My last trip to Paris I spent a long time in these "comic book" stores. They are absolute goldmines with passionate and knowledgeable staff and incredible selections.
I agree that sneering at Comic books as "not the culture we wanted" is BS. Culture is culture. French and Belgian comic books like "Asterix et les Gaulois" or "Tintin" or "Gaston La Gaffe" etc... are great works of comedy and art just like anything else.
But mine was also the pre-Internet era, where we'd spend small fortunes on comics and magazines because we had nothing to offset the boredom. With always-on Internet, that's just not a reality now.
Right now I really love PTSD by Guillaume Singelin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix
https://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2014/03/asterix-and-the-bl...
I guess they are unhappy about teens buying manga? Real question is why French comic book artist aren't selling in Japan? There's a lot of Japanese tourists in France, that doesn't sound too far-fetched.
(I personally find manga to be excessively drawn-out, even more than American comics, seemingly in order to sell more books. But that's me.)
Dickens was paid by the word. This is why "Tale of Two Cities" is a wonderful book with a gigantic pile of garbage in the middle.
(To be fair: The middle of "Tale of Two Cities" has some of my favorite scenes, but, boy, howdy, could it use an editor to chop out about 2/3 of it)
If it's independent stores, then I think that qualifies as a local enterprise hit hard by COVID, and fits in the spirit of the scheme, maybe even national bookstores can be considered thusly, too.
If they can give the money to Amazon, though, then maybe there's an issue.
I honestly just thought of it as an interesting article about what happens when you do the thing they describe. Not any particular judgment.
Here is an example:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maus
Yes… this is definitely art in my book.