Today's BD: Between Big Clash and Survival

Creating a comic series and generating a viable success is much hard to earned it right. It's also very harder to drawn correctly, let alone to master it. Back in 2016, there was a somehow Comic-Boom in my own nation, where copies of books selled anywhere. And then, it didn't took long (Maybe two years later) that some parents and also, feminists argued that several of these series contained lots of innapropriate and lewd segements on series that "supposed" to targeted youths. 

The history of Mortelle Adèle exemplify the kind of dominator and sadistic thing that will make the trio of equally-sadistic protagonists of Les Nombrils at pure angels. It also went to the creators to took all the ownership of the property by even launch their own book publishing for releasing the remaining of the series. But what do you teaching to youths when a little girl is a sadistic, hellish and bully brat who make lots of comeupance like burn the house cat to the microwave or sell... her own parents...?

...And from a time that Dupuis and others are drive crazy to incorporate another 14572839349th girl protagonist that likely pulled off from a drawer?

But nearly ten years later, it's as if this constant Boom has never happened. Two words become the opponents that the whole industry had to strike for bring viewers back to them: Mangas and... Netflix.

This is the Japanese artists who are become the most hot creators as late, with stories and arcs that went with a sense of continuity, characters who looks and speak to others like real people, (No 4th wall-breaking jokes like in America!) social commentary that went without an out-of-nowhere gag burden the dramatic parts and sure, lots of kickass action and adventures that are more larger-than-life. Netflix has listening them and that given things like Stranger Things and K-Pop Demon Hunters. Is the Francophone's comic could do achieved all these demands?

To say nothing that many series from them are more gratuitious and cynical than funny. Like a children's book series named Léon & Lena (Seen above) about siblings whom makes tons of pranks as they were Hamas terrorists. Who ever wanna be related to them?

There is just ONE series in the entire world, that still generate positive critics and were able to own a mass-marketed appeal by also own an interest to the more hardcore ones: Asterix the Gaul. This is the Bugs Bunny of the comic cartoondom, with over billion copies selled in the world, lots of Art-Books and Collectors issues that even in its Dargaud days, the Gaul and his bunch of buddies never actually earned it. We took this fame for granted, if in the older days of Uderzo/Gosciny, occasions to elevate the high-quality of the series on regular basis were more rarer.

And then, Asterix own a Netflix animated series, THAT YEAR! See where the influence of the platform came from which many of its peers keep to snubbed?

This is since three years that I searched myself on the creation of a newer project. Since that this Christine's Series 2 trilogy of stories went to an eventual end, the pleasure to working in these has never been the same. Pandemic weren't the cause of it. It's the snubbery of the industry to the average-class people. It's been uncomfortable to look of the Graphic Novel range without a sign of dimsay if they still act as they bullied those who work for the mainstream market, but then, drawn stick-figures characters for make them so, "adult" or "hip". That don't work.

This is where kids things like Agent Jean Lebon remains at succesful for younger viewers. Exit the pretention and faux-elitism that the usual graphic novel storage could offered. The creator, a certain Alex, has understood the basics of what a comic series have to work: Likable and adventurous characters. Jam-Packed action that went in all direction and a lot of charming humor. This is what my nephew usually read and where his parents (My sister and her unmarried husband) are been still strict with the usage of screenings and they don't even have any streamers at home! Kids have much busiest things to do than watch lots of TV trash!

And that in Europe, the artform's crisis persists over two decades later. We really reach a point of no-return if changes are not entirely done. Stopped the snubby and bully nature of graphic novels and thrown away the Anime clones on the mainstream sphere are certainly what may will help the whole structure of the artform to reach the maturity it currently need, if lately, things are not very bright there.

And for all these years I bragged the regression of the artform to bring back that level of Saturday-Morning-TV syndrome by shoot a live-action movie, no matter how horrendous went the full script! Now, this is been like watching a 30-minutes Infomercial we have all looked on the Paid-TV Channels of old.