Hugo Pratt’s series Corto Maltese created an attractive character in a combination of exoticism, adventure, and romanticism.
Dealing with history with such precision and playing on classic literary references, they created very personal universes and contributed to legitimizing BD as a ‛serious’ form of artistic expression. Some artists brought BD to the level of the finest literature. See for example Vink (Le Moine fou)or Alex Barbier. In fact, each frame is composed like a small painting. Important names are Reiser, Cabu, Wolinski, Bretécher, Vuillemin.įor various effects, others used the technique of “couleur directe”, which means that colours are not added to a preexisting black and white inked drawing.
Satirists opted for dirtier, rougher drawings aiming at expressing the violence of their anti-establishment revolt, and resorting largely to dark humour.
The 1970s witnessed the rise of many alternative magazines for adults they were provocative, subversive, and representative of the counter-culture (Charlie mensuel, Fluide glacial, Hara-Kiri, L’Echo des savanes, Bodoï, Charlie Hebdo). Several BD artists felt the urge to expose hypocrisy, social problems, colonialism, racism, misogyny, police control, and many other political issues. The spirit following the student revolt and the strikes of May 1968 in France entailed a trend of anti-establishment protests in every field. Yet, translating Astérix in Brittany in English turned out to be much more difficult. When different languages are signaled by font effects, the joke is easy to transpose into another language. Goscinny liked to play with cultural misunderstandings. For that matter, Astérix provides a fascinating insight into French culture, but it represents a challenge for translators, the gags often resting upon cultural specificities which do not necessarily have their counterpart in other countries and languages. The stories were popular among a very large audience as children would enjoy the stories and Obélix’s fights with the Romans while adults would appreciate private jokes (caricatures of celebrities, anachronisms based on a combination of Ancient time references with daily-life realities typical of 1970s France, names based on puns). Two of Pilote’s founders, Goscinny and Uderzo, created Astérix le Gaulois. With its sparing use of text, this type of comic explored the resources of graphic design at various levels. Some famous names: André Franquin (Les Aventures de Spirou et Fantasio), Peyo (Les Schtroumpfs), Morris (Lucky Luke), Jean Roba (Boule & Bill). It featured rounder speech balloons instead of rectangles and favoured short, informal exchanges over long speeches. Its artists developed a modern style based on caricature (large heads and big noses). Le Journal Spirou (founded in 1938 in Charleroi) Hergé drew inspiration from cinema, but while a film decomposes movement displaying every part, comic artists have to choose a few snapshots, carefully selected so that the reader’s imagination can fill the gaps between pictures. The high readability of Hergé’s drawings was coupled with a sophisticated use of layout, which is essential to suggest movement. Jacobs, the author of Blake & Mortimer (above, on the right). His style and technique were soon adopted by Edgar P. Hergé (portrait: ) brought the drawing technique called “ligne claire” to a level of command that earned him the status of a pioneer. Le Journal Tintin was a family-friendly weekly: “Le journal des jeunes de 7 à 77 ans.” Many stories fell into the adventure genre.
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