A Bordeaux, l’exposition « les cartes de l’imaginaire »
Exposition « les cartes de l’imaginaire » à Bordeaux /\ Exhibition “ maps of the imaginary” in Bordeaux
Dialogues avec les globes. Mafalda
Le module SPHEROGRAPHIA explore les représentations environnementales mondiales à travers Mafalda et son globe /\ The SPHEROGRAPHIA module explores global environmental representations through Mafalda and her globe.
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.
Salut, Gotlib ! On aura bien rigolé.
Merci pour tout : Gai-Luron, La Rubrique-à-brac, Fluide Glacial et tout le reste… On a bien ri. Tu n’étais peut-être pas un mutant, mais tu nous auras aidé à grandir.
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…
Lost in the City of Glass, Auster-Karasik-Mazzucchelli
Cité de verre (City of Glass) by Paul Auster was published in 1985. This is the first volume of the New York Trilogy by this author. An adaptation of this work in comics was published in 2005 by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli. David Mazzucchelli is an American cartoonist, best known for his versions of Batman…
« 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…
Les cartes du Japon de Florent Chavouet/ Maps of Japan by Florent Chavouet
Florent Chavouet, Manabe Shima, ©Éditions Philippe Picquier, 2010 Tokyo Sanpo and Manabe Shima, are actually at the intersection of comics, travel guides and travelogues. The maps of Tokyo and of the island of Manabe Shima that Florent Chavouet proposes in his two books are directly inspired by the geographic reality of of these places in…
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…
Encore merci, Fred !
Fred passed away yesterday and everyone is sad : Philémon, Barthélémy, Anatole, the Manu Manu and all of those who loved Fred and his logically crazy / madly logical poetic universe, always and never following him « to the letter » should we say. At (e)space & fiction we say good bye to the artist, inventor of…
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…
The Eruption of Karamako / L’éruption du Karamako. Hergé
The Eruption of Karamako is the second volume of The Secret Ray, a volume of the series The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko that Hergé published in 1952. In the book Jo was saved from certain death by a film crew who filmed the eruption of Karamak volcano from a seaplane. The pilot reported…
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…
« La cour secrète des Arcanes » ou le voyage de Corto Maltese en Asie centrale
« La cour secrète des Arcanes » is an animation film directed by Pascal Morelli in 2001. This is a free adaptation of one of stories of Corto Maltese, the famous adventurer invented by Italian designer Hugo Pratt. The film includes scenes from several albums, mainly « La maison dorée de Samarkand « . In this album, maps are…
Crossroads in Maus – Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman, creator of the graphic narrative Maus, is the President of the 39th Angoulême International Comics Festival in Angoulême. It is the opportunity to celebrate on (e)space & fiction this exceptional designer by presenting this deeply moving frame issued from page 127 in the first volume of Maus. The road network that forms a…
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…
End of the World
In animated films, ways of representing space are unlimited. Everything is possible in an animated cartoon. From the beginning of the 20th century, animated movie makers have been inventing new ways of representing space (e.g. The flying house by Winsor McCay, 1921). Le dessin animé est un domaine dans lequel les formes de représentation de…
(e)space & fiction 