To France and Back

Leo here! I've just returned from a trip to Caen in Normandy, France to attend the 10th comic festival, "Des Planches et des Vaches", at the kind invitation of organiser and perpetual dynamo of bande dessinée enthusiasm, Eric Le Pape. I went with a small British contingent of fellow fantasy art and comic creators, Manon (Emily Hare), Kev Crossley and Dave Kendall.

After disembarking the ferry we were whisked away to the venue, La Fonderie, and the first of many fabulous meals cooked freshly, consumed with quantities of wine and great conversations with our hospitable hosts. After supper we looked around the extensive and beautifully presented exhibition of the star artist of the festival, Vincent Mallié.

Every year the festival highlights a single artist whose contribution to the art form has been particularly notable. The black and white originals showed beautiful line work and compositions, along with numerous patched corrections and changes that displayed how Vincent constantly changed his work to find the very best outcome.

Saturday morning saw us nervously take our places in La Fonderie, a large community hall on the outskirts of Caen, along with the 47 other artists. The doors opened and trickle of visitors was soon followed by a flood as the morning progressed. Dave, Emily, Kev and myself were soon drawing for the excited crowds. It quickly became apparent that there was no easily defined "type" of French comic enthusiast. We drew for children, teenagers, parents and grandparents, everyone of them delighted and respectful of our drafting skills. While we had a steady stream of interested customers the artists already established in bande dessinée had long queues of fans, so dedicated that they had brought fold out chairs and flasks of coffee.

I took a little time out to look through the bookstall selling hundreds of the "Albums", the hardcover large format favoured in France. As always I wanted to buy the lot, but had to settle for as many as my fist of euros would allow. What joy! What a broad selection of stories and art styles, from crime to fantasy, thrillers to love stories, full of every character you could imagine except, thankfully, lycra-clad superheroes.

I only had a couple of samples of Mirabilis as the UK hardback version published by Print Media hasn't quite emerged. (More news on this in just days now!) It was a shame as there was a great deal of interest in Mirabilis, and I was forced to turn away the proffered Euros. The conclusion, was that Mirabilis would be a perfect fit on any French shelf, and so Dave and I will be working hard this year to find European publishers and get it translated not only into French, but other languages too.

We returned to Portsmouth too soon, but full of inspiration and excitement, and a little despondency that the pure delight for "BD" is only fractionally evident on this side of the channel. I sit down now to work on the next set of roughs for Mirabilis with my Level 1 Idiot's Guide to French playing on the mp3. Viva Des Planches et des Vaches!

Next stop, Kapow! This coming weekend. See you there!

Le monde à l'envers

Spot the difference - it's one of our comic book covers (all coming shortly to an electronic tablet device near you) only this is the French version which we're even now getting ready for Angoulême. And while sorting out both the print and app versions of the Winter book (in English, that is) we're also revamping the website with a bunch of articles and artworks. So keep an eye on what's happening over there and in a few weeks we'll give you the release date for those other goodies.

Dancing with light

To fulfil David Mamet’s main criterion for storytelling, which is to make the audience wonder what happens next, the writer has to do more than just cook up an unpredictable plot. You have to make the reader care about your characters. That comes before anything else.

I was reading a pretty famous comic recently. It’s another one that is supposedly going to get turned into a movie. It starts with two characters talking about some item that’s been stolen, the whole world is in peril if it isn’t found, yada yada. Yet I don’t know who these characters are. The writer does nothing to establish them as individual personalities that I should find uniquely interesting and engaging. They aren’t talking as people really do, they’re just holding up placards that explain the plot.

Who gets it right? Not that many writers in any medium, fewer still in comics. It’s a difficult job and I’m constantly having to chuck out pages I’ve written because this simple truth is elusive. Characters who come to life will make a story come to life. The audience takes them to their hearts and will follow them through all kinds of scrapes. We just enjoy (I’ve said it before) hanging out with them.

