La bande dessinée — Comics

The ninth art, and why Belgium takes it seriously

Alex's assumption — that comics are for children — is the ordinary Anglophone one, and in Belgium it is simply wrong in a way that is worth understanding rather than merely noting. The historical reason is concrete. Hergé's Tintin began in a Brussels newspaper in 1929; Spirou followed in 1938, Lucky Luke in 1946, the Smurfs in 1958, Blake and Mortimer in 1946. For several decades, a large share of the French-language comics read anywhere were drawn in Belgium, by studios in Brussels, and the form developed here as a mainstream commercial medium with adult readers rather than as a children's sideline. The two major traditions — the clean-lined Brussels school and the looser Marcinelle style around Spirou — are discussed by Belgians roughly the way film movements are discussed elsewhere. The phrase 'le neuvième art' is the clearest signal of status. It places comics in a numbered sequence after architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry, dance, cinema and radio or television, and it is used without irony. Comics are reviewed in newspapers, awarded prizes, taught, collected, and exhibited — the Centre belge de la bande dessinée occupies a Victor Horta building, which is itself a statement about what kind of thing this is. The annual festival at Angoulême, in France, is the form's major international event. What this means for a learner is more practical than cultural. **Comics are the best reading material available at B1.** The pictures carry context, so an unknown word is guessable rather than fatal; the text is dialogue, which is the register you most need; the volumes are short enough to finish, and finishing things matters; and the vocabulary is ordinary rather than literary. A graded reader is written for you and feels like it. Tintin was written for Belgian children and their parents, which means the French is real. Where to start, with the register in mind. Tintin is clear, slightly dated, and exceptionally easy to read — some of its early volumes carry colonial-era attitudes that Belgium argues about publicly, and the most criticised of them is handled with a warning in most editions. Astérix is funnier and much harder, because the jokes are puns and the names are all wordplay. Lucky Luke and Spirou sit in between. Le Chat is single-page and excellent. For adult material, Belgian and French publishers produce a large amount of serious graphic fiction and reportage, and if your idea of comics stops at adventure stories, that is the shelf that will surprise you.