Thursday, January 11, 2007  
Quebec Comics 2006

:: Posted by Bryan @ 1/11/2007 03:18:00 AM
BDQ 2006



Over at the BDQ forums, comics journalist and scholar Michel Viau has released his annual assessment of comics production in Quebec. Viau's Bilan BDQ 2006 (google translation) is along the lines of the report on the market in France released by Gilles Ratier last week. In discussing the number and type of bande dessinee published in Quebec, Viau in part answers the prayers of Bart Beaty from his discussion of the Ratier report at Comics Reporter, as well as my own question about numbers in Canada. Some of the distinctions Viau makes might seem confusing to readers outside Canada (for instance the anglo publisher D&Q is referred to as a publisher of Quebec comics/BDQ despite being basically a translator; ditto the publisher of French-language Garfield collections), but it's easy if you think of BDQ as "comics from Quebec" rather than "Quebecois comics" --that is, as a very broad category encompassing everything comics-related published in the province, which is what Viau's catholic article does.

Viau lists every album published (excluding zines and magazines) and includes a general discussion about genre, target audience, trends, etc. with tons of statistics. One of the issues the report makes clear is the general fragility of the publishing industry: although it has grown, many publishers last only a few years, statistcally. For the academic-minded, Viau also lists separately 5 books about comics published in 2006. What we don't really have are sales figures. C'est la vie! Still, a very thorough report!

My own rough translation of the first part of Viau's excellent overview:


In 2006, 26 Quebecois publishers released 86 albums of BD, in French and English, representing close to double the number of albums published in 2005. Indeed, the previous year, 19 publishers released a total of 44 albums. Five years earlier, in 2000, 16 publishers (of which half are no longer active) had published 35 albums. The production of 2006 thus represents an increase of 95% compared to that of 2005 and 146% compared to that of 2000.

A new publisher specializing in BD appeared in 2006 (Fichtre! with two titles), but one notices also the arrival of general practitioner publishers (Arion, Du Quebecois) or youth publishers (Boomerang) in the landscape of the BDQ. They join Les Intouchables and FouLire which had launched editions of BD in 2005 and which repeat themselves this year with a title each.

However, the largest ammount of 2006 production can be divided between four publishers. Thus, Drawn & Quarterly, La Pasteque, mecanique generale and Presses aventures, alone, published 54 albums, that is to say nearly two thirds of the annual production (63%). Among the other active publishers in 2006, one can note Les 400 coups (5 titles) and Le vent qui vente (4 titles).

Three quarters of the albums published in Quebec in 2006 are French language (75.5%), which maintains the average of the previous year (77%), but marks a light retreat vis-a-vis the year 2000, where 83% of the albums published were in French. Two of the albums published in English are the work of French-speaking publishers and in both cases, they are promotional albums. Only one bilingual work appeared in 2006, "Touche pas a ma planche, Volume 2", published by Metropolis Bleu, collecting stories from students at French-speaking and anglophone schools....

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