GPS et géolocalisation à travers la fiction

Les résultats de la petite enquête sur Twitter sur les œuvres de fiction où le GPS ou la géolocalisation jouent un rôle significatif /\ The results of a small survey on Twitter on fiction works where GPS or geolocation play a significant role.

La carte manquante d’Astérix / The Asterix Missing Map

A l’occasion d’une polémique (très confidentielle) à propos de la carte du nouvel album Astérix et la Transitalique, on revient sur certains enjeux cartographiques de la célèbre BD. /\ On the occasion of a (very confidential) controversy about a map in the new album Asterix et la Transitalique, we adress again some of the cartographic issues at stake in the famous series of comics.

Geography of fantastical countries

For those who didn’t come to Saint-Dié-des-Vosges Festival this year (so am I), I warmly recommend to listen to this radio podcast (french only), which echoes the main topic of this year’s festival : http://www.franceculture.fr/emission-planete-terre-de-peter-pan-a-tintin-geographie-des-pays-imaginaires-2015-09-30 This program touches on many subjects and comic books already mentionned in this blog. Pour ceux qui, comme moi, n’ont…

Exposition temporaire « Revoir Paris » de François Schuiten et Benoît Peeters à la Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine/ Temporary exhibition « Revoir Paris » of François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine

The temporary exhibition « Revoir Paris » held on 20 November 2014 to 9 March 2015, offers the opportunity to engage a dialog between the work of François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters, cartoonists, writers and screenwriters, with the one of Jules Verne, Robida or Le Corbusier, and, on the other hand, with development projects in Paris and…

Why Greenland ? / Pourquoi le Groenland ? (source : xkcd)

A quoi je prête attention dans les films : 1) l’intrigue, les personnages (très peu) 2) les écrans d’ordinateurs qui apparaissent brièvement à l’arrière plan (principalement). « – Attends! Sur cette carte floue derrière le général on voit qu’un des vaisseaux extra-terrestres se trouve au Groenland ! Pourquoi le Groenland ? – STP, est-ce qu’on peut…

« Supermap » returns ! (and « Batmap » as well…)

Superpowers might give superheroes a very specific experience of space. Some examples of spatial machineries in comic books and movies confirm this idea. The superheroes are often confronted with original cartographic issues and often invent very precursory geospatial devices. So here are already Supermap and Batmap, before possibly, if you dig into your old Marvel magazines to find…

Metropolis : Superman and Lois Lane statues / Les statues de Superman et Lois Lane

Rocky, Yoda or The Little Prince are not the only fictional characters who have been materialized. Superman and Lois Lane have also their own materialization. Even if Metropolis, the  city where Superman lives is fictional, a city in Illinois has the same name and beyond this resemblance, the city host… Superman and Lois Lane! Rocky, Yoda…

Immortel (ad Vitam) : les espaces d’une dictature à New-York en 2095/ New York dictatorship’s space in 2095

« Immortel (Ad Vitam) » is a French sci-fi movie directed in 2004 by Enki Bilal, designer of world famous comics. It is one of three films directed by Enki Bilal, all directly inspired by his works, the atmosphere that emerges and their imaginary geographies. The stories all take place in a more or less distant future,…

Exposition « Astérix à la BnF » /Exhibition « Astérix at the BnF »

From 16 October 2013 to 19 January 2014,  the exhibition « Astérix at the BnF » holds at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF)  in Paris,. This exhibition proposes a wide number of original sketches, videos and many by-products of Asterix’s world. It gives an occasion to pinpoint the use of maps and spatial means in one…

Imaginons à quoi pourrait ressembler une ville intelligente / Let’s imagine what a « smart city » could look like…

« Mémoire morte » (this title could be translated either by « Read-Only Memory » or « Dead Memory ») is neither the latest album nor the most original one of Marc-Antoine Mathieu (a famous french comic-books author, who received many awards at Angoulême Festival). But in a way, it could be considered as one of his most visionary creation. Published…

Earth attacks Mars ! La Terre à l’attaque de Mars !

