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Automythology

Jimmy Beaulieu

Abstract
A brief historical overview considers a number of factors that were not
propitious for the development of a home-grown comics culture in Quebec
(notwithstanding the popularity of a few noteworthy artists) including
the impossibility of competing with cheaper American production, and
the ambient conservatism that dominated much of the twentieth century.
Beaulieu goes on to describe the shock and excitement of his discovery in
the mid-990s of an alternative comics scene (more active in Montreal than
in Quebec City), and his own involvement in it from the beginning of the
twenty-rst century as an artist, publisher and teacher. He offers a rsthand
account of the realities of negotiating the pressures of alternative comics
publishing within the two structures that he set up: Mcanique Gnrale and
the smaller and (still) more radical Colosse. There are pleasures: the ethos
of collective work, the opportunity to support up-and-coming young authors
and to ensure the survival of work by an illustrious predecessor, invitations
to take part in productive exchanges on a local, national and international
level, and the sheer obsessive pursuit of perfectionism. But there are also
frustrations: the never-ending grind of getting manuscripts ready for the
printer, wearying battles with publishers reps, the constant need to manage
the expectations of authors and the skewing of the market by competitors
prepared to outsource printing to Asia. The author explains his decision
nally to withdraw from his publishing commitments and to focus on his
own work. His conclusion, about the future of comic production in Quebec,
is, however, optimistic and devoid of cynicism.
Keywords: Quebec, Alternative, Counter-culture, Collective, Festivals, Design,
Distribution

Rather than attempting to put together an objective account that would


situate comics in Quebec within a historical perspective, a task that
would be better performed by a historian like Michel Viau or an academic
like Jacques Samson, I am going to take the opportunity offered me

European Comic Art Volume 5 Number , Spring 202: 2556


doi:0.3167/eca.202.05004 ISSN 7543797 (Print), ISSN 7543800 (Online)
26 JIMMY BEAULIEU

here to recount, once and for all, my own stint in the publishing milieu,
including at the same time as much information as possible about the
overall picture.1 It would, furthermore, be difcult for me to see things
in any other way than through the lens of alternative comics.

A Dash of Context
On a rapid overview, the history of twentieth-century Qubcois comics
looks like a series of booms rapidly followed by busts (Perpetual New
Beginnings, as Jacques Samson would say).2 Let us take as an example
the golden age of its early period, from 904 to 909. Artists like Albric
Bourgeois, Ren-Charles Bliveau, Hector Berthelot, Joseph Charlebois
and others of that ilk were publishing highly popular series in the daily
press, of a quality comparable with the best comics being produced
elsewhere at that time. In fact these were the rst French-speaking
authors to use speech balloons. So why did they ourish for so brief
a period? Firstly because newspapers started to favour the option of
buying American strips translated into French (which was considerably
cheaper than paying authors), but also because a second generation of
artists failed to materialise.3
It is worth noting that before the 960s, the Qubcois tended to
read little, on account of the obscurantism practised by the Duplessis
government, with the support of a complicit clergy. Although the
progress of intellectual life was rapid in urban centres during the Quiet
Revolution, it was slower in the countryside. For example, I was born
on the le dOrlans in 974, and grew up in a house where the only
books were the phone book and the Bible. When I discovered comics,
my family were bafed. They were not overtly suspicious of reading,
but whenever I was caught with my nose in a book, I was urged to
go outside and play instead of working. Even today, although Quebec
has largely caught up on the cultural front, book-buying is still a fairly
marginal pursuit, or at least, it has become marginal again here, like
everywhere else on the planet.

This article is an expanded version of a presentation given at the Figures indpendantes


de la bande dessine mondiale [The Face of Independent Comics Worldwide] conference
in Lige in November 20. The English translation is by Ann Miller.
2 Jacques Samson, Bande dessine qubcoise: sempiternels recommencements?
[Qubcois Comics: Perpetual New Beginnings?], in Panorama de la littrature qubcoise
contemporaine [Overview of Contemporary Qubcois Literature], Rginald Hamel ed.
(Gurin: Montral, 997). To be reprinted in Trip 7 (Montreal: ditions Trip, 202).
3 Michel Viau, La Naissance de la BDQ [The Birth of Qubcois Comics] Formule
(2007) (published in Montreal by Mcanique Gnrale).
Automythology 27

In the decades from 960 to 990, comics were read, but, apart from
major series like Tintin and Astrix, or translations of Marvel and DC
superheroes, very rarely bought. To give an idea of just how small, until
the end of the 990s, the sales of Tardi, Pratt, Loisel or Bilal were, they
peaked at just 2,000 copies for a population of 7.5 (now 8) million
inhabitants.
As regards local production, with the exception of a few permanent
xtures, like Albert Chartier who published the series Onsime for over
sixty years in the Bulletin des Agriculteurs [Farmers Monthly] or other
series that had long runs in magazines like Les Dbrouillards [Crafty
People], Croc [Fang] and Safarir [Thats a Laugh], authors soon ran
out of steam after battling with the difculty of nding enough of a
readership to make their work economically viable. This was especially
the case for counter-cultural comics, which got off to several promising
starts with the magazines Baloune [Balloon], Prisme [Prism], BD
[Comics], LHydrocphale Illustr [The Illustrated Hydrocephalus]
and the (tragically unpublished) work of the Groupe du Chiendent
[Invasive Weed Group] at the end of the 960s. This period was, in
fact, called the Kbcois [sic] comics spring by Georges Raby,4 but no
summer followed on and winter quickly returned (I will now drop the
seasonal metaphor). Montreal was also the centre for a prolic output of
fanzines in the 990s (Henriette Valium, Julie Doucet, Simon Boss).
Unfortunately the titles produced were always ephemeral, with sales
too low to sustain a regular ow of books.
This situation changed around the year 2000, for several reasons,
but mainly the following: rstly, easy access to software for layout and
image manipulation, and digitizers, which reduced book production
costs; and secondly, a change in the way that the soft-cover black and
white format was perceived. Something that had long been a matter of
necessity had suddenly lost its amateur associations to take on another,
more elitist, status.
It could also be argued that since authors starting out at that
conjuncture had had access to a greater range of comics in their childhood,
they were able to cover a wider variety of subject matter and tonality.
At all events, publishers from that period (LOie de Cravan, La
Pastque, Mcanique Gnrale, Premires Lignes, Kami-Case, Les 400
Coups, Zone Convective) thought in terms of durable books. On the
sales front, it cannot be said that this approach was strikingly successful,

