Why no war in French comics? The Trente Glorieuses and redrawing of the second thirty years war

This article looks at transitions in representations of war and Occupation across three cartoon journals for children published in France between the Liberation and the early 1970s: Coeurs vaillants, Coq hardi and Pilote. The comics censorship legislation of 1949 and 1952 is examined as a palliative response to war trauma experienced by children and by their parents across both world wars. The rejection of war is also traced back to the efforts of inter-war peacemakers to engender cross-cultural tolerance in the minds of the young and the French state’s careful management of war memory throughout the period of the “trente glorieuses”. Finally, the article explores how the early strategies adopted for the representation of war shifted in line with socio-cultural change and, in particular, the politicisation of authors and readers after ‘68. Analyses of strips from Pilote hebdomadaire between 1960 and the early 1970s show how the distorted memorialisation of the Occupation in the Gaullist era became a target for a contestatory rewriting of war into cartoons.