European Comic Art

European Comic Art 16.1 was not planned as a themed issue, but the articles by our contributors nonetheless touch on some recurring themes: the close relationship between comics and caricature, the capacity of the medium for political and satirical critique, and its cultural ostracism. There is also a notable focus on comics as a transnational medium.

Comics adaptations of literary classics often struggle to step out of the shadow of their model. This article explores how the recent adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote by German comics artist Flix transposes the Golden Age classic to a contemporary German setting, updating the story to speak to some of postmodern society's concerns. Flix's approach is marked by an ironic distance from his textual and pictorial sources, which he repurposes without losing sight of the Spanish novel's story arc, character constellation, and narrative devices. The adaptation restores the original comicality to a classic that has mostly been read as a tragic story. While the adaptation inscribes itself into Germany's cultural fabric, it proposes a Don Quixote that transcends traditional notions of clearly delimited, monolithic national cultures.

This article reflects on formal aspects of comics, and on how they inherently undermine a mimetically oriented realism, by drawing on the example of Jeff Lemire's Gideon Falls. Due to its pictorial architecture and narrative structure of drawn panels, the comics medium exhibits the procedures through which it unfurls representational competencies. The message of comics images is that what is depicted is not authentic, but an invention. Comics rely on an illusory world when, aesthetically, they remain a perpetually visible imitation. The concept of ‘graphicality’ is developing ideas about an epistemology of comics. As comics are essentially characterised by iconographical representation, their epistemological level must also be addressed in terms of images. Hence, the graphic basis of the medium must contain an independent media knowledge.

This article examines how Baruti and Cassiau-Haurie's Le Singe jaune (2018) subverts the literary adventure tropes that have been associated with the Congo. By examining its complex network of intertextual references, including the controversial Tintin au Congo, the analysis demonstrates that this graphic novel misleads readers into expecting a mere entertaining adventure quest, while leading them instead to learn about the social, economic, political, and historical consequences of a colonial system based on segregation and exploitation. Le Singe jaune, therefore, breathes new life into adventure comics while also subverting the unilateral (neo)colonial representations this tradition has reinforced. It enables readers to embrace alternative perspectives on the common history of the Congo and Belgium and urges them to answer the call for a new dialogue.

This study investigates how translation flows of Francophone comic art into the Swedish cultural space contributed to the development of local comics between 1950 and 2020. The data collection and analytical approach is inspired by ‘distant reading’ methods (Moretti 2013), focusing on general features, including author, genre, and mediation practices. The main results show that the importation of internationally established works, such as Tintin, legitimised comics as an aesthetic expression. A sharp divide between children's comics and adult comics is identified in the dataset covering the 1980s, whilst the first decades of the twenty-first century reveal an increase of female author/illustrators corresponding to local creative dynamics and exportation trends. The discussion highlights both Sweden's peripheral position and its achievement of agency in the circulation of comics.

In this interview, the political cartoonist Steve Bell reflects on his past career and work, seeing it against the wider tradition of British political cartoons, and in relation to the work of other artists whom he admires. He answers questions as to the fundamental nature of visual satire and speculates as to its likely future in an age of media fragmentation, and ideological polarisation and intolerance. Although we now live in turbulent and divisive political times and in an era where it becomes ever harder for satirical artists to find outlets for their work, Bell is by no means pessimistic as he looks to the future. His view is very much that artistic quality and sharp observational wit will continue to find appreciative audiences, whatever the means or media their makers employ.

David Kunzle, Rebirth of the English Comic Strip: A Kaleidoscope, 1847–1870 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2021). 455 pp. ISBN: 9781496833990 ($90)

Katherine Kelp-Stebbins, How Comics Travel: Publication, Translation, Radical Literacies (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2022), 238 pp. ISBN: 978-0-8142-5823-1 ($34.95)

Mark Heimermann and Brittany Tullis, eds., Picturing Childhood: Youth in Transnational Comics (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017), 264 pp. ISBN: 978-1477311622 ($27.95)