Upon completion of the passive wave of Assimil NFWE, will bandes dessinées be approachable?

[SladeWilson]

The title sums it up, but I also wonder what bandes dessinées you would recommend to someone who has just completed New French With Ease? I plan on moving through the passive wave at a greater speed and jumping into interesting but approachable content as soon as I can, while continuing with the active wave at the normal pace Assimil suggests.

[Cavesa]

Your best source of information will probably be emk's logs here and on the old htlal.

I'd say that going at least passively through whole assimil should suffice for the easier BDs. Don't forget there are many authors and some are more difficult than others. I found Asterix and such very approachable, and there are some more BDs more labeled as "A2" in the library, I'll have a look when I am there, those tips by librarians were quite useful when I started reading in French.

[emk]

The title sums it up, but I also wonder what bandes dessinées you would recommend to someone who has just completed New French With Ease? I plan on moving through the passive wave at a greater speed and jumping into interesting but approachable content as soon as I can, while continuing with the active wave at the normal pace Assimil suggests.

Assimil NFWE seems to get many people to a pretty solid A2. I've seen a few manage B1, but they may have more natural talent than I ever did. At this level, native media is pretty much hit or miss, and you'll probably have to try a bunch of things. For example, you might need to buy and try 5 books before you find one that "clicks" and that works really well for you personally.

Bandes dessinées would be a pretty reasonable choice for your first native media. They're available in dozens of genres (action, science fiction, fantasy, history, non-fiction and "literary" subjects among them), and the pictures do help a lot. On the downside, they don't support pop-up dictionaries or tools like readlang, which is one of the best things about ebooks.

The variety must be seen to be believed

First, let me give you an idea of the selection available. These photos were taken at Planète BD in Montréal (with permission of the clerk):




And this is a curated selection! They most just pick the good BDs and the classics. This is a huge industry.

Getting started

One big problem with BDs is that they're expensive and hard to find outside France and urban Québec. The best solution to this probably Izneo (which was first pointed out to me be either garyb or geoffw). This is an online store where you legally can buy and download BDs from anywhere in the world. The let you sample the first 5 pages for free, and it you sign up for their mailing list, they offer a lot of free BDs. Their offline BD reader runs reasonably on larger tablets, but it uses DRM.

If you like science fiction, I highly recommend Aldebaran, which is on sale for €0.99 today at Izneo. This has great drawings of strange alien wildlife, it's unusually easy to read (more so than many Tintin or Asterix BDs), and if you like it, it's part of a 15-volume series, so you have lots of material. But if you'd prefer spies, or historical fiction, or romance, or charming slices of life, or BDs explaining economics, you can find those, too.

I also wrote a list several years ago with a bunch of personal favorites for students of French. I included some remarks on the difficulty of each book, though it's worth noting that the final item on that list is for B2/C1 students.

Anyway, if you want detailed recommendations, it would help to let us know your favorite genres. Folks around here have read a lot of BDs, and the big challenge is just narrowing down that knowledge.

[aloysius]

I was just going to recommend Persepolis and then I saw that emk had it on his list as well. If you would find it too difficult, why not start by watching the movie (with subs). Or read it in translation first. Or in parallel.

I recently scanned the BD shelves in a couple of ordinary bookshops in France. Yes, there are tons!

[tarvos]

Why don't you have a go and tell us all about it?

[SladeWilson]

Anyway, if you want detailed recommendations, it would help to let us know your favorite genres. Folks around here have read a lot of BDs, and the big challenge is just narrowing down that knowledge.

Thank you emk. I just realized I should have made it clear what genres I am into, but I really didn't know how much selection there really is. Science fiction is one of my favourite genres. I don't do a ton of novel reading, but popular YA novels like Divergent - dystopian type novels - interest me. Television-wise in sci-fi, I'm currently watching Defiance and Under the Dome. But my taste in anime, if you were to look at my Crunchyroll queue, leans heavily toward the slice of life stories (Toradora!, One Week Friends, etc.) so that's always an option. I also read American comics.

Izneo looks great. Can you download items you purchase as files on your hard drive (say, epub, cbr/cbz, pdf formats) or is viewing limited to the app? It's not a deal-breaker situation or anything if I can't, I'd just like to know what I'm buying.

Edit: Thanks for the list too.

