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As an aside. J was intrigued to spot this cover of the first issue of The Beano on display as pan of a "40 Years of Scottish Publishing" exhibition in the Bonar Hall where Ex Libris was held. At first, I did not notice it; amendments had been made. Herc's how the cover was presented here:

The exhibition has taken out the black character eating watcnnelon, and shifted the logo over to the center. Rewriting of history like this is always controversial, as would presenting the cover as it originally was would have been too. A less egregious example of changing mores is Ti11ti11 in the Congo being published scaled with warning labels nowadays. The Beano changes went unnoticed as far as I could tell, but I felt it worthy of mention.

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Fig. 11.

Dundee Comics Day's popularity hit its highest level a couple of years ago when Grant Morrison topped the bill. Last year's event was on British science fiction comics, with Ian Kennedy, Sydney Jordan, and 80s Marvel UK writers and artists. This year's event took a couple of steps into more artistically adventurous areas with Andrzej Klimowski and Danusia Schcjbal and Woodrow Phoenix. She lives, in particular, was amazing and I would call

the "Day" another success.

David Robertson

42"d Angoulemc International Comics Festival, Angouleme, France, January 29 - February 1, 2015.

When the initial exhibition program for the 42"d Angoulcme International Comics Festival was announced in late 2014, it was hard not to get a little excited. The top billing featured major career overviews of Bill Watterson, Jack Kirby, and Jiro Taniguchi, with further retrospectives including a celebration of Tove Jonsson and the magical world of her Moomins, a career-capping consideration of the painted comics of Alex Barbier, and an exhibition examining the idea of shared creation through the work of writer Fabien Nury. To this impressively collection were added several smaller-scale exhibits (such as the mysterious installation 'The Kinky

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& Cosy Experience" named after the popular humor comics by Flemish artist Marnix Verduyn) that really gave the programming a unique cosmopolitan flair. So it was with enthusiastic excitement that I made preparations for my sixth consecutive pilgrimage to the festival with a vow to cover as many of these exhibitions as possible.

What was impossible to prepare for were the violent murders at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris on January 7, 2015. To say that the massacre had a profound effect on the international comics community is a massive understatement and the Angouleme festival was the first opportunity of its kind for that community to collectively reflect, commemorate and come to terms with the terrible event and its collateral effects. With this in mind heading into Angouleme, I was curious to sec and experience the different ways that the festival would respond to the tragedy a mere three weeks after the fact.

Fig. I. Angoulcme City Hall adorned with banners commemorating the Charlie f/ebdo tragedy. The banner on the left lists the names of a ll the lives lost at the massacre.

Upon arriving, the most obvious response by the festival and the city of Angouleme was to elevate the security presence for the duration of the festivities. Hired security guards were judiciously patrolling the streets and monitoring every Festival attraction. To what degree these he ightened security measures would adversely affect the festival experience was a worrisome question for many visitors. The rumors circulating about French President Francois Hollande's possible attendance at the festival on Saturday didn 't assuage any of those concerns. Thankfully he didn 't show up, opting to send his Minister of Culture and Communication Fleur Pellerin as official government representative in his place. Despite having a press pass, my usual mobility was fu11hcr compromised by the insistence at every entrance

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of being frisked by guards w ielding metal-detecting wands. These increased measures forced attendees to plan their daily itineraries more carefully than usual, as the potential to lose valuable festiva l time while waiting in

• unnecessarily long queues was high. This was especially true with respect to the exhibitions, as they are spread out across the city in venues that are all within substantial walking distance from each other. Given this predicament, I feared that r would not be able to see the entirety of the exhibition program as planned, so I made the game-time decision to hit the major ones first and then roll the dice for whatever time was left afterward.

Fig. 2. The queue at the Cite de la Bande Dessinee ct de l'image on opening day at 9:30 AM;

the festival opens at I 0:00.

