The Great French Graphic Novel Tradition

I’ve always admired, and, in truth occasionally snickered at, the French demand that French things stay French in an obviously French way. It was like they were trying to hold back the tide of globalism through hauteur and protectionism.

These days, I’m more sympathetic. By virtue of indoctrinating this behavior ("puh!"), some truly special and uniquely French things still exist. For a moment, let me extol French graphic novels.

While Asterix et Obelix and Valerian et Laureline may have been successfully exported to the globe, there are tons of graphic novels in France that target children to adults and have subject matter that range from childish to literary (and naughty, betimes).

Here are some items I saw in Cannes:

in «Monte-Cristo», we see a modernization of the Count story by Dumas

Next, «Kilomètre Zero» tells the story of the driven men and women who built the train line across the mountain passes of Northeastern France from Strasbourg to Basel. Obsession, the industrial age, wealth, passion: these are the ingredients of Herzog movie, but here available in beautiful hard-bound edition graphic novels.

Sadly graphic novels like this don’t have much purchase in the American market: we import manga for that or repeat some fairly familiar paths defined by Marvel and DC. As manga, DC, and Marvel make global literary traditions ever more the same I love that France has something different.

• france
• literature
• art

• Previous: The Globalized Death of Class; or, Why I Disliked Monte Carlo
• Next: The Rewriting of History