If there is one thing you can guarantee about the Angoulême International Comics Festival, it’s that you will seldom have enough time to catch your breath – and that remained true for 2024. While comparatively quieter than the intense record-breaking crowds of the 50th-anniversary extravaganza last year, some 200,000 people still made their way to the self-proclaimed French capital of comics. As always, there were plentiful exhibitions, publishers, creators, and books to catch your eye and empty your wallet.
The number of visitors to the Angoulême Festival was closer to the 2020 attendance level – at the time, a bumper year that occurred as the spectre of COVID-19 was beginning to make itself known – but it did not match the crush of 2023, an anniversary year that occurred with the relaxation of COVID restrictions in France. As the dust was settling, the General Delegate of the Angoulême International Comics Festival Franck Bondoux remarked [translated via DeepL] to Charente Libre, a regional newspaper, that visitor numbers were “closer to 2020 [figures],” and “we had hoped for better.” Still, the crowds were definitely there, and come Friday, many venues saw lengthy entry queues.
The format of the Angoulême Festival is pretty much old hat by now—the medieval town center sees the erection of enormous marquees in which publishers gather to show off their newest titles and engage with the public, with giveaways, signings, and more. Each major marquee caters to a different interest set, from your mainstream [Monde des Bulles – World of Bubbles] to your alternative and world comics [Nouveau Monde – New World] to manga and manhwa [Manga City] to the art dealers and resellers [Place du 9e Art – 9th Art Place]. An essential ingredient, though not open to the public, is the international rights market, where agents and publishers from across the globe negotiate new titles for translation. A welcome correction this year was seeing Manga City restored to its full expansive size after a depressingly fallow 2023, which is essential when considering that France is the world’s second-largest manga market, with more publishers launching their imprints year after year.
Canada had a big presence at this year’s event, with its own special pavilion for public talks, signings, rights discussions with publishers, and a market for selling books. In front of the town hall, there was also an installation highlighting the wealth of work produced in English and French in every region of that vast country.
If you knew where to look, there was an even bigger surprise as Future Off (while still hard to find) was given even more room to showcase small press and indie talent from across Europe and further afield. Wandering through the space and its relaxed DIY vibes, one could easily have thought they were in a decent-sized indie zine fest—a fascinating bubble within one of the world’s biggest comics events.
Controversy and Protest
It’s not France if there isn’t a little protest and discontent cropping up. This year’s little taste of unrest at Angoulême came from farmers unions, which, on Friday and Saturday, set up road blocks and other forms of disruption countrywide in response to French and EU regulations, low prices, and shrinking state subsidies. It is possible that these activities may have had an impact on this year’s turnout.
Events in Gaza were also not forgotten, with a small protest booth clandestinely being set up by the regional Charente Palestine Solidarity group at the end of the festival. Wandering around town before, during, and following Angoulême [your reporter was there a while…], there were spray-painted anti-war and pro-Palestinian slogans if you knew where to look, as well as some clever chap managed to place the image of Handala in certain parts of the towns winding streets.
The Bastien Vivès controversy continues to simmer, with a new police complaint being filed by anti-incest charity Face à l’inceste on the day before the festival opened to the public, Wednesday, January 24, 2024. The complaint is not just against the artist but two of his publishers as well Glenat and Les Requins Marteaux. Already under police investigation following a previous complaint issued last year, it seems the provocateur creator might have pushed the envelope too much from his 2018 books, which vocal critics have lambasted for child pornography and endorsing incest and pedophilia.
A Heaping Helping of Exhibitions
Exhibitions are a major highlight at any Angoulême, and this year boasted ten in the main program, with a number of satellite shows taking place in empty shops, residences, and more. Six of the exhibitions only took place between the festival itself, between January 24 to 28. And these are no mere hastily cobbled together bits in a small venue.
A career retrospective of up-and-comer Nine Antico, a multi-award winning French cartoonist, ran two floors – showing her evolution from an illustrator on music zines to critically acclaimed graphic novelist.
