In 1837, Rodolphe Töpffer had this to say about his album Monsieur Jabot : "This little book is of a mixed nature. It consists of a series of drawings accompanied by one or two lines of text. The drawings, without the text, would have only an obscure meaning; the text without the drawings would mean nothing. The whole together forms a kind of novel, all the more original because it looks no more like a novel than anything else." Töpffer was convinced of the future of this new form of storytelling, but he could never have imagined the importance it would take on.
Oscillating between the press and the book, childhood and adulthood, caricature and realism, playing with boxes and strips, cutting and layout, phylacteries and onomatopoeia, the comic strip is a medium in its own right that neither cinema, video games nor the Internet have yet threatened. From Krazy Kat to Spirou et Fantasio, from Peanuts to Persepolis, from manga to graphic novels, the ninth art has already produced many masterpieces, but today it's more diverse and vibrant than ever.
