La bande dessinée, son histoire et ses maîtres

There is no doubt. Strip cartoons are coming to power as an art form in all its right. The musée de la Bande dessinée (Strip cartoon museum) of Angoulême has set up in its new venue and Portzamparc has completed the Hergé museum. The exhibitions are many (Vraoum ! at the Maison rouge in Paris, Sexties at the palace of Fine arts of Brussels) and the prices paid for works by Hergé, Franquin or Bilal are getting close to those of the great painters. Vademecums of this type are no longer limited to be simple hobbies for original individuals, and are becoming art history tools. The essential links have been put into place, from the first boxes by Rodolphe Töpffer in the 1830s up to the various contemporary independent schools, such as the one of the Association en France. As we walk through it we run into Alex Raymond, Will Eisner, bulimic Harvey Kurtzman, the creator of MAD, Moebius and Charlier, we witness the peak of the American comic and of the clear Belgian line. We will of course regret some are missing – the Western and the Italian giallo (Tex Willer, Dylan Dog) or the Spanish tebeo, but the raw material is so colossal that it would be a brave challenge to try to synthesise it …

• La bande dessinée, son histoire et ses maîtres by Thierry Groensteen, Flammarion, 2009, 456 p, 49 €, ISBN : 978-2-0812-2757-6