4 Georges Raby, Le Printemps de la bande dessine kbcoise [The Springtime of


Kebecois Comics], Culture Vivante [Living Culture] 22 (97).
28 JIMMY BEAULIEU

given that Croc and Safarir had, for a while, achieved sales of 30,000 a
month. But I would claim that it helped to change the public perception
of comics in Quebec, and that it inspired a tremendous progressiveness
which has gathered momentum among our authors.

My Aesthetic Puberty
I bought Benot Jolys fanzine Exit in 988, a year after it rst came out,
when I was fourteen (Fig. ). It was the rst time that I had encountered
a comic that conveyed the fascination of things just beyond reach
rather like a dream, songs in a foreign language, or the books that you
read before learning to read. I already liked music that evoked that
feeling, but I discovered that I could nd it in comics. The rst time I
closed the book I felt less alone, and moved by an immense sense of
vocation that still res my imagination.
Exit quickly disappeared from the shelves of Pantoute, the only
bookshop that sold it (it did not reappear until 999, in an edition
published by Kami-Case). I got a job in this beautiful independent
bookshop in the old quarter of Quebec City in 993. In Quebec City,
we did not really have access to the fanzine scene that was emerging
in Montreal (Mille Putois [A Thousand Polecats], Mac Tin Tac, Doucet,
Siris, Valium, Obom), but there was another scene (Joly, Andr-Philippe
Ct, Louis Rmillard, Zeppelin and, later, Tabasko!). It is noticeable
that this self-sufciency created two distinct schools (a distinction that
later became less clear-cut): the comics from Montreal had furious,
anti-establishment content, with a highly detailed graphic line, and the
comics from Quebec City had highly detailed, conceptual content, with
a furious graphic line.
In short, in the mid-990s, the comics shelf in the bookshop where I
worked was not very well stocked, and nothing on it excited me. The best
comics were out of print, and the books themselves were not especially
appetising. They contained a few worthy series, like Baptiste le Clochard
[Baptiste the Tramp], but from a publishing point of view this series
was oddly conceived, as the format and drawing style changed with each
volume. It seemed to me that the book had been carelessly designed,
principally as a by-product of the magazine. It might be argued that it
was difcult to produce attractive books for such a tiny market, but I have
always thought that doing things in a tasteful way does not cost any extra.
Benot Jolys Exit, very modest in its conception, offered proof of that.
I discovered the international scene in alternative comics late, having
had no access to them. The comics shop where I used to go stocked
Automythology 29

Figure 1: Exit, Benot Jolys fanzine. Benot Joly 987.

only a few titles that were ground-breaking, but towards 995, its staff
nonetheless turned me on to Chester Brown, Seth, Joe Matt and the
Hernandez brothers. On the French-language side, the Futuropolis
titles that had been available too early for me had disappeared after the
rm went bankrupt. I was intrigued by what I was able to read about
LAssociation, and eager to nd the other Trondheim books (I had really
enjoyed Mildiou),5 and the celebrated Journal dun album [Diary of an
Album].6 I should make the point that, in contrast, contact between
the Montreal underground and its French and American counterparts
had already been rmly established as from 9927 which perhaps
conrms the reputation of Quebec City as a rather bourgeois place.
It was music that took me to Paris for the rst time, in 996. I had
been invited to give a concert there. I seized the opportunity to visit the

5 Lewis Trondheim, Mildiou (Paris: Seuil, 993).


6 Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian, Journal dun album (Paris: LAssociation, 994).
7 Marc Tessier, Voyage au pays de Magritte [Journey to the Land of Magritte] in Petits
Nuages de fume [Small Clouds of Smoke] (Montreal: Tchiize, 2007), 7692.
30 JIMMY BEAULIEU

Association headquarters, to buy a bundle of their books and to place an


order for the bookshop.
Forgive a short digression about this musical interlude, which explains
a great deal about my determination to publish comics. At that time, I
was one of a group of musicians who were involved in the alternative/
electronic music scene, amongst whom were some talented personalities.
Unless you were playing traditional French popular music, it was very
difcult to get your work disseminated in Quebec. This situation improved
ten years later, by which time all members of this happy few had thrown
in the towel. This group was decidedly snobbish. We never sent a single
demo tape to any record company. We considered ourselves to be above
such frivolous concerns. We were proud of being motivated purely by
our art, and only for the highest of reasons. And that is how this group
engendered a vast catalogue of priceless gems destined for oblivion
because they were never released, or in some cases never even recorded.

A Clean Slate in Montreal


In 998, I decided to move to Montreal and take advantage of this clean
slate by embarking on a career as a comics artist. And since I had no
desire to repeat the same disastrous mistakes that I had made in my
musical ventures, I was going to have to think about dissemination as
much as about creation.
Not long after my move, I visited the Fichtre! bookshop. Yves Millet,
the owner, gave me a job straightaway, and I worked there on a part-
time basis until 2004. It was during my rst visit there that I discovered
the work of Luc Giard, which made a huge aesthetic impact on me.
Between 988 and 993, he had produced some completely insane
Tintin adventures. He had taken over Hergs world, just as a child
might, but he brought to it his background as a painter and sculptor.
A much more subtle form of subversion was at work here than in the
majority of Tintin parodies around at the time.
In the same week, I met Martin Brault and Frdric Gaulthier, who
were just about to found the La Pastque press. I helped them out on the
rst two numbers of the Spoutnik journal, and on Michel Rabagliatis
rst book, Paul la campagne [Paul in the Country].8 I was on the
editorial board of La Pastque, but as my tastes, in spite of some overlap,
were too different from theirs, our collaboration was short-lived.

