In a poll of French men and women over the age of 15, 68% reported having read at least one Astérix album. That is a remarkable figure and indicates how thoroughly this BD hero has permeated French consciousness. According to Ann Miller, Astérix is “particularly open-ended in its relationship to the collective imaginary,” which is lit-crit jargon meaning that we can read Astérix as a key to French culture and France’s concept of itself. That may seem a stretch. However, when, on November 16, 1965, the French launched their first satellite into space, they named it Astérix. Astérix taps into something very specifically French.

First appearing in the comic magazine Pilote in 1959, Astérix quickly transitioned to the album format. He was created by René Goscinny who did the story while Albert Uderzo drew the pictures. Together until Goscinny’s death in 1979, they produced 24 albums. Uderzo, in collaboration with others, produced nine more. Usually regarded as quintessentially French, Astérix has nevertheless transcended national boundaries, having been translated into 107 languages and sold over 300 million copies. One of the few countries where Astérix has not been well received is the US.

The main character and hero of the eponymous series, Astérix lives in a small village in Gaul (present-day Brittany) which still resists the Roman occupation in 50 BC. Diminutive, not particularly handsome, distinguished by his long flowing hair and bushy handlebar mustache, possessing super strength only when he drinks a magic potion, Astérix nonetheless incarnates an indomitable will to resist an overwhelming foe, the Romans. This truculent attitude has endeared him to Frenchmen who identify with his refusal to give up the good fight and his resistance to invading foreigners.

As I mentioned above, Astérix can be read in many ways, some of which might seem to cancel out the others. For literary scholars, such multiple interpretations are not contradictions to be avoided, but rather complications that should be embraced. We can keep all the balls up in the air simultaneously. We are not obliged to choose one meaning and abandon the others.

There are at least three possible explanations of how Astérix can articulate a deep national anxiety on contemporary politics and history.

Charles de Gaulle returned to power as France’s president in 1958 at the height of the Algerian crisis even as Frenchmen were struggling to face up to their behavior during the occupation. De Gaulle never ceased to extol the virtues of “eternal France” and tried to erase the overpoweringly negative memories of France’s military collapse in 1939-40 (known as the “Phony War” or the “Drole de guerre”), its subsequent occupation, and the extremely sensitive topic of its collaboration with the Nazis. France was, it cannot be denied, the only European country conquered by the Nazis that did collaborate with them.

Despite the widespread and flattering legend that the French underground forces mobilized the entire country, in reality few Frenchmen belonged to the resistance. Not until the Nazis invaded Russia in June 1941 did a significant number of Frenchmen, typically members of the French Communist Party, begin to join the maquis. Their motive was as much to fight the German foe on behalf of Russia as it was to liberate France. Throughout de Gaulle’s time as President, only the glorious but overly exaggerated myth of the heroic Resistance was permitted. Jean Moulin and other real heroes were rightly celebrated, but less convenient facts were pointedly forgotten. Moulin struggled against the Nazis with a few fellow partisans. In the end he was betrayed by another Frenchman. As a fervent anti-Communist, de Gaulle refused to admit that the PFC (French Communist Party) played a positive role in the resistance although they were in fact its most powerful and effective element. The documentary film “Le Chagrin et La Pitié,” (The Sorrow and The Pity) which told the painful truth about collaboration, was banned by de Gaulle. The 50s and 60s were stressful times for the national memory as the country refused to acknowledge the truth about its own shameful conduct.

Only recently, for example, has serious attention been paid to the Vel d’Hiv incident of 1943, when thousands of Jewish parents and their children were rounded up and interned in abysmal conditions at an indoor bicycle track (le Vélodrome d’Hiver) before being transported to the gas chambers. (See the novel, Tatiana de Rosnay’s Sarah’s Key) This round-up was conducted by French police and not Nazi soldiers. Despite President Jacques Chirac’s public apology (16 July 1995), few know or remember the details of this event. The “rafle du Vel d’Hiv” is an enormous stain on France’s national honor. In the fiction of Astérix, France found an ideal that did not exist in fact.

As an “irreducible” Astérix resists the invading Roman army (read here the Nazis) in the name of national pride and honor. He refuses to surrender; he never collaborates; he opposes the invaders viscerally and thwarts their domination at every turn. He and his fellow Gauls rewrite a dark page of French history with their pluck and cunning.

Another major issue de Gaulle faced was decolonialization. Algeria gained its independence in 1962 after eight years of guerilla warfare during which France committed numerous and very grave war crimes, all of which were denied by the government at the time. In one of the most praised acts of his presidency, de Gaulle subsequently dismantled the French empire, liberating former colonies in North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Indo-China, and the Pacific. The explorers who had established that empire wrote some of the most glorious pages of French history. Now they were repudiated, their efforts negated, their names forgotten.

