“The Hunting Accident”, a perfect blend of noir novel and poetry

Chicago, 1959. Little Charlie is 11 when his mother dies and he has to return to live with his father, whom he hardly knows. He lives in a single, barely furnished room with books and a typewriter. He is blind. To his son who asks him why, he tells the story of a hunting party with friends, in adolescence, which would have gone wrong.

The prison experience is the heart of the book

Charlie grows up and comes to the age of nonsense. He has bad company. When he is arrested for burglary, his father decides to talk to him seriously and tell him the truth: there was no hunting accident. In fact, he himself was a little mafia strike and it was during a heist that he lost his sight, before being sent to Stateville prison for four years.

This account of the prison experience constitutes the heart of the book: blind, locked in the nine square meters of his cell, the young Matt will nevertheless find in prison the light and the hope. They will come to him from books, and from a man, who teaches him to read Braille. And this man is not just anyone: it is Nathan Leopold, sentenced to life imprisonment with his friend Richard Loeb for the atrocious and gratuitous murder of a fourteen-year-old child – a matter that the media reported. then had qualified as “crime of the century”. With Nathan, but especially with Homer, Shakespeare, Yeats and especially Dante, Matt will save himself and become another man. He now wants to save his son.

A breathtaking work inspired by a true story

This story is true. When cartoonist Landis Blair told screenwriter David L. Carlson about it, he decided to do “something” with it. Both had never made a comic book; they had never worked together… But the alchemy operates: from their collaboration will be born this breathtaking work! A perfect blend of noir novel and poetry, of great expressionist strength and loaded with symbols and graphic discoveries, “The hunting accident” is a real master stroke.

In almost 500 pages full of darkness and light, with a detailed design, the authors immerse us completely in these embedded stories that address major universal themes: the father-son relationship, evil, the power of literature, and redemption.

The complete list of the Angoulême festival

The jury, chaired this year by Benoît Peeters, distinguished strong and personal works, as much by the themes approached as by the graphic treatments adopted.

Steven Appleby’s transsexual superhero “Dragman” (again a first graphic novel) receives the special jury prize. Other awarded works also tackle, more or less directly, questions linked to gender and sexuality: “Peau d’homme”, by Hubert and Zanzim, “Tanz” by Maurane Mazars, or “Anaïs Nin on the sea ​​of ​​lies “by Léonie Bischoff.

Also note, for all those curious about the 9th art, the attribution of the Fauve Patrimoine to the magnificent edition of the works of Lynd Ward (1905 – 1985), who was, with his silent tales in woodcuts, one of the great precursors of graphic novel.

• Fauve – Special Jury Prize: Dragman by Steven Appleby (Denoël Graphic)
• Fawn – Series price: Paul at home by Michel Rabagliati (The Watermelon)
• Fauve – Audacity Award: The Mechanics of the Sage by Gabrielle Piquet (Atrabile)
• Fawn – Revelation price: Dance ! by Maurane Mazars (Le Lombard)
• Fauve – High school student price: Man skin by Hubert and Zanzim (Glénat)
• Fauve – Audience Award France Televisions: Anaïs Nin, on the sea of ​​lies by Léonie Bischoff (Casterman)
• Fawn – Heritage Prize: The Scout by Lynd Ward (Monsieur Toussaint Louverture)
• Fauve – Polar SNCF: GoSt111 by Mark Eacersall, Henri Scala and Marion Mousse (Glénat)
• Fauve – Youth Prize 12-16 years: Middlewest / Volume 1 by Skottie Young and Jorge Corona (Urban Comics)
• Fauve – Youth Prize 8-12 years old: The Friends Club by Sophie Guerrive (2024)
• Fauve – Price of the alternative comic strip: The Thick book of KUTI (Finland)

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