European Comic Art

This issue of ECA takes as its theme the importance of looking back in order the better to look forward. We can apply this in the first instance to our role as editors: this is the final edition of the journal to be published by Liverpool University Press. As from ECA 5.1 in July 2012, ECA will be published by Oxford and New York-based Berghahn, one of the leading independent academic publishers, with specialisations in cultural studies and visual media.

Our starting point is the idea that Hergé sets up a series of reciprocal links between two of his albums, Les 7 Boules de cristal and Le Temple du Soleil. Over and above simple narrative succession, these two albums fit together like two wings of a diptych across which visual, semiotic and even symbolic elements echo each other. In order to appreciate these fully, the diptych has to be considered from the perspective of a 'rereading', in other words from a standpoint that enables a particular panel or situation to be regarded as a flash forward or flashback. The tracking of this back-and-forth motion seeks to reveal the artistic profundity of Hergé's narrative, where anticipations of later elements or reminders of earlier ones either serve to intensify the dramatic build-up, or, conversely, work to parodic effect (through a distancing impression of 'déjà vu'). These echoes have cumulative effects that contribute to the overall 'intelligence' of the work. Hence our title: 'Figurations and Prefigurations in Hergé's Work, or from Les 7 Boules de cristal to Le Temple du Soleil and Back Again'.

Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (1808-1873), one-time President of the Second French Republic (1848-1852) and Emperor of the French (as Napoleon III, 1852-1870) exercised a profound effect on European cartoonists and the comic art they produced during his lifetime. As a real historical personality, Louis Napoleon feared the power of the cartoon to make him appear ridiculous and instituted one of the most effective and heavy-handed regimes of censorship of comic art in all European history. Beyond the boundaries of the French Empire, he pressured neighbouring states to protect his image in similar fashion, but in Britain and Germany and beyond, the cartoon Napoleon III became not only ubiquitous in the satirical press, but also served as a powerful touchstone for emerging national identities. The real Louis Napoleon's political and military influence was felt throughout Europe for over two decades, but his cartoon self was even more of a European phenomenon. Usually studied within national contexts, the 'Cartoon Emperor' needs to be studied transnationally in order fully to grasp his importance for developments in European history, as in European comic art.

Too ideologically conservative to associate with contemporary bande dessinée, the Bécassine albums (1905-1939) nonetheless provide a rich historical and sociological archive of French behaviors, values and attitudes during the latter half of the Third Republic. A closer reading of the four albums set during the First World War, and the fourth one in particular, Bécassine chez les Turcs, helps to demystify the place in the world of France as superpower. The partnering of exotic 'Others' - a maid from Brittany with an Arab immigrant - further complicates a plot unable to end the war with patriotic unity and a return to the status quo. Bécassine the character puts a human face on displacement as she befriends colonised subjects. This study yields a vision of a smaller, more fragile France for readers who are not as much nostalgic for a glorious past as eager to decipher the complexity of a troubled time through the eyes of a subaltern observer.

This article considers Émile Bravo's screenprint, Spirou à Bruxelles, in order to analyse the relations that existed between the two dominant styles of comic book drawing in Belgium during the mid-twentieth century: the ligne claire style associated with Le Journal de Tintin and the Marcinelle school characterised by artists affiliated with Le Journal de Spirou. Working outward from the specific details of this image, the article situates Spirou within the history of Belgian children's publishing, and the world of modernist and surrealist painting as it can be encapsulated in the figure of René Magritte. The article suggests that the study of line has been historically overlooked by comics studies, and suggests ways by which this absence might be rectified.

Hervé Barulea (b. 1947), known as Baru, is a French cartoonist of Italian and Breton heritage, who has spent much of his life in the metalworking region around Nancy, in northeastern France, his birthplace. He outlines his approach to comics, beginning with his vision of comics as essentially being images that speak to primal human urges. He finds this kind of imagery today mainly in American movies and novels, but not so much in American comics. He describes his tenure as president of the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée ['International Festival of Comics'] in Angoulême in January 2011, after having won the grand prize for his career's work in comics at the same festival in 2010. Baru then speaks of his approach to history and current events in his comics. He outlines how he has depicted immigrants of European and African heritage in his comics, and then explains why he has often returned to the Algerian War. Baru ends this first half of the interview by describing his views of the French Communist Party, and explaining his critical depiction of it in Les années Spoutnik ['The Spoutnik Years'].

Bruno Denéchère and Luc Révillon, 14–18 dans la bande dessinée: Images de la Grande Guerre de Forton à Tardi [‘World War I in [Franco-Belgian] comics: Images of the Great War from Forton to Tardi’], Collection La bulle au Carré (Turquant: Cheminements, 2008), 167 pp. isbn 978-2-84478-697-5 (€24).

Vincent Marie and L’Historial de la Grande Guerre, Images de la Grande Guerre dans la bande dessinée de 1914 à aujourd’hui [‘Images of the Great War in Comics from 1914 to the Present’] (Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2009). 111 pp. isbn 978-88-7439-518-7 (€25).

José Alaniz, KOMIKS: Comic Art in Russia

Marco Pellitteri, The Dragon and the Dazzle: Models, Strategies, and Identities of Japanese Imagination: A European Perspective

Notes on contributors

Index to Volume 4