8. La Ballade de la mer salée and the Emergence of the European Graphic Novel

Hugo Pratt’s La Ballade de la mer salée marks a turning point in the history of bande dessinée. In publishing these contemplative meanderings stretching over 161 pages as a single book, Casterman brought to a close the cycle opened by Losfeld in 1964—and opened a new one. Like Losfeld a decade earlier, Casterman was simply compiling a strip which had been published as episodes in the Italian and French press. Like Losfeld, Casterman was offering a new apprehension of these disparate episodes, now gathered as a continuous long story in a black-and-white publication which helped to give birth to the graphic novel in France. Except now, it was a top publisher entering the field of mainstream adult comics, providing both commercial muscle and unprecedented respectability. La Ballade came to be the model for the literary aspirations of comics, and the model for the adult bande dessinée as recognised and celebrated in festivals.