This is the beating heart of Garen Ewing’s brilliant and charming adventure series The Rainbow Orchid. It stands out from other comics because you feel like you are joining an extended family of well-rounded characters. They’re your mates and you’re rooting for them all the way. In an epic plot involving family fortunes, life-or-death wagers, ancient secrets, skulduggery, cults, myths, loyalty and betrayal, Garen never loses sight of the importance of grounding us in the characters’ reactions to all these events in which they’re embroiled.

In this second volume, Julius Chancer and his friends arrive in India in their quest for the fabled rainbow orchid, hotly pursued by sexy bad girl Evelyn Crow and her henchmen. Without giving any spoilers, I just want to point out the richness and depth of the story. There’s plenty of thrilling action, but there’s also room to stop and marvel at the sights. Garen evokes his locations so wonderfully that you almost smell the spices in the marketplace, feel the hard seats of the railway carriage, sense the nip in the air as our heroes’ journey takes them up into the hills.

There’s a quiet, moving campfire moment that rounds out Julius’s backstory and develops his relationship with Lily. A dream sequence depicts in just a handful of panels everything about his self-doubt and desires. A betrayal that we see coming carries a poignant sting. Watch characters’ reactions – for example, Lily’s surge of emotions in the last three panels. That’s what makes them feel like real people. This is a book worth a million dumbly hip, smart-aleck zombie-killer comics. Because the author takes the trouble to make his characters live and breathe, we connect with them and so we care what happens next.

Other episodes make us laugh or shudder, a reminder that all the best stories, from Chaucer on, have plenty of room for the whole gamut of human emotions. But these aren’t just peppered in willy-nilly. Garen shows mastery of his craft in where he places every sequence. Look at the final pages. Don’t worry, I’m not going to give anything away, but see how he juxtaposes danger, violence and (maybe) death with a breathtaking moment of wonder at the whole of life and creation. You’ll know what I mean when you see it. Buy the book now (and Volume One as well if you don’t have it) because this is a ride that you simply have to go on.

I realize I’ve talked all about the story and hardly at all about the art. Garen is using a ligne claire style that both suits the meticulous detail of vehicles and locations and that creates a great sense of warmth with the characters. The cover is a great example, but if you’re still not sold then head over to the Rainbow Orchid blog where you can feast your eyes on more excerpts. I just yearn for the day that a British director could get behind a movie of this true homegrown work of UK comics genius.

L'Age de Pierre

Amazon lists the Editions Soleil version of Mezolith as coming out any day now. If you're reading this in France, go buy it here. I don't need to reprise my previous post, I think - and my French really isn't up to it anyway. Suffice it to say that if any British graphic novel deserves to sell the kind of numbers that the top BD albums achieve, it's this consummate masterwork by Messrs Haggarty and Brockbank. Bonne réussite, mes amis.

Mirabilis: l'année des merveilles

My wife Roz, better known in blogging circles as Dirty White Candy, was at the London Book Fair today. It's actually her second LBF this year, and the last time round she was chatting to Clint Eastwood, but that's another story. Today she came home with some bits 'n' bobs of interest to me, including a nicely produced little booklet that comprises a taster menu for the best of French graphic novels. And the best of French, of course, is the best in the world. So here's a reprise of an earlier post for our cousins from across the Channel - excuse me, La Manche - and especially the ladies and gentlemen of Casterman, Gallimard, Delcourt, Soleil, Dargaud, Dupuis, Le Lombard, Futuropolis, Quæ Éditions, and the rest. We could do with you guys over here in the UK. Anyway, here is the first-ever episode of Mirabilis, entitled La Piqûre! - enjoy, and we hope you have a great time in London.

L'année des merveilles

We're hoping to get the first episode up on the main Mirabilis website in French this weekend. (Translation courtesy of one of our RMS correspondents, the Rev Fitzroy Hallpike of Chalfont St Giles.)

We see our work as belonging as much to the Continental tradition of Tintin and Adele Blanc-Sec as to the American comic book influences of Ditko, Wrightson and Mignola. So welcome aboard to our French comrades!

The slightly muddy colors here are just an artifact of the compression used to get the images ready for Blogger, incidentally. The originals by Nikos are infinitely richer and more subtle.