A little bit off topic but there’s a new wave of bande dessinée (french comics) artists in France i can really recommend anyone understanding french to have a look at anything published by the Label 619[1][2] especially the one shot Shangri La[3]. There’s also the beautiful Saint Elme[4] that is definitely worth a read.
Thanks so much! My kid needs to learn French (Montreal) but the way they teach it here is awful and I'm afraid turning her off the language. The only thing she really liked so far was a bande dessinée called "Lou". I'll give these others a try before the education system turns her off la belle langue forever
Depending on their ages and tastes here are a few of my favorites :
- Manu Larcenet : has many great series suitable for kids. If you want to check one a bit more for adults I recommend "Blast" which is pretty much my favorite comic ever.
- Lewis Trondheim has a great series around his character "Lapinot" (his Donjon series is amazing too ; be careful one or two of the albums can be a bit scary if the kid is too young, for instance I remember a scene of rape, not visual but it is clear what happens ; but a good chunk of the series is light-hearted especially potron-minet and parade)
- Joan Sfar : actually co-author of Donjon but has entire work of his own, quite introspective with his jewish culture
If you would like to teach with songs I also recommend Renaud (the albums from the 80s, not the recent ones), Brel, Iam (french 90s rap group but a lot of the lyrics are non-violent ; their most famous piece is about star wars actually).
Great recommendations, my favorite bd serie is Ralph Azham[1] from Lewis Trondheim. It’s great for readers of all ages.
Boulet[2] is also a nice writer with the same kind of humor as the ones suggested here.
For teenagers there’s also a lot of good sagas published by Soleil[3] especially during the 90-00.
Reminds of The Nib ( https://thenib.com/ ). Some of the best English language non fiction artists contributed to it. Was saddened when they decided to discontinue.
Seems very heavily… leaning for sure. And interestingly, you can tell at first glance without reading any of the contents — it's the artstyles. I'm not sure what it is exactly, I wish I could put a finger on it, but there's just something about most political cartoons which makes them give away their alignment instantly (either way).
It's especially obvious if you look at the Authors page [0]. I don't think anyone can be in doubt as to where most of these artists stand. As a group for sure, but even the individual avatars when viewed isolated. This is somehow fascinating to me.
Yeah, I came here to post this. I still have all my back issues. They are great, and my kids understand the world a little better because it is accessible to them.
If you're letting "kids" read this, you're robbing them of their childhood. Minds that have not been fully developed should not be ingesting propaganda.
I for one plan to limit my children’s screen-propaganda time at least until they’re in middle school, so I appreciate a paper-propaganda option to serve as a less-stimulating entre to society.
Buying physical magazines in this era seems a bit archaic. One aspect that I like about the slow release schedule is that it forces the editors to only include things which are really important or relevant, rather than having to pad with news that will be forgotten in a couple days.
I think Washington Post is doing the best job at reaching younger audiences with their TikTok shorts. They make short sketches of current events, which the viewer can follow up on if the story catches their interest. You have to meet young people where they're at while respecting the medium.
Maybe a fun remix would be to make short and silly animations detailing current events.
Another attempt at reaching younger audiences: there are some egirls that act really over the top anime kawaii uwu while dropping political facts. It's a bit cringe inducing, but appears to be effective at getting people's attention. Admittedly I'm not sure if this form of informational dissemination will remain viable in the long term or if it'll lose potency once the novelty wears off.
"ATTENTION! L'EUROPE s'habitue au poison de l'extrême droite !" / "ATTENTION! EUROPE habituates itself to the poison of the far right!" (from image at top of article)
This publication seems to have a clear editorial line…
Cartooning involves a lot more ability to editorialize. Even if the words are the same, subtle alterations in depictions can convey what the cartoonist wants.
In addition, in a world of StableDifffusion and AI generated graphics, are we really wanting to train teens to get their news via (human for now) generated depictions of current events?
Even if you are there you still don't see the whole event, just the tiny part that is within view. Everyone has to rely on the evidence gathered and presented by others.
They admit as much in the article, by stating that they want to strike a tone that is not too positive and not too depressing. It isn't a journalist's job to do either of those things.
A charitable take is that they want to be honest without disillusioning kids. They want kids to feel included in understanding current events, without making the world seem utterly hopeless (and thus inflicting a nihilistic world view).
An uncharitable take is that they are grooming activists. They don't want it to be too positive so kids feel an urge to right some wrong, and they don't want it too depressing so they think there's still some agency to be advocated for.
