From December 20, 2024 to April 6, 2025, the Brussels Comic Strip Museum is hosting the exhibition “Reality in BD. The comic strip bears witness and engages.” After inaugurating the permanent retrospective “A Century of Belgian Comics” last October, the museum is this time offering a collective exhibition dedicated to reporting comics.
Through the work of around sixty reporter-cartoons, the exhibition highlights methods of analysis and transcription specific to the 9e art. Focused on the notion of testimony, “Reality in BD. Comics bear witness and engage” traces the evolution of this genre through key works. Will be exhibited, among others, Étienne Davodeau, Emmanuel Lepage, Joe Sacco, Marjane Satrapi, Riad Sattoufetc.
Reportage comics: a booming genre
Reportage comics have been booming for around twenty years, and it is a genre that is particularly close to the hearts of Isabelle Debekker director of the Comic Strip Museum in Brussels: “Comic strip authors are discreet, much more so than photographers, for example. They have access to other elements, and thus reach another audience. It is a narrative which, in my opinion, sheds fundamental light on certain subjects”she confides to Weekly Books.
Futuropolis Editions occupy a central place in the exhibition. Having edited most of the works presented (Emmanuel Lepage, Étienne Davodeau), the publisher directly participated in the recovery of certain original plates, in particular from the American-Maltese comic strip author and journalist Joe Sacco (Reports2011, Futuropolis). The genre is at the heart of the house’s editorial line, which has also earned it the presence of three of its works in the selection for the France Info 2025 prize for current affairs and reporting comics.
Comics as a tool for knowledge and popularization
With this exhibition, the 9e art becomes a gateway to current events. Around ten social subjects will be treated through the prism of comics. The album Tower of Babel of Kokopello (Dargaud), a cartoon report devoted to European institutions, will for example shed light on the theme “Questioning power”.
“Comics authors have been experimenting with reporting comics for a long time. Our material was gargantuan. If I had to compare our 500 square meters of exhibition space to a forest, I imagine it noisy and leafy, a place where everyone can peck according to their tastes, their sensibilities,” rejoices Isabelle Debekker. Thus, the museum wanted to diversify the contents. The original plates will be mixed with current magazines such as The comic magazine et Topobut also projects from the Ink Link association. This puts comics at the service of social causes through popularization through drawing.
For the museum director, reporting comics are an inexhaustible theme: “We are convinced that the Comic Strip Museum is not finished with this theme. This exhibition opens a chapter into which we will be delighted to dive again later. »