Perhaps the most important response to the Charlie Hebdo tragedy was the decision by the festival programmers to add a special exhibition that paid tribute to the institution and the artists that are the backbone of Charlie Hebdo. Held at Le Cite de la Bandc Dessinee et !'Image (CBDI) in the space usually reserved for the museum 's permanent exhibition, the Charlie 1-/ebdo exhibit played a dual ro le in serving as a commemoration to the slain cartoonists as well as presenting a wide-ranging publication history of the magazine that situated itself within a particular comics tradition of French postwar political

satire. Appropriate ly, the entire exhibition was made up of covers and interiors

from the weekly ephemeral newspaper that consistently presented outrageous comic strips, gags and drawings; many of them are tasteless and offensive, almost all of them audaciously funny. Starting from the genesis of Hara­Kiri, the original "journal bcte et mechant" that first appeared in 1960, the exhibition traced the magazine 's complex genealogy and evolution while taking note of the higb frequency of its transgressions against public taste and government censure. Video screens were scattered along the serpentine

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Fig. 3. Group photo of the Charlie Hebdo staff that greeted visitors to the exhibition.

display table setup, each featuring short looped clips of the artists involved with the magazine at different moments of its publishing history. One of the most fascinating pieces of archival footage on display shows a young Cabu cavorting and drawing with Fred, Wolinski and Melvin van Peebles in a Paris pool hall, circa 1968. Several tangential publications were also presented to highlight the notion that this particular brand of mean-spirited satire was not particular to Charlie Hebda, but was also practiced in a range of short-lived comics magazines that were published around the same time. One of the interesting takeaways in this respect was seeing just how many soon-to-be big name cartoonists crossed paths with this satirical tradition, whether by working directly with the magazines (Fred, Moebius, Jean-Claude Forest, Guy Peelaert) or being inspired by it (Joost Swarte and Ever Meulen via Willem in the pages of Surprise).

When the exhibition chronology reached the appearance of the first issue of Charlie Hebda in its current incarnation, the glass display cases exploded with a surfeit of visual information. A crowded selection of Charlie Hebda issues were neatly arranged in overlapping rows and columns to provide a condensed visual history of offense that expressed the raison d'etre of the magazine. This overload of Charlie Hebda cover imagery comes crashing to an abrupt halt with the issue released on January 7, 2015, whiclfis segregated off to the side from its immediate neighboring issues. The massacre itself is then referenced in the display of pages taken from international press coverage, which also included the special supplements featuring the first wave of tributes from international cartoonists. A final glass case served as the conclusion of the historical portion of the exhibit, punctuated with the solitary display of issue #1 178 of Charlie Hebda, the first issue publi shed

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after the murders, which put the spotlight on the brilliant cover by Luz that expressed what seemed to be almost inexpressible.

Fig. 4. All ls Forgiven.

After this crescendo of emotion, visitors were offered some necessary catharsis in the form of an enormous blackboard mural to express their thoughts and sentiments about the tragedy. The wall elicited diverse reactions: there were many notes of sympathy, condolence and solidarity, while other visitors chose to stand quietly aside in mournful contemplation.

Fig. S. For Charlie Hebdo.

The exhibition concluded with a room devoted to the work of the main Charlie Hebda cartoonists: those no longer with us (Charb, Wolinski, Cabu, Tignous, and Honore) and those still around to call those in power on their bullshit (Willem, Catherine and Luz). The entire show served as a much­needed corrective to the ill-informed press commentary about the supposedly

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singular Islamophobic and racist nature of the magazine. Indeed the organizers almost went out of their way to highlight how Charlie Hebdo's brand of satire functioned as a counter-discourse to the rhetoric of any Established Power, whether national or clerical by nature. Major kudos goes to the CBDI and the festival organizers for an exhibition that, rumor has it, was put together in ten days during what was surely an emotionally-charged atmosphere. It successfully focused on what these cartoonists did best -- take the piss out of Establishment -- without artificially elevating them to heights that went unnecessarily beyond their artistic abilities and aesthetic concerns.

