“Angoulême 2009 started off with a national strike on the railways, and concluded with an act of political protest. How appropriate for the presidency of Dupuy-Bernerian, arch chroniclers of the vicissitudess and hypocricies of modern French life.” Stephen Betts gives a fascinating and well-informed look at the recent Angoulême BD festival in France, taking in the various exhibits (including a rather controversial and sexually explicit one from South African group Bitterkomix), talking to publishers and also rather nicely linking it to the work being done on the Comix Influx Blog which, as regular readers will know, has been encouraging a collaborative translation for non English language comics, where the text is translated for each frame and page and made available online. As you still require the original album to read alongside the translation this is actually encouraging readers to try some foreign language comics picked up on trips and, as Stephen points out in his report, it can be potentially useful for publishers looking to create foreign language deals (especially their new ‘snip-it‘ system). You can read Stephen’s full report on the Comix Influx site here and he has a Flickr stream of Angoulême 2009 images to check out as well.
(one of the photos from Stephen’s Angoulême 2009 Flickr set)
Wed, Feb 11, 2009
Comics and cartoons, Conventions and events