8 Michel Rabagliati, Paul la campagne (Montreal: La Pastque, 999). Published in


English; translation by Drawn and Quarterly, 999.
Automythology 3

Even so, we did manage to go and see Albert Chartier, in his beautiful
house out in the country at Saint-Jean-de-Matha. We spent a wonderful
afternoon in his company, hanging on his every word as he told his
stories in a free-wheeling way his marriage, his attempt to make it in
New York, his car accident, his love of black and white, his meeting with
Tezuka. He showed us his stash of originals (not very carefully preserved,
but preserved nonetheless). Among these originals, there was a series of
strips of whose existence we had been unaware. They were wordless, and
more urbane and sophisticated than the rustic Onsime and Sraphin,
featuring female characters in prominent roles: Kiki, Elsinore, Zizi,
and so on. We borrowed these strips so that we could publish them in
the second number of Spoutnik. We entertained the project of bringing
out a complete collection of Onsime strips, but on top of the fearsome
difculty of the task (given that Chartier had damaged his originals
by repeatedly reusing his pages with slight alterations), the copyright
belonged to another publisher: Les 400 Coups or so we were told.
I submitted Quelques pelures [Taking Off a Few Layers],9 my rst
collection of short stories, to La Pastque. But they thought the quality
was uneven, so I decided to publish it myself. First of all in April 2000, in
fanzine format (00 copies), then the following September, on an offset
press, and bound, with a print run of 500 (Fig. 2). I sold my musical
instruments to pay the printers bill and to buy my rst computer. In
order to avoid making it too obvious that the book was self-published
(such is the vanity of beginners), I decided to put a logo on it.

Mcanique Gnrale
I had had the name Mcanique Gnrale10 in mind for some time
not necessarily with the idea of setting up a press, because I did not
think I was enough of an administrator to become a publisher, but as
the name of a movement (on the model of Refus Global),11 or an artists

9 An English translation of Quelques Pelures, together with Le Moral des troupes [Troop
Morale], is available under the title Suddenly Something Happened (Wolfville:
Conundrum Press, 200). A new French edition was brought out by Les 400 Coups in
2007, containing much additional material.
0 Translators note: this term, which can be translated as general mechanics or general
mechanical services, appears as a sign on factories and repair shops. It is also the name
given to training courses in engineering or mechanics.
Translators note: Refus Global [Total Refusal] was a movement of artists and
intellectuals begun in Montreal in 948, which drew up a manifesto of the same name
against the prevailing religious, social and cultural orthodoxy. See Christopher Rolfes
article in this edition of ECA.
32 JIMMY BEAULIEU

Figure 2: Jimmy Beaulieu, Quelques pelures. Jimmy Beaulieu and Les 400
Coups, 2000.

agency. This name represented a homage to my father and my uncles,


all garage mechanics (except for one, who was a priest). When the
moment came to put a logo on my rst book, it was naturally that name
that I thought of. When you cant afford a publicity campaign, you may
as well use a name that is already displayed, very stylishly, throughout
the French-speaking world. Sbastien Trahan designed the logo from
my sketch. To be honest, I thought this would be the only time that it
would ever be used. But this comics pamphlet was quite well received,
in spite of the very limited distribution undertaken by F-52 (a y-by-
night rm that left unhappy memories in the comics milieu) almost
well enough to make me want to publish some more.
At the end of 2000, Leif Tande and Sbastien Trahan insisted that I
should go to the Angoulme Festival with them. I agreed, on condition
that we should produce something new that would serve as a sample
of our work for visitors, distributors, journalists and other potential
publishers. We asked our closest friends to take part in the venture,
and, two weeks after dreaming up the idea, I went to the printers to
pick the collection up (incidentally, on that day I also kissed for the
very rst time a delightful bookseller who is now my wife). Because I
had an ISBN listing, I reused the MG logo. The collection was called
Automythology 33

Avons-nous les bons pneus? [Do We Have the Right Tyres?] (Fig. 3), and
it included contributions from Philippe Girard (who signed himself
PhlppGrrd in those days), Benot Joly, Luc Giard, Leif Tande, Sbastien
Trahan and myself. When I saw the book in print, I realised that there
was a wonderful coherence to the project. Everyone had a very personal
approach, but what we all shared was the ardent desire to be inventive,
to be elegant but not mannered, hard-hitting but not gross, and sensitive
but not self-pitying. Later, I would call this book lacte de naissance
de lcurie mcanique gnrale [the birth certicate of the Mcanique
Gnrale stable].
The Mcanique Gnrale stable worked as a group until 2007. We
published several collective works, including Le Pitcheur pense sa blonde
[The Pitchers Mind is on his Girl], an account of a baseball match that
we had watched (Fig. 4), and Albert en six temps [Six Stages of Albert],
a homage to Albert Chartier on his death (Fig. 5); and we organised
exhibitions, readings with slide shows, and other such events. Our
camaraderie gave rise to a healthy rivalry that motivated us, at worst,
to be more productive and, at best, to excel ourselves. Because we were

