12 - Picturing Post-industrial Societies in Franco-Belgian Comic Books

Summary

Abstract

Over the past twenty years, Franco-Belgian comic books have been subject to significant transformations with the emergence of non-fiction comic books, sociological studies adapted to comic book formats, and graphic novels. In this context of renewal, this chapter aims to explore how authors of Franco-Belgian comic books have portrayed the emergence of a postindustrial society. It is then possible to distinguish four topics underlined by these authors, namely the disappearance of the working class or its invisibility, the emergence of cultural regeneration schemes on former coal mining sites and, in particular, the Louvre-Lens project, the generational transition between fathers and sons, and finally the responses of the working class to de-industrialization.

Keywords: Franco-Belgian post-industrialization; comics; working class; resistance; visibility

This chapter will cast a light on specific Franco-Belgian comic books in which authors pinpoint de-industrialization or consider post-industrial society as a key component in their scenarios. I see them as distinct from postapocalyptic comics in which the emergence of a post-industrial society is a consequence of a disaster that deeply changes human society. The portrayal of an explicitly post-industrial world in comic books is restricted to a narrow circle of productions. Nevertheless, academic research on the aesthetics of de-industrialization has not yet considered comic books as sources to investigate how post-industrial landscapes and social relations are pictured in those landscapes. Here, I consider comic book series such as Le combat ordinaire by Manu Larcenet (Ordinary Victory, 2003–8), which focuses on the disappearance of the French working class, L’art du chevalement by Loo Hui Phang and Philippe Dupuy (The Art of a Mining Frame, 2013), Sortir de terre by Jean-Luc Loyer and Xavier Bétaucourt (Emerging from the Ground, 2018) about the cultural regeneration programme in Lens which included the opening of the Louvre Lens in 2012. With Les gueules noires (Black Faces, 2021), I analyse how the authors Gilles Zampano and Jack Domon humorously depict the decline of the coal industry through children's eyes. Finally, I examine how Louis Thellier in Johnson m’a tuer (Johnson Kills Me, 2014) and Benjamin Carle in Sortie d’usine (Leaving the Factory, 2021) portray the de-industrialization process from the workers’ point of view. Before proceeding to the exploration of how post-industrialism is pictured in these comic books, it is necessary to observe contemporary transformations in the editing process of comic books.