In this reading the unconquerable Astérix incarnates a small, unimportant country like Algeria that has to fight against an overwhelming invasive force, namely France as a ruthless colonial power. Astérix represents the colony’s struggle, Rome assumes the burden of the now repudiated colonial policy. Once again Astérix rescues the national imagination from all the negative aspects of its former behavior.

If in one reading the odious invader, Rome, can be ridiculed by clever Gaul to assuage the humiliation of military defeat, occupation, and collaboration, then in a second reading an odious French colonial policy can be repudiated in the name of the struggle, now recognized as legitimate, of colonial peoples to embrace their own freedom and to find their own national identity.

We can even propose a third interpretation. Despite the absence of any physical resemblance, Astérix incarnates President de Gaulle. The General himself resisted any and everything that threatened his ideal of an “eternal France.” He believed in French exceptionalism, the idea that France was unique and destined to be a world leader. He feared that his vision of France as a beacon of hope and an example for the whole world was being challenged by a modern day Roman empire, America. Unilaterally he pulled France out of NATO and threw the Americans out of their military bases in his country. Proposing France as the leader of a third world between the Cold War antagonists Russia and the US, de Gaulle also encouraged countries in Latin American to resist American political hegemony and Quebec to reject the Anglo-Saxon language.

Thus the General, like the heroic Astérix, resists an arrogant invasive foe, America, that is trying to impose its economic system (what the French call “savage capitalism”), its impoverished mass culture (the ubiquitous Coca Cola and comic books, for that matter), and of course its own language.

Coca Cola is not a trivial example. Every Astérix album closes with a banquet, a celebration around a table that emphasizes community and companionship. And cuisine: food, especially haute cuisine, is a marker for Frenchness. As just one example I note the recent book Wine and War (published 2001) in which Don and Petie Kladstrup retell the story of the resistance as carried on by wine growers who were defending first and foremost their wine, which they regarded as an irreplaceable national treasure, from Nazi depredations.

Indeed, the place that food holds in French culture is quite special. Any threat to that cuisine can be interpreted as an attack on the whole culture. In the 1990s, José Bové was the leader of a militant group that defended French food, especially the Rocquefort cheese from his own region, against foreign competition and contamination. In Millau, in 1999, he destroyed a MacDonald’s restaurant as part of his struggle against all fast-foods and mal bouffe in general, loosely but accurately translatable as the crap you eat or pig-out food. Fast foods and mal bouffe insulted French cuisine and thus posed a danger for French culture. They were specifically identified as American and as part of the American menace to all things French. Short, stocky, with a mane of long flowing hair and a distinctive handle-bar mustache, Bové seemed to play on his resemblance to Astérix. MacDonald’s responded with a publicity campaign based on Astérix that de-emphasized its status as a foreign business and accented its commitment to using local products in their meals. MacDo seems to have won that media battle.

As weighty as these interpretations are, they do not alter the fact that Astérix is funny. It appeals to kids on a simple level, but it is also capable of advancing more sophisticated meanings. Adults like the BD’s word play, its parody of “official history” (like the famous school lesson about “Our ancestors the Gauls …”), its numerous cultural references, and the kinds of interpretations we presented above.

The names of the characters provide one example of this “adult” humor. All the names are written as one word, which changes ever so slightly where the syllabic breaks occur and where the accent falls. In addition, critical letters can be omitted. As a result, what we “hear” in silent reading differs from the same sequence of letters when they are pronounced out loud as separate words. This subtle word game probably escapes children but it does reward the adult reader seeking more than meets the eye.

All of the male Gauls have names ending in -ix. This is an unusual combination of letters, really almost non-existent in French, and therefore liable to amuse, but it does remind us of the first Gallic hero, Vercengétorix, who was conquered by Caesar.

