Your view on european comics?

[carloswebcomic]

Reading European comics is what sparked my interest in comics in general.
Growing up, I used to read this magazine called Heavy Metal which consisted mostly of Adult (as in mature, not porn) European comics.
In my view, they were far, far superior, in both art and story, than anything I've seen before in the mainstream.
I also got a soft spot for British comics like Judge Dredd and The Rifle Brigade.
After that, I discovered Manga and underground Australian and American comics which also influenced me.
So yeah, European comics is what got me excited about this medium.

[cribeilletguillaume]

I've never managed to find a Heavy Metal book, I only saw pieces of art here and here, I want one so hard. I was happy when they announce a tv serie but it didn't work out too well.

fun fact : in french it's "Métal Hurlant" so the correct tranlsation should have been "Howling Metal" wich I find very cool, too bad they didn't use it !

Never heard of the rifle brigade, I will look that up

[carloswebcomic]

in french it's "Métal Hurlant" so the correct tranlsation should have been "Howling Metal" wich I find very cool, too bad they didn't use it !

Yeah, I know. I guess it was a product of the time when"Heavy Metal" would have resounded better with their target audience.
Howling Metal is such an awesome name though!

[Jrej]

OMG you are part of watch digital comics!
Saw you on the news and subscribed to the newsletter. I was seriously considering a subscription because of Enfer Blanc!

Amazing coincidence!

I think the model you are trying to build is very clever. I think it could really change how digital artists get support for their work. Mind blowing stuff...8-D

[cribeilletguillaume]

Haha what ? are you serious ? that's awesome ! (and thanks because I guess it means you liked Enfer Blanc)

You saw it on France 3 Alsace ?

[miseryhunting]

I'm not sure how European comics are doing outside of Europe, but when I was growing up, the first comic I got was Asterix and Obelix (French) and later on got into Witch (Italian). At that time, Bulgarian comics started dying down and later on, even the publishing of foreign comics started declining. From the American series, I don' think I've seen any with the exception of Spiderman.
The United Kingdom has extremely big comic market though! They do publish a lot of graphic novels, both original and from the USA.

[Jrej]

Enfer Blanc looks brilliant from what I saw. I haven't had the chance to see much of it though. Is it going to be a watch digital exclusive?

I am originally from Seine et Marne but saw the region special on france 3.
You know it's good, when you see it on tv!

[AnnaLandin]

I'm Swedish, and I grew up reading - and still read! - a bunch of European comics! :3 Blacksad is amazing.

Asterix, Tintin, Lucky Luke, Iznogoud, The Smurfs, Johan et Pirlouit, Yakari, Buddy Longway, etc., etc., were all cornerstones of my childhood, and I've still got a big bunch of them on my shelf! And like @Chopythes says, right now, Enrique Fernandez is being published in Swedish, for which I am infinitely grateful - his comics are beautiful and amazing. <3

In general, I've found franco-belgian comics to be very, very beautiful (Derib's work on Yakari and his Western comics <3 And Moebius!), but the stories themselves don't always hold up well. I remember reading Le Sceptre d'Ottokar, the Tintin album, and just being so annoyed at the way Tintin would just speak his every thought out loud. There's this one scene, where he's sitting TWO FEET away from someone he suspects is a bad guy, and talks OUT LOUD about how that guy IS a bad guy - and the bad guy doesn't hear him. There's also a tendency in a lot of Tintin comics of just telling/explaining the entire story in dialogue, as if the readers can't see the pictures of what is happening.

There are also a lot of Swedish comics, of course - ranging from newspaper comic strips to autobiographical stuff (which is kind of our thing, I guess?) and even a bunch of all-ages adventure comics! Meet Bamse, the world's strongest (and kindest!) bear! Super-popular with kids, and there's a bunch of animated movies and at least one small theme-park based on him and his adventures:

Also, horse-comics. I don't know if this is a big thing in other countries, but Sweden has/had at least two separate magazines full of horse-comics when I was growing up, and at least one of them is still kicking around. You think I'm joking? I'm really not:


Horse comics - I've read a metric ton of them, and used to dream of being able to draw horses like Lena Furberg, horse-comic-artist extraordinaire.

Sweden has also more or less taken over the originally American pulp-character The Phantom; it's been published in Sweden since 1940, and currently, The Phantom-comics produced in Sweden by a Swedish team are some of the most popular monthly comics on the market.

We've even got a The Phantom-club! I've met them a bunch of times at cons - their chairman has the best moustache, and is also super-nice and friendly. :3

[jennula]

I have pretty much the same experience as @AnnaLandin - our childhood home is built on Bamse, Tintin, The Smurfs, Lucky Luke, Swedish horse comics (!!!) and the Phantom.
But also - Bobo and Gnuttarna!

And I have some Enrique Fernandez comics in my bookshelf that I can't wait to read, they look AMAZING <3

[Simon_M]

Honestly I think european comics are in a bad spot right now. They don't have the cultural relevance they had when they created kid-friendly stuff (Asterix, Tintin), and their current stuff... I don't know. It looks very dated. They seem to aim for art that looks better as an illustration than as a reading experience, looks more static than manga or american-style comics... I know it's absurd to reduce an entire continent (from which I am, by the way) to that, but I think the way they are produced and published helps to create that. I just don't see them appealing at all, they seem out of touch, and when they try to acknowledge the times, they just copy the style of other industries, like the french manga stuff, instead of coming up with new ideas themselves. But whatever. I'm from Spain, where we don't even have a proper industry to begin with.

