Welcome To Toon Town

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Four-hundred and forty-three kilometers South West of Paris and one-hundred and sixteen kilometers North East of Bordeaux, the ancient town of Angouleme — sitting snugly between the Charente and Aguienne rivers — is ‘picture perfect’ in every sense. Back in January, 1974, the town — once the center of the French paper industry, and now the center of comic-strip production in France — decided to hold an exhibition designed to showcase and encourage cartoon artists. Ambitious from the start, it was hugely successful, attracting international attention and — over the years of increasing success that followed — becoming regarded as a kind of “Cannes of cartoon”. Now the whole town is given over to the festival, with free buses taking wide-eyed visitors from one dazzling event or exhibition to another. “Yeah? And so what?” some of the uninitiated might say, “That stuff’s just for kids! A bit of escapism, only to be taken lightly, if at all.” No, no, no. The world of comic books and cartoons has been moving forward in leaps and bounds over the past few decades, drawing large numbers of artists to the form, and huge numbers of fans. Sharp, sometimes violent, bitingly satiric, erotic, or just plain SHOCKING, this is an arena no longer guaranteed to provide escape from even the harshest realities.  ART IMITATING LIFE (THE GRAPHIC NOVEL) Always internationally minded and seeking to cross all and any cultural divides, the special guest of this year’s festival is the legendary American artist Art Spiegelman. Art literally decided to imitate life — in a totally non-compromising way — when in the mid-eighties he set about writing Maus, A Survivor’s Tale, dealing with the Nazi holocaust by portraying the Jewish people as mice and the Nazi’s as cats, and single-handedly revolutionizing the comic book world in the process. Working in underground, counter-culture publications in the late sixties and early seventies, Spiegelman had touched upon the holocaust before — driven by the suicide of his mother, a holocaust survivor who had suffered Survivor’s Guilt Syndrome — but Maus was a full-frontal confrontation of the horrors and, although treated with some suspicion at first, became universally accepted, exposing Spiegelman to international fame and changing everything.  SPIEGELMAN’S INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCE Spiegelman’s masterwork inspired a generation and opened the doors to all forms of self-expression as one part of what is known as The Ninth Art. Apart from US artists like Adrian Tomine (Blonde platine), and Crag Thompson (Blankets — an extremely long autobiographical work, considered one of last years revelations), the graphic novel is thriving thanks to Japanese artists like Taniguchi (Quartier lointain – a 2003 prize-winner), Kiriko Nananan (Blue),  and Yoshiharu Tsuge (L’homme sans talent  – recently translated into French and a nominee for the Best Album Prize at the Festival Awards this year). And of course, France and French speaking countries love the form and include works by such names as David B, Fabrice Neaud, Fréderic Boilet, Fréderic Peeters and Marjane Satrapi.  THE LONG ARM OF ANGOULEME Angouleme has never been shy of moving beyond the limits of the town to promote itself and the artists it represents. I was at the Press Conference to announce this years Festival here in Paris last year and was astounded at the size of the journalistic turn out. Discussions and exhibitions take place regularly in places as far flung as Paris, New York and Switzerland. I personally was lucky enough — along with around 150, 000 others — to see the excellent ‘Blake and Mortimer’ exhibition at the Museé de l’homme here in Paris, produced by the Festival International de la bande dessinée (FIBD), to celebrate the anniversary of creator Edgar P. Jacobs a century after his birth. The exhibition moved on to Switzerland from there, before returning home to be exhibited in Angouleme itself. One that I missed was CARS IN COMICS in Paris between September and October last year, in which the Festival teamed up with the Paris Motor Show to exhibit some of the cars appearing in the most popular of the action comics.  SEEING IS BELIEVING One of the many highlights of the Festival this year is a highly innovative tribute to Winsor McCay’s LITTLE NEMO, created in 1905. The tribute, entitled, ‘A Concert Of Drawings’ will show the live creation of a comic, which will be illustrated by around ten major illustrators from the French scene. Above the stage will be a gigantic split-screen, divided into four panels, forming a broad imitation of a comic book plate. Sloped desks, equipped with cameras, will be set out at each side of the stage for the illustrators to come to and work, gradually filling the four panels in accordance with the story-line. The story itself will be an original scenario written specifically for the Festival.  OTHER HIGHLIGHTS The saying ‘A picture paints a thousand words,’ should indicate to readers how far short this little article falls of properly describing the variety of works to be displayed, inspired by international culture: French, Japanese, African, American, Canadian, Swedish, British, and — of course — the power of the individual imagination. Having mentioned the Japanese, it should be pointed out that the mighty MANGA will be celebrated this year.  PRIZES Each year the judges receive around 400 albums and break them down into seven albums for each of six categories for the Official Selection. This year’s selections reflect a vast array of international talent and a wide open field of differing styles, approaches, personalities and artistic vision, ranging from American underground hero Kim Keitch in the ‘Best Album’ category, to Japanese Manga Rebel Tsutomu Nihei, nominated for best art-work. ZEP — a thirty…
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