Strangely enough, immediately adjacent to the final memorial room of the Charlie l!ebdo exhibition was a small separate exhibit commemorating the centenary of Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp character (or as he is known in France, "Charlot") as he appeared in comic books and strips in the United States, France and England. Original strips, some drawn by E.C. Segar, adorned the walls of the small room, while display cases located in the center presented a selection of original French comic books featuring 'Charlot.'

Fig. 6. The Little Tramp as star of his own comic books.

Since I am interested in cinema history, it was worthwhile for me to see this extra universe that helped sustain Chaplin's popularjty, filling in the space between his vaudeville and cinema stints. Unfortunately, this exhibition came across as a sort of filler since I never truly engaged with the collection of displayed material. In the end, I considered it a fairly slight diversion, especially when it had the misfortune to be juxtaposed against the tension between gravitas and hilarity that the neighboring Charlie Hebdo exhibition offered.

Also located among the primary museum spaces of the CIBD was

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Figs. 7a-c. The Magical World of Moomin.

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"The World of Moomin," a colorfully laid out introduction to Tove Jansson's beloved creations through their book, comics and animated forms. The exhibition offered several opporrunities for interactivity, such as opening little treasure boxes scattered across the room, which was divided into separate color-themed spaces that were connected via an illustrated pathway.

Paintings, sketches and rough drafts of Jansson 's work hung comfortably next to toys, ephemera and television screens to introduce or remind visitors about the scope and reach of the wonders that sprang from the Moomin-verse. As a result, the information and the organization oftbat information differed considerably from the Moomin exhibit curated by Paul Gravett that circulated a couple of years ago. Gravett's exhibition delved much deeper into Jansson's career and the evolution of the Moomins in that context, resulting in a tone and scope that appealed to an audience already familiar with the subject.

Across the river over at the vaisseau Moebius was the greatly anticipated exhibition monograph on Jiro Taniguchi, considered to be the most European of mangakas. Subtitled "The Man Who Dreams," this exhibit was laid out across two floors. The main floor was dedicated to Taniguchi's career as understood on European terms by his essential themes (The Great Outdoors, Bridging Manga and Sande Dessinee, Nostalgia and Memory, Culinary Pleasures, Muscles and Testosterone, Illustrations, and the Meaning of Man) while the second floor was devoted to his three European projects published in 2014. Originals, mainly watercolors, were placed alongside many digital reproductions of pages from his books at different scales that served as visual evidence of the section themes.

As much as I appreciated seeing Taniguchi originals, the exhibition didn ' t impart any new knowledge or insight into his work for me. The auteurist

Fig. 8. The 'Taniguchi meets Moebius' room.

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approach rightly celebrated the great artist, but it did so at the expense of important historical and contexhlal questions. Where does Taniguchi fit in the world ofmanga and Japanese culrurc? How is Srudio Taniguchi organized to .pet out work that is signed ' Taniguchi ?' It was tough to get an understanding of his artistic evolution since his work was presented in an ahistorical fashion. It's a shame that the organizers didn ' t tum more toward Benoit Peeters' book of interviews with Taniguchi, L 'Homme qui dessine: Entretiens avec Jira Taniguchi (Castcrman, 2012), as it offers a fantastic career overview while also touching upon the themes highlighted in the exhibition.

I was surprised to find the Jack Kirby exhibition located inside the large tent next to the main publisher's pavi lion at Angouleme's Champ de Mars. A tent is not an ideal place to house a comics art exhibition for a variety of reasons so I wondered why the highly-touted Jack Kirby exhibition was booked in such a venue. Word on the street has it that the last-minute decision to add the Charlie Hebdo exhibit crowded out the Kirby exhibit from.its space in the CIBD and forced its relocation. After that, the Festival's insurance would not cover the display of original Kirby art inside a tent. With that in mind, one couldn't help but see this show as a missed opportunity because the exhibition itself was surprisingly effective in tem1s of introducing a European audience to Kirby's decades- and genre-spanning work.

Fig. 9. Darkseid at the gates to the Jack Kirby exhibition.

