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If you like this image, you can also send it as a postcard for free Map of Asterix - The Full Wiki The Full Wiki Map showing all locations mentioned on Wikipedia article: The Adventures of Asterix ( ) is a series of French comic books written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo (Uderzo also took over the job of writing the series after the death of Goscinny in 1977). The series first appeared in French in the magazine Pilote on 29 October 1959. As of 2009, 34 comic books in the series have been released. The series follows the exploits of a village of ancient Gauls as they resist Roman occupation. They do so by means of a magic potion, brewed by their druid , which gives the recipient superhuman strength. The protagonist, the titular character, Asterix , along with his friend Obelix have various adventures. In many cases, this leads them to travel to various countries around the world, though other books are set in and around their village.

For much of the history of the series (Volumes 4 through 29), settings in Gaul and abroad alternated, with even-numbered volumes set abroad and odd-numbered volumes set in Gaul, mostly in the village. The Asterix series is one of the most popular Franco-Belgian comics in the world, with the series being translated into over 100 languages, and it is popular in most European countries. Asterix is less well known in the United States and Japan . The success of the series has led to the adaptation of several books into 11 films ; eight animated, and three with live actors. There have also been a number of games based on the characters, and a theme park near Paris, Parc Astérix , is themed around the series. To date, 325 million copies of 34 Asterix books have been sold worldwide, making co-creators Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo France's bestselling authors abroad. History Prior to creating the Asterix series, Goscinny and Uderzo had previously had success with their series Oumpah-pah , which was published in the Tintin magazine.

Astérix was originally serialised in the magazine Pilote , in the very first issue published on 29 October 1959. In 1961 the first book was put together entitled Asterix the Gaul . From then on, books were released generally on a yearly basis. Uderzo's first sketches portrayed Asterix as a huge and strong traditional Gaulish warrior. But Goscinny had a different picture in his mind. He visualized Asterix as a shrewd small sized warrior who would prefer intelligence over strength. However, Uderzo felt that the small sized hero needed a strong but dull companion to which Goscinny agreed. Hence, Obelix was born. When Goscinny died, Uderzo continued the series alone, though on a less frequent basis. Uderzo created his own publishing company, Les Editions Albert-René, which published every album drawn and written by Uderzo alone since then. The firm was owned by Albert Uderzo and his daughter Sylvie (80%) and by the Goscinny family (20%).

However, Dargaud, the initial publisher of the series, kept the publishing rights on the 24 first albums made by both Uderzo and Goscinny. In 1990, the Uderzo and Goscinny families decided to sue Dargaud to take over the rights. In 1998, after a long-time trial, Dargaud lost the rights to publish and sell the albums. Uderzo decided to buy these rights to Hachette instead of Albert-René, but the publishing rights on new albums were still owned by Albert Uderzo (40%), Sylvie Uderzo (20%) and Anne Goscinny (40%). Although Uderzo declared he didn't want anyone to continue the series after his death, which is similar to the request Hergé made regarding his The Adventures of Tintin , his attitude changed, and in December 2008, he sold his stake to Hachette, which took over the company and now own the rights. This has provoked a family row.

In a letter published in the french newspaper Le Monde , Uderzo's daughter, Sylvie, has attacked her father's decision for selling the family publishing firm and the rights to produce new Astérix adventures after his death. She is reported as saying the co-creator of Astérix, "France’s comic strip hero, has betrayed the Gaulish warrior to the modern-day Romans - the men of industry and finance”. Anne Goscinny also gave her agreement to the continuation of the series. and sold her rights at the same time. A few months later, Uderzo appointed three illustrators, who had been his assistants for many years, to continue the series. List of titles Numbers 1 - 24, 32 and 34 are by both Goscinny and Uderzo. Numbers 25 - 31 and 33 are solely the work of Uderzo. Years stated are for their initial release. 34. Asterix and Obelix's Birthday: The Golden Book (2009) Asterix Conquers Rome is a comic book adaptation of the animated film The Twelve Tasks of Asterix .

It was released in 1976, making it technically the 23rd Asterix volume to be published. But it has been rarely reprinted and is not considered to be canonical to the series. The only English translation ever to be published was in the Asterix Annual 1980. In 2007, Les Editions Albert René released a tribute volume titled Astérix et ses Amis , a 60 pages comic book made up of various short stories (from one to four strips). It was a tribute to Albert Uderzo at the occasion of his 80th birthday by 34 renown European comics artists. The volume was translated in nine languages, but not in English yet. Synopsis and characters The main setting for the series is an unnamed coastal village in Armorica , a province of Gaul (modern France ), in the year 50 BC . Julius Caesar has conquered nearly all of Gaul for the Roman Empire , however the little Armorican village has held out because the villagers can gain temporary superhuman strength by drinking a magic potion brewed by the local village druid , Getafix .

The main protagonist, and hero of the village, is Asterix , who is usually entrusted with the most important affairs of the village, because of his shrewdness. He is aided in his adventures by his rather fat unintelligent friend Obelix , who has permanent superhuman strength, as he fell into the cauldron of the potion as a baby. Obelix is usually accompanied by Dogmatix , his little dog. Asterix and Obelix (and sometimes other members of the village), go on various adventures both within the village, and in far away lands. Places visited in the series include parts of Gaul ( Lutetia etc), and far away lands ( North America , Middle East , India etc). The series employs science-fiction and fantasy elements in the more recent books, for instance the use of extraterrestrials in Asterix and the Falling Sky and the city of Atlantis in Asterix and Obelix All at Sea . Humour The humour encountered in the Asterix comics is typically French, often centering on puns, caricatures, and tongue-in-cheek stereotypes of contemporary European nations and French regions .

Much of the humour in the initial Asterix books was French-specific, which delayed the translation of the books into other languages for fear of losing the jokes and the spirit of the story. Some translations have actually added local humour: in the Italian translation, the Roman legionnaires are made to speak in 20th century Roman dialect and Obelix's famous "Ils sont fou ces romains" is translated as "Sono pazzi questi romani", alluding to the roman abbreviation SPQR . The newer albums share a more universal humour, both written and visual. In spite of (or perhaps because of) this stereotyping and notwithstanding some alleged streaks of French chauvinism , it has been very well received by European and Francophone cultures around the world. Translations The 34 books or albums (one of which is a compendium of short stories) in the series have been translated into more than 100 languages and dialects.

Besides the original French , most albums are available in Estonian , English , Czech , Dutch , German , Danish , Icelandic , Norwegian , Swedish , Finnish , Spanish , Catalan , Basque , Portuguese (and Brazilian Portuguese ), Italian , modern Greek , Hungarian , Polish , Romanian , Turkish , Slovene , Bulgarian , Serbian and Croatian . Beyond modern Europe, some albums have also been translated into languages as diverse as Esperanto , Indonesian , Mandarin , Korean , Japanese , Bengali , Afrikaans , Arabic , Hindi , Hebrew , Frisian , Latin , Romansch , Vietnamese (mainly in the South pre-Communist April 30, 1975), and Ancient Greek . In France, in Finland , Poland and especially in Germany . Hungarian -language books have been issued in Yugoslavia for the Hungarian minority living in Serbia . Although not a fully autonomic dialect, it slightly differs from the language of the books issued in Hungary . In Greece, a number of volumes have appeared in the Cretan Greek , Cypriot Greek and Pontic Greek dialects and in Ancient Greek . In Sri Lanka, the cartoon series was adapted into Sinhala as Sura Pappa.

