Chris Oliveros - Coda

The Pompidou Centre in Paris published online (and accessible to everyone) a sociological study about comics readers. (As an aside, the cover reminds the old Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales whose managing editor was Pierre Bourdieu. Powerful icons can't be escaped, I guess...)

This data is not about North America, but to prove my pessimistic views on these matters I'll post below some charts extracted from said study.

Christophe Evans, La bande dessinée: quelle lecture, quelle culture? [comics: which reading, which culture?], Éditions de la Bibliotèque publique d'information, January 2015, 19.

As you can see above comics readers are decreasing. Not surprisingly the chart also confirms the stereotype that women don't read comics.

Christophe Evans, La bande dessinée: quelle lecture, quelle culture? [comics: which reading, which culture?], Éditions de la Bibliotèque publique d'information, January 2015, 29.

As for women's comics reading habits the chart above shows that there are only four genres that women read more than men. Two of said genres, autobio and reportage, are almost the only ones that interest The Crib. (This means that, ideally, I would be blogging at least for 50% women and 50% men. The reason I think this doesn't happen is because women tend to be less involved in the comics community, whatever that is...) Anyway, in view of the reading habits indicated above Christophe Evans titled one of his chapters thus: "Le roman graphique: une catégorie féminine?" [graphic novels: a women's genre?]

The data would be different in North America because super-heroes would most certainly be over represented.

Christophe Evans, La bande dessinée: quelle lecture, quelle culture? [comics: which reading, which culture?], Éditions de la Bibliotèque publique d'information, January 2015, 40.

The above chart shows how few comics readers read graphic novels in comparison with the number of comics readers who read trash.

Christophe Evans, La bande dessinée: quelle lecture, quelle culture? [comics: which reading, which culture?], Éditions de la Bibliotèque publique d'information, January 2015, 41.

How many, you ask? Well exactly 93 % read trash and 7% read graphic novels. If we subtract the number of readers who read trashy graphic novels (even if the enquirers were careful enough to avoid mixing graphic novels with formulaic genre; see also note 4) we know for certain that comics continues to be mostly trash culture.

Quelle culture? Well, now you know.

Note 1: thanks to Jean-Paul Gabilliet for calling my attention to this publication.

Note 2: as Christophe Evans says himself Jiro Taniguchi's books should be under "Graphic Novels" instead of being under "Manga."

Note 3: speaking of which I continue to be baffled by the use of the Japanese word. I can't imagine a academic essay in English about Munch talking about "maleri" instead of "painting."

Note 4: here's what Chistophe Evans says on page 29 of La bande dessinée: quelle lecture, quelle culture? (my translation):

En effet, il y a fort à parier – malheureusement, cette enquête ne permet pas de le vérifier – que les reportages dessinés autobiographiques d’un auteur tel que Guy Delisle plaisent aux femmes. [In fact, I bet - unfortunately, this inquiry doesn't allow a confirmation - that women like drawn autobiographical reportages like Guy Delisle's.]

If Christophe is right that's exactly what I mean by mediocre graphic novels.