“Reading comics gives us access anyway to a little cultural life that we all need”, said Thursday, January 28 on franceinfo Marion Speiser, bookseller at “Atout Livre BD” in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, on the eve of the first part of the Angoulême Comic Strip Festival, a virtual awards ceremony because of the Covid-19 epidemic. Despite the context, sales of comics increased by 9% in 2020. “Everyone has reservations”, she explained, while the option of a third confinement is on the table. More than 650 authors call for a boycott of the event to denounce the government’s inaction in the face of the crisis in the community.
franceinfo: France is in crisis, but comics do not know the crisis?
Marion Speiser : Yes, it’s true that it’s going pretty well at the moment. Well, it must be said that it is true that we no longer have so much entertainment available, we can no longer go to the cinema, or the theater, even more to the museum … It is true that reading comics, that still allows us to access a little cultural life that we all need.
In the end, did the bookstore closures not impact book sales?
They had an impact, inevitably, last spring. But people caught up with the reopening, in May, were very present, also present during the confinement of November in click and collect, and for the end of the year as well. Everyone has reservations. Rather than take a comic, they will take two or three. When they have not been able to have access to the advice of the bookseller, to take a sequel to a series, whether it is the Arab of the Future or Lucky Luke, we are sure of our shot.
The Angoulême festival, even in its reduced version, provides visibility, it is a showcase …
Le Fauve d’Or d’Angoulême is the equivalent of the Goncourt prize in comics. It’s very prescriptive, it will immediately highlight an album, an author or an author … This allows to have visibility in more points of sale than without the reward. There are still plenty of new products that arrived on our tables in January, notably at the Atrabile editions, Frederik Peeters’ new comic book, “Oleg”. It’s more autobiographical, or at least strongly inspired by his own life. If you want to put yourself in the shoes of a comic book author, it’s really interesting, and then it also talks about a lot of other things and everything that makes our humanity, it’s really a very, very beautiful comic of this fall. There is the new Chabouté, “Yellow Kab”, about a screenwriter who decides to become a taxi driver in New York, that too is very beautiful, it allows us to travel, to teleport to New York, it is not bad. In Angoulême’s selection, Baume du tigre by Lucie Quéménér is a superb comic book, Gousse & Gigot by Anne Simon published by Misma … It’s a whole universe to discover!
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