Comics and Novelization A Literary History of Bandes Dessinées

Introduction. Comics-related novels

Comics and literature

A novel perspective on comics and adaptations

Comics novelization and the visual turn of literary writing

Two adaptation processes generating comics-related novels

Towards a literary history of bande dessinée

Chapter 1. Textual margins of early comics

How to verbalize a picture story?

Close reading: Voyages and Adventures of Dr Festus

Captions rewritten as a bridge over redrawn illustrations

Big Little Books and the French book market: a missed rendezvous

From captioned picture stories to serials-under-images

Mickey et Minnie, a precursor to the modern French junior novelization

Chapter 2. Enunciative issues of comics verbalizations

The literary adventures of Tintin

An issue of enunciative responsibility

Literary initiations to a visual universe

Close reading: The Adventures of Tintin

When comics fans write literary panels

From ekphrasis to fanfiction

Chapter 3. Why self-novelize a comic strip?

The illusion of a deeper reading experience

Comics artists and literary illustration

A logic of supplement

Close reading: Acknowledgment of Murders, Ric Hochet’s First Case

From graphic to literary novels

A logic of substitution

Chapter 4. The comics heroes’ childhood told to children

How to relate the past of comics heroes

The literary prequels of French comics characters

Multiple childhoods of a Belgian-Japanese comics heroine

Close reading: The Froth of Dawn, the First Adventure of Yoko Tsuno

Comics-related French junior novelizations

When a comics character writes his own autobiography

Conclusion. Reading novels as comics novelizations

Comics on the threshold of literary texts

Comics as a frame for multimodal storytelling

Comics in the factory of literary writing

Reading novels as comics scripts

References

Comics-related fiction

Other primary sources

Secondary criticism

Index

Biography

Benoît Glaude is a researcher at Universiteit Gent and a visiting lecturer at Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. He has published several books about French-speaking comics, including his PhD on comics dialogues (La Bande dialoguée, 2019), as well as a volume on novelization in children’s literature (Les Novellisations pour la jeunesse, coedited with Laurent Déom, 2020).

"The relationship between comics and literature is not one-way traffic: literature is not only adapted in graphic novel format, it also owes a lot to the world of comics, appropriating its forms and themes in many ways. Relying on a strong theoretical framework and robust case studies, Benoît Glaude’s trail-blazing study discloses this less known but vital dimension of intermedial connections in modern transmedia culture."

Jan Baetens, KULeuven, Belgium

"The meticulous research and clever thinking shown in this new work represents some of the most influential scholarship in the last decade. Benoît Glaude is a scholar of the highest order and his nuanced treatment is rigorous and powerful."

Hugo Frey, University of Chichester, UK

"Up until now, novelizations had attracted little academic interest. Benoît Glaude’s compelling study shows the interest of looking into this little-known corpus of texts adapting comics into literature. Nourished by fascinating case studies, his book considerably renews our approach to transmedia cultures and opens up a field of primary importance in our understanding of the history of the ninth art."

Sylvain Lesage, Université de Lille, France

"This remarkable work of scholarship brings a new perspective and sharp analytical insights to the study of transmedia adaptation, while providing a master class in the close reading of some famous comics alongside the fascinating and little-known novels that they have engendered."

Ann Miller, University of Leicester, UK