Charles Bremner - Times Online - WBLG

Serious money for comic strip heroes in France

The English-speaking world can never fathom the French and continental passion for comic strips.  That disparaging expression does not do justice to the Bande Dessinée, the genre more respectfully known in English as the graphic novel. In the French-speaking countries and beyond, the BD, with its heroes from Belgium's Tintin to Switzerland's modern Titeuf, are not just for kids. They are revered and treated as a serious, ninth art of a kind that mixes the novel and cinema.

La BD (pronounced bédé) is big business. Last year 34 million albums were sold in France. As further proof, a Paris sale of original comic art broke world records last weekend. A cover illustration for a Tintin album went for 764,200 euros (1.22 million dollars). The indian ink and gouache, bought by an anonymous French collector, was drawn in 1932 by Hergé for Tintin en Amerique, the third adventure of his intrepid boy reporter [picture above]. The previous BD record was 177,000 euros, paid a year ago for a drawing by Enki Bilal, one of the titans of the French BD [picture below]

The ecstatic Artcurial saleroom said the auction of 653 items earned 3.4 million euros. "This marks the veritable consecration of the bande dessinée," said Eric Leroy, the house's expert. "People are no long ashamed to say that they collect BDs. The market is expanding fast."

As an honorary Gaul, I have long been a Tintinophile. The nostalgia-inducing tales have a certain magic. Like many French, I recognise lines from his adventures that have passed into the language. For example, everyone knew what le Monde meant the other day when it noted that the bad reputation of one of President Sarkozy's ministers "clings to him like Captain Haddock's Band-Aid" (Le sparadrap du capitaine Haddock). This refers to a running gag involving the whisky-soaked mariner in Tintin's Affaire Tournesol and Vol 714 pour Sydney. On a flight to Beijing with a French Prime Minister a few years ago, I noticed that his staff were briefing up by reading Le Lotus Bleu, Tintin's tale of late 1930s China.

I can also understand the attraction of some of the masters like Bilal, who created post-apocalyptic world that draws heavily on old Soviet bloc life.  And yes, Art Spiegelman has shown in the USA how the comic strip can be used to high brow ends. Yet... I still find it hard to take the bande dessinée as serious art, with its high-brown criticism, annual festival at Angoulême and venerated stars. In the past week, the media have feted the publication of the latest adventure of Blake and Mortimer, a pair of old world military Englishmen who exclaim "by Jove" on every second page. Le Monde's literary supplement on Friday ran a cover on a new BD version of Dickens' Oliver Twist.

A lot of creative work goes into the art and plot of a BD album. They have come a long way from the American comic strips for kids that inspired them in the early 20th century. It's also fair to note that the thriving genre is accessible to young creative talent in a way that the movie industry and classical publishing are not. But I still see them as fast food beside entertainment that takes more mental effort to consume. I'm happy to be contradicted by my French regulars and anyone else, so fire away....

PS: I see that Steven Spielberg is likely to cast Thomas Sangster, a 17-year-old English actor as Tintin when he makes a long-awaited movie version of the cartoon hero this year. Movies of comic strip heroes are rarely as good as the original.  I'll stick to the cardboard and paper version.

[Blake and Mortimer's latest]

Bilal's Bleu Sang sold for record price in 2007]

Self-mockery in France's unlovely north

Much of the world thinks of France as a sunny Latin place with vineyards, windows with shutters and a fine art de vivre. Many French also prefer that image and look down on the bits that do not fit the picture, especially those along the northern fringe next to England and Belgium.

This week, the far northerners -- a tribe that calls itself Ch'tis -- are celebrating a chance to shake off their uncouth image as potato-guzzling beer-drinkers who dwell in a rain-soaked rust-belt.

The excuse is the opening in Lille yesterday of Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, a film that makes fun of the region's unflattering stereotype in order to show the people as warmer and generally nicer than those in the sunny south.

Starring and directed by Dany Boon, the film has won critical praise and seems destined to become a hit. So it should boost the much-maligned Ch'ti country, the old port and mining area which runs from Calais eastwards to about Maubeuge (I have a fondness for this area of red-brick terrace houses and tall bell towers from four years living in nearby Brussels in the late 1990s).

Dany Boon is a popular stand-up comedian and actor who is a native Ch'ti or Ch'timi. The name comes from Picardy patois. Like comedies about England's "Geordie" northeast, much of the film's fun stems from a working class dialect so impenetrable that it needs subtitles. In Ch'ti, "ch" replaces "s" and it includes expressions from old Picard and Flemish as well from the Italian, Polish and other migrants of a century ago. The Ch'ti language splash in yesterday's Voix du Nord was: Dany Boon, Bienvenue à s'baraque!" ('welcome home'). Instead of a "chortie nachional" (sortie national-- national release) the film has started with a "chortie ch'timi". Have a look at the promotion site, with the CNN parody "ChtiNN, une chaîne qui ne perd pas le nord".