Over on the indispensable Comics Reporter Bart Beatty discusses the famous Angoulême festival, one of the most highly regarded – if not the most highly regarded – comics festivals in Europe, which begins on the 24th, focusing on this year’s crop of awards nominees. Bart seems reasonably pleased with the way there is a mix of established artists – Trondheim, Tardi for example – with fresh talent such as Julien Neel and quite a number of artists English-language readers will be familiar with, like Peter Bagge, Joe Matt and Chris Ware. For anyone who is thinking a large European comics festival doesn’t have much to interest them, it is worth remembering that plenty of British and American (and others) creators have been influenced by the European scene – look at Pat Mills and Kev O’Neill drawing on Métal Hurlant for early Nemesis or David Lloyd whose Kickback came out in Europe before we saw it.
(the poster for the 35th Angoulême Festival, designed by José Muñoz)
The only thing that depresses me a little about Bart’s articles on European comics for CR is the fact that all too often we either don’t see those works making it into the English-language market or we see only a handful and much, much later on. Still, at least we do have publishers like Drawn & Quarterly and Fantagraphics who will do their best to bring at least some of these works to the English-language readership, while Cinebooks is bringing the European bestselling series Largo Winch to the UK and US this spring.
Mon, Jan 21, 2008
Awards, Comics and cartoons, Conventions and events