Women Comics Authors in France and Belgium Before the 1970s: Making Them Invisible

The very masculine history of the comics world is often held to account for the small proportion of women among comics authors nowadays. However, when examining the Franco-Belgian illustrated magazines of the 1950s and 1960s, I discovered that 7% of authors were women, some of whom had started to work in the field in the 1930s. Hence, the history of comics has thus far ignored an entire population of authors who, though they were a minority, were nonetheless active. In this article, I attempt to retrieve the names and the careers of these post-war women comics authors, in order to understand t... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Kohn, Jessica
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
Verlag/Hrsg.: David Diallo
Schlagwörter: bande dessinée / auteures / dessinatrices / histoire culturelle / comics / women cartoonists / cultural history
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-27370725
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : http://rrca.revues.org/725

The very masculine history of the comics world is often held to account for the small proportion of women among comics authors nowadays. However, when examining the Franco-Belgian illustrated magazines of the 1950s and 1960s, I discovered that 7% of authors were women, some of whom had started to work in the field in the 1930s. Hence, the history of comics has thus far ignored an entire population of authors who, though they were a minority, were nonetheless active. In this article, I attempt to retrieve the names and the careers of these post-war women comics authors, in order to understand the process of invisibilization they underwent, which consisted mainly in restricting them to children’s illustrations. This context made it difficult to promote the emergence of a women's network and reference system in the world of Franco-Belgian comics. ; La faible présence actuelle des femmes parmi les professionnel.le.s de la bande dessinée est souvent expliquée par l'héritage presque uniquement masculin de ce médium. Pourtant, quand on dépouille les illustrés franco-belges des années 1950 et 1960, on constate que les auteures sont en fait déjà 7 % à exercer ce métier, certaines continuant d'ailleurs une carrière commencée dans les années 1930. L'histoire de la bande dessinée s'est donc construite en passant sous silence une population certes minoritaire, mais malgré tout active. Cet article cherche donc à retrouver les noms et retracer les carrières des auteures de bande dessinée de l'après-guerre, afin de comprendre un processus d'invisibilisation qui passe notamment par l'assignation à un style unique, celui de l'illustration pour enfants, et qui a rendu difficile l'émergence d'un réseau et d'un système de références véritablement féminin dans le monde de la bande dessinée franco-belge