Figure 3: Jimmy Beaulieu, Leif Tande, Sbastien Trahan, PhlppGrrd, Benot


Joly, Luc Giard. Avons-nous les bons pneus? The birth certicate of Mcanique
Gnrale. The authors and Les 400 Coups, 200.
34 JIMMY BEAULIEU

scattered across Quebec, we used the internet to send each other our
work in progress, by email or, later, via a private message board. We also
gave each other mutual support in the project of setting up this press
that we seemed to be willing into being.
Serge Throux, the owner of the press Les 400 Coups, contacted me
to say that he wanted to be involved in our project. He was familiar with
our early titles, and I showed him the ones that were in preparation. He
offered to buy up the stocks and to nance our forthcoming projects.
What could have looked like an example of hasty absorption of a radical
publisher by a more mainstream one, or of selling out on my part, in
fact felt to me more like a providential hand held out that would enable
me to carry the project through. The grant-awarding bodies in Quebec
have a rather pernicious tendency to reward publishers for quantity, not
quality. By dint of this alliance, I probably beneted from this dubious
principle, but I believe that I used it responsibly.
In the end, it was clear that for Serge Throux, the decision to buy
Mcanique Gnrale and to give me carte blanche either amounted
to a moment of madness (which cost him very dear) or to a case of

Figure 4: Members of the Mcanique Gnerale stable, Le Pitcheur pense sa


blonde. The authors and Les 400 Coups, 2002.
Automythology 35

Figure 5: Members of the Mcanique Gnrale stable, Albert en six temps.


The authors and Colosse, 2004.

the heart leading the head in something very like patronage. Knowing
his aesthetic tastes, I am convinced that his motives were in no way
suspect. He supported us for seven years, much longer than he should
have done for his own nancial health (even though MG did have some
outstanding successes, they never redressed the decit from the loss-
making projects), and I will always be grateful to him.

Colosse
Once the prospect of publishing real books was denitely on the
cards, I quickly realised that this undertaking was going to demand
a deliberation and prudence that did not come naturally to me. I
therefore, in autumn 2002, created Colosse, an alternative collection,
within which I could practise dition sauvage (publishing in the wild), to
borrow Tanguy Habrands delightful term,12 as much as I liked. These
comics with a low print run, carefully but modestly crafted, enabled

2 At the Figures indpendantes de la bande dessine mondiale conference, University of


Lige, November 20.
36 JIMMY BEAULIEU

Figure 6: Luc Giard, Ticoune 6 Luc Giard and Colosse, 2002.

us to avoid getting prematurely locked into the routine imposed by


professionalism. In the run-up to a festival, or, even, if it came to it, on
the eve of a festival, we were able to concoct something new with little
concern for economic viability. And unlike autonomous publications
brought out on a whim, that new project took its place in a family,
and would be catalogued. When I look back on the MG venture, I still
shudder at the number of unhappy memories that it evokes. Colosse
evokes none at all. These little books were produced in a spirit of
pleasure and light-heartedness (at least those of the rst generation, a
point to which I will return).
Colosse was also born out of another frustration: I was bored by
festivals. As a teenager, when an event featuring comics was approaching,
I expected to nd myself in a wonderland. And I never failed to be
disappointed. You could see the same stock as in all the bookshops,
at the same price, with the bonus that if I queued for an hour, some
little man might draw a Scrameustache in my book,13 without even
looking up at me. The interest of this ritual was beyond me. Once I was

3 An extraterrestrial in a series drawn by Gos that rst appeared in Spirou magazine in


972.
Automythology 37

Figure 7: Collective, Station Service 4 The authors and Colosse, 2003.

Figure 8: David Turgeon, Luc Giard, Le Ronron de Krazy Kat (Cover illustration
by Luc Giard) David Turgeon, Luc Giard and Colosse, 2006.
38 JIMMY BEAULIEU

in a position to participate in a festival, I wanted to offer the visitors


something extra that was not available anywhere else. That was the
origin of the crazy notion that was particular to the Colosse stall: a table
containing only new publications that would all disappear at the end of
the festival. This was not out of any desire to create collectors items,
but just to spice up the event a bit, to reward the enthusiasts, those who
had bothered to turn up rather like the singles that pop groups used
to release for sale only at tour venues (Figs 68).

Vestibulles
In 2003, I was offered a job running workshops at the Cgep du Vieux
Montral.14 The workshops are extracurricular and open to the public.
Over the thirty-hour course, the participants produce a short comics
story that is then published in the Vestibulles journal, founded in 990.
The classes take place on the eleventh oor of the Cgep, which offers
a superb view over the Latin Quarter and the Jacques Cartier Bridge.
Some of the most illustrious up-and-coming members of the profession
(most of whom I ended up publishing in one way or another) rst met
there: Zviane, Julie Delporte, Vincent Giard, Luc Boss, Michel Hellman,
Cathon, Sophie Bdard, Franois Dunlop, and so on (Figs 9).
My teaching method is not very intrusive. Since I consider that
the quality of a book depends very much on individuality, daring and
resourcefulness, it would not make sense to stie these qualities by
imposing uniformity. I do at least tell students that it is a very good
thing to be obsessed by the desire to produce good work. I try to
transmit the bug, although I avoid telling them that they are embarking
on a sacricial journey that will involve relentless work and permanent
humiliation.
Another digression, on the topic of training, is that since 999, the
University of Quebecs Outaouais campus has offered an academic
course in comics, the rst in French-speaking America, under the
watchful stewardship of Sylvain Lemay. Teachers on the programme
have included Ral Godbout, Edmond Baudoin and Jean-Louis Tripp.
Authors who have emerged from this training programme include:
Iris, Jean-Sbastien Brub and Cdric Plante.
I do not attach too much importance to the feminisation of the
profession. Important female comics artists have been around for a
long time (Julie Doucet, Obom, Caroline Merola, Lucie Faniel, etc.),

4 Collge denseignement gnral et professionnel (Technical School).


Automythology 39

Figure 9: Zviane, La plus jolie n du monde Zviane and Les 400 Coups, 2007.

