BD - Comic or Not

Comics were once comic-only. Picture-telling through juxtaposed drawings, with people talking with or without balloons, have entertained news-paper readers and magazine buyers for ages. But there is also a world beyond simply being fun.

Hundred years ago there were already comic strips such as "Little Nemo in Slumberland" and "Krazy Kat". They presented fantastic imagery and imaginative fantasies in an era where films still lacked sound. The advents of super-heroes and comic books then widened the medium to younger readers, but the stories often fared less than well. The comics industry in the United States eventually got simplistic and type-cast, while only the advent of underground comics and sophisticated humour strips such as "Peanuts" brought back some of the literary qualities of the past.

Then, in the 80s and 90s, a new and chic breed of comic books brought in graphic influences from Europe and Japan. Now they were called "graphic novels" and were considerably more graphically complex. This often meant stories clearly aimed at an older audience wanting comic books that were a bit more mature.

Elsewhere things had developed on their own. In Belgium and France (where comics are called BD, short for "bande dessinée") the legacies of "Tintin" and "Spirou" fostered generations of artists making children's literature inside the album format. And in the 1960s "fine" artists, film and media got interested in the comics medium (shortened to "BD" in French), which spelled the start of a development of comics for older audiences, including adults.

The 70s and 80s were heydays for adult comics published inside or outside of a string of adult comics magazines. But the trend was towards comics as literature, so the magazines disappeared in large, leaving a literary tradition of comics in the album/book format behind.

Latin countries such as Italy, Spain and Argentina were also important as arenas of development within the comics medium. In the 80s German and Dutch territory (as well as the smaller territories Denmark and Sweden) also took part in the the new wave of comics.

In the meantime, far in the east, the most impressive comics culture of them all began to form. In Japan, comics were introduced mainly through US influences. In the 1950s, improved living standards boosted sales of the new comics magazines (as well as the book collections of comics published as serials in those magazines). The nation's complicated mix of reading standards meant the Japanese could develop a comics tradition unhindered by further imports from abroad. At the same time, this very same mix meant that the picture-filled comics pages were perceived as a direct way of communicating. The tie-in with the growing industry of Japanese film animation (often the stories started out as comics, then went to become TV animation) further added to its popularity.

In the 80s and 90s the Japanese comics industry continued to prosper on its own. Eventually its importance began to spread to abroad, where ailing comics markets needed new input to regain interest in the medium. Beginning with the US, Japanese comics were exported into English-speaking territories, with the big comics markets in continental Europe soon to follow. And at the turn of the century, manga (meaning comics in Japanese) were instrumental in changing the notion of what comics are far away from mainland Japan. //