Originally published at: The breathtakingly gorgeous work of Jordi Lafebre | Boing Boing
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Those are splendid, I’d hang any of that stuff on my walls.
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Ooh, that is glorious! 
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It’s gorgeous and very French.
However, I doubt this is true:
In the past, since Marvel and DC were acknowledged as the pinnacle of the industry, several international artists were eager to jump into either company’s loving embrace for recognition and payment.
I doubt French (or Belgian) comic artists have ever felt a need or a desire to work for Marvel or DC. Not with a thriving local comics industry that is at least as old and as culturally influential as the American one
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Indeed, it was my understanding that the French speaking world had it’s own large comic industry. I discovered this long running series when they made a 360 game out of it:
Wikipedia in the early days had a good discussion on the list of countries the comic was a smash hit in. (A lot, across a few continents)
ETA: Further reading. Mentions that the 3 big Comic markets are Manga, US/UK (i.e. English), and Franco-Belgian (i.e. French):
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I liken it to baseball. Japan has a thriving baseball circuit, but the goal for any player that wants to go global is the MLB.
That’s not a knock on the quality of French books. I love me some Valérian, but it would be crazy to argue that Batman doesn’t reach more French people than the inverse with Valérian.
Again, I’m not saying their local industry is inferior, or less influential in any way, they’re just less commercial than the big two.
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I agree that there’s a gulf between American and Continental comics (though Hollywood has had a massive impact on European artist); however, there have been cases of collaborations that have reached across the pond.
Edited to add: There certainly seem to be a number of Spanish artists working for Marvel.
PPS: I didn’t realize that Olivier Coipel (Legion of Superheroes and House of M) is French.
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True, and I’m not saying that American comics aren’t influential, especially in the times of comic book movies. But let’s say 30 years ago? I bet more people had heard of Tintin or Asterix or of Spirou or Lucky Luke than had of Batman
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I think it’s probably far more influential in Europe, though, which has it’s own pretty powerful history of cultural production. As much as American culture industries tried (especially as a key part of the cultural Cold War), they never were able to fully dominate the content of European culture, even if the production of said culture looked far more like the US than prior to the second world war… I also think European attitudes towards the US culture industry is much different than in Japan with regards to baseball. The French are especially hostile to US pop culture, even where they happily consume those forms with French content… Rock music is a great example of that, with a focus on homegrown rock vs. American/British imports…
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To illustrate the point: as a German I grew up with the comic books I mentioned above. I have never even laid eyes on a Batman or Spiderman comic in real life.
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Interesting! I wonder if that’s still true or if it’s easier to get translated American comics in Europe now? Are comic book stores a thing in Germany today, or not?
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They are and you can get American comics there, both in translation and in the original. But that is really only an extension of the global surge of nerd culture in the same way you can find burger and barbecue restaurants now thanks to the globalisation of hipster culture. A few comic book stores in the American sense did exist before that as well, but mostly in the bigger cities and I honestly couldn’t tell you what they would have sold in the 80s for example. I suspect many of them grew out of board game stores. Meanwhile French comic books were available both in bookstores and in the public library, where I found them as a kid. In addition to the ones already mentioned, the ones I also remember are Gaston Lagaffe and Marsupilami, as well as the more “grown up” ones (clearly aimed at male-identifying teenagers) such as Michel Vaillant and Buck Danny.
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True… but my argument on this is that it’s rooted in the cultural cold war, where the US government worked to open up markets for American mass culture rather than driven entirely by the popularization of nerd culture.
But this was entirely true in the US as well. I’m from a small town in N. GA, and we did not get a comic shop until the 1980s, and that was in part due to our relatively proximity to Atlanta. Same problem with getting music prior to the internet age. If you weren’t near a major city with a great record shop, it was hard to get anything other than what the mainstream industry had on offer.
Yeah, probably so. Even today, there is plenty of cross over here in the states between comic stores and gaming shops.
Interesting. I wonder if there was an attitude that’s similar to European views of Hollywood, that European versions are artistically superior to what the US culture industries had to offer…
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That’s certainly true for my francophile mother, who, I am sure, wouldn’t have allowed us to read American comics if they had been available, but saw the Franco-Belgian stuff as educational, or at least acceptable… 
(She probably would have allowed us to read them, she wasn’t/isn’t into censoring children’s reading but she definitely would have disapproved more)
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I can respect your position on that, and maybe my American bias is flaring up, but I would have to disagree. Batman and Superman’s symbols are some of Earth’s most recognizable logos.
I highly doubt Lucky Luke, dopeness of the book aside, could say the same. Even if people don’t interface with the actual comics, Marvel and DC have infinitely more brand recognition than almost any European character.
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Post TV shows and movies they are. I’m saying that in a very defined context (France and Belgium, and to a lesser degree their neighbouring countries) and before the success of comic book movies the local brands (especially the blockbusters Asterix and Tintin) would have been more familiar to the average person. But I might be wrong. We should really ask someone from one of these countries. And I really don’t want to turn this into an argument. I recognise that you feel very passionately about comic books, something that I regretfully don’t (although I do have a lot of nostalgia for the ones I mentioned).
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No, I think that’s probably true. But I honestly don’t know if there is anyone who has done any historical work on the popularity of American comics abroad? I know that in his book Coca-Colonization, Reinhold Wagenleitner discussed how Austrian teens in the 1940s and 1950s would visit the Amerikahaus’ and request comics and popular music records… but he seemed to indicate that it was a smaller group of patrons there…
Seems like this history might be uncharted, meaning the international history of the American classic superhero comic.
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Not an argument at all, man.
I love learning about the global comic book scene. I value your input.
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Surely someone must have? Academics are known to bring their hobbies into their research after all…
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