FIBD 2004 poster

The annual Festival International de la Bande Dessinée in Angoulême, France offers American comics readers a tantalizing opportunity to romanticize on a grand scale. Angoulême is a picturesque town near Cognac, situated on a hill between the Charente and Aguienne rivers. Once the heart of the early modern French paper industry, Angoulême has embraced its recent, thirty-year association with comics: city walls are decorated with vast murals designed by French cartoonists; giant busts of Hergé and Hugo Pratt have been ceremoniously dedicated; the street signs in Angoulême, it is said, are shaped like word balloons. The Festival seems to embody the fulfillment of every fond and noble hope, as comics fantasies unite lovingly with expatriate daydreams. Certainly, what can be seen from afar looks good, and it's easy to imagine the Festival at Angoulême as comics' own Mecca, or, rather, Hicksville brought to life.

However, the Festival at Angoulême has its own unique history, and is governed by particular interests that determine each year's selected honorees, exhibitions and events. "There's a big struggle all the time about what the Festival is," said Bart Beaty, Assistant Professor of Communication and Culture at the University of Calgary and "Eurocomics for Beginners" columnist for the Comics Journal. "In the past the big presses have boycotted it because it's too arty, the small presses because it's too commercial. It's an event that everyone is unhappy with all the time because it tries to be everything to everyone... The only thing that you can say really is that it gets 'MORE' every year." This year's festival in particular marks a signal change in emphasis, goals, and scope, according to General Manager Jean-Marc Thévenet, and, therefore, deserves careful attention.  continue...