English translation The translation of the books into English has been done by Derek Hockridge and Anthea Bell . Adaptations The series has been adapted into various media. Films Various motion pictures based upon the series have been made. Two Romans in Gaul, 1967, live-action, in which Asterix and Obelix appear in a cameo. Asterix - The Full Wiki The Full Wiki Note: Many of our articles have direct quotes from sources you can cite, within the Wikipedia article! This article doesn't yet, but we're working on it! See more info or our list of citable articles . Related top topics From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about the comic book series. For the character, see Asterix (character) . Not to be confused with asterisk . For other uses, see Asterix (disambiguation) .

Asterix The Adventures of Asterix ( French : Astérix or Astérix le Gaulois, IPA: [asteʁiks lə ɡolwa]) is a series of French comic books written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo (Uderzo also took over the job of writing the series after the death of Goscinny in 1977). The series first appeared in French in the magazine Pilote on 29 October 1959. As of 2009, 34 comic books in the series have been released. The series follows the exploits of a village of ancient Gauls as they resist Roman occupation. They do so by means of a magic potion, brewed by their druid , which gives the recipient superhuman strength. The protagonist, the titular character, Asterix , along with his friend Obelix have various adventures. In many cases, this leads them to travel to various countries around the world, though other books are set in and around their village.

For much of the history of the series (Volumes 4 through 29), settings in Gaul and abroad alternated, with even-numbered volumes set abroad and odd-numbered volumes set in Gaul, mostly in the village. The Asterix series is one of the most popular Franco-Belgian comics in the world, with the series being translated into over 100 languages, and it is popular in most European countries. Asterix is less well known in the United States and Japan . The success of the series has led to the adaptation of several books into 11 films ; eight animated, and three with live actors. There have also been a number of games based on the characters, and a theme park near Paris, Parc Astérix , is themed around the series. To date, 325 million copies of 34 Asterix books have been sold worldwide, making co-creators Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo France's bestselling authors abroad. [1] [2] Contents 11 External links History Prior to creating the Asterix series, Goscinny and Uderzo had previously had success with their series Oumpah-pah , which was published in the Tintin magazine.

[3] Astérix was originally serialised in the magazine Pilote , in the very first issue published on 29 October 1959. [4] In 1961 the first book was put together entitled Asterix the Gaul . From then on, books were released generally on a yearly basis. Uderzo's first sketches portrayed Asterix as a huge and strong traditional Gaulish warrior. But Goscinny had a different picture in his mind. He visualized Asterix as a shrewd small sized warrior who would prefer intelligence over strength. However, Uderzo felt that the small sized hero needed a strong but dull companion to which Goscinny agreed. Hence, Obelix was born. [5] Despite the growing populairty of Asterix with the readers, the financial backing for Pilote ceased. Pilote was taken over by Georges Dargaud . [5] When Goscinny died, Uderzo continued the series alone on the demand of the readers who implored him to continue. He continued the series but on a less frequent basis.

Uderzo created his own publishing company, Les Editions Albert-René, which published every album drawn and written by Uderzo alone since then. [5] However, Dargaud , the initial publisher of the series, kept the publishing rights on the 24 first albums made by both Uderzo and Goscinny. In 1990, the Uderzo and Goscinny families decided to sue Dargaud to take over the rights. In 1998, after a long trial, Dargaud lost the rights to publish and sell the albums. Uderzo decided to sell these rights to Hachette instead of Albert-René, but the publishing rights on new albums were still owned by Albert Uderzo (40%), Sylvie Uderzo (20%) and Anne Goscinny (40%). Although Uderzo declared he didn't want anyone to continue the series after his death, which is similar to the request Hergé made regarding his The Adventures of Tintin , his attitude changed and in December 2008 he sold his stake to Hachette, which took over the company and now own the rights. This has provoked a family row.

[6] In a letter published in the French newspaper Le Monde , Uderzo's daughter, Sylvie, has attacked her father's decision for selling the family publishing firm and the rights to produce new Astérix adventures after his death. She is reported as saying "...the co-creator of Astérix, "France’s comic strip hero, has betrayed the Gaulish warrior to the modern-day Romans - the men of industry and finance”. [7] [8] Anne Goscinny also gave her agreement to the continuation of the series and sold her rights at the same time. [9] A few months later, Uderzo appointed three illustrators, who had been his assistants for many years, to continue the series. [10] List of titles 33. Asterix and the Falling Sky (2005) 34. Asterix and Obelix's Birthday: The Golden Book (2009) [11] Asterix Conquers Rome is a comic book adaptation of the animated film The Twelve Tasks of Asterix . It was released in 1976, making it technically the 23rd Asterix volume to be published.

But it has been rarely reprinted and is not considered to be canonical to the series. The only English translation ever to be published was in the Asterix Annual 1980. In 2007, Les Editions Albert René released a tribute volume titled Astérix et ses Amis , a 60 pages comic book made up of various short stories (from one to four strips). It was a tribute to Albert Uderzo at the occasion of his 80th birthday by 34 renown European comics artists. The volume was translated in nine languages, but not in English yet. [12] Synopsis and characters Main article: Characters in Asterix The main setting for the series is an unnamed coastal village in Armorica , a province of Gaul (modern France ), in the year 50 BC . Julius Caesar has conquered nearly all of Gaul for the Roman Empire . The little Armorican village, however, has held out because the villagers can gain temporary superhuman strength by drinking a magic potion brewed by the local village druid , Getafix . The main protagonist and hero of the village is Asterix , who, because of his shrewdness, is usually entrusted with the most important affairs of the village.

He is aided in his adventures by his rather fat and unintelligent friend, Obelix , who, because he fell into the druid's cauldron of the potion as a baby, has permanent superhuman strength. Obelix is usually accompanied by Dogmatix , his little dog. Asterix and Obelix (and sometimes other members of the village) go on various adventures both within the village and in far away lands. Places visited in the series include parts of Gaul ( Lutetia , Corsica etc), neighbouring nations ( Belgium , Spain , Britain , Germany etc), and far away lands ( North America , Middle East , India etc). The series employs science-fiction and fantasy elements in the more recent books; for instance, the use of extraterrestrials in Asterix and the Falling Sky and the city of Atlantis in Asterix and Obelix All at Sea . Humour Main article: Humour in Asterix The humour encountered in the Asterix comics is typically French, often centering on puns, caricatures, and tongue-in-cheek stereotypes of contemporary European nations and French regions .

Much of the humour in the initial Asterix books was French-specific, which delayed the translation of the books into other languages for fear of losing the jokes and the spirit of the story. Some translations have actually added local humour: in the Italian translation, the Roman legionnaires are made to speak in 20th century Roman dialectand Obelix's famous "Ils sont fous ces romains" is translated as "Sono pazzi questi romani", alluding to the roman abbreviation SPQR . The newer albums share a more universal humour, both written and visual. [13] In spite of (or perhaps because of) this stereotyping and notwithstanding some alleged streaks of French chauvinism , it has been very well received by European and Francophone cultures around the world. Translations In France, in Finland , Poland and especially in Germany , several volumes were translated into a variety of regional languages and dialects , such as Alsatian , Breton , Chtimi ( Picard ) and Corsican in France, Swabian and Low German in Germany, Kashubian and Silesianin Poland and Savo , Karelia , Rauma and Helsinki slang dialects in Finland.

