Description

Pilote's unique position in a new and fast developingyouth press market
The French comic magazinePilotehebdomadaire arrived in aweakening comics market in 1959 largely dominated by syndicated translations ofAmerican comics and comics inspired by a Catholic ethos. It tailored itscontent and tone to an older adolescent reader far removed from that ofFrance's infant comic. Pilote'sprofile set it on a turbulent course subject to the vicissitudes and ficklenessof fashion which situated it within an emerging teenager press under pressureto renew and innovate to survive. When it made cartoons its definingcharacteristic in 1963, Pilotearticulated its uniqueness by channelling teenager discourse through themwhilst also trying to encourage a zest for education in a modernising andeconomically buoyant France of exciting new opportunities. Pilote's cartoon art thus became a dynamic repository for the ideasand attitudes of France's educated youth which evolved into the radicaldiscourses of the lifestyle and political revolutions of the late 1960s andearly 1970s.
This book tells how Pilote hebdomadaire'sunique positioning in a new and fast developing youth press market forteenagers provided the forum and catalyst for the bande dessinée's stylistic evolution over the course of the 1960sand 1970s.