This sumptuous monograph of the joys of comic art was published earlier in the summer to accompany a new exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. An apt location, because no country has taken to the format more enthusiastically than France, where bandes dessinées are held in high critical esteem and around 5,000 new comic books are published each year.
The exhibition is hugely wide-ranging (as it has to be with a six-decade period to cover), and the monograph does a great job of tracking the evolution of the modern BD era into the diverse and eclectic market it is today. Bridging the world’s three key comics cultures – Europe, Asia and the USA – the book and show places its focus on the counter-cultural role of comics, from the Sixties to the present day.
Extensively illustrated, as one would expect, the monograph definitely leaves the reader wanting more, encouraging them to search out the full-length works of artists like Marjane Satrapi, Posy Simmonds, Alison Bechdel, Art Spiegelman, Joe Sacco, and Chris Ware, as well as a cornucopia of historic work.
There are also chapters on geometry and abstraction, and the role of the city in the comic, the latter tracked through the backdrop to nascent superheroes to the suburban angst of artists like Chris Ware and Daniel Clowes.
The legacy of sixty years’ worth of graphic novels, comic strips and bandes dessinées is becoming more and more apparent in modern media, not just through the sophisticated visual language of video games, but through Hollywood’s ongoing fascination with adapting and adopting these highly stylised narratives. Sections on storytelling and science fiction show how much modern cinematic universes owe to these succinct, precise and graphically efficient worlds.
Comics 1964-2024, Edited by Thierry Groensteen, Lucas Hureau, Anne Lemonnier and Emmanuèle Payen, Thames & Hudson, £40, ThamesandHudson.com, @ThamesandHudson
The exhibition Comics 1964-2024 runs until 4 November 2024 at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, tickets at CentrePompidou.fr, @CentrePompidou
