ABSTRACT
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a new force emerged on the French-language comics scene. Maghrebi-French cartoonists raised in France by immigrant parents – cartoonists such as Farid Boudjellal, Larbi Mechkour (Mechkour and Boudjellal 1985), Rachid N’Haoua, Rasheed and Sabeur D. (also known as Sabeurdet) ( El building 1994) – began to bring a distinctively post-colonial voice to this popular cultural form. In March 1985, the Centre Culturel Algérien (1992) in Paris held an exhibition on comics that brought together these new artists alongside well-known Algerian cartoonists such as Kaci (1994), Saladin (1979) and Slim (1995, 1996). 2 The new Maghrebi-French artists’ talent gained recognition in mainstream French society: for example, in 1987 Boudjellal was featured on the cover of Le Point – along with other rising Beur 3 stars – and his comic book Ramadân (Boudjellal 1996b) won the “Résistances” prize (sponsored by Témoignage Chrétien; the jury was presided over by Danielle Mitterrand) at the Angoulême national comics festival in 1989. The post-colonial tide in comics also included the Caribbean artist Roland Monpierre who has published comics on Caribbean-related themes (Monpierre 1986, 1988). 4 Monpierre was a member of the ground-breaking comics-producing trio known as Anita Comix, whose other members were Farid Boudjellal and José Jover (Anita Comix 1984).