Also, in Portugal, a special edition of the first volume, Asterix the Gaul , was translated into local language Mirandese . [15] In the Netherlands several volumes were translated into Frisian , a language related to Old English spoken in the province of Friesland . Also in the Netherlands two volumes were translated into Limburgish , a regional language spoken not only in Dutch Limburg but also in Belgian Limburg and North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany . Hungarian -language books have been issued in Yugoslavia for the Hungarian minority living in Serbia . Although not a fully autonomic dialect, it slightly differs from the language of the books issued in Hungary . In Greece, a number of volumes have appeared in the Cretan Greek , Cypriot Greek and Pontic Greek dialects and in Ancient Greek . [16] In Sri Lanka, the cartoon series was adapted into Sinhala as Sura Pappa. [15] English translation The translation of the books into English has been done by Derek Hockridge and Anthea Bell . Adaptations The series has been adapted into various media. Films Various motion pictures based upon the series have been made.

Two Romans in Gaul, 1967, live-action, in which Asterix and Obelix appear in a cameo. Main article: Parc Astérix Parc Asterix , a theme park, 12 1/2 miles based upon the series, was opened near Paris in 1989. It is one of the most visited sites in France, with around 1.6 million visitors per year. Influence in popular culture Asterix ham and cheese-flavored potato chips The first French satellite, which was launched in 1965, was named Astérix-1 in honour of Asterix. Asteroid 29401 Asterix was also named in honor of the character. Ironically, the word Asterix/Asterisk originates from the Greek for Little Star. During the campaign for Paris to host the 1992 Summer Olympics Asterix appeared in many posters over the Eiffel Tower . The French company Belin introduced a series of "Asterix" potato chips shaped in the forms of Roman shields , gourds , wild boar , and bones . Asterix and Obelix appeared on the cover of Time Magazine for a special edition about France .

In a 2009 issue of the same magazine, Asterix is described as being seen by some as a symbol for France's independence and defiance of globalisation. [20] The animated series Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears also concerns an oppressed group in possession of a magic potion capable of conferring superhuman strength and agility. The 2006 FIFA World Cup final between France and Italy was depicted in newspapers as a fight between Roman legions and Gaulish villagers. Version 4.0 of the operating system OpenBSD features a parody of an Asterix story. [21] Action Comics Number 579, published by DC Comics in 1986, written by Lofficier and Illustrated by Keith Giffen , featured an homage to Asterix where Superman and Jimmy Olsen are drawn back in time to a small village of indomitable Gauls. Lisa Simpson is delighted at the sight of a rack with Tintin and Asterix comics in a comic book store, depicted in The Simpsons episode " Husbands and Knives ".

Obelix is referenced in The King Blues ' 2008 single " My Boulder ." The song features the lyrics, "If I'm Obelix, you are my boulder". On October 29, 2009, the Google homepage of a great number of countries displayed a logo commemorating 50 years of Asterix. [22] See also BACK Asterix and Obelix Asterix the Gaul Asterix and Obelix. it is a free image to put on your computer. in our collection of images have this sample to download. all computers type and operating systems. images sizes for all monitors. Asterix and Obelix Wallpaper (Asterix the Gaul). Free HD Wallpapers with pictures, images and Asterix and Obelix Background (Asterix the Gaul). Download Asterix and Obelix wallpaper (Asterix the Gaul) for PC from Gifmania Networks, the network of free internet sites. Pictures wallpapers of Asterix and Obelix (Asterix the Gaul) for desktop. Download Desktop Background characters, asterix, obelix, french comics,. Asterix and Obelix HD Wallpapers (Asterix the Gaul).

This wallpaper holds the 553th position in the overall top of the website. The wallpaper in the gallery of Asterix the Gaul is better positioned than the rest of its gallery. If you like this image, you can also send it as a postcard for free French Animation. Part 3: Tintin, Lucky Luke and Asterix | Cartoon Research November 9, 2014 posted by Fred Patten French Animation. Part 3: Tintin, Lucky Luke and Asterix The Belvision Years. Starting with prehistory, first there were the weekly French and Belgian comics, beginning in the 1910s. These weekly comics came in two forms; a weekly full page in a regular adult newspaper starting in the 1910s and ‘20s, and a weekly boys’ magazine that specialized in about a dozen comic-strip stories, serialized one page a week for about a year, with several other juvenile features, starting in the 1930s. After completion and some editing if needed, the finished stories of the most popular strips were collected into an album-format cartoon-art novel, usually of 46 pages.

Les Aventures de Tintin by Hergé (Georges Remi, 1907-1983) was one of the first of these, beginning in Brussels’ Le Petite Vingtième on January 10, 1929. As usual with Belgian publications, there were separate French and Dutch editions, for the Walloon (French-speaking) and Flemish (Dutch-speaking) sections of the country. Tintin gradually grew so popular that when the Nazi German occupiers closed down Le Petite Vingtième in 1940, Hergé moved it to the major newspaper Le Soir. Meanwhile the separate boy’s comic-strip magazine, Le Journal de Spirou (April 21, 1938; the Dutch edition, Robbedoes, began on October 29, 1938) started and was very popular. After the tumult of World War II (Hergé was briefly accused of being a Nazi collaborator for continuing to produce Tintin for a Nazi-approved newspaper), Hergé was approached in 1946 by Belgian publisher Raymond Leblanc.

Leblanc had just started a major publishing company, Le Lombard, and he wanted to start a rival comic-strip magazine similar to Le Journal de Spirou. He proposed that Hergé move Tintin’s adventures there to become the showpiece of Le Journal de Tintin. Hergé agreed, and Le Journal de Tintin (in Dutch, Kuifje) appeared on September 26, 1946 (published to June 29, 1993). Leblanc hired three or four other artists such as Bob de Moor (1925-1992; Mr. Barelli), Edgar Jacobs (1904-1987; Blake et Mortimer) and Jacques Martin (1921-2010; Alix) who, in addition to starting their own comics, assisted Hergé in ghosting Tintin to two full pages per week. By the early 1950s Le Journal de Tintin and its comics were a major success. The French edition was reprinted as a French magazine, with advertising for France, which had a much larger circulation.

Raymond Leblanc decided to expand into animation of the Tintin stories for the new television market. His Belvision Studios started in Brussels in 1954, 1955, or 1956, according to different sources; the studio was founded in December 1954, it began production of animation during 1955, and its first animation went on the air in 1956. Belvision took it slowly. Leblanc hired American animator Larry Harmon to help set up the studio. Its first animation released was simple pans and zooms of Dutch cartoonist Willy Vandersteen’s Bob et Bobette strip. Belvision advanced to paper cutout stop-motion serializations of the Tintin adventures The Broken Ear and King Ottokar’s Scepter in 1957-‘58, in 104 five-minute black-&-white episodes, produced in collaboration with France’s national RTF. The next step was in 1959 when the animation direction was taken over by Ivan Szücs and supervised by Charles Snows from Hanna-Barbera, in cel animation and color.

