Style combination · Contrasts
L'Association and French Alternative Comics × Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
Luminous colour, vast science-fiction vistas and painterly spreads against small black-and-white books about dreams, illness and family: the two poles of adult French comics.
Mix them and make something L'Association and French Alternative Comics Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
01
What each style brings
Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.
L'Association and French Alternative Comics Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics (Mœbius, Druillet & Les Humanoïdes Associés)
- Type from Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
- Colour from L'Association and French Alternative Comics
- Form from L'Association and French Alternative Comics
- Composition from L'Association and French Alternative Comics
- Surface from Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
No!
Bangers; Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics used Pen-lettered balloon capitals and Monumental drawn title lettering
Text · L'Association and French Alternative Comics
The black-and-white auteur comics of L'Association, the Paris publisher founded by seven cartoonists in 1990, and the 1990s small-press scene it led. Against the 48-page hardback colour album, it printed dream diaries, memoirs and formal games in black ink on white paper, in books of many sizes, from 24-page pocket booklets to A4 albums and the 2,000-page wordless Comix 2000. Every author keeps a personal hand: David B.'s crowded black masses, Satrapi's flat, frontal figures, Trondheim's improvised felt-tip rabbits. Covers add one or two flat inks.
Caveat; L'Association and French Alternative Comics used Captions and balloons lettered by hand in each author's own writing and Story and chapter titles drawn large in white capitals reversed out of a black panel or band
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from L'Association and French Alternative Comics, with a counter-accent from Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
L'Association and French Alternative Comics Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics (Mœbius, Druillet & Les Humanoïdes Associés)
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#fbfaf6ground · 36% -
#011021ink · 14% -
#ffb200accent · 18% -
#a3243faccent · 14% -
#ffdf6caccent · 10% -
#e7a487accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #fbfaf6;
--ink: #011021;
--accent-1: #ffb200;
--accent-2: #a3243f;
--accent-3: #ffdf6c;
--accent-4: #e7a487;
--font-display: "Bangers", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Caveat", cursive;
}Use it with care
L'Association and French Alternative Comics: The leading authors are living, named people and much of the work is memoir of real events, so never ask an image model for a named author's hand, and never attribute invented pages or opinions to them; Persepolis tells a real Iranian childhood under revolution and war, so do not lift its veiled schoolgirls as generic shorthand for Iran or for Muslim women; and David B.'s monsters in L'Ascension du Haut Mal are one family's account of epilepsy, not a generic image of illness or disability.
Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics (Mœbius, Druillet & Les Humanoïdes Associés): The stories, characters and drawings of Mœbius, Druillet, Bilal and the other contributors remain in copyright with their authors, estates and publishers: build your own worlds, creatures and title lettering in the shared idiom, do not ask an image model to imitate a named artist, and never present a generated picture as a page from the magazine. The magazine's adult register also ran to sexualised depictions of women; keep that choice deliberate and give women the same agency and drawing care as the heroes.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With L'Association and French Alternative Comics
- Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line) Contrasts · The colour adventure album with an even contour and researched backgrounds is exactly what these black-and-white memoirs in personal hands were made against; set a page of each side by side to show the break.
- Risograph & Indie Print Culture Pairs well · Give a black-and-white comic a one- or two-ink Risograph cover to bring its small-press book design into today's indie print culture.
- Expressionist Woodcut Graphics Pairs well · Borrow the woodcut's harsh black masses and distorted figures, as Satrapi's drawing drew on German Expressionism, to give a black-and-white memoir page more weight.
- Story Manga (Postwar Japanese Comics) Contrasts · Both are black and white, but manga builds grey from screentone and motion from speed lines; here there is no grey at all, only solid black, white and patterned fills.
- Arab Independent Comics (Samandal, TokTok, Lab619, Skefkef) Pairs well · A younger many-handed small-press scene that also prints mostly in black ink; one of its Beirut titles won Angoulême's alternative comics prize in 2019. Pair the French book design with its dialect lettering and Risograph colour.
- Underground Comix Pairs well · A later French-language small-press scene, one of whose founders turned to psychedelic and autobiographical comics after discovering Crumb and Shelton, keeps the black ink and the single author's hand but clears the crowding and the shock; borrow its book design to give a comix page a calmer format.
With Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
- Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line) Contrasts · Both grew from Franco-Belgian albums, and the magazine also printed clear-line artists such as Yves Chaland and Serge Clerc; ligne claire closes every form with one even, unhatched contour and flat colour in tidy panels, while Métal hurlant hatches and stipples its detail, modulates its colour and breaks the page into tableaux.
- Synthwave / Outrun Contrasts · Both picture the future as a 1970s and 1980s fantasy, but synthwave uses neon gradients, chrome and a perspective grid on black; switch to Métal hurlant for hand-drawn, pale desert light and alien organic forms.
- Story Manga (Postwar Japanese Comics) Contrasts · Hayao Miyazaki said he directed Nausicaä under Mœbius's influence; manga stays black and white with screentone, speed lines and fast cinematic cutting, while Métal hurlant slows down into colour tableaux and, in Arzach, tells whole stories without a word.
- Art Nouveau Pairs well · Druillet drew the huge structures behind Lone Sloane partly from Art Nouveau and Gothic cathedrals; borrow Art Nouveau's whiplash frames and arched borders to turn a science-fiction splash page or cover into a baroque altarpiece.
- Solarpunk Contrasts · Both paint pale, luminous futures full of biomorphic forms, and solarpunk counts Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind among its models, a film Miyazaki said he directed under Mœbius's influence; solarpunk is utopian, verdant and floral, while Métal hurlant sets lone figures in empty alien deserts and colossal architecture, tells adult stories with sex and violence, and breaks comic pages into tableaux.
- Surrealist Graphics Pairs well · Mœbius's silent deserts and metamorphosing creatures share Surrealism's dream logic and long empty perspectives; add its uncanny juxtapositions to a science-fiction landscape, but keep the comic's sequence of drawn panels.
- American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age) Contrasts · The American newsstand comic tells superhero stories in ruled panel grids with flat four-colour dot tints on newsprint; Métal hurlant, and Heavy Metal as a glossy full-colour magazine, told adult science fiction with sex and violence, painterly colour and pages exploded into single visions.
- Underground Comix Contrasts · Adult comics of the 1970s in two opposite registers: painted, luminous science-fiction vistas against cheap, crowded black-and-white satire.