It might not capture all the depth of what it really is but at least everyone understands.
Somehow I still prefer those kind of comics and korean / japanese comics than those by DC / Marvel (they look technically marvellous, with their computer graphics, but still pale compared to the non-US ones).
It's interesting to see how US evolved very different from European.
Tiny anecdote, France was quite aware of US comics (including Disney) and I read that there was some anti US reactions to this. Some magazines started as an effort to make more french stories (leftist, ecology). See PIF Magazine, which was funded by the French Communist Party (no joke). Even Asterix is said to be influenced a bit by US super heroes, hence the magic potion giving super powers.
The style and humor was different though.
So my answer would be .. no. US comics = Disney + Marvel + DC. I actually struggle to remember anything else. I'd be happy to know more though..
Also, I had no idea Ghost World was a comic, neither The Walking Dead..
Oh and lastly, not comic per se, but cartoons were a staple of US drawing culture. WB, toons, even the simpsons to an extent.
Frank is by Jim Woodring. It's hard to describe.
Frank does look odd.
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3...
If we're just focusing on the modern meanings, I'd say the two are about as close to perfect translations of each other as you could ask for.
It's quite interesting to observe then all the changes that happened between the multiple publication of the same story: https://tintinomania.com/tintin-dans-ses-cases
I’m in Berlin since a few years now and one of the main thing I miss are places where I can go and read good comics, that’s not really something as developed here, majority of people I meet don’t even know that’s a thing.
As a contrast, in Switzerland or France I can go to any Fnac store and spend a Saturday afternoon reading comics from a huge set of artists.
If you’re in Berlin check out Dussmann if you haven’t already (it’s hard to miss …). It’s nowhere near as well stocked as an average book shop in France but it does probably have the largest collection of BDs of any shop in Berlin.
Speaking of broadening people conception of BDs, I highly recommend people to have a look at La Revue Dessinée, a quarterly news magazine in BD https://www.larevuedessinee.fr
I don't know, that's not the way I see it personally. I see roman graphiques as more experimental concerning the narration, art, even how the actual book is produced (experimenting with different type of paper, different format) where traditionnal bandes dessinées have more strict codes they follow. So yes it can feel a bit more serious in some way but you also find weird and funny things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphic_novel
I read A Contract with God and some other of Eisner's stuff lately, e.g. The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the version of the "To be, or not to be" speech in Comics and Sequential Art - just awesome.
The word «bande dessinée» is also the hyperonym for all the comics genres, although connoisseurs usually don't use it for «Comics» or «Manga».
Of course there are massive cultural differences between American-style comics and the Belgian/French kind but it's also true for many other art forms and we don't feel the need to come up with a different name every time.
I suppose there's a precedent with Japanese comics that are usually called "mangas" but at least that's short and easily pronounceable by your average anglophone. "Bande dessinée" will be painful both to pronounce and to write (as you showcase yourself, you forgot the accent and the feminine -e at the end of dessinée). I guess you could borrow the common shorthand "BD" (pronounced bédé).
Americans seem to have mostly settled into accepting this contradiction, with some incredibly unfunny and serious stuff being published as "comics". There's also the term "graphic novel", which sometimes only applies to stories first published as a book , rather than a series of monthly pamphlets, and also still sometimes has people saying "are they full of explicit porn or something?" as a misinterpretation of the "graphic" part.
Another term I've seen bandied around is "sequential art".
There is no implication that "comic books" are comedic in modern American culture. You're over-focusing on the etymology of a term that has since come to mean something quite different.
> Americans seem to have mostly settled into accepting this contradiction, with some incredibly unfunny and serious stuff being published as "comics"
This is merely how language evolves. We park on driveways. "Fat chance" indicates, in fact, a very slim one. Suitcases are a thoroughly incorrect way to store or transport suits, unless you like creasing them. Civil wars, aren't. Comic books are rarely comedic.
We speak in customary meaning, not based on overly literal analysis of component words.
I make comics.
I have spent a lot of time reading about the history of the medium.
I have opinions about the terms used for it, and how they have shaped the medium in the past, and how their meanings have changed.
