As part of its 100th anniversary celebrations, Mustique, a long-running Belgian current affairs weekly, has selected the 100 best bande dessinées (comics) of all time, with Art Spiegelman’s Maus taking the top spot.
Other well-known names in the top 10 include David B.’s L’Ascension du Haut Mal (5th place), Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha (8th place), and Chris Ware’s Building Stories” (9th place) and Emile Ferris’ “My Favorite Thing”. Monsters (#10). Alan Moore has two films in the top 100, Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen (No. 19) and Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta (No. 4). Besides Moore’s work, there is only one other superhero book on the entire list. Grant Morrison and Dave McKean’s Batman: Arkham Asylum ranks 34th.
Mustik said of the top-ranked Mouse (translated via DeepL):
“Spiegelman interviews his father about the Holocaust and casts Jews as rats, Nazis as cats, and Poles as pigs. Never seen before! A Pulitzer Prize-winning work of comic and autobiographical storytelling. It’s a landmark piece of history.”
Jean-Marc Rochette’s 2022 graphic novel The Last Queen/La Dernière Reine placed sixth. It was published in English by SelfMadeHero earlier this year. Along with author Jack Lob, the artist’s more famous work, Snowpiercer/Le Transpercenage, came in at number 49.
Regarding The Last Queen, Mustique says (translation by DeepL):
“By interweaving the true story of a face crushed and restored by an extraordinary woman with the life of one of Vercors’ last bears, Rochette has created a universal and moving story. It is a cry of love for the environment before it disappears.”
Manu Larsenette – who came to the attention of English readers this year with his adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, has two of his earlier critically acclaimed works on the list. They are “Blast Quartet” (2009-2014) and “Ordinary Combat/Le Combat Ordinaire” series (2003). -2008). They rank 7th and 44th on the list, respectively. Both are currently available digitally only in English through Europa Comics, with international rights available to eager publishers.
Regarding Blast, Mustik says (translated by DeepL):
“Manu Larsenette combines different styles to tell the story of a murderer on the run. The author of Ordinary Combat does a great job of expressing this madness in a way that goes far beyond, but leaves us with… I will never lose it. It’s a great masterpiece.”
Strangely, in third place is a book published this year, Le Lierre et l’Araignée /The Spider and The Ivy, by Grégoire Carle, which brings his grandfather’s role in the French Resistance to modern times as a teenager. The author is tracing back. It was published in French by Dupuis in January, and an electronic-only English version was released by Europa Comics in July.
Mustik described Karl’s book (via DeepL):
“Based on the story of a band of resistance fighters that history has all but forgotten, Carl explores not only strength, courage and fear, but also nature and its fragility in a dense, well-documented and captivating story. I will tell you.”
Beyond the top 10, there are other names familiar to English-language readers – Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (No. 24) and Là où vont nos pères by Shaun Tan (No. 31) ), Ghost World by Daniel Clowes (#52), Black Hole by Charles Burns (#68), Palestine by Joe Sacco (#74), Will Eisner’s The Spirit (#79), Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts” (#81), Alison Bechdel’s “Fun Home” (#90), Darf Backderf’s “My Friend” Dahmer” (92nd place) and Richard McGuire’s “Here” (95th place).
Manga outside the top 10 include Naoki Urasawa’s “Monster” (20th place), Osamu Tezuka’s “Message to Adolf/History of Adolf” (23rd place), Taiyo Matsumoto’s “Sunny” (41st place), and Jiro Taniguchi’s “Distant Neighborhood/ Quartier Loentin” (41st place). 45), Katsuhiro Otomo’s epic poem “AKIRA” (#51).
This list is an interesting look at comics from a French and Belgian perspective. Several classic French and Belgian series and characters have appeared in the top 100 at least once, including Gaston Lagaffe (Gomer Gouff in English), Asterix, The Smurfs, Lucky Luke, Blueberry, Blake & Mortimer, XIII, and Thorgal. will appear. The most famous Belgian character of them all, Hergé’s Tintin, was ranked 15th in 1954’s The Lunar Explorers and 25th in 1962’s Castafiore Emerald. It only appeared twice on the list.
The famous French-Belgian character Spirou has the most appearances in the top 100, ahead of Tintin.
The character with the most appearances and highest ranking on the list is Spirou, an equally popular (but less internationally known) Belgian creation. 1966’s QRN sur Bretzelburg by Andre Franquin and Gregg, about Spirou and his friends entering an authoritarian state, reached number two. Hope Against All Odds/L’Espoir malgré tout, Emile Bravo’s recent brilliant reinvention of the series into a relatable yet heartbreaking wartime occupation drama, reached number 17 (European). The first two parts of the comic are translated). Another Spirou album, Z is for Zorglub/Z comme Zorglub (1961), by André Franquin, introduced the series’ iconic villain and reached number 21 (available in English at Cinebook) .
Mustique is a French-language Belgian news and culture magazine founded on November 23, 1924 by print publisher Jean Dupuis. Dupuis famously published the weekly comic anthology Spirou in 1938. Mustique, which is based in Brussels, has several owners. Years have passed and it is no longer owned by comics publisher Dupuis. Since 2015 it has been purchased and currently published by L’Avenir Hebdo, a subsidiary of the Belgian industrial group Nethys. The centennial celebration also included a Top 100 list of novels, movies, television series, video games, and albums.
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