[zenmonkey]

If sci-fi is your thing and you want to read BD's then may I suggest the following:

• L'Incal - This is a series on John Difool, a character invented by Jodorowski that is sort of a cult figure ... It is written Alejandro Jodorowsky and illustrated by Moebius and others. Anything by Jodorwsky or Moebius is worth reading. There are 15-16 BDs in this series, I think.
• Metabrons - Also by Jodorsowski - and loosely related to Incal
• Bilal and his Nikopol Trilogy - quite different and a universe mixed with language ancient gods and sci-fi
• And of course Metal Hurlant where everything started - The French anthology that was the flagship of Humanoids Associe, the publishing house and resulting in the US with with Heavy Metal comics...

[emk]

[zenmonkey beat me to the post!]

Science fiction is one of my favourite genres.

OK, let's start with science fiction!

Definitely do look at Aldébaran and the following series, plus the other series by the same authors set in Africa. Try the first 5 pages of one of those, and let us know if those work for you. If you like weird SF, you could try L'Incal, which was allegedly an inspiration for the movie The Fifth Element. If you like really weird SF, try La Triologie Nikopol, but that's probably more a B2+ book. Also fun: Expérience Mort has some great images and set pieces, even if the overall story is kinda average. Ab Irato is a nice bit of SF set in a semi-dystopian Montréal, but only the first two volumes are out. Orbital is basic, but not bad, and there's a ton of volumes, each a standalone episode with lots action and property damage. If you don't mind an occasional detour into ancient horrors and military submarines, check out Sanctuaire. (I need to get volume 3.) If you like English-language comics, the French translation of Saga is good solid SF.

(For post-apocalyptic fantasy novels, do check out Autre Monde, which so far has been leaving heavily in this direction, and which would probably be pretty reasonable as an ebook around B1, though it's hard for me to tell these days.)

If you like slice of life, try Persepolis. It's excellent, it's not too hard, and it features really natural conversational French. Or try the Paul BDs from Québec, which are really charming stories of growing up. They make me feel seriously nostalgic, and I didn't even live through those events! You might also glance at Un petit livre oublié sur un banc, which starts out almost like a romantic comedy but takes a weird twist—I've only read volume 1 of 2, but I keep hearing people talking about it.

Izneo looks great. Can you download items you purchase as files on your hard drive (say, epub, cbr/cbz, pdf formats) or is viewing limited to the app? It's not a deal-breaker situation or anything if I can't, I'd just like to know what I'm buying.

Izneo has an online reader (using Flash, I think), and a tablet reader for Android (at least). They use DRM. On the other hand, they'll sell you a lot of €20 books for €1 to €10, and "rent" them for less, and they had an "all you can eat" deal for €10/month that offers you a library of ~1,500 titles that change on a semi-regular basis. So overall, it's not necessarily a bad tradeoff. I still buy my favorite books on real paper though, when the budget permits!

[zenmonkey]

[zenmonkey beat me to the post!]

Lol, but you did it so much more completely and finely.

[SladeWilson]

If sci-fi is your thing and you want to read BD's then may I suggest the following:

• L'Incal - This is a series on John Difool, a character invented by Jodorowski that is sort of a cult figure ... It is written Alejandro Jodorowsky and illustrated by Moebius and others. Anything by Jodorwsky or Moebius is worth reading. There are 15-16 BDs in this series, I think.
• Metabrons - Also by Jodorsowski - and loosely related to Incal
• Bilal and his Nikopol Trilogy - quite different and a universe mixed with language ancient gods and sci-fi
• And of course Metal Hurlant where everything started - The French anthology that was the flagship of Humanoids Associe, the publishing house and resulting in the US with with Heavy Metal comics...

Thanks! Starting to read BDs is my prime motivator at the moment. It wasn't why I started, but it's what's going to get me through Assimil, as I have trouble staying on track a lot of the time. I should probably already be able to read BDs by now, if I'm being honest. We can't all be as fervent about study just based on our love for the language though. I do have a love for French, but I kind of rest on my laurels after a bit of study and move on. That's why I need to push through Assimil faster, because if I leave it at one lesson a day I won't pick anything else up, and honestly I have trouble studying every day as well. It's a slow ride and I need to pick up steam before I lose everything I've gained.

It might be a long shot asking, but I've noticed a lot of people who read lots of American comics know enough about the work of certain writers and artists. You did mention Moebius and Alejandro Jodorowski and. I was wondering if you or someone have other artists or writers you'd recommend.