America’s Portrayal in European Comic Books
By Hervé St-LouisJun 1, 2009 - 23:54
The Europeans have a love hate relationship with everything American. They at once love the United States, deem it the country of freedom, entrepreneurship and the country that saved Europe from the devastating wars of the 20th Century. Yet, America continues to be a mystery and something to be treated as contempt, like that little brother that tagged along with you when you were a teenager. You don’t hate him, of course, but he doesn’t have your maturity and frankly, he’s embarrassing.
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Europe’s relation to the United States is similar. The Americas offer a great landscape for Europeans. American cities are larger than life compared to the typical European city, except for a few megalopolises like London and Paris. Its skyscrapers are stuff of legends. Americans have customs and a culture that is considered exotic by Europeans. There is truthfulness about the United States which is difficult to decipher in the multi-layered European way of being, where a yes doesn’t always mean a yes, and a no is as confusing. The Europeans are constantly in awe of the frankness and genuineness of Americans. But they also like to use this as a criticism, meaning Americans are less cultured and less refined.
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Looking at some comic books featuring the United States, there are a few themes that stand out. The cowboy and the Western, for example, have captured the imagination of European cartoonists for decades. Two very famous cowboys are Lucky Luke and Jean-Michel Charlier’s and Jean Giraud (Moebius) Blueberry. Lucky Luke was created by Maurice de Bevere (Morris) in 1946 in a story published by Le Journal de Spirou. He was cool, didn’t speak much but could shoot faster than his shadow. While Lucky Luke may not have become an icon of American culture, in Europe for generations, he has come to symbolize what the United States are. It’s a land of pioneers and heroic figures building a society in a hostile environment. The Europeans, although they won’t admit it, secretly envy this land.
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Sergeant Blueberry, another such character created by Belgian Charlier and Frenchman Moebius, is about a cavalry man involved in conflicts with local Indians. Blueberry’s stories are more adult in tone than Lucky Luke and were a direct evolution of the European comic book culture and industry faced with the leap of age of an entire generation in May 1968. No longer cutesy stories like those in Lucky Luke enough to sustain this industry. Yet, popular themes based on American culture could still be found and used to entertain readers.
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But there has been a change related to globalization in how Europeans treat American themes in their comic books. Nowadays, series aimed at all ages, like Les Blondes, Young Ronins and Hero Academy borrow American popular culture icons, such as reality television and the cult of the physique and super heroes, only to adapt them to local European settings. Hence, the heroes of these new comic books, made to appeal to a younger audience, look more uniform to American comic book standards and culture, because the cues they use have become standardized in youths in both Europe and the United States. They even use a English wordings in titles and the texts of the comic books. It’s an interesting development where American culture has become internalized by current European cartoonists and is a far cry from the romanticism of series like Indian Summer by Hugo Pratt and Milo Manara. In that series, about the early settlers and their relationships with natives. As close as Pratt and Manara tried to make that series feel authentic, it was always an external view of American society deeply influenced by the similarly titled song which served as the inspiration for the comic book.
Last Updated: Jan 7, 2012 - 7:41
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I don't know where you are from but I think you have to live outside the USA to understand how closely reality shows are associated to american television.
@Hervé: The list of american heros in euro comics could be really long and I agree with you that they represent certain myths European have about the USA.
The same can be said by the use of english, or reality TV, or hip hop, or whatever you come up with: they're part of the culture of the new internet generation, and it's even easier to spot the influence in other media. (And I must agree with the comment that reality TV is not american by any means, I always think about it as this weird Dutch invention) One can import aspects of another's culture without much second meanings (what does the US embracing of japanese media means? do they have some kind of victors complex over WW2? you can make nice pseudo-psychological arguments there too)
The fact that much of US culture spread to Europe (and every other country in the world) is undeniable, but that hardly server as a justification for the platitudes about love hate relationships and how every European as an American inside... There are many interesting things to say about the relationship of Europeans and Americans (both ways) but this article seems to me as a very shallow argumentation from someone that generally strikes me as very good critic.
(sorry for the abrupt answer, but as an European living for a few years in the US, I'm pretty sensitive to the all to common simplifications and stereotyping that American have on us. It's annoying, depressing and I find that they rarely are aware of them, as they do it)
cheers
As someone that was raised on Lucky Luke's and Asterix's, I do appreciate the fact that you're covering these comics that very few people care about this side of the Atlantic.
A further thought on theme, is that apart from Westerns, of which you mentioned a few, but many more could be mentioned, it might be more interesting to analyze some of the other American-themed European work, not so connected with these genre. I must confess I can't think of many of those, but it might be an interesting project.
Cosey has "Orchidea" and maybe a few others. Loustal has "New York/Miami" and a few Jazz related things. There's "Los Angeles" from Bilal, "Road to America" from Baru... There's definitely many other's but I can't remember that many from my collection and some of these have a definitely movie inspired theme.
It's funny that is not easy for me to think of a book where American characters are chosen specifically to be used as charicatures for villains/cowards/incompetents while it's fairly common to see that in manga or in the US with Europeans (specially French). They mus exist, as that's probably a universal thing, but I just can't think of any right now.
Oh dear... The belief that the USA "Saved" Europe in WW2 particularly is a misconception perpetuated mostly by Americans themselves; The USA only grudgingly entered the European War when Germany declared war on them.
It is an insult to the memories of the many citizens of the UK, The Commonwealth, the USSR and the many displaced Europeans who escaped to Britain to fight the Nazi threat.
Every country played their part, and were it not for the resistance of Europeans at a time when the US were either ignoring the situation or supporting the Germans, the USA may have found itself at the last, alone and powerless to stop the Axis powers, who would have possessed every other inhabited continent.
And as for later wars... remember Srebrenica?
A perfect example of the gulf between the US' belief in their military authority supremacy, and the actual reality.
You are right that the United States did not "free" Europe during the two world wars, but to discount their contributions or dilute them because they went in "grudgingly" is not correct.
Having studied this period of history a lot and even had to write essays about the American military contribution to the world in grad one of grad classes, I know fully that to belittle the military might of the US and its influence in the two world wars is a mistake. The Americans did tip the balance of powers against the AXIS and the continental allies in the two world wars. It is not a myth.
About the American contribution to the Balkan conflict of the 1990s, I had whole seminars dedicated to that topic alone! If it were not for the American presence in Yugoslavia, the conflict would have degenerated as the Europeans wanted an opportunity to show that they could fix a problem in their backyards, yet failed miserably to influence the Serbs. It was when the Americans showed up and flex their muscles and showed used their Air Force and and army as a deterrent and in plain view that the Serbs would calm down.
Nothing the Europeans had done before that has had any effect on the Serbs. The Americans - and I am a Canadian saying so - made a difference and continue to do so today all across the world. One can criticize them for many thing, but in the end, their have their heart and values in the right place.
But one thin is true...somehow, its more interesting for europeans, because the myth mix with the history, making mitological archetypes become real. We cant difference where the old americans from 19th century end and where the John Ford's characters begings...
