Comic books are culture. Whether you like that or not is a matter of taste. Personally I absolutely love 'Gaston' and 'Asterix', but also like some other old school ones. The newer stuff I don't feel much connection with.
No accident that part of the world produced Herge and Mobieus and inspired Miyazaki.
Is that true though? Maybe some people in the government feel that way, but it sounds like the goal was just to allow teenagers to buy what they wanted. If they thought kids were going to spend it to go the opera or something, why wouldn't they have put more restrictions on it in the first place?
What? The French government isn't dumb. If they didn't want, teenagers to spend the pass money on BD, it would have been excluded. As is, I assume the French government is perfectly fine with French teenagers spending it on French produced entertainment in French stores.
> Envie d’aller au théâtre, voir un film ou un spectacle ? De prendre des cours de photo ? D’un roman ou d’un manga ? [emphasis mine]
Which roughly means
Would you like to go to the theatre, see a film or a show? Take some photography courses? Read a novel or manga?
If the French government didn't intend for the money to be used this way, they certainly haven't told the people designing the site that promotes it.
Tintin was gripping too, and arguably the greatest cultural icon to come from European comics.
In Spain we had a good comic culture from the 50s onwards, with perhaps one of the greatest exponents being Mortadelo y Filemón which had was hilarious and had some international exposure (I've seen it in German flea markets as Clever & Smart)
I agree that comics are culture too, but I can see how this will ruffle some feathers among people expecting that young kids would be buying thick tomes by Chateaubriand or attending Racine plays in droves.
This is a model of subsidy (vouchers, in essence) which some free-market economists can get behind as it still allows agency from individuals or markets. However what we're seeing is the very reason why others would staunchly oppose this kind of model...
There are a couple that immediately spring to mind, the one where he launches the gas container from the roof of his car, the 'running gag' about the contracts that never get signed and that surprise in fact do get signed and then are promptly shredded by the cat and the badly humored seagull that drops stuff on people.
And the parking meter wars, hilarious.
Interestingly the other comics I read were Phantom, Mandrake, Rip Kirby, Flash Gordon - available via a local publisher, Indrajal Comics [0], that were sent to us monthly (or was it weekly) via a subscription. Got introduced to all the *men much later.
Here is a (French, I hope you can read it, if not you'll have to scrounge for a translated version) sample:
"Gaston, bring me the last letter of insults from de Mesmaeker"
"I'm curious how long it will take him to retrieve that from his"
"mess...."
"err, thanks"
"Strange, he must have had it in hand by chance".
"Let's do a second test"
"Please fetch me the 4603rd response to the latest contest, it is ur"
"gent"
"Urr... thanks"
"That's not possible, I know the mess in his place"
"And the letter signed 'a new reader of 78'"
"It upsets me, it upsets me"
"And the message sent by that group of hippies"
"He's invented a new system for classification of documents"
"And look, in every piece there are tiny holes, it is a system based on micro-perforations"
"I love my cactus, all of the correspondence organized and visible"
Enjoy :)
It IS culture.