Uneven Developments. Bande Dessinée, Rear-guard and Neo-Avant-Gardes

This chapter examines the irruption of avant-gardes in the context of twenty-first-century bande dessinee in French-language Europe. In particular, it considers their asynchronous and uneven development in comics: the emergence of avant-garde claims in the late twentieth century makes of bande dessinee an interesting and yet overlooked medium in the context of the neo-avant-gardes, complicating all too simple observations of their appropriation by the cultural industries.