Figure 10: Julie Delporte, Encore a Julie Delporte and Colosse, 2008.
40 JIMMY BEAULIEU

Figure 11: Vincent Giard, Laisse tomber les lles Vincent Giard and Colosse,
200.

and it would not occur to me to regard them as a minority group,


even in a positive way. But it is perhaps relevant to add that in the
two programmes that I have mentioned, female students are in the
majority, a phenomenon that can probably be attributed to the rise of
alternative comics, manga and blogs. Within the alternative comics
nanocosm, we are not far from having achieved parity, and the future
promises to be balanced fairly evenly in that respect, all of which gives
the lie to the old clich about comics being just for little boys.

Rhythm
The output of MG was quite sustained, at anything from four to twelve
titles a year (Figs 24). I kept on nding projects that caught my
imagination, and I encouraged authors to take the plunge, mainly by
inviting them to join collectives, my recruitment weapon of choice.
Projects were becoming more numerous, and I had less and less time to
work on my own books. I would begin a working day by sitting down at
my drawing table bursting with ideas, only to break off two minutes later
Automythology 4

Figure 12: Jimmy Beaulieu, Rsine de synthse Jimmy Beaulieu and Les 400
Coups, 2002.

because I had remembered some editorial task or other than needed to


be done (these were tasks that swallowed up the rest of the day).
Moreover, admittedly with the help of the Les 400 Coups team
and other aides-de-camp like the intrepid Sbastien Trahan, I learned
everything on the job. Never having had any training, I took on many
roles, such as graphic designer, and editor. Each new book represented
a technical challenge that unfailingly made me nervous. In fact, I rarely
had to say I dont know how to do that. The high point of this learning
curve was reached with the conception of Formule, the rst number of
a journal of theory and practice.
From 2002 to 2007, for my work as collection director, I was paid
2 per cent of the retail price of each book sold. The sales varied from
70 to 2,000 copies, except for Burquette [Burqa Girl],15 which sold
4,000. I was also able to invoice the rm for my book layout and design
work (but not for capturing lettering corrections, a task that becomes
Herculean when it involves making invisible alterations to handwritten
characters). In 2007, I began to receive an advance on this 2 per cent,

5 Francis Desharnais, Burquette (Montreal: Les 400 Coups, 2008).


42 JIMMY BEAULIEU

Figure 13: Luc Giard, Le Pont du Havre Luc Giard and Les 400 Coups, 2005.

Figure 14: Philippe Girard, Les Ravins (Note Jimmy Beaulieu, who accompanied
Philippe Girard to St Petersburg, pictured behind and to the left.) Philippe
Girard and Les 400 Coups, 2008.
Automythology 43

paid as a weekly salary equivalent to thirteen hours of work. Needless


to say, I worked more than thirteen hours a week on MG, but in case
that provokes an outcry, I should make it clear that the collection ran at
a decit, and that in my view this salary showed that the management
were trying to be supportive. In order to live, I therefore had to accept
all the bread and butter contracts that came along.
My main source of frustration and exhaustion was, however, the
divided loyalties built into the job, caught between the rock of the
authors and the hard place of the management. The artists were by
nature suspicious of authority, and did not always appreciate that I
was on their side. They entrusted me with the thing that they most
cherished, and fondly imagined that the management was a machine
for conjuring money out of thin air. The management, meanwhile, was
losing a lot of money, did not seem to have much of a clue what our
books were about, and believed that the authors produced comics as
a hobby and that they had another source of income (so paying them
could wait). I was constantly having to arbitrate in numerous disputes
between the two camps.
My main objective was to bring books into being, and I concentrated
on it too exclusively. I carried out this work with devotion and with
energy, but also with impatience and sometimes maladroitly.

Exporting
Our rst books were intrepidly distributed in French-speaking Europe
by Makassar, albeit on a limited scale. When we joined Les 400 Coups,
we gained access to the Volumen distribution system, which was
more efcient but impersonal. My relationships with the reps (not
to be confused with the distributors mentioned above) that Les 400
Coups employed in France were somewhat tense, with friction arising
essentially out of the specicity of Qubcois production. These reps
panicked at the sight of a word in Joual:16 they refused, for example, to
distribute my book 22C,17 because I had used the word chocolatine to
designate what in metropolitan French is called a pain au chocolat, in
spite of the drawing just below the word (Fig. 5), or Pascal Girards Dans
un cruchon [In a Jug],18 or Iriss Dans mes rellignes [In My Trainers],19
because of their titles (bear in mind that before Iris suggested this title,

6 Translators note: Qubcois French.


7 Jimmy Beaulieu, 22C (Montreal: Mcanique Gnrale, 2004).
8 Pascal Girard, Dans un cruchon (Montreal: Mcanique Gnrale, 2007).
9 Iris, Dans mes rellignes (Montreal: Mcanique Gnrale, 2006).
44 JIMMY BEAULIEU

Figure 15: Jimmy Beaulieu, -22C Jimmy Beaulieu and Les 400 Coups, 2003.

I had never heard the highly regional expression rellignes, a deformation


of running shoes or espadrilles). This used to drive me crazy (Figs
57).
The popularity of the two series Magasin gnral [General Store],
by Loisel and Tripp,20 and Aya de Yopougon [Aya from Yopougon] by
Abouet and Oubrerie,21 proved me right. French readers were much
more open to reading an unfamiliar variety of their language (in fact it
was no stranger to them than the French of San Antonio or Rabelais)
than these publishers reps had thought. This over-cautiousness simply
showed up their colonial attitudes towards our project. I am well aware
that these were just excuses because our books did not interest them (it
is true that the excuses that I gave to authors who submitted projects
that left me cold were probably no more convincing), but I found them

20 Rgis Loisel and Jean-Louis Tripp, Magasin gnral (Brussels: Casterman, 2006).
Translators note: this series is set in Quebec, in the rst half of the twentieth century.
2 Marguetite Abouet and Clment Oubrerie, Aya de Yopougon (Paris: Gallimard, 2005).
Translators note: this series is set in Cte dIvoire, in the 970s.
Automythology 45

Figure 16: Pascal Girard, Dans un cruchon Pascal Girard and Les 400 Coups,
2006.

