This year’s edition of the 24 heures de la BD, a competition of 24-hour comics that is organised in the margins of the Angoulême Festival, is especially interesting for non-French speakers, as one of the constraints was that the story had to be totally wordless, or “muette” as the French put it. It also should feature pirates, which is of course an added bonus. The event, which also features live cartooning sessions during the festival (live coverage was provided for those who couldn’t make it), was quite a success : more than 70 professional cartoonists provided a full 24-page story, twice as many amateurs and a whole host of students.
It’s virtually impossible to savour all of the stories, partly because the website’s navigation system is a bit awkward, but I’ve tried to select ten stories that you shouldn’t miss :
- Lewis Trondheim created a short story set in Angoulême about the opposition between creating and stealing ideas. It’s a typical Trondheim romp, with a lot of autbiography and quite a lot of violence. I quite like the way he played around the “muette” constraint.
- King of the comics blogs Boulet presents a story which masterfully combines the competition’s constraints with his own recurring subjects, such as monsters, love and the loss of youthful innocence.
- Croatian cartoonist Darko Macan combines the pirates with the difficulty of telling a story without words, by using word balloons as a real object in the story. A lovely tale !
- Avec Julien de Plan B is one of the amateurs who contributed a story. I liked it very much because it shows how you can tell a very layered story with limited space and very limited means, even more so when you choose to use very styllised art.
- kéracho is a trio of amateur cartoonists who got together to create a very playful, full color story, filled to the brim with adventure, monsters and suspense, and a very unexpected surprise ending (even though you can guess it if you closely look at the main character’s features)
- Sparta represents the manga element that is extremely important in bandes dessinées these days. His story borrows elements from films like Treasure Planet, manga like One Piece, and binds it all together in a very playful story. It doesn’t really stick to the rules, but it’s very entertaining.
- Jssica studies at the ERG school in Brussels. She did a very child-like story that, like Boulet’s, shows how children’s play can interfere with reality, and how fantasy is necessary to live a full life.
- Bastien Vives is one of my favorite finds of late. He contributes a quite erotic story in which a young man is quite overwhelmed by a poster of Jack Sparrow, while making love to his girlfriend. A nice play on fantasy and reality.
- Half Bob uses a naive, quite endearing style which looks very professional. In his story, a pirate captain goes a long way to protect his treasure. And what treasure this proves to be !
- Alex Chauvel is a student at the EESI in Angoulême. He manages to include an extra page in his story, even though he only uses the obligatory 24. If you wonder how he does this, just think back of Promethea…
I hope you’ll find plenty of other great stories among the many that are available on this website. If you do, please let us know, and also have a look at the previous years’ treasures. You never know what you may find…
Wim Lockefeer lives in Belgium where comics are always 24/7; you can read more of his comics musings on The Ephemerist blog
Fri, Feb 12, 2010
Comics and cartoons, Conventions and events, From our Continental Correspondent