As part of its centenary celebrations, Belgium’s longstanding weekly current affairs and culture magazine Moustique has named the 100 Best Bande Dessinées (Comics) of all time – with Art Spiegelman’s Maus claiming the top spot.
Other familiar names in the top ten include David B.’s Epileptic/L’Ascension du Haut Mal (#5), Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha (#8), Chris Ware’s Building Stories (#9), and Emil Ferris’ My Favourite Thing is Monsters (#10). Alan Moore makes two appearances in the top 100 – Moore & Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen (#19) and Moore & David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta (#4). Besides Moore’s works, only one other superhero book makes the entire list – Grant Morrison and Dave McKean’s Batman: Arkham Asylum placing at #34.
Describing top spot holder Maus, Moustique said [translated via DeepL]:
“Spiegelman interviews his father about the Holocaust, casting Jews as mice, Nazis as cats and Poles as pigs. Never before been seen! A Pulitzer Prize winner and a milestone in the history of comics and autobiographical narratives.”
Jean Marc Rochette’s 2022 graphic novel The Last Queen/ La Dernière Reine landed #6. It was published in English by SelfMadeHero earlier this year. The artist’s more famous work, alongside writer Jacques Lob, Snowpiercer/Le Transperceneige made an appearance at #49.
On The Last Queen, Moustique said [translated by DeepL]:
“By interweaving a true story of a face crushed and repaired by an extraordinary woman, and the life of one of the last bears in the Vercors, Rochette weaves a universal and poignant tale. A cry of love to our environment before it disappears.”
Manu Larcenet – who this year came to the attention of English language readers with his adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road had two critically acclaimed earlier works make the list: the Blast quartet (2009-2014) and Ordinary Combat/Le Combat ordinaire series (2003-2008). They make the list at #7 and #44 respectively. Currently both are available digital-only in English via Europe Comics with international rights up for grabs for any eager publishers.
On Blast, Moustique said [translated by DeepL]:
“Manu Larcenet mixes styles to tell the tale of a murderer on the run. The author of Ordinary Combat manages to capture this madness in a way that goes far beyond, but never loses us. A tour de force.”
Curiously the number 3 spot is taken by a book published this year – Le Lierre et l’Araignée /The Spider and The Ivy by Gregoire Carle, which follows the author in the present day retracing his grandfather’s role in the French Resistance as a teenager. Published in French with Dupuis back in January, a digital-only English language edition was released in July with Europe Comics.
Moustique described Carle’s book [via DeepL]:
“Based on the story of a band of resistance fighters that history has all but forgotten, Carle tells of strength, courage and fear, but also of nature and its fragility, in a dense, well-documented and engaging tale.”
Beyond the top ten are other names familiar to English language readers – Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (#24), Shaun Tan’s The Arrival/Là où vont nos pères (#31), Daniel Clowes’ Ghost World (#52), Charles Burns’ Black Hole (#68), Joe Sacco’s Palestine (#74), Will Eisner’s The Spirit (#79), Charles Schulz’s Peanuts (#81), Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (#90), Derf Backderf’s My Friend Dahmer (#92), and Richard McGuire’s Here (#95).
Manga appearances beyond the top ten include: Naoki Urasawa’s Monster (#20), Tezuka’s Message to Adolf/L’Histoire des trois Adolf (#23), Taiyo Matsumoto’s Sunny (#41), Jiro Taniguchi’s A Distant Neighbourhood/Quartier Lointain (#45), and Katsuhiro Otomo epic Akira (#51).
The list is a fascinating look at comics from a Franco-Belgian perspective. Multiple French and Belgian classic series or characters make at least one appearance in the Top 100 – including Gaston Lagaffe (Gomer Goof in English), Asterix, Smurfs, Lucky Luke, Blueberry, Blake & Mortimer, XIII, and Thorgal. The most famous Belgian character of them all – Hergé’s Tintin – only made two appearances on the list with 1954’s Explorers on the Moon/On a marché sur la Lune at #15 and 1962’s The Castafiore Emerald/Les Bijoux de la Castafiore at #25.
Famous Franco-Belgian character Spirou made the most appearances in the Top 100 – beating TintinThe most character appearances – and the highest placed character – on the list is another beloved (though less internationally well known) Belgian creation: Spirou. 1966’s QRN sur Bretzelburg by André Franquin & Greg, which sees Spirou and friends enter an authoritarian state, reached #2. Émile Bravo’s stunning recent reinvention of the series into an accessible yet heartbreaking wartime occupation drama – Hope Against All Odds/ L’Espoir malgré tout – reached #17 (Europe Comics translated the first two parts). Another Spirou album by André Franquin, Z is for Zorglub/Z comme Zorglub (1961), which introduces an iconic series villain reached #21 (available in English with Cinebook).
Moustique is a French-language Belgian news and culture magazine founded by printer-publisher Jean Dupuis on November 23, 1924. Dupuis would famously also go on to publish weekly comics anthology Spirou magazine in 1938. Based in Brussels, Moustique has had multiple owners over the years and is no longer owned by comics publisher Dupuis. Since 2015 it was purchased and is currently being published by L’Avenir Hebdo, a subsidiary of Belgian industrial group Nethys. The centenary celebration also included Top 100 lists for novels, movies, TV series, videogames, and albums.
English (US) · 