The day of the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe, considered today as one of the biggest stars of American cinema, California received the first images of Mars. How could one fail to notice this dual event occurring on the same day, that the American entertainment world, and especially in California, wanted to produce as well…

Cartographier livres et oeuvres culturelles / mapping novels and cultural works

We present here two recent French projects of cultural mapping. The first is developed  by the association of libraries of the Ville de Paris. The second named Géoculture, a very ambitious cultural Web and mobile  service with a mapping tool that aim to give access to the cultural works of a region. . Les initiatives…

L’après-midi où les Cités Obscures se sont mises à exister / The afternoon when « Cities of Fantastic » came to life

The meeting with Benoît Peeters and François Schuiten, that we announced here, was held on Thursday, April 11, 2013 from 14h to 20h in the small auditorium of the BnF. A beautiful afternoon with the creators of The cities of Fantastic. Les rencontres avec Benoît Peeters et François Schuiten, que nous avons annoncées ici, ont…

Rencontres avec Schuiten et Peeters à la BnF le 11 avril 2013

François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters, the authors of the cartoon series The Cities of the Fantastic (Les Cités Obscures) who includes the two volumes of La Frontière Invisible about which a first article was recently published on this site, will be present at the BnF (Site François Mitterrand) for two meetings with their public on Thursday, April…

Cartographier les Cités obscures (1): à la recherche de la frontière invisible / Mapping the Cities of the Fantastic (1): searching for the invisible frontier

La frontière invisible is an album of cartoonists François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters. This album includes two volumes and is part of the series « Les Cités obscures« , literary The Dark Cities but translated to English The Cities of the Fantastic. The book portrays the lives of characters who perceive too late the real challenges and…

Cartographers in a Middle-Age World City / Des cartographes dans une « Ville-Monde » médiévale

Les maîtres cartographes (Mapping Masters) is a series of 6 comic books published between 1992 and 2002, drawn by Paul Glaudel and written by Scotch Arleston. This author is well-known for his large collection of heroic fantasy comic books, including  the famous Lanfeust de Troy‘s series. Les maîtres cartographes est une série BD de 6…

Cartographier une planète où les lieux sont mobiles : Donjon. Sfar, Trondheim et al.

Donjon is a series of satirical fantasy comic books created and supervised by two famous French artists, Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim. Many other talented designers have contributed to this collective work: Manu Larcenet, Christophe Blain, Blutch or Andreas. The world of the series is extremely complex and changing, and the question of mapping this…

Babar and Father Christmas’s House/ Babar et la Maison du Père Noël – Jean de Brunhoff

Here is a seasonal post. Christmas time is for children and children’s stories. It is the perfect moment to present the simple and naive but very effective spatial machinery Jean de Brunhoff imagines when he relates the discovery of the house of Father Christmas by Babar in the album Babar and Father Christmas(1941). It illustrates…

X-Men – Singer

The X-Men are a group of superheroes created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. There adventures were published in X-Men # 1 by Marvel Comics in September 1963. The book was adapted for three movies released in 2000, 2003 and 2006 (plus a prequel in 2009 telling the story of one of the main characters:…

The ‘Manitoba’ No Reply / Le Manitoba ne répond plus

As already shown in this post, geographic space plays a fundamental role in the work of Hergé. In The ‘Manitoba’ No Reply, first volume of The Secret Ray from The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko, published in 1952, the liner SS Manitoba indicates its position by radio, remains silent for 20 hours and send…

Le photographe – Guibert, Lefèvre et Lemercier

Le photographe is a graphic novel  (3 albums) created by Emmanuel Guibert (script, design and colors), Frédéric Lemercier (colors and layout) and Didier Lefevre (scenario and photographs). It retraces the journey  of a Médecin sans frontières team (MSF is an independent humanitarian medical aid organisation). The story  takes place between Pakistan and Afghanistan in 1986…