Christelle Pissavy-Yvernault launches a collection of beautiful Books (…)

This is an important book, because it is both a reference on André Franquinthe radiant genius of the Belgian School, but also an interesting testimony to the historiography of comics criticism – the one which does not exist, according to some – contextualizing the first beginnings of this discipline at the end of the 1960s. Collaborating on the first comic book prozines: Phoenix, The Comic Books and many others, Numa Sadoul is one of the first French critics of the 9th art, the first to have devoted a thesis to it. We owe him major interviews with Hergé, Franquin, Jean Giraud/Moebius, Tardi, Uderzo, Vuillemin, Mordillo…The comics historian Christelle Pissavy-Yvernault he in turn submits to the question in a book which tells us about the beginnings of comics criticism in France.

What is a historically important author, one of those we call the “masters” of an art? He is an author who influences a large part of his contemporaries and beyond: Hergé, Alex Raymond, Milton Caniff, Edgar P. Jacobs, René Goscinny, Albert Uderzo, Alex Toth, Moebius/Jean Giraud, Osamu Tezuka, Jack Kirby or André Franquin, for example, gave birth to dozens of disciples, profoundly impacting their discipline and their era. After their passage, comics were no longer made as before.

It is the same in the field of criticism. Roland Barthes, Henri Langlois, François Truffaut or Gérard Genette brought to the attention of their readers not only the greatest authors of literature or cinema, but also a look and an analytical method which was able to overturn the artistic hierarchies of their time, to highlight little-known authors and, at the same time time, to reinforce those who, in history, have been milestones in the history of their art. After their passage, the vision of art changes…

One of the first comic book critics

Numa Sadoul is one of the first commentators on comics. The one who, following Pierre Couperie or from Francis Lacassinapproached comics as a serious body of study to the point of forging the concept of the 9th art.

Numa Sadoul's approach was no longer that of a collector. It began with documenting, using interviews, the fundamentals of this corpus. His interviews with Franquin, Hergé and Moebius are fundamental references for all researchers and for the simple readers that we are: they have allowed us to acquire a wealth of knowledge about these authors and, at the same time, to give us the contextualization tools that allowed us to understand the importance of their work.

Christelle Pissavy-Yvernault, to whom we owe, in the company of Bertrand Pissavy-Yvernaultessential works concerning the history of Spirou's journalparodying in its title the first major book of interviews by Numa Sadoul with Hergé: Tintin and megives us here her “Franquin and I” which is also a “Numa Sadoul and I” as far as she is concerned. An exercise in admiration and at the same time an incredible source of information on Franquin, his work, his time, but also on the conditions in which comics criticism was founded.

It is indeed in the Comic books of Jacques Glénata series of special issues dedicated to the great authors of the golden age of Franco-Belgian comics, which a whole generation of commentators and critics and historians of comics, Benoît Peeters has Thierry Groensteenof Pierre Fresnault-Desruelles has Patrick Gaumerwere formed constituting the mass of knowledge about comics that we have today. This new work further enriches it.

In the process appear Draw! of Frank Foot et Loisel – In the shadow of Peter Pana book of interviews with Régis Loisel which we will talk to you about again.

We met its editor in this podcast who recounts her project for a collection of works entitled “Les Cahiers de la bande Dessinée” (independent of the current affairs magazine, The Comic Books of Vincent Berniere).

Listen to it, it's fascinating.