Bloody Sunday 1920 as a French graphic novel

'Croke Park, dimanche sanglante à Dublin' [Croke Park, Blood Sunday in Dublin] is the title of a new French graphic novel. It tells the story of the killing by Crown forces of Gaelic football supporters who were attending a match in Croke Park on 21 November 1920. 

The scenario was written by Sylvain Gâche and the artwork is by Richard Guérineau. Gâche is a French and history teacher in the French city of Blois. It is really interesting to read about the process they went through in deciding to make a graphic novel about Bloody Sunday. Read it here (en français)

Front cover of the 'Croke Park' graphic novel. Image source.

As you can see from the images here on this post (which all come from the BDGest website), the graphic novel contains a mix of new and old with scenes from November 1920 and from February 2007. November 1920 is when the massacre took place and February 2007 was when Ireland played England in rugby at Croke Park. 

The home of rugby in Ireland, Landsdowne Road, was closed for renovation at the time and Croke Park, home of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), was used instead for soccer and rugby matches (something which had not happened before, due to the Association's ban on 'foreign games'). Naturally, on that day in February 2007, emotions ran high as England played rugby in Croke Park for the first. Ireland won 43-13. 

You can read more about the graphic novel 'Croke Park' here in English on the RTÉ Brainstorm website. Vous pouvez aussi lire des articles en français sur le roman graphique 'Croke Park' ici et ici sur les sites de BDGest et PlaneteBD.

France and Belgium have a long tradition of creating comics and to this day, bande dessinée [comics] known colloquially as BD, and roman graphique [graphic novels] remain immensely popular in those countries with young and old alike, where they are classed as le neuvième art [the ninth art]. According to this article, sales of BD (including comics, manga etc.) in French bookshops represent 13% of all sales. 78 million copies of BD are produced each year. In 2018, 60 million copies of BD were sold in France and 25% of the books borrowed from libraries in France were BD.

Find out more about the history of the bande dessinée here. To celebrate all things BD and to promote the world of comics, the French Culture ministry have launched a programme of events called BD 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been extended until June 2021. You can get more information on BD 2020 here.

'Croke Park' is not the first time that French cartoonists have created a bande dessinée or roman graphique on the subject of Ireland. Some of the others include:

'Chiens de Fusil'

'James Joyce, l'homme de Dublin'

'Giunchiglia'

'Mon Traître'

'Padraig'

'Professeur Bell'