The Visionary Art of Franco-Belgian Comics, 1930s to 1960s

Hidden within the millions of panels and magazine pages collected by Alain Van Passen, a devoted Belgian comics collector active from the earliest days of the comics clubs, lies a long-forgotten history of vibrant, surrealist, and even ’visionary’ images. His pristine collection, built over decades of searching and exchanging comics, offers unprecedented insight into the diverse trajectories of twentieth-century popular publishing. Focusing on comics magazines published between 1935 and 1965, this catalogue reveals a ’lost world’ of French and Belgian comics, as well as their translations and reworkings of American, British and Italian strips. Ten concise and colourful chapters introduce readers to the zany and fascinating pages and panels across genres such as humour, science fiction, history and adventure. Shedding light on often-forgotten or little-known artists, this volume traces a counter-history of French-language comics. Richly illustrated with largely unseen material, it offers the reader an introduction to the visionary art of French-language comics.

Contributing authors: Jan Baetens (KU Leuven), Benoît Crucifix (KU Leuven/Royal Library of Belgium), Felipe Muhr (KU Leuven/Ghent University), Eva Van de Wiele (Ghent University).

Hugo Frey is professor and director of the Institute of Arts and Humanities at the University of Chichester. He is a cultural and political historian who has published widely on visual culture.

Maaheen Ahmed is an associate professor of comparative literature at Ghent University specialized in comics and graphic novels, periodicals, children’s culture and intermediality.