Globalizing Bande Dessinée and the Periodization of the “Ninth Art”

The periodization and terminology of anglophone and mostly superhero comics (Golden, SIlver, Bronze, Modern, Blue) offers little in the way of understanding the history and development of francophone comics (called bandes dessinées) from the earliest examples, like Bécassine and Les Pieds Nickelés, to the present day. How might the periodization of comics differ if we take into account this other globally influential body of sequential art? If we reject the categories used to chart changes in American superhero comics, what metrics might we use to build a new, different, or more complete chronology of global comics art? This paper will consider differences in the production of bandes dessinées in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in France and Belgium, their structural differences from anglophone comics, and the spread of BD influences around the world to propose a more representative periodization of the global history of comics. Is such a synthesis of anglophone and francophone comics histories–to say nothing of other national comics “worlds”–possible? In other words, is comics history a single shared universe or a multiverse?