History and Politics in French-Language Comics and Graphic Novels

CHAPTER THREE: Re-imaging Heroes / Rewriting History: The Pictures and Texts in Children’s Newspapers in France, 1939–45

44 Re-imaging Heroes / Rewriting History The PicTures and TexTs in children’s newsPaPers in France, 1939–45 IntroductIon: “the Beast Is dead!” When Paris was liberated in the summer of 1944, a beautifully illustrated, twenty-nine-page, hardback comic book about the war appeared on the market seemingly overnight. This publication, La bête est morte! [The Beast is Dead!] (Calvo, Dancette, and Zimmermann 1944; 1995), presented a pictorial account of a world war among animals who represented all the major players of the Second World War. Thanks to a facsimile published by Gallimard in 1995, this bande dessinée with its extremely positive vision of the French and their actions during the Occupation is more familiar to a wide audience today than most publications available to the young people in France in the late 1930s and early 1940s. According to this story, France’s enemies were barbarian hordes from other countries (with Hitler as the big bad wolf, Mussolini as a hyena, and the Japanese as yellow monkeys), all evil came from outside the borders of the homeland, ordinary French citizens were docile rabbits and industrious squirrels, and their savior was a great white stork wearing a Lorraine cross. Although de Gaulle and the chaPTer Three —clare TuFTs 45 Pictures and Texts in Children’s Newspapers Resistance are glorified through the symbolism of purity and rebirth in the figure of the stork, the story barely touches on the subject of collaboration. What is less well-known is that the juvenile press in France between 1939 and 1945 provided children and adolescents a regular diet of fact, fiction, and outright propaganda about the Germans, the Vichy regime, the Allies, and eventually, the Resistance. The present study looks at a selection of those publications, focusing in particular on the messages they passed on to their readers and the heroes they created for them as they evolved over the course of the war to reflect the prevailing political ideology. Out of the more than two dozen papers that were available between 1939 and 1945, we will consider seven: three weeklies available in France on the eve of the war that migrated south to unoccupied France (Le Journal de Mickey, Jumbo, and Coeurs vaillants ); three papers started in Paris during the Occupation; and the weekly Vaillant, born with the Liberation and filled with realistic images of fighting and resistance.1 French comIcs PuBlIcatIons on the eve oF the occuPatIon Le Journal de Mickey revolutionized the juvenile press in France when it was launched in 1934, and it soon became the standard by which other French weeklies were measured.2 Children were easily seduced by the four vividly colored pages (out of eight) filled with classic American strips designed strictly to entertain, and by 1939 the average weekly print run had reached an astounding 365,000 copies.3 The issue of Le Journal de Mickey published on May 12, 1940—a mere thirty-four days before the Germans invaded Paris—is an excellent example of all that distinguished this paper from most of its competitors (figure 1). The colors of the front and back pages and center spread were so vivid and the ink of such high quality that they are still clear and crisp today, and those pages were dedicated exclusively to American comic strips (rebaptized with French names).4 The noncolor pages contain a variety of rubrics and a message from the fictitious “Onc’ Léon” [Unc’ Leon] to all members of the Mickey Club.5 Onc’ Léon’s messages tended to instruct readers on how to be a good student or an honest person, but the message of May 12, 1940, talks about food shortages. This remark is the only indication that something is amiss in the daily lives of the young Mickey fans, but it is more an acknowledgment of an inconvenience rather than of the impending political crisis. 46 Clare Tufts FIg. 1. Le Journal de Mickey, May 20, 1940. 47 Pictures and Texts in Children’s Newspapers The Italian paper Jumbo was first published in France in 1935, a year after Le Journal de Mickey hit the market, but it did not became a top seller until its look was updated and its content was changed to include several popular American strips in 1939 (Crépin 2001: 49). On the eve of the war Jumbo was still focused primarily on entertainment, but it already...