Comicalités (Dec 2017)
Aux limites du réel : le terrain vague et la palissade du Bicot de Branner
Abstract
In France, comic book Bicot, Président de club was released in 1923. French Newspaper L’Excelsior Dimanche ordered this series from an American cartoonist. Bicot and several kids from poor neighborhoods started a club to devote themselves to their passion: playing baseball. On a waste ground, they built a clubhouse and converted the area to play their favorite sport there. Their "territory" was separated from the street by a fence. The converted playground and fence played essential parts in the comic book. The later delimited the border between different worlds. It separated the bourgeois residential suburb in which Bicot lived from the area the kids reserved for themselves. There, they played and performed their pranks and little thefts. The fence was a physical and symbolic line that separated, differentiated, included or excluded spaces and people. It was also where the kids hid. Behind the fence, they learnt about life too. Our study focuses on all the stories featuring sport as a guideline in the series.