They sped up the animation from the more leisurely European style to the tighter, faster American style. Szücs produced the Tintin novel Objective: Moon, and top Tintin magazine writer Michel Greg was brought in to write a short adaption of Tintin magazine’s funny-animal series Chlorophylle the dormouse by Raymond Macherot. (This was not related to the 1990s French TV Les Enquetes de Chlorophylle, 52 13-minute episodes made with hand-puppets and live animals, and very environmentally-conscious. It was dubbed into English and shown on British TV as The Adventures of Grady Greenspace.) Well, briefly, Belvision continued to grow. In the early 1960s it was contracted to animate an original feature for two Americans, Norm Prescott and Fred Ladd: Pinocchio in Outer Space, directed by Belvision’s Raymond Goossens. (To digress, it was while Pinocchio in Outer Space was just beginning production that Astro Boy appeared on Japanese TV in January 1963. NBC-TV’s representative in Tokyo called it to the attention of NBC’s head office as possibly worth getting for American TV.

The little robot was described as “sort of a sci-fi Pinocchio”. The NBC executives were aware of Fred Ladd’s involvement with Pinocchio in Outer Space, which made him “the expert in sci-fi Pinocchio’s” as far as NBC was concerned. The network asked him if he thought Astro Boy was worth producing for American audiences, Ladd said “yes”, and that was how Ladd and his voice team came to produce Astro Boy for NBC, which led to Gigantor and Kimba the White Lion. Meanwhile, Pinocchio in Outer Space was finished and theatrically released in 1965; in Belgium on March 25 and in America on December 22. It quickly sank out of sight in both countries.) Pinocchio in Outer Space was an original creation with no following. To Belvision, it must have seemed like a golden opportunity to get two paid years of theatrical animation experience before beginning theatrical features that had a guaranteed European fandom. Next were two adaptations of a comic not from Le Journal de Tintin. In 1959 two French veteran cartoonists began Pilote, a French answer to the Belgian Spirou and Tintin magazines.

One of the serials beginning in the first issue (October 29, 1959) was Astérix le Gaulois, written by Pilote co-editor René Goscinny and drawn by Albert Uderzo. Astérix was instantly fantastically popular throughout French-speaking Europe and Quebec. By the mid-1960s there were over a half-dozen Astérix albums that had gone into multiple printings. The then-publisher of Pilote, Dargaud, decided to animate the first of these, Astérix le Gaulois, plus the most popular in the series, Astérix et Cléopâtre. Dargaud did not have its own animation studio, so these were co-productions of Dargaud Films (which took all the credit) and Belvision with the animation actually by Belvision. Astérix le Gaulois, 68 minutes, was directed by Belvision’s Ray Goossens and released on December 20, 1967; July 31, 1968 in the U.S.

According to Wikipedia, Goscinny and Uderzo, the creators of the comic-book series, did not even know that this was being made. They were very dissatisfied with it, so they made sure that they were the co-directors of Astérix et Cléopâtre (72 minutes), released on December 19, 1968; September 24, 1969 in the U.S. Astérix le Gaulois introduced the small but cunning Gallic warrior, his beefy (don’t call him fat!) super-strong friend Obélix, the wise old Druid Panoramix (Getafix in English) who made the potion that gave Astérix super-strength, their little Gallic village on the Armorican coast (Normandy in later history) who were the only Gauls that could hold out against the conquering Roman legions of Julius Caesar, and those legions’ attempts to steal the secret of Panoramix’s potion. Astérix et Cléopâtre had Astérix and Obélix travelling to Egypt to help Cleopatra win a “friendly” bet with Julius Caesar.

Finally in 1969, Belvision released its own Tintin theatrical feature, after a decade of serialized television adaptations. Tintin et le Temple du Soleil (Tintin and the Temple of the Sun) was a combination of the 13th and 14th Tintin albums, The Seven Crystal Balls (1948) and Prisoners of the Sun (1949), a two-part story. The absent-minded scientist Professor Tryphon Tournesol (Cuthbert Calculus in the English translations of the series) is kidnapped in Belgium by modern Incas, who take him to their secret Andean temple to sacrifice him. Tintin and his friend Captain Haddock follow to rescue the Professor. The 77 minute feature, directed by Eddie Lateste, was released on December 13, 1969. This was followed in 1972 by an original Tintin animated feature, but first there came the first Lucky Luke animated movie in 1971.

Cartoonist Morris (Maurice de Bévère) had created the humorous Western about “The Man Who Shoots Faster Than His Shadow” for the Belgian Spirou magazine in 1946. In 1955, after the ninth album, Rails Across the Prairie, new Spirou staffer René Goscinny persuaded Morris that he drew better than he wrote, and the two formed a partnership by which Goscinny wrote Lucky Luke’s adventures and Morris drew them. Popularity shot upwards. After 22 more albums, Goscinny and Morris moved the series to Goscinny’s Pilote magazine in 1967. Belvision animated Pilote’s more popular Astérix the Gaul in 1967 and 1968, and Goscinny wanted to see what could be done with Lucky Luke in animation. He wrote and directed the original story, which was released as Lucky Luke, a 71-minute movie on December 15, 1971. A wagon train of settlers crosses the featureless prairie until they see a lone daisy growing. They take that as a sign and build Daisy Town on that spot.

It is immediately filled with outlaws who terrorize the settlers; the four Dalton Brothers being the worst. When Lucky Luke rides into town, the mayor and town leaders beg him to become Sheriff and clean up Daisy Town. The original story is mostly about Luke versus his regular adversaries, the Daltons, with all the other prominent characters in the series getting walk-on parts. After other Lucky Luke animated features and TV series were made, the movie title was changed to Daisy Town in 1983, along with publication of the plot as an album drawn by Morris. (Goscinny had died in 1977.) Tintin et le Lac aux Requins (Tintin and the Lake of Sharks) followed; 81 minutes, directed by Raymond Leblanc, released on December 13, 1972. The original story, developed by Hergé and the editor of Tintin magazine, Michel Greg (with the help of four others including Belvision’s Eddie Lateste and Goscinny’s co-editor of Pilote, Jean-Michel Charlier), was another potpourri that featured as many locations and regular characters from the series as possible.

Professor Calculus, staying in a Balkan village near the Syldavia-Borduria border, has invented a matter duplicator that the villainous Rastapopoulous tries to steal. Tintin, who is Calculus’ bodyguard, stops him. Captain Haddock and Bianca Castafiore, the opera diva, also appear. Next, Belgium’s other big comics magazine, Le Journal de Spirou, wanted to animate its biggest hit. Cartoonist Peyo (Pierre Culliford) had a long-running cartoony series about a young Medieval knight and his court’s smart-alec jester, Johan and Pirlouit. In 1958, with the ninth album, The Flute With Six Holes, Peyo introduced the little blue Schtroumpfs, who would become better-known under their later American name, the Smurfs. (Actually, the Schtroumpfs were already called Smurfs in Spirou’s Dutch edition.) The Schtroumpfs/Smurfs were an instant hit.

