Intermediality in French-Language Comics and Graphic Novels ed. by Jan Baetens, Hugo Frey and Fabrice Leroy (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Intermediality in French-Language Comics and Graphic Novels ed. by Jan Baetens, Hugo Frey and Fabrice Leroy Patricia Geesey Baetens, Jan, Hugo Frey, and Fabrice Leroy, eds. Intermediality in French-Language Comics and Graphic Novels. UP of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2022. ISBN 978-1-946160-89-8. Pp. xxix + 299. In their introduction to this fine collection of thirteen individual chapters (grouped into five sections that address different mediums), the editors highlight the complementarity of comic studies to the field of intermediality studies. The introduction helpfully addresses theories and applications of intermediality, or the “use of different signs or types of signs within a single medium” (xi), presented in previous critical works. The essays of this well-illustrated volume explore “the relations or interconnections between the modalities of expression and representation used in bande dessinée and that of other media” (xvii). The thirteen chapters provide close readings of other media or other forms of representation including reportage, film, literature, video games, memory studies, music, painting, and photography appearing in French-language comics and graphic novels. The editors note that intermediality is already a recognized aspect of comic art; furthermore, an intermediality-based approach to the study of comics allows for a useful balance between theoretical speculation and case-study-based close reading (xii). The essays in the collection strike such a balance in analyzing intermediality in bande dessinée in new and thoughtful ways, looking at forms of hybridity, as well as narrative, enunciative, and structural innovations that reference other mediums. In “Part One: Comics and Cinema,” three essays present detailed analyses of comic art and cinematic intermediality. The chapter on Greg Shaw’s Travelling Square District by Livio Belloï, suggests that Shaw’s unique publication “could be labeled as a ‘para-cinematic’ work, to the extent that this album applies its mechanics and reveals its actual stakes only in relation to or in proximity with cinema” (10). Tamara Tasevska’s essay “Godard’s Contra-Bande: Early Comic Heroes in Pierrot le fou and Le livre d’image,” posits Godard’s referencing of Les Pieds Nickelés as “an explicitly historical, political, and ethical critique that comments on the norms of production, distribution, and circulation of images in artistic practices in the modern period” (37). The six chapters contained in “Part Two: Comics, Photography, and the Photonovel,” and “Part Three: Comics, Reportage, and Memory,” present valuable studies of documentary and photography, including Michelle Bumatay’s “BD Reportage or Exotic Travel Journal? L’Afrique de papa and the Intermedial Gaze;” Charlotte F. Werbe’s “Remediating the Documentary: Photography and Drawn Images in Mickey au camp de Gurs;” and Renée Altergott’s “Mediated Martyrdom in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.” Parts Four and Five of the collection cover intermediality in comics in relation to other artistic traditions such as music (Mark McKinney’s chapter on songs and music of French colonialism in the Maghreb); Pop Art (Hugo Frey’s study of Hergé’s L’Affaire Tournesol); and even video gaming (Ana Oancea’s “Salammbô [End Page 195] in the Third Degree: From Novel to BD to Video Game”). This volume presents insightful, multi-layered readings of bandes dessinées and graphic novels using other mediums to create new and innovative modes of visual and narrative communication. [End Page 196] Patricia Geesey University of North Florida Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French