History of French comics no laughing matter

By Izabel Deuff

JAKARTA (JP): Foreign comic strips are quite popular here. Both children and adults enjoy reading them, and it is no secret that most people prefer foreign comics to local ones.

Three of the favorite comics are from France: Asterix, Lucky Luke and Tintin (whose hairstyle has become a fashion here).

"As the editor of Pilote, I was able to break the shackles that have imprisoned comics," said Ren Goscinny, the famous father of Asterix, summarizing the 1960s liberation of French comics from censorship and childish pictures.

Pilote was a comic strip magazine which marked a turning point in comics, to what the French consider art, the history of which is displayed in an exhibition held at the French Cultural Center, Jl. Salemba Raya, Central Jakarta, until Oct. 10.

Twenty-four storyboards with texts and illustrations from the National Center of Comics and Images in France, are displayed in two rooms. They tell Une histoire de la BD en France (A History of Comic Strips in France) from their beginnings in the 19th century to the late 1980s.

Strip cartoons were born in 1833 as an autonomous form of expression and were the first printed illustrations in books.

The creator of francophone comic strips was Rodolphe Tpffer (1799-1846), a writer and teacher in Geneva who published seven albums. Two boards show plates by l'cole du chat noir (The Black Cat School of Comic Strips). Founded in 1892, this school introduced satire to comic strips.

From that time on, magazines for children were increasingly filled with comic strips and within 60 years, comics had vanished from publications for adults altogether.

Due to the Socit parisienne d'dition (the Parisian Publishing Society), French comics became solely the domain of child publications. Each comic strip was dedicated to a particular type of people: for girls or boys, well-off people or people from the lower classes and for the religious press and other denominations.

In 1928, Herg, the creator of Tintin marked a watershed in the history of French comics because he succeeded in writing long stories thanks to simple drawings and changes in scenery.

At the end of the 1930s and after the war, the coming of American comics such as Mickey, Robinson, Tarzan and Mandrake heralded the birth of the adventure comic strips ranging from western stories to science fiction adventures.

After the war, the magazine Le coq hardi (The Bold Cock) displayed popular comic strips relating stories about the French Resistance or adventures in America such as Vaillant or Le journal de Pif (Pif's Newspaper).

Comic strips were also politically directed. Both Catholics and communists had their own publications disseminating their ideas: Vaillant was a communist publication, whereas Coeurs vaillants (Valiant Hearts) was part of the large Catholic press.

However, both backed the censorship of comic strips. The 1949 law on youth-directed-publications stipulated that comic strips should not deal with violence, eroticism or extreme satire.

Later in the 1960s, Goscinny and Jean-Michel Charlier imposed a new style in several series: Iznogoud, Tanguy et Laverdure or Lieutenant Blueberry.

Following Goscinny and Charlier's daring example, the movement bdphile (comic strip mania) installed the modern French comic strip. It took advantage of the crisis of May 1968 to eradicate the prejudices and limits laid down by censorship and put an end to American and Belgian domination.

Pilote illustrated this progress as well as Hara-Kiri, a satirical magazine by Reiser, Willem and Wolinski. But Mtal hurlant (Screaming Metal), a magazine launched in 1972, found unlimited freedom thanks to modern graphics, free speech and drawings for adults.

The exhibition closes with "alternative Futuropolis", a black and white magazine which promotes new authors and heralds the 1990s' comic strips.

The exhibition gives visitors some hints about the changes which have occurred in the comic strip genre. Displaying sequential stories on several pages, comic strips became more organized in the 1900s through the child press's vignettes. Between the two world wars, imitating the American designers, Alain de St. Ogan, Zig et Puce's designer introduced speech balloons.

The French comic strip took the form of long stories only in the 1950s when female figures were still banned.

In 1978, Casterman, Tintin's editor, launched a black-and- white monthly magazine for adults called A suivre (the French word for "following"). It displayed Corto Maltese, the famous hero by Hugo Pratt. Since then, comic strips have been largely considered like novels and become products in bookshops.

When looking at the boards, people recognize famous characters. The renowned characters of the French-speaking comics: Asterix, Tintin,Spirou, Gaston Lagaffe, Lucky Luke, Alix, Blake et Mortimer were born in the 1950s and the 1960s. All are part of the French culture and can teach people about French habits and history.

For instance at the beginning of each Asterix album is the following sentence: "The whole of France is occupied" referring to France's situation during the second world war.

Bcassine featuring a naive Breton maid who discovers Paris, gives visitors a picture of the French Capital at the beginning of the century as well as an insight into how Parisians viewed provincial people at that time.

It is interesting to learn about the history of the French comic, however unfortunately, there is no translation of the text in the exhibition.

Aji Yahuti Ramyakim, the FCC's public relations officer, admitted that it would have been better to have an Indonesian translation of the exhibition but she expected that people would still be interested in coming because: "Even if people don't speak French, they like looking at the pictures. Moreover, it could induce them to read French."