Angoulême Festival 2023: our favorites

► “Intractable”, at the heart of the social struggle

Intractable

de Choi Kyu-sok

Translated from Korean by Kette Amuroso

Rue de l’échiquier, 6 volumes of 224 p., €20 per volume.

Plate taken from Intractable. / Chessboard Street

How to fight against a large retailer, a multinational established in South Korea, whose management will stop at nothing to make numbers? Outraged by the unfair dismissals and the moral harassment of which the employees are victims, a company executive joins forces with a union activist from the start. Together, they manage to unite the employees to wage a real social war.

This fiction is inspired by the history of the French group Carrefour in the 2000s, accused of having freed itself from social rights when arriving in Korea. Choi Kyu-sok drew a poignant account. Giving a large place to portraits drawn with finesse, it details the career and the personal motivations of employees fighting sometimes at the risk of their lives. A committed work with universal accents.

♦ And also

Peleliu, Guernica of paradise

by Kazuyoshi Takeda

Translated from Japanese by Satoko Fujimoto

Vega-Dupuis. 11 volumes of 210 p., €8 per volume.

It will take two months and the death of more than 10,000 Japanese soldiers for the Americans to take possession of a paradise island, Peleliu, during the Pacific War, in 1944. A young enlisted mangaka, his sketchbook in his pocket , recounts this slow descent into hell. Through the bonhomie of these curvaceous characters, and the candor of the dialogues, this series, which recalls the masterful work of Shigeru Mizuki, Operation Death, manages to recount in a very intimate and endearing way the terrible fate of these young soldiers.

Christopher de Galzain

► “Naphtaline”, such a heavy heritage

Naphtaline

by Sole Otero

Translated from Spanish (Argentina) by Éloïse de la Maison

Here and there, 336 p., €25

Naphthalene. / here and there

One less and there wouldn’t have been enough of them to carry the coffin. Vilma was such a cantankerous old lady that hardly anyone went to her funeral. Not sure if she is sad, her granddaughter, Rocio, wonders: “What can push a person to become so bitter? »

In Argentina in 2001, in the midst of an economic crisis, the young 19-year-old woman occupies her grandmother’s now empty home. But his shadow hangs over every room. What is the real story of this woman who arrived here as a child, in the arms of her parents fleeing Mussolini’s Italy?

Tracing the thread of a thwarted existence, Sole Otero draws inspiration from her own grandmother to explore the way in which renunciations can influence our character, but also be transmitted to those around us, even to our descendants. Drawing on very soft colors (blue, yellow, pink), it offers the reader a fascinating family fresco, in which characters with disproportionate bodies struggle, as if weighed down by the weight of the past.

♦ And also

The part-time artist

by Timothee Ostermann

Sarbacane, 256 pages, €28

A precarious young artist, Timothée signs a teaching assistant contract in a professional high school. Confronted with demotivated teenagers, he tries to help them but fears to move away from his vocation as an artist. With a cartoonish drawing in very contrasting colors, this humorous comic rings very true in its dialogues. And feel the experience!

Aurelien Lachaud

► The Color of Things, a stunning visual experience

The color of things

by Martin Panchaud

Here and there, 236 p., €24

The Color of Things. / here and there

Can you tell a good story and arouse emotion with a graphic novel where the characters come down to… circles? Surprisingly, the answer is yes with this award-winning album. The bias of the Swiss author is resolutely infographic: the characters, embodied by small circles therefore, evolve in sets seen from above, reminiscent of the staging of video games.

The dialogues, written in the margins of the illustrations, like captions, are very well felt. And essential, as their role is increased tenfold compared to a classic comic strip, to give life to these color circles. The story ? The disappearance of his father and the violent aggression of his mother leave a 14-year-old boy alone, when he has just pocketed a fortune by playing races. We are surprised to be carried away by this melodrama with black humor, with its gallery of pathetic losers, to the point of forgetting that they are only circles wandering on the pages…

♦ And also

The Department of Truth, Volume 2: “The City on the Hill”

of James Tynion IV and Martin Simmonds

Translated from English (United States) by Maxime Le Dain

Urban Comics, 176 p., 19 €

Imagine a world where conspiracy theories would become real if enough people believed them. The Department of Truth ensures that this does not happen, while the occult organization Black Hat pursues the opposite objective. This American comic book with its tortured design digs into the murky entrails of conspiracy theories in all its forms and offers, under the trappings of science fiction, a complex reflection on our relationship to the truth. Sensitive souls refrain.

Gauthier Vaillant

► Petar & Liza, the colors of melancholy

Petar & Liza

de Miroslav Sekulic-Struja

Translated from Croatian by Ana Setka and Wladimir Anselme

Actes Sud BD, 176 p., €28

Petar & Liza. / South Acts

Petar is a lunar being, wandering the streets of a dreamlike Croatia where the characters say things like: “Some colors are edible when you’re waiting for your train in the cold”… He goes from job to job, composing poems, laces always undone.

In a city with a blocked horizon, where the parties are endless to forget the despair, he meets Liza, a young dancer who, like him, does not laugh at the same time as the others while watching a film. Life changes, the decorations take on color like Douanier Rousseau’s canvases, happiness seems possible. Until the demons return. A love story of a rare narrative and poetic force where each board is a painting. Stunning.

♦ And also

At sea

the Clara Lodewick

Dupuis, 160 pages, €24

Merel, local of a Flemish gazette, cultivates her independence with as much care as her vegetable garden. Her quiet life is gradually turned upside down by the poison of a rumor of which she is the target… Young Belgian author, Clara Lodewick signs a touching first album, both a cruel chronicle of rural life in Flanders and a sensitive portrait of a beautiful female character. Nugget of a new collection launched by Dupuis, Les ondes Marcinelle, this comic strip, whose delicacy is reminiscent of Camille Jourdy (Rosalie Blum), is less concerned with its aesthetics than with its attention to detail. And to the silences that show and hear the inner voice of a free woman.

——–

Other favorites already cherished

Five other albums from the selection official have already been chronicled in our columns.

Starting with the moving sixth and final volume of The Arab of the Future, of Riad Sattouf (Allary), who, not content with having obtained the Grand Prix of the city of Angoulême, could win another prize.

Another favorite, The Last Queen, by Jean-Marc Rochette (Casterman) who combines his love of the mountains, his attention to nature and his passion for art.

Without forgetting skin, delicate portraits of women by the Belgians Sabien Clement and Mieke Versyp (Çà et Là), Les Pizzlys, an optimistic allegory on the “climate generation” by Jérémie Moreau (Delcourt) and The Revenge of the Librarians, strips with tender irony by the British Tom Gauld (2024).

---

Source

---