Swiss author Martin Panchaud, 41, tells JDD how he draws, his revenge on dyslexia, his fascination with whales and his new projects.
What is the “pitch” of this award-winning album at the 50th Angoulême Festival?
It is the story of Simon Hope, a 14 year old teenager who lives in the suburbs of London. A great misfortune and a great happiness will happen to him simultaneously. He wins a sports bet on a horse race, and ends up with a ticket worth several million pounds. Unfortunately, he needs an adult to countersign his ticket. It turns out that her mother is in a coma, and her father is gone. Thus begins an adventure, a quest to find a trusted person, and find out what happened.
How did you come up with this idea of telling the story seen from above, with characters represented in the form of colored circles?
After my studies in comics, then graphic design, with a friend Mickaël Terras, we created a small laboratory to test new forms of comics. It took the form of a book produced with other artists. From this exercise, I said to myself: “I am going to tell a story with the language of comics, but using the methods of “Swiss graphic design”, going to the outline, to the essential. I reduced all the characters to points; I made them talk to each other; from there, was born this new form of language. I saw it worked. The readers understood well that these were not just circles, but characters who discussed between them.
My own thing, with these rounds and these circles, it was going nowhere
Martin Panchaud
Was it difficult to find a publisher for this book?
Yes a lot. I received the encouragement prize from the city of Geneva for comics in 2012, for the first 50 pages, but it was only a project. I worked on it for a long time. I participated in fundraisers, grant applications, prizes, and I had good feedback. I got scholarships, prizes, but when I went to see the publishers, I got, at best a negative answer, at worst no answer at all. Often, I was told: “We, what we like is the hand-made line”; “it’s too independent”; “there is no place for this kind of books in our catalogue”. There are fanzines made with the photocopier, a little grubby, well-sculpted drawings from big publishing houses, my thing, with these circles and these circles, it was going nowhere. The two who edited the book, David Basler for the German version, and Serge Ewenczyk for the French version, they were editors who had flashes, who said: “We’ve never seen that, we’ll do it !”
How do you draw?
I use Illustrator software, which allows me to do vector drawing. It is generally used for technical plans, typography, logos. It is true that we are far from the famous artistic gesture which, in a few strokes, will sketch a drawing. I work on a computer. It can first be a form, a sketch that I take up, that I model, until I get what I want. Basically, this software was designed by a French engineer, Pierre Béziers, to design car bodies. Then, I found a machine to make my dedications, a kind of mechanical arm capable of reproducing the drawings of my books with a pen.
I am a high functioning dyslexic. Reading, writing, spelling, it’s completely abstract for me
Martin Panchaud
How did your dyslexia affect your approach to comics?
I am a high functioning dyslexic. Reading, writing, spelling, it’s completely abstract for me. I spent years trying to decipher texts. Later, when I studied graphic design, we were told that letters were drawings, which could be put in sequence to form words, sentences, paragraphs, a technique that is also used in comics. In the end, it’s a bit as if I had reduced the drawings of characters, of the environment, to characters that can be put in sequence, a typographic language that is both sober and elegant. It’s kind of my revenge on dyslexia. This language that I invented for myself, I can read it, understand it. I have an appetite for all these diagrams, all these symbols that I can decode, unlike texts that have long remained abstract for me.
Who were your role models?
There were several, for their philosophy and their approach, more than for their final result. Very early on, I discovered Demian 5 who made an internet comic, all in vectors, and managed to reinvent something 20 years ago. Then, there are all the experiments by Lewis Trondheim which showed that we could explore new territories in comics, new ways of doing things. Afterwards, I didn’t want to fall into a niche, where we would say to ourselves: “Ok, it’s funny his story of points, but that has its limits. » I wanted to make a book which has a density, a seriousness in the narration, a duration… A novel from A to Z, with this particular visual language.
The more one is interested in the blue whale, the more one realizes that it is a dantesque vision of what the living can be
Martin Panchaud
You first got noticed by telling an episode of Star Wars in the form of circles, what was the purpose?
In the album I was preparing, I wanted my character to watch an episode of Star Wars ; which forced me to go get documentation and the original script. Very quickly, I thought: “Why not? We can adapt it. » I made quick sketches, which I showed to a fan site of Star Wars. They encouraged me a bit. I had a style. I had already received encouragement from the profession. But I had no audience. I needed readers to know if this story could work. Fit Star Wars, this contemporary myth that everyone knows, seemed interesting to me. I hadn’t realized how much work that meant. But I continued, one page after another, to end up with this work of 30 centimeters wide, the size of a screen, and 120 meters long! People loved it.
In The color of things, a whale plays a decisive role. Does this animal fascinate you?
We are often looking for the fantastic, through stories, incredible things; we create mythical animals. However, the whale is a mythical animal from all points of view, in its size, its size, its speed… The more one is interested in the blue whale, the more one realizes that it is a dantesque vision of what can be the living. It is also an echo of our relationship with nature: on the one hand it fascinates us, on the other we cheerfully destroy it. Beyond that, this animal can be a real floating bomb. I thought it was interesting to bring it, like an abscess, a rotting pocket that bursts and carries everything away.
What are your plans after receiving this Best Album Award?
I have many. I have already sold the film adaptation rights to The Color of Things ten months ago, before the Angoulême Festival. I now receive proposals twice a week from production companies. But luckily I don’t have to deal with that anymore! There, I was approached by a video game studio to work on a model. We are really at the beginning, it interests me a lot, it opens up new storytelling paths. I also started a book which is interested in the relation that we have between the image and the sound. Now that I have solved several problems – convincing the publishers, financing my projects – I would like to devote myself fully to the production of a book. But I’m currently promoting The color of things, so that will be for later. We have already sold 22,000 books. But this is the seventh reprint, we will soon have printed 48,000 copies.
