Balloons on the Moon: Visions of Space Travel in Francophone Comic Strips

Abstract

Reflecting on the 1969 Apollo 11 lunar landing, French astronaut Patrick Baudry (1946–), then a fighter-pilot candidate, admitted years later that he and his classmates had felt a sense of déjà-vu. After all, Tintin, a world-famous comic strip character, had been there 15 years earlier.¹ Though anecdotal, the comment nonetheless points to an important element of European astroculture — the comic book — where ‘bubbles’ or ‘balloons’ filled with text intertwine with pictures to move the story forward. The two volumes that cover Tintin’s lunar odyssey, along with other episodes from francophone comic strips, became a classic of the genre, reprinted and discussed years later. Because of the combined importance of the Francophone comic strip in twentieth-century European popular culture, and the fact that its golden age coincides with the beginnings of the Space Age and the associated Cold War Space Race, it is fascinating to consider the factors that account for the public interest in space-themed comics. To do so, an examination of the space episodes that were published in the Tintin, Buck Danny and Dan Cooper series will show not only the commonality of themes, but the seemingly contradictory aspirations the theme of ‘space’ elicited.