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Angoulême – From The World's Biggest Comic Convention

Published Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:45:26 -0600

Last updated Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:13:04 -0600

The Angoulême Comics Festival takes over the entire French town, transforming it every year into the world's biggest comics convention. In its 34th year, it's still going strong.

Jim Wheelock, live on the ground for Bleeding Cool writes;

This was the first day of the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée in Angouleme, France. It's a city wide event that gets about twice the visitors as the San Diego Con. I've been coming here since 1991.

It's a very promising year, potentially the best in recent times. The President is Blutch, a brilliant young artist not known in the U.S., the '70s artist turned film-maker Enki Bilal is doing a multi-media show, and Robert Crumb is making a still rarish appearance. In addition, the city's shiny new comics museum opened earlier this year and reportedly is totally awesome.

I spent today trying to figure out what's going on, but did catch the Blutch exhibit which was excellent. More on that later on.

It was a good night at Le Chat Noir, where most of the non-French spend their evenings consuming beverages. No one knows where the French go at night — possibly home to a sensible dinner. Amongst the folks I knew were the inevitable Finns, Italians, a Flemish group, Swedes,a few Brits, a Spaniard and me, as far as I could tell American in the place.

More as things develop…

The French magazine Libération is giving away a new edition of the magazine completely ilustrated by cartoonists and comic book artists, with Robert Crumb on the front page. The New Yorker's Jean-Jacques Sempé and Robert Crumb are guests of honour at the convention. Jean is a Frenchman who lives in the USA, Robert an American who lives in France…