Topo magazine uses comics to tell the news to French teens

Thanks so much! My kid needs to learn French (Montreal) but the way they teach it here is awful and I'm afraid turning her off the language. The only thing she really liked so far was a bande dessinée called "Lou". I'll give these others a try before the education system turns her off la belle langue forever

Yeah, I came here to post this. I still have all my back issues. They are great, and my kids understand the world a little better because it is accessible to them.

Seems very heavily… leaning for sure. And interestingly, you can tell at first glance without reading any of the contents — it's the artstyles. I'm not sure what it is exactly, I wish I could put a finger on it, but there's just something about most political cartoons which makes them give away their alignment instantly (either way).

It's especially obvious if you look at the Authors page [0]. I don't think anyone can be in doubt as to where most of these artists stand. As a group for sure, but even the individual avatars when viewed isolated. This is somehow fascinating to me.

[0] https://thenib.com/authors/

What are the quotation marks meant to convey?

Unless you’re physically present for an event, literally all news you can possibly get about that event is a generated depiction of it.

I once visited a photography exhibition about propaganda in Nazi Germany.

Photos look much realer than most drawings/paintings so people assume what they're depicting must be real. Since the technology was new, most people just believed it, and so the Nazis could sell them anything as the truth.

In Spain we also have a magazine like this called "El Jueves" which is also very left-leaning like this one.

I suppose such magazines exist in every country?

Cartooning does involve editing reality and giving it a personal interpretation, yes.

Like writing, framing a picture, or whatever that is not being there.

Of course it is and people recognize it as such and therefore their circulation is very low. So naturally they’re trying to get public funds to put it into schools and into defenseless kids heads through subversion.

They admit as much in the article, by stating that they want to strike a tone that is not too positive and not too depressing. It isn't a journalist's job to do either of those things.

A charitable take is that they want to be honest without disillusioning kids. They want kids to feel included in understanding current events, without making the world seem utterly hopeless (and thus inflicting a nihilistic world view).

An uncharitable take is that they are grooming activists. They don't want it to be too positive so kids feel an urge to right some wrong, and they don't want it too depressing so they think there's still some agency to be advocated for.

Oh thanks! Also in Italian topo means mouse.

But it is “place” in Greek, funny that it is different

In Italian. But in French, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/topo#Noun_3 sketch/rundown/short report/rough outline seems more likely the meaning in context here.

Maybe in an other language. But in French (and in this context) a "topo" is a summary or a synopsys.

I guess it comes from "topographie", a sort of map.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topolino .

Perhaps this is a connection to comics too.

Except for Musk, everyone seems stylistically fairly cute. The textile workers all are simply drawn but cute, and the cover with the reclined man is odd but he's still attractive. So I'm guessing the artist isn't a huge fan of Musk.

As much as the French consume manga and other Japanese culture including anime, I think this is a more typical Western style, audiences of which may find normal Japanese cuteness to be over-the-top.

I feel like historically french and belgium comic has a lot to do with caricature.

I remember reading a lot of comic where every character was actually ugly. The only exceptions were tintin and blake et mortimer (from my childhood comic selection obviously)

I am fed up with cute characters and similarly beautiful looking people. Give me characters with flaws, that's how most humans are

People in France who buy Comics/BD have a completely different aesthetic sense than manga buyers. There is almost no overlap, and manga buyers I know do not even register Comics/BD as an option. Comic artists are also usually very much against the manga aesthetics and seem to go for (imho) ugly designs to differentiate themselves.

I could never find flawlessness interesting in this kind of art.

It’s the style of European comics (bandes dessinées). To be even more precise, it’s a French-Belgium style. Those two countries have an awesome culture and history of "bandes dessinées" which is hardly comparable to manga or US comics. It’s much more fine humor and hidden criticism than heroes and incredible adventures.

Also, here it’s a magazine which will sometimes talk about hard or sad topics so I don’t think you want something too bright, a neutral style like shown here seems to be the most sensible choice.

You should take a look at the book Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. It's a fascinating book about how our brains interpret imagery through the study of comics. One of the best parts is when he explains how humans connect better with abstract imagery. For example, villains are often close to photorealistic while the characters the author wants us to identify with is often abstract. It's very counterintuitive and fascinating.

The "everybody is cute" art style that modern manga and anime converged on is very ugly. It tracks with the degeneration of the audience; there used to be content made for all sorts of audiences but now it's all made for weirdo manchildren. This has been a trend starting with Japan's economic stagnation and getting worse every year. Investing time and money in an anime or manga production is risky and the safest bet is to pander to the most reliable audience (the manchildren.)

Dept of characters?