Figure 17: Iris, Dans mes rellignes Iris and Les 400 Coups, 2006.
46 JIMMY BEAULIEU

insulting. Once a new team had been formed in Paris around 2008, the
situation improved, but too little and too late.
So we were distributed in France, but with some difculty being at a
distance, with no promotional budget, and with no presence at festivals
(admittedly with the exception of Angoulme). The shipping costs
were very steep, and we learned the hard way about some European
distribution practices, like recycling.
We should perhaps have put more effort into building up the
promotion of our work among our anglophone neighbours. But in
the internet era, language seemed to be a much more substantial
barrier to overcome than distance. Moreover, comics distribution in
the anglophone world is very different from ours. It is more brutal, and
much more focused on new titles to the detriment of the back catalogue.
Nonetheless, the publishing house Conundrum has published a few
books by Philippe Girard, Line Gamache, Richard Suicide and myself.
Drawn and Quarterly has taken under its wing Pascal Girard, Obom,
Julie Doucet, Guy Delisle, Pascal Blanchet and, for a time, Michel
Rabagliati, who has now joined the ranks of Conundrum. There is
much work still to do in this area.

Expozine
If there is one cultural event where anglophone and francophone
residents of Montreal cohabit harmoniously, it has to be Expozine. This
little festival of cantankerous, resourceful small presses was founded
in 2002, and is not restricted to comics: it happily encompasses poetry,
literature, political pamphlets and other books of images, and it is
like having annual rejuvenation treatment. I might come out of the
Montreal book festival feeling 08 years old, but when I come out of
Expozine I feel 7, and ready to take on a whole lot of new projects. Not
only does this event give us the chance to meet readers who are just like
us, but it also enables us to see what our fellow citizens are doing in the
margins of the tortuous ofcial circuits. The content on show exudes
freshness, which is probably not unrelated to the fact that the hollow-
eyed artist behind the table spent the night screen printing the cover
and sewing the binding of the new work that you are icking through.
This event gives recognition to art produced out of a sense of urgency,
and this is why Colosse ts in so well there. This is why Expozine is, just
like the Festival de la Bande Dessine du Qubec and the Angoulme
festival, an important annual deadline, with a view to which we get
Automythology 47

together a batch of new publications. And we rarely end up with unsold


copies.

The New Colosse Collection


In association with the brilliant author and critic David Turgeon, I
relaunched the Colosse collection in 2007 in a more ambitious format,
in particular thanks to his discovery of the Montreal-based printer Le
Caus du Livre, which specialises in digital printing with the possibility
of German binding. This has enabled us to make much bolder choices in
the books that we produce, in terms of content as well as material format,
especially since Vincent Giard joined us in 2009. This reincarnation,
which we sometimes rather pompously call la Nouvelle Collection
Colosse [The New Colosse Collection], has become the playground of
which we had always dreamed (Figs 822). This is an unusual publishing
set-up. Each author pays for the printing and binding of his or her book,
and receives all of the prots (we occasionally keep back 5 per cent for
overheads), a system that could be called federated and regulated self-
publishing (but still in the wild). In our determination to shelter the
works from the bloody arena of the cultural market and its false hopes,
we are indifferent to press reviews, awards, mainstream distribution
or other ways of achieving success. We only sell at festivals and via our
online shop. Colosse is condemned to expand only through the quality of
its list, and it will remain a collection to which the mountain has to come.

Strips
When they bought MG in 2002, Les 400 Coups gave me the title of
comics collection director, which suggested that I was also going to
look after the mainstream comics catalogue. But as talented authors of
genre comics could be paid ten times more for their work by publishing
in the United States or in Europe, we only received rather unappealing
submissions, normally ones that had been turned down by everyone
else. So for this reason, and out of personal preference (my main
reward being the satisfaction of work well done), I mainly favoured the
publication of so-called alternative comics. Since authors of alternative
comics have little to gain by publishing elsewhere, and since the
impoverishment that pervades this milieu is pretty widespread, we
were still in a position to build something of our own without having
to make too many nancial sacrices. I only accepted one manuscript
that came through the post: Burquette, by Francis Desharnais. All the
48 JIMMY BEAULIEU

Figure 18: Jimmy Beaulieu, Appalaches Jimmy Beaulieu and Colosse, 2007.

Figure 19: David Turgeon and Vincent Giard, Les Pices dtaches 1 David
Turgeon, Vincent Giard and Colosse, 200.
Automythology 49

Figure 20: Catherine Genest, David Turgeon, Jimmy Beaulieu, Julie Delporte,
Sbastien Trahan, Vincent Giard, Lecture vue: Alto The authors and
Colosse, 200.