[AnnaLandin]

@jennula Bobo och Gnuttarna! XD My grandparents had a bunch of those comics in their summer house - I read them so much they nearly fell apart, but for some reason I'd forgotten them entirely!

Random aside, but related to The Phantom, since the Swedish Phantom-magazine used to publish a bunch of backup-comics to fill out the issues - I read Thorgal for the first time when I was, like, 10. Not exactly age-appropriate, but hey, they were pretty comics!

Also, the Bacon&Ägg comics by Patrik Norrman - a weird adventure-comic about an antropomorphic pig and duck.

It wasn't age-approriate for a 10 year old either - it had plenty of nudity and quite graphic violence - but Norrman's artwork has a lovely sense of motion and dynamics, and they DID tell some pretty great stories.

[jennula]

Ooh, Bacon & Ägg, one of those comics I've heard a lot about, but not read myself! Same goes for Herman Hedning (who has his own beer, right?):

[cribeilletguillaume]

Yep, unless Watch doesn't work out (but let's just hope it does)

[scythe]

My work is very heavily influenced by French Bandes dessinées, and last time I was in France I went to an amazing little shop that was just full to the brim with them, almost all of them in hardcover. I was like a kid in a candy store. The American books were tucked away in the corner, so obviously the Franco-Belgian titles are doing well there by comparison.

I grew up reading American comics, and of course I still love that look, but it wasn't until I found out about French, more mature-focused comics that I was inspired to start my own.

[cribeilletguillaume]

totally forgot about Yakari !

I must admit I didn't know about those horse comics haha, well to be honest I don't know much about Swedish comic, cool to hear about it !

I will look that up (that bear is cute, no wonder he is popular)

[cribeilletguillaume]

The american comics are gaining more and more space in stores (without impacting the other type of comic, wich is very cool), especially with Urban Comics who is doing an excellent job for them (the hard cover and the quality + some dvds in them, very cool)

[cribeilletguillaume]

The pubhishing is indeed a problem, at least the fact that it's so slow, if you like a serie, you are going to wait at least a year to read the next volume (if not a couple more), I don't know how many series I gave up because of that. But it can be be helped, unlike manga and serial comic, bandes dessinées is usually a one or two man thing.

As for the art, can't say, it's personnal opinion, to me european comics are way more varied for example so there is stuff I love and stuff I don't. Comics, I usually like one shot story more, the serial one, I don't like the art (partly because to me it is incredibly static). For manga, it's way more codified (?) ant it's rare to find something that really look different.

In the end I enjoy those three ways of comic and hope none of them is gonna crash !

[quakeulf]

So many recent ones are mediocre, dull, tedious and they provide me with absolutely nothing of interest. It doesn't matter what setting is being used or what style or techniques, they just confirm everyday life and that's it. It's like they're made for prisoners to have something to long for once they get out. What happened to the action and the adventure in comics like Spirou and Tintin? I am aware that Spirou is still going but it's not going anywhere better. When I read many attempts at doing action it usually ends up being a drag to read through caused by terrible pacing and way too much text. I wonder why it has become like this.

Compare it with Japanese comics which gets thousands of pages to tell almost nothing, but to me reading at that pace is a desired luxury. I really enjoy getting into the details of a situation and that's exactly what a comic should do. It should not rush ahead like a TV-show, it should take its time and provide angles, insight and more pages and frames to dwell on the powerful action panels. Don't just tuck them away in the corner. That's lame. (edit: I must mention that last year's Shaolin Cowboy: Shemp Buffet by Geof Darrow is the best comic I have read in years. It's EXACTLY what I want to read. 100+ pages of pure action, excitement and unfathomable attention to detail that I can read the comic again and again and always discover something new.)

There are exceptions, of course, and one of them is Joan Cornella and a few others like Cowboy Henk, but they're mostly lighthearted and funny gag-comics, though.

[Simon_M]

Well, right now you can find variety both in american comics and european comics. Manga is different for sure, but that's what I don't like of europeans imitating manga. The best of them only attain a codified look of a generic manga style that it's not even that relevant right now in Japan, at least not in very popular genres like the shonen (seriously, the Big three, One piece, Naruto, and Bleach, only the last one resembled a little bit the traditional manga look we think of...).

I don't know, there's something in the approach of european comics that turns me off. Like european movies. They seem to be too... I don't know... reserved, quiet, never striving for the big emotional explosion, the pulpy stories, the vibrant imagination. But hey, right now I detest how superheroes are done, so it's not like I think american comics or manga are that much better, I just think they are lacking for different reasons.

[iddqd]

I recently started digging a little into European comics after picking up a few "A Jew in the communist Prague" volumes by Vittorio Giardino at the university library. It's definitely a different way of doing things compared to either North American serialized comics or graphic novels, and different compared to manga... as many have pointed it out, the drama, the motion, everything about European approach seems a little, well, muted. I found that I like it, but now I am not sure where to go next.