And Afterwards? bande dessinée: Part Art, Part Industry

Abstract

The transformation of comics into art was far from complete in 1975. Yet while many facets were still to come, the foundations had been laid. The critical gaze had changed, as had that of the public authorities, who had until then confined comics to the status of a cultural product for children, and in need of monitoring. Comics were no longer assigned to the sphere of childhood and had acquired respectability. During the 1960s, a new consensus emerged in France: comics were of cultural, intellectual, and artistic value for an educated adult readership—on top of the more traditional child readership. The 1980s saw the emergence of a real cultural policy to support comics, both their history and their creation. With the disappearance of nearly all the last comics periodicals, the 1990s were a time of great creative and editorial dynamism in the alternative comic strip sector. But the transformation of comics into art has a bitter counterpart today for creators: assigning comics to the world of art has made it harder to properly address the socio-economic conditions and precarity which undermine the sector, threatening the dynamism of a type of production unique to France.