There were a few more Johan and Pirlouit albums, but mostly Peyo wrote and drew the Schtroumpfs for the rest of his life. (Peyo died in 1992. His son and Peyo’s old collaborator, Spirou’s editor Yvan Delporte, have resumed the Johan et Pirlouit series.) In 1976 Peyo and Yvan Delporte developed the first Shtroumpf novel for animation, as The Flute With Six Schtroumpfs; called in America The Smurfs and the Magic Flute. It was 74 minutes; directed by Peyo, Jose Dutillieu, and Eddie Lateste; and released in Belgium on October 7, 1976. In the Medieval kingdom, a flute with only six holes makes everyone who hears its music dance uncontrollably, then fall asleep. Evil Mathieu Torchesac (Matthew McCreep) steals the flute and uses it to rob people. Johan and Pirlouit go to the wizard Homnibus, who sends them magically to the forest village of the Schtroumpfs who made the flute.

They help the young knight and jester to get it back. After that, Belvision launched a series of 7-minute TV shorts showcasing other popular humorous characters in Tintin magazine: Colonel Clifton, a very British secret agent; Chick Bill, a cowboy; Spaghetti, a comic-relief Italian stereotype; Oumpah-pah, an American Indian at the time of the French and Indian Wars of the 1750s; and others. (Oumpah-pah was the comic that Goscinny & Uderzo had been doing pre-Astérix). Mixed with this was a live-action documentary, Moi, Tintin (1976). Belvision also did the animation (mostly the Lilliputians) for a mostly live-action theatrical feature of Les Voyages de Gulliver. It was completed in 1977 but released all over Europe except in France or Belgium between 1977 and the 1980s. By the time they finished, other animation studios had started in France and Belgium, and Belvision’s monopoly of French-language animation was over. Belvision was not the only French producer of TV animation. Dupuis Audiovisuel, a.k.a.

TVA Dupuis, a spinoff of Le Journal de Spirou, animated at least its popular Schtroumpfs for TV years before Belvision made The Flute With Six Schtroumpfs in 1976. In 1959 there were seven 13-minute episodes made in black-&-white, and two in color. In 1965 Dupuis Audiovisuel edited the five black-&-white TV episodes together into the 87-minute theatrical feature, Les Aventures des Schtroumpfs, directed by Eddy Ryssack. The seven black-&-whites were the Peyo stories Les Schtroumpfs Noirs, L’Oeuf et les Schtroumpfs, Le Voleur de Schtroumpfs, Le Faux Schtroumpf, La Schtroumpf Volant, Le Schtroumpf Cet Inconnu, and Le Schtroumpf et Son Dragon; and the two color were La Schtroumpflûte and Le Schtroumpf-Robot. Next week: Up through 1975.

Project MUSE - Bande dessinée Studies Bande dessinée Studies Laurence Grove In 1996 the Festival international de la bande dessinée d’Angoulême piggybacked on to the centenary of the (French) invention of cinema so as to discuss ‘les origines de la bande dessinée’. During his opening speech, one-time MEP and highprofile bande dessinée expert Yves Frémion summed up as follows: C’est bien connu, les Américains ont tout inventé: l’aviation (qui est germano-française), la fusée (qui est russo-allemande), l’homme dans l’espace (ce fut un russe [sic]), le cinéma (qui est français), le sida (qui est zaïrois), la science-fiction (qui est anglaise), les Jeux Olympiques (qui sont grecs), le blue-jean (qui vient de Nîmes) et les Grottes de Lascaux. Quelques-uns tentent également de fêter cette année le centenaire de la BD, qui en a bientôt deux.

Pour des Américains incultes ne sachant même pas où placer l’Europe sur la carte entre le Japon et la Russie, rien d’étonnant à ce qu’ils prennent pour base ce qu’ils ont choisi: l’anniversaire du Yellow Kid de Outcault, puisque c’est une BD américaine comme eux. […] Il me revient l’honneur, en commençant ce colloque, d’orienter le débat clairement pour éviter qu’il ne dévie vers un résultat mitigé, et pour que cette imposture soit démasquée sans ambiguïté. En réalité, tout ce que nous pouvons fêter cette année, c’est le cent-cinquantenaire de la mort de l’inventeur de la BD, Rodolphe Töpffer.

1 Nearly two decades later, the effect of rereading Frémion’s words, however tongue-in-cheek, might be compared with the emotions provoked by a return to dated and now unacceptable icons of popular culture, in what one might call a ‘Benny Hill effect’: nostalgic amusement is overshadowed by the happy awareness that times and norms have changed, alongside bewilderment at values that apparently passed unchallenged. Bewilderment here, from a bande dessinée (hereafter BD) point of view, at an almost jingoistic appropriation of a cultural form, but also at the canonical notion of history and its artistic expression that depended on the need for a founding ‘great man’ to validate a genre. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Channel and in North America, by the mid-1990s the spread of Cultural Studies meant that BD was an appropriate object of scholarly attention, alongside bawdy Renaissance jokes, photojournalism, and chansonniers. At least, that was the theory. In practice most bachelor’s degrees in French still attempted full coverage of the literary canon, with no room for graphic novels.

Comprehensive exams in the USA might mention Astérix alongside Poujade or L’Affaire du collier in the snippets sections, but no more than that. These examples suggest that an état présent of BD studies is potentially a casespecific microcosm of key issues within French studies as a discipline, and thus of [End Page 78] the values of that discipline as represented by a journal such as French Studies itself, with two main axes that can be explored from an evolving reception-history point of view: first, the value we give or do not give to an author-based canon; second, the methodological divergences that exist between criticism in French and criticism in English, and the possible contributing factors. BD studies in English: some milestones As physical phenomena that render visible a mental turning point, milestones and frontier markers are favoured topoi in BD, for example Astérix et les Goths. 2 What follows is a far from exhaustive overview of indicative moments in the development of BD as a subject of critical attention in English.

The first article published by a major scholarly journal in English with BD as a genre its central subject appears to be Hugh Starkey’s ‘Is the BD “à bout de souffle”?’ of 1990. 3 Starkey’s initial état présent was to be followed by academic writings that (perhaps unwittingly) countered any notion of a form on its way out; on the contrary, they now underlined its place among the ‘musts’ of French culture. 4 The first conference in a non-French-speaking country entirely dedicated to BD was the International Bande Dessinée Conference held in Glasgow in June 1999. Although many aspects of this conference were ad hoc (including the scheduled opening speech by George Galloway, which, despite his absence, was reported in the Scottish press), the event did bring together researchers known for work in other areas — Mike Kelly on language and reception, Judi Loach on architecture, Charles Forsdick on geographic exoticism — and thus posited BD as what could be a unifying rather than a peripheral area of scholarly attention.

5 Above all, it gave the impetus for future conferences, including what is now a biennial feature of the International Bande Dessinée Society (IBDS), founded at the following 2001 conference. 6 Research-led university-level options on the BD have been available since the late 1980s and early 1990s, one of the first being Cécile Danehy’s at Middlebury College (Vermont), where the winter term system allowed for experimental [End Page 79] offerings. BD courses blossomed in tandem with the fledgling publications and conferences, for example at the universities of Glasgow, Leicester, and Manchester Metropolitan, generally attracting healthy student numbers, but they tended at this stage to be the fruit of individual academics increasingly defining themselves as BD specialists, rather than department-wide essentials in a non-optional curriculum. With the above developments as at least part catalyst, the opening years of this century saw the completion of the first PhD theses in English on BD, by Elizabeth McQuillan, Wendy Michallat, and Ann Miller.

