Jean-Christophe Menu

Recent career

Menu continues to work on his comics. On 8 January 2011 he was awarded a doctorat en art et sciences de l'art (Doctorate in Art and Art Sciences) after defending his thesis La Bande dessinée et son double: langage et marges de la bande dessinée: perspectives pratiques, théoriques et éditoriales (The Comics and its Double: Language and Frontiers of Comics: Practical, Theoretical and Editorial Prospects). The thesis was under the supervision of Jacques Cohen (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne).

Controversy

In 2005, Menu published "Plates-bandes", a diatribe against the co-optation and wholesale copycatting of the indie, avant-garde, experimental, or alternative comics aesthetic by France's mainstream comic book publishers looking to corner what had suddenly become a lucrative market. Literally meaning "flowerbeds", the title is a pun involving part of the word for comics ("bande dessinée," or "drawn strip"), a concern that independent comics are headed for blandness and platitude ("plat," literally flat or insipid), and a gauntlet thrown down to mainstream publishers for encroaching on indie territory (the colloquial expression "trampling someone's flowerbeds" means to step on someone's toes). The book coincides with three of the original founders and a few authors leaving L'Association and finding work with many of mainstream publishers mentioned in its content.

In May 2011, after nearly six months of struggles within the structure, Menu announced his official departure from L'Association and spoke in a public letter of a desire to start a new project elsewhere.