Figure 21: Marie Saur and Nylso, Alphagraph 1 Marie Saur, Nylso and
Colosse, 20.
50 JIMMY BEAULIEU

Figure 22: Alice Lorenzi, Un moment priv Alice Lorenzi and Colosse, 20.

other projects originated from people that I knew, whether through


the bookshop, the workshop, blogs or fanzines (I later discovered that
I already knew Francis, who had been a customer of Pantoute at the
time when I was working there). This book has been, by a long way, my
greatest commercial success as a publisher.
However, I did not really see this project as suitable for MG.
Its humour was based a little too much on current events for this
collection, which I envisaged as more timeless. I had thought about
founding a new collection devoted to comic strip (after all we are in
North America). I had, in fact, three projects for strip collections in
hand: this one, the re-edition of Daniel Sheltons Ben series,22 and Une
piquante petite brunette [A Foxy Little Brunette] by Albert Chartier.23
It is worth pausing over the latter project. After the death of Albert
Chartier, his daughter, Christiane Chartier, contacted me in order to
take forward the long-held project of bringing out a new edition of
Onsime and Sraphin. When I went to meet her, with Michel Viau,
I discovered that there were a whole lot more Elsinore, Kiki and other

22 See, for example: Daniel Shelton, Ben: Les Plus Belles Annes [Ben: The Best Years]
(Montreal: Les 400 Coups, 2009).
23 Albert Chartier, Une piquante petite brunette (Montreal: Les 400 Coups, 2009).
Automythology 5

strips than we had published in Spoutnik. I thought it would be better to


get my hand in by beginning with this project, which seemed simpler,
before embarking on the epic task of sorting out and restoring the
pages of Onsime. I also felt that I had come upon a priceless treasure.
On reading Chartiers notes and correspondence, I discovered that he
had been keen to publish this series, but none of the magazines that he
had submitted it to had accepted it. I felt that I was putting right, albeit
regrettably late in the day, a great injustice (Fig. 23).

The End of MG
In 2008, Les 400 Coups was bought out by Caractre, a rm that until
then had specialised in school textbooks. I very quickly realised that
our ambitions in relation to comics publishing were by no means in
harmony.
In October, I went to St Malo, for a month, with Pascal Girard. We had
been invited by the Quai des Bulles festival for a one-month residence.
During our stay, we rubbed shoulders with European authors who had
an approach to the job of comics author that was very different from

Figure 23: Albert Chartier, Une piquante petite brunette Christiane Chartier
and Les 400 Coups, Jimmy Beaulieu (ed.), 2008. First published as cover
image of Le Samedi, in the 950s.
52 JIMMY BEAULIEU

ours. They thought of themselves as professionals, which I found


unsettling. They spoke of their determination to protect their interests,
and to enjoy relationships of mutual respect with their publishers. And
furthermore, if they submitted a project to several publishers who did
not accept it, they let it drop. With my artists mentality, I had never
really looked at the job in this light. During my previous long stay in
France, for an eight-month residence in Angoulme, I had experienced
a similar shock, but it had been less pronounced, as I was mixing with
the Ego Comme X group, whose ideology was close to mine. I am not
saying that I adopted this European professional vision, but being
confronted with it during these few weeks in St Malo certainly led me
to reect. The distance from home also encouraged my tendency to call
things into question during this month.
On returning to Montreal, in November, I was very disappointed to
discover that the publication of Une piquante petite brunette had been
greeted by a wall of indifference. I had got used to worthwhile projects
that fell at, but this time it was beyond belief. It was an accessible,
inviting book, of great historical interest because it took the reader on
a stroll through urban Montreal in the 960s, that most fascinating
decade. It depicted Expo 67, the construction of the metro, and much
more. Had I ruined these treasures with my editorial or design work?
Was it such a failure? Would I have done better to produce a smarter
looking product?
My esteemed competitors, for their part, had begun to have their
books printed in Asia, which enabled them to produce books that
looked more resplendent. Now, although I like elegance, I hate luxury,
particularly when it comes at a cost that is politically unacceptable, and
I was not prepared to enter this race. As a result, our books looked more
and more poorly produced when side-by-side on the shelf with others
in a similar price bracket.
In short, my disappointment over the Chartier volume added further
weight to my general sense of weariness about my work as a publisher.
And above all, I wanted to be telling my own stories.
I therefore decided to tell Les 400 Coups that I would be leaving in
December 2008. I had intended to go on editing the journal Formule Un
[Formula One], which I still found stimulating, but the new owners of
Les 400 Coups were more mundane in their concerns (or less militant)
than Serge Throux, and did not wish to keep it going, in spite of sales
gures above 500.
So I ofcially retired from publishing. The declaration of this decision
on my blog ends with this bitter paragraph:
Automythology 53

With MG, I feel that I have accomplished even if I overdid it and did
it badly an important mission, that I have been involved in the artistic
development of a number of young authors, and that I have saved a few
important books from oblivion. From now on, my relationships with
people from the publishing world will no longer be distorted either by the
pressure of expectations or by sycophancy. I am going to do what everyone
else does, and devote myself exclusively to tending my own little garden and
my little career, and, paradoxically, I will have fewer enemies.

On my departure, I asked the new management to allow me oversight of


anything to be published on MG or, even better, to bring the collection
to an end. They refused, in spite of a verbal agreement with Serge
Throux that, as I understood it, guaranteed me moral ownership of the
collection. It was handed over, at the same time as the title of comics
collection director to the highly erudite Michel Viau. He has published
some creditable titles, but it is mainly with the mainstream list that he
has made his mark at Les 400 Coups, in particular by nally managing
to exhume Albert Chartiers Sraphin,24 and Onsime.25
As soon as I resigned, most of my health problems disappeared.

After MG
The Mcanique Gnrale collection now seems to have been abandoned.
It was a ne collection. We reached a much wider readership than we
could ever have expected, and we achieved this much more quickly than
we had thought possible (you will have guessed that in spite of this
positive assessment, prot proved elusive). And, above all, we sought
out a new readership, outside the comics ghetto. Our appeal was to
anyone who showed some curiosity the open-minded, the young and
not so young, the fashionable and unfashionable.
I still take great pleasure in running the comics workshop at the
Cgep du Vieux Montral, and in producing my own books. At the
end of 200, after four years out of circulation as an author, I had two
books published by European publishers,26 amounting to a total of 400
pages in colour, as well as a hand-lettered English version of two of my
autobiographical books.27