This conflict between the term we use for this art form in America and the ways it shapes what we think "a comic book" can be was an important discussion for comics creators to have had, as the medium grew and changed. Comics has been a medium seen as only suited for children for much of its American lifespan; it's only in the eighties that this began to change, with best-selling work by creators who would tear you a new one if you called their "graphic novel" a "comic book" because Comics Were For Kids and they were making work that was distinctly Not For Kids. (In the sixties, folks making works distinctly Not For Kids mostly called them "comix", and there are still creators who favor that term for their work because they feel a connection to that particular horny, counter-culture kind of energy. In the nineties, Scott McCloud floated "Sequential Art" as an umbrella term, but it never really stuck, even my copy of his later book "The Sculptor" says "graphic novel" on the back.)
The diversity of literal translations of other terms for "stories told as sequential pictures, often with words" is worth reflecting on, especially if you have devoted a significant chunk of your life to the medium like I have. Were the French more open to adult work than Americans because their term for the medium didn't include implications about the content? Or is it just that Americans are weird and uptight?
And on the other side of the world, a literal translation of "manga" is "whimsical/impromptu pictures" and Japanese comics sure grew up a lot faster than American comics - but on the other hand, the sixties saw the coining of the term "gekiga", which literally translates to "dramatic pictures", and was promoted by... creators who wanted to mark their work as being distinct from kid-friendly manga. The term has faded, they're all just "manga" now for the most part (to the best of my knowledge, I am not exactly up to the minute on the current manga scene), but the way this parallels the period of distaste for the literal meaning of "comic book" is pretty interesting! This is a thing people making Serious Work in a medium whose name has connotations of being silly need to grapple with.
Of course, there was also Frederic Wertham and his 1954 book "Seduction of the Innocent", which lead to the creation of the Comics Code. Which essentially set back acceptance of the medium as something you could tell adult stories in for a generation, and it's only in the past couple decades that "comics" have been something it wasn't considered kinda childish for an American adult to read, outside of the subculture of comics aficionados. France had their own crackdown on Immoral BD around the same time, but embraced adult work a lot faster. Did their lack of a term that inherently marked the medium as frivolous help? Maybe it really is that Americans are weird and uptight.
Perhaps we have finally arrived at the point where we can call the overall medium "comics" without ever worrying about the fact that the word originally referred to the comedic content found in much of the form. And that's pretty cool! But the literal meaning of the name has only recently stopped being a thing creators felt a need to really engage with, and the alternative terms still have a life as a cue to booksellers and librarians that they should probably double-check the contents before reflexively shelving a "graphic novel" in the kid's section.
tl;dr: i make comics, and the literal meaning of these words is an important part of the three strands of the global history of this medium.
* Obviously not similar in political terms, but similar in that it's about a Western man who writes comics, trying to work in an Asian country and fit in a sometimes impenetrable culture. But if you want political, there's also Igort's Russian Notebooks.
Unfortunately the book was terrible. Deslisle was so condescending and disrespectful to the people he was covering that it was painful to read. And he clearly had no concept of how to broach, well, journalism. For example, there's one scene where he essentially interrogates a woman who works for him about whether she really believes "all the propaganda". She nervously agrees, then politely excuses herself from the room, and the author uses this to "show" how brainwashed and uncritical these people are, not realizing that this is a completely inappropriate setting for the conversation given the power imbalance, and not bothering to consider that she may not have been telling him the truth.
I'm honestly struck by the sheer awfulness of Deslisle's tactics here. He put a woman and three generations of her entire family at risk just for his own personal greed.
Or she could have assumed, quite reasonably, that Deslisle was a dumb foreigner who could blurt out what she said to whatever person, out of ignorance.
There's another horrible bit near the end where Deslisle is on a tour where they describe alleged torturing of Koreans by US soldiers, and Deslisle thinks (sorry, the bad translation is mine) "our tourist guide was beautiful, and after hearing so many descriptions of torture, I began to imagine myself as a US soldier practicing new torture methods of my own invention on her".
I was speechless after reading that, my little remaining sympathy for Deslisle completely evaporating.
In contrast, Igort and his Japanese Notebooks seem to treat the Japanese with respect, even when they do things that seem strange or unappealing to him (like the stressful work environment of manga artists).
The term Graphic Novel was invented in the US initially to describe comic books which contained a single self-contained story - as opposed to newspaper comic strips and superhero periodicals with never-ending storylines. So it is a subset of comics, which are marketed differently.