One of the most impressive exhibitions this Angoulême was Hiroaki Samura’s Blade of the Immortal entitled Corps et Armes [Bodies and Weapons]. Receiving the prime spot in Espace Fraquin’s main gallery, the 1993-2012 manga epic was given a 30th-anniversary celebration featuring around a hundred pieces of original art – much of which Samura produced using pencil lines and effects. Being able to get up close with the work, you could really see how he produced such impressive imagery in a way that the print edition (a gateway manga for the French and US markets) never could. Simply astonishing.
Likewise a career retrospective of the queen of shojo Moto Hagio was a glory to behold—running from her entry into the young girls’ manga space using a style pioneered by Osamu Tezuka to finding her own voice and developing her most famous series, such as immortal vampire epic The Poe Clan; the prototype and then the main series of Heart of Thomas (deemed by some as an early work in the Yaoi/Boys Love genre) – to then go beyond that…finding the freedom to pursue her passions for science fiction and other genres. Seeing how much she has produced across her lifetime (she turns 75 this year), one hopes more of her work gets translated into English.
Not all exhibitions were as impressive. Two in particular disappointed—those being 2023 Grand Prix awardee Riad Sattouf’s Arab of the Future – Oeuvre-Monde [‘World Work’] and comics writer and theorist Thierry Smolderen’s Le Scénario est un bricolage [‘The Scenario is a Work in Progress‘]. The Sattouf exhibition promised to explore his six-book opus through a historical, sociological, and autobiographical lens. You see photos of his life and the works that influenced him in a well-designed exhibition that felt sorely lacking in original art (Sattouf had shifted to digital art over the course of the series).
Smolderen’s only disappointed if you were keen on exploring his work as a writer, as the exhibition focused on his multiple artistic partners in what is becoming quite a significant bibliography – with very impressive pages on show. It is a shame there was insufficient exploration of the writing process nor much in the way of biographical detail about Smolderen, who won the comics writer’s René Goscinny Prize last year. There were no scripts or research materials at the show. We do get a glimpse of the academic theories of the creative process but, really, the show was more about the artists than the writer.
To a lesser extent, the Lorenzo Mattotti exhibition was a bit of a downer. An astonishing artist in his own right, the Italian draftsman was charged with producing an exhibition of work featuring people running (France is hosting the 2024 Olympics). While a Mattotti is always impressive, it does start to feel a little repetitive, seeing iterations on the same theme after a while. That said, his running figures put in landscape environments were a real visual highlight.
As always, a major tip for attending Angoulême, if you have the financial resources, is to book a longer stay. After resting on Monday (everything shuts down), four of the ten featured exhibitions begin their extended run—often without crowds. On top of those, you can add the four temporary exhibitions at the town’s prodigious comics museum (Croquez! [‘Have a bite!‘] – on comics and food; an art gallery of work from the recent Journal de Tintin 77th anniversary tribute book; a webtoon competition showcase; and a quite impressive François Bourgeon retrospective); plus an exhibition at the Paper Museum highlighting three books featuring young people at war – comprised entirely of original art pages.
If that wasn’t enough, there is the annual must-see showcase of artist residencies at the Maison des Auteurs (over 47 works in progress from across France and around the world!), and a publisher retrospective for Editions de la Cerise, with original art on show for practically every book they have published in the last twenty years – including Linnea Sterte’s Frog in the Fall (published by Peow in English).
It may have been a comparatively quieter year for the festival but definitely not for your correspondent (or his poor suitcases).
[Note: The less overcrowded photos were taken on press days or following the festival]
—- CONTINUING EXHIBITIONS IN ANGOULÊME —-
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- Maison des Auteurs – exhibition of authors in residence, 2 boulevard Aristide Briand (until February 28)
- Moto Hagio – Beyond Genres, Angoulême Museum (until March 17)
- Lorenzo Mattotti – The Art of Running/Catching the Race, Angoulême Museum (until March 10)
- Croquez! — food and comics, Musée de la BD (until November 10)
- François Bourgeon, Musée de la BD (until May 5)
- 77 Years of Journal de Tintin, Musée de la BD (until May 12)
- 20 Years of La Cerise, Vaisseau Moebius (until May 5)
- Thierry Smolderen, Vaisseau Moebius (until May 5)
- Riad Sattouf/Arab of the Future, Vaisseau Moebius (until May 5)
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