24 Albert Chartier and Claude-Henri Grignon, Sraphin illustr [The Illustrated Sraphin]
(Montreal: Les 400 Coups, 200).
25 Albert Charter, Onsime (Montreal: Les 400 Coups, 20).
26 Jimmy Beaulieu, A la faveur de nuit [Under Cover of Darkness] (Brussels: Les
Impressions Nouvelles, 200); and Comdie sentimentale pornographique [Porno
Rom-Com] (Paris: Delcourt, 20).
27 Jimmy Beaulieu, Suddenly Something Happened (Wolfville: Conundrum Press, 200).
54 JIMMY BEAULIEU

Although I am still in the early stages of my career as an author, I


think that I have done my share of campaigning on behalf of auteurist
comics in Quebec (and I dare to believe that producing my own books
will not harm the cause, in any case).
Vincent Giard and David Turgeon have taken some responsibility
for the Colosse collection. They are running it with impressive verve. I
still have some involvement, but I take a back seat, mainly in the role of
the rather eccentric founder, a kind of mascot. Since the bitterness that
I feel about my previous escapades in publishing has undermined my
vocation, I prefer not to risk spreading my disillusionment and denting
the enthusiasm of my highly dynamic partners.
On rue St-Hubert, there stands La Maison de la Bande Dessine
de Montral,28 a studio that provides working space for about fteen
authors, almost all of whom have emerged from the Cgep course. It
also hosts artists in residence and events like the Montreal 48-hour
comics marathon, a variation on the 24-hour comics marathon, which
consists of producing, not twenty-four pages each but a collective
tabloid-format magazine that is then given out the following week at
Expozine. The MBDM is the place to visit to get a sense of the explosive
vitality of the Montreal alternative comics scene.
New presses are currently being set up in order to publish the work
of this talented crew (accessible mainly on internet at the moment).
Presses like Pow Pow and La Mauvaise Tte, both based at the MBDM,
or Trip and Front Froid, among others, have plenty of aces up their
sleeve. La Pastque has also adapted some premises in Mile End, which
are used both as studio and ofces.
Drawn and Quarterly had opened the bookshop, Fichtre!, which has
since closed down, but its head book buyer has been taken on at a
splendid general bookshop called Le Port de Tte, which has become
our port of call for book launches and other events. Mainstream Franco-
Belgian comics are also well represented in a few bookshops, such as
Plante BD, Le March du Livre, and Monet. Montreal still has many
English-language comic shops and a few bookshops that specialise in
manga, that seem to be holding their own in spite of the recession.
In Quebec City, Phylactre, a new bookshop that supports our cause,
has just opened, taking its place alongside venerable institutions like
Pantoute, Premire Issue and LImaginaire.

28 It benets from the co-leadership of Vincent Giard, who is at the forefront of the new
generation. He is a brilliant, gregarious and generous author, who helps, motivates and
inuences almost everyone. Giard also plays a key role in the Montreal 48-hour comics
marathon and the La Mauvaise Tte label.
Automythology 55

The popularity of Michel Rabagliatis work seems to be on the up,


just like that of several Qubcois authors whose work is published in
Europe, such as Guy Delisle (but he does live there), Delaf & Dubuc,
Eva Rollin, Jacques Lamontagne, Franois Miville-Deschnes, VoRo,
and Thierry Labrousse. In the United States, some of our authors have
attained superstar status, like Yannick Paquette, Michel Lacombe, Serge
Lapointe, Niko Henrichon and Cameron Stewart. Alternative authors
(so to speak) from the generation following my own (Pascal Girard,
Zviane, Iris, Matthew Forsythe) are now established professionals with
a regular and indeed exemplary output.
This list of successes might, unfortunately, invite an over-hasty
conclusion to be drawn: it seems that working for a foreign press is
an obligatory stage towards breaking through (with Rabagliati and
Forsythe as exceptions). I hope that this is not the case. I hope that
Qubcois readers will continue to increase the space on their shelves
that is given over to Qubcois comics, especially to those published in
Quebec. They have everything to gain from this. Authors cannot go on
indenitely producing work comparable to that being done elsewhere
if they are working for almost nothing. And publishers cannot expand,
and so offer a better deal to their authors, without a big seller every
now and then (let us cite the example of Rabagliati for the umpteenth
time). And if current political trends prevail, we will have to ght to
keep our state subsidies. Winning conditions are in place, and I still
dare to believe in victory. The target is narrow, but we have several sharp
shooters.

By Way of Conclusion
Economically speaking, Quebec is, then, not yet a paradise for comics
authors, but on the creative level, you can feel the electricity in the air.
We have the advantage of an enviable strategic position. Without the
burden of history to weigh us down, we are free to develop away from
the shadow of a hegemonic comics school. We can invent a voice of our
own, by mixing, if we so desire and as we like, U.S., Franco-European
and Japanese inuences to which we have access in equal proportions. It
is not difcult to convince the media, booksellers and readers that even
if what we do does not t into the mould (forty-eight pages, hard cover,
colour, comic book, manga, and so on), it is still a real book. Moreover,
the difculty of turning everyday working practices into a professional
activity soon lters out authors who embark on it for the wrong reasons
(money, popularity, springboard to lm making). Whatever aesthetic
56 JIMMY BEAULIEU

path they travel, authors who keep going must certainly have re in
their bellies. And the curiosity of all those who set out to discover their
work will be handsomely rewarded.
I believe that my main legacy has been to participate in the creation of
the illusion in the minds of young authors that it is possible to produce
comics with, shall we say, integrity in Quebec. That there are ways of
nishing books, in your own way, of publishing them in your own way,
and that they can even make enough money to let you write the next
one. And I feel certain that if we keep the illusion going a little longer,
it will turn into reality.
When I think about those authors from the beginning of the last
century who, when they reached retirement age, saw their pioneering
work nullied and their profession disappearing for a lack of successors,
I count myself lucky that my own succession is rmly assured by the
up-and-coming generation.
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