Oh Lordy, it's.... FP's Cartoon Playlist

One of the first things which strikes you when you come to live in France is that they take their comic books deadly seriously. Bandes dessinées or B.D. (pronounced Bay Day) are considered to be an art form with their own sections in book stores and indeed entire specialist shops are given over exclusively to comic books. Exhibitions of comic book art draw the initiated and the simple admirer in vast numbers and the authors and artists are often revered. The subject matter ranges from children's themes with bright, bold brushstrokes, passing by world class stars such as Asterix and Tin Tin and on to the kind of adult dystopias drawn by the likes of Enki Bilal.

Just out of interest, according to amazon.fr, out of the top five best-selling BDs at the moment, 4 are clearly adult content, by which I mean fantasy, adventure or murder mystery. Only one - Titeuf - is aimed at a younger market. I suppose that's the big difference between France and Britain. Apart from one notable example (more about that later....) comics are for kids, whereas BDs are a very grown-up affair.

It's one of the few aspects of French culture I haven't espoused with enthusiasm. My other half loves Les Chevaliers du Ciel (The knights of the sky) which is about two fighter pilots called Tanguy and Laverdure. It was created by JM Charlier and A. Uderzo (of Asterix fame) The first editions came out in the 1960s and they're still going strong. The fact that they were written in collaboration with the French air force shows how seriously they are taken and it's one of the comic books which was transformed into a very successful television series and, more recently, a high-budget feature film with spectacular photography which frankly puts Top Gun to shame.

However, there is one comic book which I continue to buy every time I come back to England - Viz magazine. It's a mix of irreverence, satire and, frankly, smut. The content is a mixture of comic strip characters and hilarious pastiches of 'Sun'-type articles ('Esther Rantzen to receive real heart of gold transplant'). Viz originates from the North East of England - my region - and some of the characters speak Geordie, our local patois. The fat slags are perhaps my favourite characters, simply because I went to school with them. 'Shar' and 'Tray' are chip guzzling, beer slurping good-time girls whose main concern is where their next shag is coming from. I'm also very fond of Sid the Sexist, the archetypal Northern MSP who always gets his comeuppance at the end. But there are also one-off characters to satirise current trends. The Da Vinci Code phenomenon sparked the creation of Opus Dave, a self-flagellating monk.


Surprising how many great songs have been thrown up by this week's theme which felt, at the outset, like one which would be very limiting in nature. For the question to go, I felt it would have been a little too obvious to ask what your favourite cartoon character is (although I'd love to know!!). Some brave soul over on the Mother Ship mentioned what we'd all been thinking - Take On Me by A-Ha. Marvellous use of animation in that video. Quite right too.
So let's have your favourite rock and pop videos using animation techniques ....

Here's A-Ha to get the ball rolling....