From indestructible samurai to heavy metal Hell

by Alistair Dabbs

angouleme 2024 @2024 alistair dabbs — The streets of Angoulême on a peaceful Day 1. Just wait till the weekend: it’ll change into mayhem.

A couple of sore heads had been evident on Thursday, the primary official day of Angoulême 2024. British artist Posy Simmonds had been awarded the pageant’s high accolade, Grand Prix, the earlier night time as a part of the opening ceremony, a stand-up occasion held in what can solely be described as a big barn containing the longest bar on the town.

Posy being unable to attend in particular person, she was represented by her French writer and translator Jean-Luc Fromental, who learn aloud the artist’s transient acceptance speech whereas swinging the Grand Prix ‘fauve’ round like a weapon. He might be discovered within the crowd shortly afterwards, exhibiting off the trophy to one and all, and singing ‘We Are The Champions’ with British collaborator and comics historian Paul Gravett.

The opening ceremony continued with speeches by native politicians and even a junior minister for sport (Paris will host the summer season Olympics this 12 months) earlier than more and more thirsty attendees had been launched to make the fast sprint throughout the automobile park to a drinks reception within the library. Hence the sore heads on Thursday morning.

…

Angoulême 2024 is an virtually impossibly complicated pageant, working over 4 days and comprising practically 100 conferences, workshops and lectures on the primary day alone. There are a dozen main ‘official’ exhibitions, which occur within the city’s principal museum and gallery websites, plus an undetermined variety of one-off particular exhibitions hosted in momentary venues round city, from the central church to the native chamber of commerce.

And, in fact, there are the huge marquees hoisted in numerous city squares wherein worldwide publishers and specialist retailers promote their wares whereas tons of of tired-looking authors and artists signal the books for endless queues of excited readers.

Fringe occasions have been rising in quantity over time however 2024 is the primary Angoulême to bless them with respectability and their very own programme of fringe occasions. In typical mangled English, the French organisers have dubbed it ‘Future Off’ (as in ‘off’-Broadway) and tried, with little success, to corral all the perimeter occasions into one constructing by the river Charente. Inevitably, this fringe programme has given rise to its personal fringe-fringe – ‘Les Offs des Offs’ – which we earnestly hope will give delivery to but additional mini-fringe infants in future years.

We have but to discover any of those ‘Offs’. When we do, later this week, we’ll let if any flip us on.

In the meantime, this author managed to combat his approach by a minimum of 9 of the exhibitions on the primary day. Here’s a fast run-through.

Riad Sattouf: The Arab of the Future

Each Angoulême Grand Prix recipient will get to host their very own show-space on the following 12 months’s pageant, and so the 2023 winner Riad Sattouf is again with a significant exhibition specializing in his not too long ago accomplished comedian biography sequence ‘The Arab of the Future’.

Since Sattouf now attracts virtually completely on a pc with a Wacom pill, most examples of his work on ‘The Arab of the Future’ are displayed across the partitions as considerably limp printouts hanging from clips, like recent t-shirts on a washing line.

But what makes this exhibition enjoyable is the presentation of biographical artefacts that the artist used for inspiration. The customer can peruse shelf after shelf of household pictures, pots, trinkets, toys, TV units, the Amiga 500 his dad purchased him, the Atari-XE that his grandma purchased him (lengthy after it was out of date), and different materials. The man’s clearly a hoarder.

Hiroaki Samura: Body and Swords

‘Blade of the Immortal’, printed between 1993 and 2012, is taken into account to be Hiroaki Samura’s masterpiece, that includes a swordsman who can’t be killed and a revenge-thirsty teenager, inevitably main to loads of limb-slicing adventures.

This exhibition is richly full of greater than 150 examples of his authentic artwork, all in good situation and revealing a stunning consideration to element in his penciling in case you take a second to lean in to take a better look. It can also be a primary for Angoulême in being the primary important retrospective of this pivotal artist’s work.

