(À Suivre) overseas : the transatlantic circulation of the French graphic novel

After the success met by La Ballade de la mer salée in 1975, the Belgian company Casterman considered a decisive move towards adult bande dessinée. Known at the time mostly for publishing Tintinand a handful of kids' comics albums, Casterman perceived a shift in readerships long before other mainstream publishers (Moine 2018). Despite its lack of experience in periodicals, Casterman launched the magazine (ÀSuivre), to provide for the artists a space to experiment, and to build a catalog of albums. (ÀSuivre) [(to be continued...)] aimed at bridging the gap between comics and literature, by specializing in long-format black and white graphic narratives, usually divided into chapters. These narratives broached new themes and new genres in bande dessinée, and the magazine soon became one of the hotbeds of the French-speaking graphic novel(Dürrenmatt 2013). Based on the examination of the Casterman archives in Tournai, this paper aims to examine the circulations of the Franco-Belgian graphic novel in the United States. The archival papers of the company provide a unique vantage point into the first generation of French-speaking graphic novels in the1970s and 1980s. Whereas the importance of specific authors and works is now well-known (Leroy 2018), we would like to stress the role of other key workers in the success of the graphic novel as a transnational for such as foreign rights editors (Brienza and Johnston 2016). Examining the exploitation rights transfers sheds a new light on the international circulation of the graphic novel. It shows the importance of (ÀSuivre) as a provider of avant-garde content for magazines such as Raw or Heavy Metal. Analyzing (À Suivre) from the contracts and the company archives allows for a better understanding of the globalized comics scene of the 1970sand1980s, and the inadequacies between French-speaking graphic novels and the American market.