Abstract
" Comics in the year 2000 ? I think, I hope, that it will (at last !) have acquired the right to be quoted [...] that it will have become a means of expression in its own right, like literature or cinema. Perhaps - undoubtedly - it will have found its Balzac. A creator who, gifted both graphically and literarily, will have composed a true work ", declared Hergé on January 20 1969. This hope has more than come true.
For decades, comics didn't even have a name, but that doesn't mean they didn't exist. It was referred to as picture stories or illustrés. Nor did it have a history. Associated with childhood and entertainment, it was published in ephemeral media. Few authors ever made it into print.
The recognition of comics was first and foremost the work of collectors, eager to rediscover the series of their childhood and nurturing the myth of a golden age : each generation wanted to celebrate the works it had grown up with. To make up for its bad reputation, people tried to find glorious ancestors, from the Lascaux caves to the Bayeux tapestry.
Things have changed over the last few decades with the development of the graphic novel, the feminization of a world that for too long had been male-dominated, the interest shown in original plates, the opening up to non-fiction... But the contemporary recognition of comics as the ninth art form is not without its ambiguities.
