Angouleme 2014

If you want some "news" about the Angouleme International Comics Festival, try checking out these reports that I wrote for The Comics Reporter.

http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/euro_comics_special_paul_karasik_in_angouleme_01/

http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/euro_comics_special_paul_karasik_in_angouleme_02/

http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/euro_comics_special_paul_karasik_in_angouleme_03/

http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/euro_comics_special_paul_karasik_in_angouleme_04/

http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/euro_comics_special_paul_karasik_in_angouleme_05/

But if you just wanna look at a bunch of pics without a lot of those extra annoying words getting in the way, stick around.

1. I went to Angouleme a week prior to the festival to teach at the EESI school where they have a two year Masters program in Comics. In four day-long classes, my wonderful students made 8-page mini comics. That's writing, pencilling, lettering, inking, printing, and binding while the clock is ticking and I am drumming my fingers on the desk.

They did splendid work and then sold out their mini-comics at the Festival. We took the profits from the sales and donated them to a needy cause, 'cause we needed a party!

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2. The crew from the Netherlands, with Joost Swarte at the helm, landed in L'espace Franquin, an exhibition space in town. They came with two suitcases and a vacuum cleaner which, when opened up and assembled, became an pop-up silk screen operation.

In three adjacent rooms, cartoonists made drawings on tracing paper which were then turned into posters and slammed all over town.

Here is Typex at work trying not to get ink on his nice yellow shirt.

Quiet! Swarte at Work!!!

Here is my drawing done of tracing paper.

And here I am with finished poster and the master behind the printshop-in-a- suitcase.

Posters as displayed around town.

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3. Camus + Munoz? Can someone please publish this book in English?!?!?

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4. Kai Pfeiffer, Peter Blegvard, Ulli Lust, and Paul Karasik recalled a time in Luzerne where we visited a squatter's house together and had a hell of a night (see previous post somewhere in the archives of this blog).

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5. Paul Karasik, Florent Ruppert, Thierry Smolderen, Dominique Bertail after an odd film showing of remixed Louise Brooks footage with live Mozart played on the piano. All agreed that any opportunity to watch Louise Brooks must be embraced...but Dominique was wistful. "Just think all those people in all those crowd shots are dead. Even Louise Brooks: dead," he sighed.

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6. I sat down next to this guy at the Bistro Bachelier in the covered market. We were both very involved in our duck. He was making short work of some homemade foie gras and I was tucking into some duck pâté. This concentrated labor went on for some time before he asked me who the hell I was. It turned out that he was the cartoonist named Max from Spain! A really nice guy and a hell of a draftsman. Googleimage "max spanish cartoonist" right now.

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7. I guess that the single biggest thrill for me was meeting Herr Seele, part of the team responsible for "Cowboy Henk". I sat for a portrait that he did of me straight in ink as we chatted. He puts Luis Buñuel at the top of his list of influences and he loves Ernie Bushmiller. As a flourish, he added Cowboy Henk whispering sweet nothings in my ear.

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8. Maybe the coolest exhibit was Guillaume Trouillard's illustrations. You had to climb up an endless stone spiral staircase to reach the exhibit space. I ran into a Saint Bernard with a small refeshing keg on the way to the top where a nurse with a respirator awaited.

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9. I know that this looks like a portrait of cartoonist, Hugo Pratt's, famous Corto Maltese character...but it is really a Coke machine on the street. Don't know who Corto Maltese is? Save yourself the plane fare 'cause they will not let you into Angouleme.

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Joe Lambert, Paul Karasik, Chuck Forsman, & Alec Longstreth

10. Occasionally Americans are allowed into Angouleme but only if they behave themselves or smoke or know who Corto Maltese is.

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11. Posters displayed on the street. No comment.