Drawing France: French Comics and the Republic

In France, Belgium, and other Francophone countries, comic strips—called bande dessinee or “BD” in French—have long been considered a major art form capable of addressing a host of contemporary issues. Among French-speaking intelligentsia, graphic narratives were deemed worthy of canonization and critical study decades before the academy and the press in the United States embraced comics.

The place that BD holds today, however, belies the contentious political route the art form has travele...