Some names describe or characterize the persons who bear them. Others are free, gratuitous word play, names just for the fun of it. Obélix, Astérix’s sidekick, always carries a menhir or dolmen on his back. Carnac, a town in Brittany, is famous for its menhirs or obelisks, monumental stones arranged in patterns like those at Stonehenge. A Phonician merchant sailor who exploits his workers is called Epidemais. The name is evocative: it has a vague eastern Mediterranean sound (cities like Ephesus or Epidourus), a medical resonance (epidermis or epidural), or a classical echo (epidictic or Epigoni); phonetically, however, it is simply “epi de mais” or an ear of corn. Everyone in the village tries to prevent the local bard from singing. His name, Assurancetourix, indicates a self-assurance that is totally unjustified, of course. It sounds however like full coverage car insurance (assurance tous risques). Petitsuix is a Swiss innkeeper; running a hotel is a stereotypical Swiss occupation. In addition, Petit Suisse is a mild processed cheese popular with kids. Zurix is a merchant who refuses to acknowledge the origins of war plunder in the name of fiduciary confidentiality and secret bank accounts. Money on the borderline of legality is another reference to Helvetian stereotypes. The village mailman is Pneumatix. Up until the 1950s Paris had an extensive network of pneumatic tubes that connected all its post offices. You could hand in a message at any branch and it would be sped by pneumatic tube to the office closest its destination. An employee there would then hand deliver the letter, known as a “petit bleu” for the special paper it was written on. The total elapsed time would be less than an hour. César Labeldecadix runs a tavern. He is a caricature of the music hall and cinema star Raimu who achieved national acclaim and iconic status for playing the role of César the café owner in the famous Marseilles trilogy of stage and screen by Marcel Pagnol Marius, Fanny, and César. Up until 1950s César was a common given name in southern France. “La Belle de Cadix” (The Pretty Young Girl from Cadix) is an operetta, largely forgotten today, first performed in 1945 and filmed in 1953. In French Cadix is pronounced [cadi] or [cadis]; there is no [x] sound. Note also the change in spelling: “la belle” becomes “label” which in franglais is quite common and means … label.

Several Roman military camps surround the Gallic village. All have authentic sounding Latin names ending in -um: Babaorum (baba au rhum: a dessert made of heavy cake plentifully imbibed with rum), Acquarium (authentic Latin but entirely inappropriate here), Laudanum (the opium-based medical drug, no longer used but quite wide-spread in the late nineteenth century), and Petitbonum (“petit bon homme”: the ordinary or the little guy). Roman names for men end in a characteristic -us, for women in -a. One Roman family, father Caius, mother Alpaga (Alpaca, both the animal and its wool), son Gracchus, daughter Tibia (as in leg bone) have the surname Quiquifus (= qui qu’ils fussent), which means “who ever they might have been.” Fussent is a rare verb tense, the imperfect subjunctive, that no kids and only a few adults would even recognize let alone use. Saugrenus is a recognizable caricature of the then Prime Minister Jacques Chirac. “Saugrenu” in French, without the “s”, means absurd or ridiculous. An English equivalent would be “Ridiculus.” This Roman is a graduate of the NEA, the New School for Freemen (Ecole Nouvelle des Affranchis), a mocking reference to the ENA (Ecole Nationale d’Administration), the school that produces almost all of France’s politicians including Chirac.

Lack of time prevents me from continuing, so I will attempt now to draw some conclusions from this still unfinished discussion.

Today, the French BD is an unqualified commercial success, both in France and around the world. It has established a strong claim to being an independent and legitimate artistic genre even while it remains close in its techniques to cinema and the novel, the two art forms that have inspired it. It has been seriously studied by university scholars and has attracted talented writers and graphic artists. Current BDs employ a wide range of graphic styles and touch upon just about every subject imaginable. Given such impressive credentials, it is amazing to realize that the door to the adult BDs being written today, and which are called “graphic novels” in the US, was opened by two diminutive and underwhelming characters who scarcely seem to merit the epithet “heroes,” Tintin and Astérix.

Bibliography

Charles Forsdick, Laurence Grove, and Libbie McQuillan, eds. The Francopohe Bande Dessinée. New York: Editions Rodolphi, 2005.

Virginie François. La Bande Dessinée. Paris: Editions Scala, 2005.

Ron Goulart. Comic Book Culture: An Illustrated History. Portland, OR: Collectors Press, 2000.

Paul Gravette. Graphic Novels. Stories to Change Your Life. New York: Collins Design, 2005. OPPL 741.509 GRA

Don and Petie Kladstrup. Wine and War. New York: Broadway Books, 2001.

Wendy Michallet, “Pilote, Pedagoy, Puberty and Parents,” in The Francopohe Bande Dessinée, pp. pp 83-95.

Ann Miller. Reading Bande Dessinée. Critical Approaches to French-language Comic Strip. Chicago: Intellect Books, 2007.

Tatiana de Rosnay, Sarah’s Key. Saint Martin’s Griffin, 2008.

Nicolas Rouvière. Astérix ou la Lumière de la Civilisation. Paris: Partage du Savoir (PUF), 2006. UIC 6748A6R67 2006

Roger Sabin. “Some Observations on BD in the US,” in The Francophone Bande Dessinée, pp. 175-188.