What is Bande DessiNoir?
Greetings Dieselfunkateers! I was always a HUGE fan of Bande Dessinée, the name for Franco-Belgian comics. When Heavy Metal magazine hit, it completely changed my life. Stories like ‘The Airtight Garage,’ ‘The Long Tomorrow,’ and ‘Exterminator 17’ completely altered my life. It wouldn’t be for a few years till I became aware that Heavy Metal was merely the american offshoot of Metal Hurlant. This European publication was started by a group of hotshot fantasy illustrators and cartoonists.
Now take the fact that I lived in the middle of a Cotton Field reading this stuff was amazing…particularly for the fact that they didn’t sell comics in Clarksdale MS beyond 1978. At the very least, it definitely made me unpopular in school:-)
I always wanted to see people of color depicted in such fantasy and science fiction scenarios. In fact, there was one obscure Heavy Metal installment done by a man of color, Ed Davis’ ‘A World Apart: The Golden City.’
I LOVED…
Jean Giraud’s ‘ARZACH’
Enki Bilal’s, ‘THE WOMAN TRAP’
Phillipe Druillet’s ‘LONE SLOANE: DELIRIUS’,
and Richard Corben’s ‘Den’
Even still, I wanted to see more. Which was about the time I realized I’d have to do it myself. More on that later.
IF you always wanted to see Afrocentric and afrofuturistic comics done with the level of craft and adventure present in fully painted bande dessinée…
Then what you want is…Bande DessiNoir
Then MATTY’S ROCKET IS BANDE DESSINOIR!
