From the agricultural crisis to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, through drugs and Russia, no current topic escapes the documentary comic, a genre that attracts new authors, such as Hugo Clément, who seek to reconcile education and relaxation.
Many albums will be released this autumn, in time for the BD Quai des Bulles festival from October 24 to 26 in Saint-Malo (Ille-et-Vilaine) and will be placed under the Christmas tree in two months.
Among these news is that of the journalist Hugo Clément, The paradox of abundance (Dargaud), presented as “an investigation into the silent ravages of agribusiness”, co-written with Vincent Ravalec and drawn by Dominique Mermoux.
“I love the comic format because, like many people, I retain information better in visual form,” Hugo Clément, who had already published a graphic novel in 2023, explains to AFP.
“Discuss topics in detail”
The comic also allows it to be “multichannel”: “As I am very present on social networks and traditional television, I can potentially reach 100% of the population by adding the edition.”
Like Hugo Clément, another star of the network, Hugo Travers, also launches into comic stories with HugoDecrypts in Russiaan album created with screenwriter Kris and illustrator Kokopello that will be released on November 4.
The album features the YouTuber meeting, with a journalist, the great personalities of Russian history so that “the past sheds light on the present” in the context of the war in Ukraine.
“Comic books allow us to deal with topics in depth, in a way that is accessible to everyone and with a flexibility that we have less in video. Furthermore, the book is a beautiful object that remains,” explains its editor, Allary.
“I really like leaving a comic lying on a table and sharing it,” says Hugo Clément.
Phenomenal success
The authors hope to repeat the phenomenal success of two graphic documentaries in recent years. The first, the world without end (Dargaud), about climate change, by Christophe Blain (drawing) and Jean-Marc Jancovici (text), has reached one million albums sold since 2021, according to the publisher.
The second is Jerusalema thick 250-page book on the history of the holy city, with the historian Vincent Lemire as the text and Christophe Gaultier as the drawing, of which more than 350,000 copies have been sold.
“There is really a great appetite on the part of a public that has little time to read and for whom comics are less scary than an essay,” says Laurent Muller, editorial director of Arènes BD.
Interest multiplies when current events intervene. Launched in autumn 2022, Jerusalem saw its sales skyrocket after the Hamas attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023 and the start of the war in Gaza, which once again put the Palestinian-Israeli conflict at the center of concerns.
“The theme of the album is important, but a good comic is above all a good scriptwriter and a good designer,” recalls Laurent Muller, who indicates that he spent two years looking for authors capable of turning the best-seller into a comic. The secret life of trees..
Success is sometimes unexpected, like the album. Green algae, the forbidden history (La Revue Dessine/Delcourt), which tells how the Breton coast was infested by agro-industrial pollution.
But, in a saturated comics market, with more than 7,000 albums published a year, there are many disappointments, especially because the profitability threshold of a documentary comic is higher than that of a traditional comic.
This fall, the albums Drugs, a global history (Delcourt), How much does a bee cost? (Point Nemo), sky planet (Dunod Chart), Kennedy(s) (Glénat), altitude sickness (La Revue Dessine) or the fourth and final volume of Sapiens (Albin Michel) will thus try to stand out from the crowd.
Source: BFM TV