I once visited a photography exhibition about propaganda in Nazi Germany.
Photos look much realer than most drawings/paintings so people assume what they're depicting must be real. Since the technology was new, most people just believed it, and so the Nazis could sell them anything as the truth.
Of course it is and people recognize it as such and therefore their circulation is very low. So naturally they’re trying to get public funds to put it into schools and into defenseless kids heads through subversion.
actually, in french mouse is souris (and bat is "shaved mouse", chauve souris)
i think the french just know the italian word. i think there have been other celebrity topi, like Topo Gigio. i wrote a little script tool to explore/confirm my network topology, and i call it gigio :) it's based on testing ad hoc knowledge of my network topology so it's not generally useful.
The etymology of "chauve" (bald) in "chauve-souris" (bat) is debated, but I've often read that it could be a deformation of a word designating an owl or a crow (it would be a cognate with the late Latin "cavannus" (tawny owl), for example).
On a similar note, the "cerf" (deer) in "un cerf-volant" (a kite toy) probably derive from occitan sèrp (snake) as a reference to dragon-shaped kites from Asia.
I don't understand why they are not making their characters attractive by default like is done in manga. People want to see cute characters and I imagine most artists want to draw cute characters.
It’s the style of European comics (bandes dessinées). To be even more precise, it’s a French-Belgium style. Those two countries have an awesome culture and history of "bandes dessinées" which is hardly comparable to manga or US comics. It’s much more fine humor and hidden criticism than heroes and incredible adventures.
Also, here it’s a magazine which will sometimes talk about hard or sad topics so I don’t think you want something too bright, a neutral style like shown here seems to be the most sensible choice.
People in France who buy Comics/BD have a completely different aesthetic sense than manga buyers. There is almost no overlap, and manga buyers I know do not even register Comics/BD as an option. Comic artists are also usually very much against the manga aesthetics and seem to go for (imho) ugly designs to differentiate themselves.
I know a lot of people who read both, it’s not some sort of mutually exclusive tastes. It’s just that they are really different products that only share the fact that they are a succession of drawings arranged to tell a story. Basically everything else is different.
Even assuming that is true, I believe that comics could be more successful if they changed their character designs to make them more appealing to look at.
I feel like historically french and belgium comic has a lot to do with caricature.
I remember reading a lot of comic where every character was actually ugly.
The only exceptions were tintin and blake et mortimer (from my childhood comic selection obviously)
Not caricature. More like … realistic? Characters have flaws, like in the real worlds.
Their body are tired and they experience real human emotions.
It’s just more adult in general
In the topo magazine yes, it has a more realistic style, but still I feel like history is very different from manga, and it still have influence even on those realistic style sometime.
Like all comics like achille talon, asterix obelix, gaston lagaffe, boule et bill, cedric...
Every character is exaggerated and not in flattering manner.
As much as the French consume manga and other Japanese culture including anime, I think this is a more typical Western style, audiences of which may find normal Japanese cuteness to be over-the-top.
You should take a look at the book Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. It's a fascinating book about how our brains interpret imagery through the study of comics. One of the best parts is when he explains how humans connect better with abstract imagery. For example, villains are often close to photorealistic while the characters the author wants us to identify with is often abstract. It's very counterintuitive and fascinating.
Except for Musk, everyone seems stylistically fairly cute. The textile workers all are simply drawn but cute, and the cover with the reclined man is odd but he's still attractive. So I'm guessing the artist isn't a huge fan of Musk.
The "everybody is cute" art style that modern manga and anime converged on is very ugly. It tracks with the degeneration of the audience; there used to be content made for all sorts of audiences but now it's all made for weirdo manchildren. This has been a trend starting with Japan's economic stagnation and getting worse every year. Investing time and money in an anime or manga production is risky and the safest bet is to pander to the most reliable audience (the manchildren.)
Can you please not break the site guidelines like this? You've been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately, and we eventually have to ban such accounts. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
I had to look up what that means as I was only familiar with the meaning of "nonce" in cryptography.
I think you are referring to this definition (wikipedia): "Nonce, a slang term mainly used in Britain to describe people accused or convicted of sexual offences involving underage children"
But being attracted to children-like looking fictional characters is not a the same as being a child sexual offender.
[1] https://www.ankama-shop.com/en/13-label619 [2] https://www.editions-ruedesevres.fr/univers/label-619 [3] https://www.ankama-shop.com/en/label619/813-shangri-la-compl... [4] https://www.editions-delcourt.fr/bd/series/serie-saint-elme/...