Saccording to a curious winter custom established in 1974, the 48e edition of the largest comic book festival in the world (including Point is a partner) should have taken place this last weekend of January. Were announced, in addition to the inevitable signing sessions or meetings with the greatest authors, exhibitions on the super-heroine Wonder Woman, the brilliant René Goscinny or the subtle Emmanuel Guibert – awarded the Grand Prix of the festival for all of his work. Alas, the pandemic crisis has forced the festival management to cancel, at least initially (a catch-up session is expected next June), the sanctuary date of the event, following in the footsteps of its venerable colleagues in Cannes and from Avignon. But all due to his concern to support the book industry, when the promises born from the Racine report in defense of a true author’s status have already vanished and many cartoonists have announced their desire to boycott the planned edition. in June, the festival decided to maintain its traditional awards ceremony, on the main stage of the Angoulême National Theater.
Planned in a (very) small committee, the ceremony, which generally succeeds the tour de force, according to the bad tongues, of combining the endless languor of the American Oscars and the unfathomable boredom of the French Caesars, will be done at a run this time. , under the baton of comedian Thomas VDB – a further sign, according to some, of the desire to turn the page on Jansenist Stéphane Beaujean, the previous artistic director of the festival. Pending the proclamation, this Friday, January 29, of the official list of this 48e editing, Point offers you as a prognosis its own prize list, drawn from the sources of the festival’s selection, a reflection as subjective as it is delicate of the global production of the past year.
Fauve d’Or – Best Album Award: Rusty Brown, by Chris Ware (Delcourt)
Long-awaited continuation of the monumental Jimmy Corrigan, Rusty Brown is the latest miracle produced by the prodigious Chris Ware, star illustrator of New Yorker and sort of cross between Virginia Woolf, JD Salinger and Georges Perec applied to comics. His works are as many world-books, fruits of a psyche centered on childish traumas, lost innocence and the great American myths, and this Rusty Brown is no exception. The eponymous hero is a bad boy in his skin (pleonasm at Ware), martyred by his classmates, and who takes refuge in his collection of superhero figurines. Rusty, who is going to meet a kind of soul mate in the person of Chalky White, has as a father one of those magnificent losers whom Ware is fond of. Professor of letters at his son’s school, Woody Brown’s colleague is a certain… Chris, a somewhat lewd misanthropist and double assumed designer. We get lost in the narrative and polyphonic maze concocted by Chris Ware, whose manic detail boards can evoke the Flemish miniatures of the XVe century. Rusty Brown is a powerful ally to pass these (too) long winter evenings with flying colors.
Special Jury Prize: Kent State. Four dead in Ohio, by Derf Backderf (here and there editions)
“Four Dead in Ohio”, sang Neil Young angrily in chorus with his friends Crosby, Stills and Nash, in homage to the students of Kent University who fell under the bullets of the National Guard on May 4, 1970. As the United States floundered in the Vietnamese quagmire, the mobilization against the war does not weaken. More or less violent demonstrations punctuate the daily life of this university in Ohio, a state whose governor, the ultra-conservative Jim Rhodes, describes the demonstrators as “worse than the Brown Shirts and the Communists”. With the rigor of a documentary filmmaker, pointing out the overwhelming responsibilities of the leaders (governor, mayor, university president) in this tragedy, Derf Backderf retraces, in a clinical and implacable black and white line, the journey of the four martyred students, in this day which helped to turn American opinion on the Vietnam War.
Audacity Award: An exemplary year, by Lisa Mandel (self-edition)
It is perhaps not so much the form adopted (at the rate of a daily page published on her Instagram account, Lisa Mandel is an heir to the drawn blogs of the 2000s) as the editorial approach which is to be welcomed here as daring. Realizing the real observation of ever more conflicting relations between comic book authors and publishers, the designer has chosen the path of emancipation and self-publication, inviting a certain number of her colleagues to join her within Exemplaire editions. . But An exemplary year is, above all, the hilarious self-portrait of a follower of junk food, stupid series and the picole, who decides to take back – painfully – in hand her life. The irresistible falls and the uncompromising description of a complicated daily life evoke the great American masters of the genre, Harvey Pekar (American Splendor)or Joe Matt (Peep Show).
Series price: Sengo 3. Families, de Sansuke Yamada (Casterman)
It is the last little wonder to come from the land of the Rising Sun. But, be careful, with Sansuke Yamada, we are closer to the gekiga, this sub-genre of manga that intended to describe, like the films of Koji Wakamatsu or Masao Adachi, a certain sordid and raw reality of Japan in the 1960s, than to Dragon Ball Z (series moreover very recommendable). Sengo takes place in the immediate postwar years, as Japan heals the wounds of WWII and atomic disasters. Two former soldiers, the good-natured Kadomatsu and the cynical Toku, try to survive in the ruins of Tokyo, navigating between the US occupation army, the black market, prostitution and the yakuza, in a new world where the little schemes of the street and survival take precedence over the aborted dreams of the past. Oscillating between comedy and despair, Yamada plays an unforgettable duet at the Macadam Cowboy.
Youth Prize: The Panther’s Speech, by Jérémie Moreau (2024 editions)
Jérémie Moreau is one of those prodigies whose fate seems to have been all mapped out. High school student prize in Angoulême, in 2005, he won the Young Talents prize, in 2012, before being awarded the Fauve d’or for best album, in 2018, for The Grimr Saga. But far from yielding to the sirens of the easy success which stretched out its arms to him, Moreau enjoys exploring tortuous or more demanding paths, like this very beautiful comic, published by the precious editions Strasbourg 2024. Composed of animal tales philosophical, The Panther’s Speech has one buffalo succeed one another fighting desperately to save its island from the destruction promised to it, two elephants carrying the memory of the world or a hermit crab in search of the most beautiful shell in the world. Texts of abrasive beauty illuminate this sumptuous carnival of animals.
Favorite price Le Point: Man’s skin, by Zanzim and Hubert (Glénat)
If ever he were to come home empty-handed, which is not impossible considering the harvest of prizes gleaned in recent weeks, we would be remiss if we did not reserve a prime seat at Man’s skin, who won the Wolinski comic book prize Point 2020. The screenwriter Hubert, who died last February, delivers here a last work in his image, bright and dark, idealistic and realistic, all in chiaroscuro. We are in an Italian Renaissance city, which looks a lot like Florence or Siena. The beautiful and diaphanous Bianca is forced into an arranged marriage with a certain Giovanni. Through her godmother, who intends to make her discover “the other sex, as men are a foreign continent for women”, she puts on a magical skin which metamorphoses her into an irresistible ephebe named Lorenzo, whose silhouette and the curves borrow from the statuary of Donatello. She will seek under this new identity to seduce Lorenzo, who prefers the company of pretty boys and that of Plato’s dialogues to his new wife. This queer and iconoclastic carnival would, without a doubt, like the forms that hide under this human skin, greatly pleased our late President Wolinski.
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