7 Miller’s doctoral research laid the foundations for her Reading Bande Dessinée (2007), a milestone not only as the first monograph to situate BD within the critical discourses hitherto reserved for pre-established genres, but also as an easily accessible work on a par with mainstream scholarship. 8 Other key publications furnished what can now be seen as the ‘development’ period of BD studies (see below). Matthew Screech’s Masters of the Ninth Art (2005) was the first monograph in English entirely on BD and one that was to hint at the creation of a canon through its author-based chapters. 9 Bart Beaty’s Unpopular Culture (2007), with three of the seven chapters specifically on BD, problematizes any notion of a canon based on mainstream comics production and analyses the strategies through which small presses have positioned themselves as avant-garde in relation to previous generations of artists. 10 Mark McKinney’s The Colonial Heritage of French Comics (2011) opens the gateway to the next stage, in that BD itself no longer needs introduction or explanation, but can be applied directly to other areas of learning (in this case the view on colonial and postcolonial expression).

11 McKinney’s intersection of two academic fields can be compared with the ongoing ‘applied’ use of BD, whereby subject areas from linguistics and language learning to medical history and marketing-based media studies also adopt BD as cultural inroad. The publication of a journal largely dedicated to BD studies is a further marker of the step beyond the development period of an academic field, although in this case it is not without ambiguity. Launched in 2008, European Comic Art was the preferred title for a publication whose remit was to go beyond comics in French, either because BD was still considered too obscure for certain markets, or, alternatively, as a reflection of the inherently transnational nature of the subject area. [End Page 80] Either way, European Comic Art has produced two issues yearly, 12 with an increasing number of submissions from both established and up-and-coming scholars. Taking forward our metaphors from Astérix to Lucky Luke, in all of these areas, what were pioneering gambles on the edge of new frontiers have now become well-ploughed fields and built-up pathways.

13 Articles, chapters, dissertations in progress, and volumes — completed or projected, single or multi-authored — are too numerous to mention individually. 14 BD-related academic events flourish and, perhaps more importantly, so do BD sessions at generalist colloquia, or even conference keynotes with French comics as theme. BD as a microcosm of academia in general can be gauged by the shift towards and swift development of online scholarship, in the form of electronic journals, discussion forums, or multifunctional websites, all of which will be discussed below. As well as BD options being offered at numerous British and North American institutions, it is currently common for BD elements to feature on courses whose direction is elsewhere: for example, Tintin with respect to Belgian culture, at Queen Mary University of London, and Fabrice Neaud as part of gay expression, at Pittsburgh. 15 Prime university posts are now given to those who specialize in BD and, of course, apply such knowledge to broad-scale teaching, rather than having specialists in post convert to dabbling in French comics.

In terms of an état présent, as with a high-art retrospective, it is useful to establish identifying markers in the stages of cultural formation, albeit in the knowledge that, as we have seen, the view of 2014 may not be that of 2032 any more than it is of 1996. But for present purposes we can class the current phase of BD studies as ‘ongoing’, one in which the form has all the trappings of an established academic discipline — a wealth of publications, conferences, scholarly societies, and teaching and research at all levels — while nonetheless being in a state of evolution. We can pinpoint this status as being, from approximately 2008, the natural successor to the development period, wherein these trappings of establishment were desired or embryonic. Prior to the early publications, conferences, and teaching modules, or until approximately 2001 when these were still far from commonplace, BD studies were tentative and highly peripheral, in what can retrospectively be seen as the ‘exploratory’ stage.

(Parenthèse: comix studies on BD) Just as Madame Bovary and Swann’s Way are firm favourites on comparative and translated literature courses, so an important strand of current BD studies comes [End Page 81] via scholarship on comix. 16 A firm caveat, however, is that, as with text-only material, it is not just linguistic subtleties that can be lost in translation, but also cultural context or historical background. The University of Florida’s Comix-Scholars list, a wide-scale online forum embracing primarily but far from exclusively North American-based academics, might serve as a rule-of-thumb indication. 17 As could be expected of a largely unmoderated listserv, postings — sometimes several dozen a day — vary in style and quality, ranging from in-house bickering, self-promotion, and trivialities to erudition and critical acumen of the highest order.

In general, issues raised will concern French-language critical approaches that can be applied to comics scholarship in general — the semiotic works of Thierry Groensteen, for example, provoked a prolonged debate — or works in French, and generally available in translation, that raise broader universal issues, such as retro-historical censorship (Tintin) or formal innovation (Moebius). Prior to widespread web-based communication, other forums had also blurred the boundaries between the study of US comics within the popular culture remit and what could easily be perceived as the direct equivalent in French. As early as 1997 the International Comics Art Forum (ICAF) conference in Washington featured eight out of nineteen papers on French-language material. Even if current ICAF gatherings remain dominated by US material, the early meetings, from 1995 onwards, are of interest in that ICAF was instigated in partnership with the cultural division of the French Embassy in Washington, with later support from the Alliance française, and in many ways provided the initial impetus for the American Bande Dessinée Society, founded in 2004. Two cases of scholarship from England are of particular note.

Roger Sabin’s Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels (1996) remains a defining text in terms of the social history and impact of the genre, with a key section, the ninth chapter, underlining ‘International Influences’ and in particular the BD. 18 Secondly, Paul Gravett, journalist, blogger, and author of numerous high-profile works on comics worldwide, has been instrumental in turning anglophone text-image eyes towards BD. 19 Already in the 1980s Gravett’s Escape magazine — in comix terms a London underground comparable with that of the US — pronounced BD culture and Ninth Art status as a guiding light, before shutting down in 1989. More recently, his work as director of Comica, London’s annual comics festival, has involved close collaboration with the Institut français on a variety of cross-cultural events — for example, pairing Posy Simmonds with Étienne Davodeau as a Drawing Duo — often under the aegis of the Institut’s BD & Comics Passion festival, an unintentional reminder of the previous collaboration between ICAF and the Washington Alliance.

[End Page 82] To return to the first of our two main critical axes, what this overview implicitly suggests is that the role of an author-based, nation-specific canon is evolving, in BD studies as elsewhere, but perhaps more markedly for an inherently hybrid medium. Around the time when Rodolphe Töpffer was being labelled as inventor of the BD, it would not be unusual for undergraduates to be given a list of works ranging from Tristan et Iseult to Zazie dans le Métro, which they had to have read in order to claim to know anything about French literature. It is hard to imagine such a list today, just as a BD studies directory starting with Töpffer and progressing from Hergé to Sfar would seem inappropriate, if not irrelevant. In the case of French studies in general, it has been a question of shift, as new media, critical approaches, and interdisciplinary methodologies have displaced author-centric learning. For BD studies, from Hugh Starkey onwards the emphasis has been largely phenomenon-based, emphasizing movements (sometimes comparative), themes, and styles of which multifarious individuals are representatives.

20 This may be due to the timing of the emergence of BD as a critical field, to a need to explain the social background of a French art that might seem as idiosyncratic as tea-drinking can to those across the Channel, 21 or to the nature of a form during much of whose development characters and publications were known rather than authors, these last often being part of an anonymous team. That said, as BD gains in intellectual kudos, perhaps in the manner of avantgarde cinema, so the cult of the creator becomes more apparent. Historically based BD criticism must inevitably continue to draw on the more anonymous formats, be they Le Rire in the 1890s or Vaillant in the 1940s, that moulded the development of histoires en images into le neuvième art. And contemporary best-sellers, such as certain BD chick-lit or heroico-fantasy series, may remain known by what they do rather than by who does it.

