The best album was awarded to that of Martin Panchaud, which tells the story of a 14-year-old English boy, victim of the mockery of his comrades.
It is a work as disconcerting as it is fascinating which last night won the Fauve d’or for best album at the Angoulême international comic strip festival: after Ecoute, Jolie Marcia by Marcello Quintanilha in 2022, c’est the color of things by Martin Panchaud who won the supreme award. A totally unexpected double for the small publishing house Here and There which, four years ago, still feared put the key under the door lack of sales (see our interview with its founderSerge Ewenczyk).
“Esoteric Cakes”
The color of things is a colossal work, the fruit of ten years of work and the first major comic strip for the Swiss Martin Panchaud, born in 1982 in Geneva. We follow the adventures of Simon, 14 years old, overweight and bullying problems, a teenager who grows up between a tyrannical father addicted to horse racing and an erased mother who makes mysterious “esoteric cakes” for the seer of the city. It is thanks to the latter that one day, with money that he steals from a parental drawer under the pressure of his “friends”, he goes to secretly bet at the racecourse on an Australian horse. who “suffers from jet lag” and in which no one believes.
Vertiginous reversal: now the unloved kid wins 16 million pounds. But the disappearance of the money in the drawer generates a terrible argument between the parents. A little later, the father disappeared and the mother was found in a pool of blood, alive but in a coma. The teenager then embarks on an incredible quest from his father (motivated in part by the fact that, being a minor, he cannot recover his jackpot without the signature of his parents), during which surprising characters appear: a wanking crane operator, an old whale…
Funny schematic ballet
In addition to the enthralling plot peppered with incongruities, it is the mode of representation that fascinates – and aroused within the jury chaired by Alexandre Astier a unanimity to which he confides on stage that he had absolutely not expected (“I was ready to fight!” he jokes, puffing out his chest). The designer indeed chooses a vision from above, like a road map, on which evolve small colored discs as characters. A disconcerting and austere bias, we say to ourselves for two or three pages, before letting ourselves be totally caught up in this funny schematic ballet. The computer graphics author had already applied this system to an entire episode of Star Warsbut also experimented with all kinds of schematic representations, narrative or not, inspired for example by the tactical sketches of football coaches (Urban Art Velodrome, 2020). A strange sensitivity for geometric shapes which comes to him, he explains, from his dyslexia.
This comic book project, patiently shaped over a decade, earned him an encouragement prize from the city of Geneva in 2012 while it was still at the prototype stage. In 2020, it finally appears in Switzerland, but with a German-speaking publisher, Modern editions, therefore in a translated version. He then set out relentlessly to find a French-speaking publisher. The author tells us about his particular affinity with Here and There: “I recently came across a notebook that dates from 2013 and where I had noted “Here and there”. I circled it then crossed it out, mentioning “non-French-speaking”, because that’s Serge’s line. Then later, during a residency in Paris, I discovered the extraordinary book by this Polish architect, Lukacz Wojciechowski, which he had published [Ville nouvelle, ndlr]. I knew that was where I wanted to do this book, and that I would wait as long as it took.”
The full list
Fauve d’or – prize for the best album: The color of things by Martin Panchaud (Here and There)
Special Jury Fauve: Animan by Anouk Ricard (Example)
Fawn series: Blood relationship T.11 de Shuzo Oshimi. Traduction de Sébastien Ludmann (Ki-oon)
Faustian revelation: A tree frog in autumn (and more…) by Linnea Sterte. Translation by Astrid Boitel (Les Editions de la Cerise)
Fauve of high school students: Khat by Ximo Abadia. Translation by Anne Calmels and David Schalvelzon, (the joy of reading)
France Televisions Audience Award: Naphtaline by Sole Otero – Translation by Éloïse de la Maison (Here and There)
Fauve heritage: stone flowers by Hisashi Sakaguchi – Translation by Ilan Nguyen, Revival
Eco-Fauve Raja: Under the sun by Ana Penyas – Translation by Benoît Mitaine (Actes Sud L’An 2)
Alternative comic award: Oven of Lime (Extinction Editions)
Fauve polar SNCF: Hound Dog by Nicolas Pegon (Denoel Graphic)
Special Fauve of the Youth Grand Jury: All princesses die after midnight by Quentin Zuttion (the Lombard)
Fawn youth: The Long Walk of the Turkeys by Leonie Bischoff and Bathleen Karr (Rue de Sèvres)
René Goscinny Prize for young screenwriter: Mieke Versyp pour Skin. Drawing by Sabien Clement (Here and there)
René Goscinny Prize for Best Screenwriter: Thierry Smolderen pour Nightmares ex Machina. Drawing by Jorge González (Dargaud)
Konishi Prize for Best Translation: Come on Darks. Volume 1 by Q Hayashida. Lyrics by Sylvain Chollet (Soleil)
Philippe Druillet Prize: The cliff by Manon Debaye (Sarbacane)
Fauve special of the 50th edition: Hajime Isayama
Honor Beasts: Junji Itō et Ryoichi Ikegami