Nine Antico: Room With A View

Regularly that includes on the lists of prize contenders, Nine Antico is again on this 12 months’s Official Selection shortlist too (for ‘Madonne et Putains’) and takes residence on the multi ground Hotêl St Simon gallery in Angoulême’s conventional previous city – the placement of final 12 months’s exhibition by the 2022 Grand Prix winner Julie Doucet.

The exhibition contains round 200 works, plus notebooks, fanzines and private archives. Antico herself was to be discovered on the highest ground once we visited, speaking to guests about her inspiration as a feminist artist and creator, and taking questions. Hotêl St Simon is that sort of intimate venue. Don’t be postpone by the queues to get in: it’s merely that the rooms are small, and so they can solely let so many individuals in at a time.

Shin’ichi Sakamoto: Dracula, A Journey Into Darkness

Talking of strange venues, this exhibition is an immersive multimedia efficiency inside a deconsecrated gothic chapel connected to a faculty within the city centre. Animated paintings taken from Shin’ichi Sakamoto’s extremely anticipated new manga ‘#DRCL: Midnight Children’ is projected across the partitions and ceiling whereas appropriately dramatic music blasts from a number of audio system.

Sherpherdess Warriors, The Great Quest by Jonathan Garnier and Amélie Fléchais

Winner of the youth comics award in Angoulême two years in the past, the ‘Shepherdess Warriors’ sequence created by scriptwriter Jonathan Garnier and illustrator Amélie Fléchais options its personal exhibition hosted within the Youth Quarter of the city’s enormous comics museum. Fans of the sequence can discover out the inspiration behind the characters, comply with their backstories and study one thing in regards to the ecological points that underly the featured tales. As ever, they will additionally stamp an exhibition booklet in every room to show they’ve been there.

Olivier Ledroit: Requiem Vampire Knight

A private favorite, Requiem Vampire Knight is written by English comics legend Pat Mills however painted in beautiful element by Ledroit. At final, we are able to get to see his authentic paintings shut up – and it doesn’t disappoint. The exhibition contains all the pieces from preliminary sketches to double-page unfold originals – a few of that are enormous – and a number of other entrance covers.

Oh, there are additionally mannequin mockups of characters, artwork from the brand-new quantity 12, a replica of Heinrich/Requiem’s sword, a painted electrical guitar and a bunch of skeletons actually spinning over the heads of holiday makers whereas heavy metal music performs within the background. And it’s all crammed into one room. What’s not to like?

Starting Lines, Slow And Steady

There is all the time an exhibition to concentrate on up-and-coming creators, held in what they name the New Creation Space. This time spherical, 4 younger artists – Lisa Blumen, Nina Lechartier, Jérémy Perrodeau and Chloé Wary – had been requested to ‘compete’ on the subject of a race beginning line. Some took it actually with clear pen strains, others went with full painted color. But behind every of their enormous show panels you additionally get to see their preparatory sketches and analysis materials, starting from traditional physique research to display screen caps of hip-hop dancers.

Coming quickly – An exhibition of authors in residence

The House of Authors in Angoulême offers a platform to so-called ‘artists in residence’ who come from all around the world. Its exhibition house is all the time a deal with through the pageant as you get a little bit of all the pieces. There is actually no theme. This 12 months, guests can pattern pages by a minimum of 48 creators, which appears unfeasible, however they’ve completed it. Nor is it only a random sampling: every creator’s mini part offers a number of pages of sequential artwork, so that you get to comply with 48 little tales.

Teenagers At War

This exhibition focuses on three printed works on the subject of younger folks’s experiences of battle on the entrance line, together with the autobiographical ‘Madeleine, Résistante’ which had its personal stand-alone exhibition final 12 months. Also featured is ‘Le Combat d’Henry Fleming’ (a graphic novelisation of Crane’s ‘The Red Badge of Courage’) and ‘Le Lierre et l’Araignée’ (‘The Ivy and the Spider’, one other ugly story of The Resistance throughout World War II).