But it is not hard to imagine that, as translations make stars of BD artists in the way that art-house subtitling brought us Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, so a new form of monograph concentrating on the work of, say, David B., André Juillard, or Julie Doucet could become widespread. As with the Manchester University Press series on French film directors, such direction could, ironically, counteract, at least superficially, the general French studies trend away from l’homme et l’œuvre. Meanwhile … BD chez les Gaulois As suggested by the pivotal Töpffer debate with which this survey opened, BD studies in France have been marked by author-based criticism and the erection of pedestals, but also by a strong need for national identity. By means of comparison [End Page 83] it is helpful to recall some of the key features of reception history in France up to and beyond 1996. 22 The earliest engagement with histoires en images tended to be critical pamphlets from concerned educational and Catholic pressure groups, the tone of which can be compared to Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent, the catalyst for the Comics Code in the USA.

23 Barthélemy Amengual’s Le Petit Monde de Pif le chien of 1955 is generally recognized as being the first positive analysis of BD, 24 although this study of childhood in the context of Vaillant magazine has often passed unnoticed. In 1975 Luc Boltanski’s ‘La Constitution du champ de la bande dessinée’ gave an overview of BD landmarks and potential directions; its context was sociological — it appeared in the first issue of Pierre Bourdieu’s Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales — and coincided with early fan-club style movements and publications. 25 The initial leader among these was the Club des bandes dessinées and its journal Giff-Wiff, founded in 1962, with members and contributors including Edgar Morin, Umberto Eco, Alain Resnais, Jean-Claude Forest, and Raymond Queneau. With BD riding on the crest of the New Wave at a time when cultural interest was being invested in the visual, the development stage of BD studies in France drew upon the serious critical engagement that followed throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

This was often spearheaded by Thierry Groensteen, who took charge of the Cahiers de la bande dessinée from 1984, bringing an intellectual commitment to the form in the way that the Cahiers du cinéma had done for film. Unlike in English-speaking countries, the development stage culminated in on-going government-backed institutional recognition. The Centre national de la bande dessinée et de l’image (later to become the Cité internationale de la bande dessinée et de l’image) was inaugurated in 1990, a year after the Centre belge de la bande dessinée; the Angoulême festival continues to attract major public funding and around 200,000 visitors a year; and in 2001 the high-profile exhibition Maîtres de la bande dessinée européenne opened at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. 26 All of these emphasized national appartenance, with BD as a valued French cultural form.

It may appear as if the principal difference between BD studies in French- and English-speaking countries is that the current ongoing stage arrived a lot earlier in [End Page 84] the former, supported by a development stage that had put in place critical discourse on a mainstream level. In itself this would not be surprising; indeed, one would expect BD to attract attention in its home countries before gaining interest abroad. Why then did Thierry Groensteen publish Un objet culturel non identifié in 2006, with the guiding theme, as the title suggests, of the underappreciation of BD as a discipline? 27 Groensteen’s own situation may be indicative of the real issues: despite being largely accepted as the main authority on BD, this former director of the Musée de la bande dessinée in Angoulême and author or editor of over forty critically acclaimed volumes (including the 2001 BnF exhibition catalogue) had been unable to secure a CNRS post, on the basis that BD, as an interdisciplinary subject, was neither art history nor literature and as such did not fit any of the given academic categories.

A closer look at the immediate post-development stage of BD studies in French points, therefore, to their glaring absence from university circles. Leading publications such as Neuvième art or Le Collectionneur de bandes dessinées came from the Angoulême centre or via erudite booksellers, with others being sustainable through general interest and coffee-table sales, or even large-scale media distribution. BD might regularly have been making the front page of Libération at the time of the Angoulême festival in January, but it certainly was not featuring in prescribed reading at the Sorbonne. The result has been a body of criticism that has been accessible in terms of availability and pricing, but often, as a general rule, less theoretically informed and more fan-based. Accordingly, we have seen, at least until recently, a marked divergence between BD studies in the countries of production and elsewhere. France boasts a tradition related to a long history of text-image culture, with particular appropriation by post-war ruling factions, namely the Communists (Vaillant) and the Catholics (Cœurs vaillants).

Post-war household usage has led to national investment in a form seen to be specifically French, or French-language, to an extent that separates the BD from comics and comix. BD criticism in English has come to the forum from an outsider’s viewpoint, but nonetheless applying the critical methodologies of our own academic systems. Where are we now? To be continued … The viewing of BD from outside the academy was, until recently at least, the norm. Increasingly of late, however, BD-related academic studies and events have appeared in France, and BDs themselves have become more academically mainstream in other countries. We are witnessing a coming together in line with the general globalization of knowledge, as online facilities enable worldwide discussion, and immediate access, at least to some extent, to primary and secondary sources. Such access has, perhaps ironically, been part of a communication process that also boosts academic publications through traditional outlets as well as conference [End Page 85] gatherings on both sides of the Channel; indeed, so much so that, as suggested earlier, any attempt at an exhaustive listing here would inevitably fall short. 28 Nonetheless, the following recent developments at least give a taste of current directions.

The Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3 and ENS de Lyon are two high-profile establishments to have hosted full BD conferences, on Astérix (2009) and ‘Engendrement des images’ (2011) respectively, and ENS Paris-Jourdan now holds a regular BD seminar series. Online journals are produced by the Université Paris 13 (Comicalités) and the Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3 (TextImage). 29 In English, since European Comic Art, further publications have come to print, for example Studies in Comics (Intellect) and The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics (Routledge); launched in 2010, both concentrate on comics in English but frequently include discussion of the French tradition. Is it new technology, as has been the case from Gutenberg onwards, that shines as the beacon for future directions? Not just in the medium itself, with the BD world embracing comics publication through apps, Kindle, and online blogging, but also in terms of first-port-of-call criticism and secondary sources?

The Comix-Scholars list has already been mentioned: the average scholar may not read a book on a teaching day, but he or she could well glance at dozens of postings. To this can be added the increasingly prominent role of online resources, and interaction, generally with one source linking to the next. A case in point is the revamped IBDS site, 30 which, as well as including news updates and links to sister sites, such as Comics Forum or Cool French Comics, 31 has an active Twitter account keeping scholars, and indeed a more general audience, informed of recent developments. As an indication, during the 2013 International Graphic Novel and IBDS Joint Conference, over nine hundred related tweets were received. Is BD any different from other disciplines in these respects? Maybe it is quicker at embracing technology, much of which is hybrid and visual like the form itself. A frequent comparison is that of BD as the new cinema studies, a genre where technology, in the form of DVDs and downloads, has changed the nature of criticism and research-led teaching. Technology also changes BD studies, but in a different way: with blog-based strips potentially ephemeral, scholarship too will become dated more quickly than previously.

