Actuel and the acclimation of US comix in France in the 1970s

Jean-Paul Gabilliet (1)

1 CLIMAS - Cultures et Littératures des Mondes Anglophones

From 1970 through 1975 the French journalist and editor Jean-François Bizot published Actuel, a monthly magazine dedicated to the post-May ‘68 era’s alternative youth culture. During its five-year run Actuel was a sounding-board of Bizot’s own fascination with the US counterculture, which he proceeded to propagate among French teenagers and young adults. One of the key elements in Actuel’s editorial identity was its consistent interest in US underground comics, in particular those of R. Crumb, featured in every issue and a couple of anthologies. Actuel also showcased a number of other significant comix creators (Gilbert Shelton, S. Clay Wilson, Greg Irons, Richard Corben, Dave Sheridan, Rick Griffin, Fred Schrier) and, by 1973, was the first French non-comic magazine to publish « all-comics issues » featuring American cartoonists as well as French beginners. Bizot was a key discoverer and promoter of the US underground comix scene by making it accessible in French to a broad readership who had no physical access to the comic books and/or could not read English. More broadly Actuel’s consistent emphasis on comic art as an “adult” medium laid the groundwork for the rise of French-made underground comic magazines (L’Écho des savanes, Métal Hurlant, Fluide glacial) in the first half of the 1970s. A quarter-century after US comics became de facto largely banned by law in 1949, the magazine thereby arguably participated in the opening of a new chapter in the history of French comics—a “re-Americanization” that functioned a transition between the post-World War II Franco-Belgian era and the 1980s heyday of album-format “bande dessinées pour adultes.”

Mots clés: Cultural & intellectual history; Comics Studies; French history

Domaines: Histoire

Jean-Paul Gabilliet. Actuel and the acclimation of US comix in France in the 1970s. 2019. ⟨hal-02275648⟩