All the indications are that current trends in BD studies are the avant-coureurs of more general phenomena: globalization of critical traditions, acceptance of popular culture, blurring of borders between subject areas, a corresponding move away from a strict author-based canon, and high reliance on new technologies both in primary and secondary communication. Additionally, BD as a discipline that attracts through the visual can, accordingly, appear immediate and as such has implications pertaining to popular appeal, media profiling, and ongoing widespread impact. [End Page 86] But the past is not entirely cast aside, and not just in so much as a healthy strand of BD studies considers the broader history of text-image narrative culture. The earliest archived Francofil postings on BD, from 1997, 32 bemoan the non-availability of primary-source periodicals from the 1940s and 1950s. Unlike for the Töpffer debate, nearly two decades later things have scarcely changed: for the scholar of La Semaine de Suzette, Vaillant, or Le Téméraire, a defining issue remains that they are still too peripheral, currently at least, for entire runs or album collections to be available at a distance.

Whereas the key facilities for literary and historical research are increasingly to be found online, the lack of digitization means that the BD historian still has to carry out traditional, on-the-spot archival research. [End Page 87] Laurence Grove University of Glasgow Footnotes For their help during the preparation of this état présent I am particularly indebted to Mark McKinney and to Ann Miller. 1. Extract from the published version of Yves Frémion’s speech, ‘Inventions, inventeurs et inventards: un inventaire, une aventure’, in Les Origines de la bande dessinée, ed. by Thierry Groensteen (= special issue of Le Collectionneur de bandes dessinées, 79 (1996)), pp. 6–10 (p. 6). I discuss this quotation in my Comics in French: The European Bande Dessinée in Context (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010), pp. 243–45. 2. René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, Astérix et les Goths (Neuilly-sur-Seine: Dargaud, 1963).

The cover of this new-direction album (the third in the series) marks the difference between the Roman Empire and alternative Others. 3. Hugh Starkey, ‘Is the BD “à bout de souffle”?’, French Cultural Studies, 1.2 (1990), 95–110. The article approaches BD from the viewpoint of the form’s development from the 1960s onwards and, while opening the subject area, starts from the premise of BD’s potential future decline. Other articles had broached BD in English-language journals from the 1970s onwards, but they tended to be translations of French works, only partially on BD, and/or in highly specialized scholarly publications. See, for example, Francis Lacassin, trans. and ed. by David Kunzle, ‘The Comic Strip and Film Language’, Film Quarterly, 26.1 (1972), 11–23; and David Kunzle, ‘Gustave Doré’s History of Holy Russia: Anti-Russian Propaganda from the Crimean War to the Cold War’, Russian Review, 42.3 (1983), 271–99. 4.

Above all, Ann Miller’s ‘Comic Strips/Cartoonists’ marked BD as worthy of inclusion in encyclopedic surveys of French culture; see A. Miller, ‘Comic Strips/Cartoonists’, in Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture, ed. by Alex Hughes and Keith Reader (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 116–19. 5. Papers from this conference were later published in The Francophone Bande Dessinée, ed. by Charles Forsdick, Laurence Grove, and Libbie McQuillan (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005). 6. See the IBDS website at < >, which will also be discussed below. (All URLs and online resources were accessible at the time of publication of this état présent.) 7.

Elizabeth McQuillan, ‘The Reception and Creation of Post-1960 Franco-Belgian BD’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Glasgow, 2001); Wendy Michallat, ‘Pilote “hebdomadaire” and the Evolution of French Bande dessinée between 1959 and 1974’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Nottingham, 2002); Ann Miller, ‘Contemporary Bande dessinée: Contexts, Critical Approaches and Case Studies’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Newcastle, 2004). Doctoral dissertations on BD had been produced in North American universities in the 1980s — for instance, Mary-Louise Fauvel, ‘L’Aventure d’une écriture: la bande dessinée d’essai’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1989) — but these were in French. 8. Ann Miller, Reading Bande Dessinée: Critical Approaches to French-Language Comic Strip (Bristol: Intellect, 2007). 9.

Matthew Screech, Masters of the Ninth Art: Bandes Dessinées and Franco-Belgian Identity (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005). 10. Bart Beaty, Unpopular Culture: Transforming the European Comic Book in the 1990s (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007). 11. Mark McKinney, The Colonial Heritage of French Comics (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011). 12. Initially published by Liverpool University Press, it was relaunched by Berghahn Books in 2012. 13. Whereas Astérix distinguishes established Gallic principles from those of the rest of the world, Morris’s Lucky Luke series (1946 onwards) playfully presents the mythology of the Wild West, with its physical and cultural forays into unexplored territory. 14. For BD bibliography up to 2010 see Grove, Comics in French. See also the following websites and their various links: IBDS (see n. 6 above) and Comics Forum, < >. 15. The Queen Mary University of London course, ‘Why Belgium?

Identitites, Cultures, Narratives’, is offered by Adrian Armstrong; at the University of Pittsburgh, Todd Reeser has drawn upon Neaud when offering undergraduate- and postgraduate-level courses such as ‘Masculinity: Theory, Film, Culture’, ‘Masculinities in Theories and Practice’, and ‘Queer Theory Past and Present’. 16. The term ‘comix’ as opposed to ‘comics’ is used to distinguish between underground art-house (‘comix’) and more popular mainstream productions in English. 17. University of Florida, Comics Studies, Department of English, Comix-Scholars Discussion List, < >. 18. Roger Sabin, Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art (London: Phaidon, 1996). 19. See, for example, Paul Gravett, Graphic Novels: Stories to Change your Life (London: Aurum, 2005). 20.

The exception might appear to be Matthew Screech’s Masters of the Ninth Art, although the ‘masters’ of the themed chapters — Hergé, André Franquin, René Goscinny, and Albert Uderzo, Moebius, Jacques Tardi, Marcel Gotlib, Claire Bretécher, Régis Franc, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and François Bourgeon — are often a lead-in to a broader discussion of the BD of their time, style, and ideology. 21. See René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, Astérix chez les Bretons (Neuilly-sur-Seine: Dargaud, 1966). 22. Again, a fuller discussion and corresponding references are available in my Comics in French, in particular Chapter 9, ‘Consecration of the Ninth Art: Meaningful Ecos or Circus Clones’, pp. 229–47. For reasons of concision, discussion here concentrates on the Franco-Belgian tradition, and in particular that of France, but those of the BD in other French-speaking countries worldwide would make a worthy supplementary study. 23.

Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent: The Influence of ‘Horror Comics’ on Today’s Youth (New York: Rinehart, [1954]). 24. Barthélemy Amengual, Le Petit Monde de Pif le chien: essai sur un ‘comic’ français (Algiers: Travail et culture d’Algérie, 1955). 25. Luc Boltanski, ‘La Constitution du champ de la bande dessinée’, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 1 (1975), 37–59. 26. Maîtres de la bande dessinée européenne, BnF exhibition catalogue, ed. by Thierry Groensteen (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France/Seuil, 2001). For details of the most recent BnF exhibition, Astérix à la BnF! (16 October 2013–19 January 2014), see < > 27.

Thierry Groensteen, Un objet culturel non identifié ([Angoulême]: Éditions de l’An 2, 2006). 28. For up-to-date evolving bibliographies see the annual January BD edition of Livres Hebdo, plus the IBDS website and its links.

Question: What is the generic title of a series of French comic strips that first appeared in French in the magazine Pilote on 29 October 1959?
Answer: The Adventures of Asterix