All the biographical and professional information that one would expect to see at a Jack Kirby retrospective was present: his pre-war apprenticeship that ultimately led to his collaboration with Joe Simon; his first stint at DC Comics before shipping off to France to serve in the war; his immediate postwar return to comics working with Simon on a variety of genre comics; his first legendary spell at Marvel from 1962 to 1970; his return to DC to fulfill his dream of bringing his New Gods saga to the page; his return to

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Marvel in the late 1970s followed by a trip back to DC to finish off the New Gods story in 1984 and ultimately wind down his career. This chronology was amply illustrated with a huge number of digital color and black-and-white reproductions of Kirby original pages, both covers and interior. Original issues of Kirby comic books spanning his entire career were arranged in neat rows and columns atop large wooden crates with a glass-covered top to allow visitors an idea of how his work looked in its final form. Though the lack of original Kirby pages was a disappointment to purists, the exhibition did a good job, especially under unlucky circumstances, of presenting an aesthetic appreciation of Kirby's art while also highlighting the characteristic aspects of his art as they evolved over the years.

.. HIU-.J4r7'10n"Z.

Fig. 10. More Darkseid from Kirby.

One particularly interesting section of the exhibition was devoted to some of Kirby's key inkers such as Steve Ditko, Vince Colletta, Joe Sinnott, Mike Royer, and Wally Wood. Workstations were installed to allow visitors the chance to try one's own hand at inking the King 's drawings on facsimiles of his pencil sketches. It is worth noting here that though the exhibition gave each of Kirby's key collaborators, Joe Simon and the above-mentioned

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inkers, their own banner featuring biographic information and their links to Kirby, one collaborator was glaringly omitted from having that same honor:

Stan Lee. • Walking uphill towards the centre of the city inevitably leads you

through Place Saint-Martial, this year 's home to the Chinese Comics Pavilion. As is the custom at the Angouleme festival, an Asian country is invited to the festival to promote international relations by using state funds to present their comics culture. This year's choice of China led to many a press release describing the event as establishing a new 'Silk Road' of cultural exchange. The twin themes of the Chinese pavilion were "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" to showcase an array of classic and contemporary Chinese comics and the promotion of the city of Guangzhou as a comics and animation hub. Guanzhou is host to the Chinese International Comics Festival as well as serving as host city for this exchange. Original art from a selection of popular Chinese artists lined half of the walls, while the other half was reserved for presentations, live drawing, and signings by several of the displayed artists. There was an interesting variety of styles and preoccupations on hand, though I found myself drawn more towards the classical and historical material over

Fig. II. Burned remnants of Alex Barbier's LYCAONS.

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the contemporary work which was too much wuxia fantasy and untranslatable humour for my tastes. Though only a few of the books were translated into French, the Chinese delegation certainly ensured that there were plenty of opportunities to engage with their comics through the packed schedule of events they had lined up. It would be in the best interests of everyone involved ifthe festival could arrange a larger space to accommodate this kind of event.

Next up was the definitely 'adults only' exhibition featuring a career retrospective of Alex Barbier, a Freon and Fremok regular whose painted comics can best be described as discomforting eroticism. Intelligently curated by Thierry van Hassell over two floors in the Hotel St. Simon space, Barbier's paintings and pages were arranged thematically in appropriately dimly- lit rooms. It was fasc inating to see his oil paintings up close in their original scale, especially the surviving pages of his early work LYCAONS, whose originals were mostly burned in a warehouse fire.

Though he's been operating at the margins of Eurocomics for the past 20 years, the exhibition pointed out, but did not make exaggerate, the fact that Barbier had originally published in Charlie Mensue/, a predecessor to Charlie Hebdo, where his early work was championed by Wolinksi. It was a heavy exhibition to take in, mainly because Barbier's work is not for the light-hearted with its recurring images of dislocated perspectives of empty rooms and coroulent copulating couples, all painted with his murky line

Fig. 12. A 'brief' introduction to the work of Alex Barbier.

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style. As much as I appreciated how the exhibition was curated, the captions written by van Hassett were very dense and heavy, carrying on for lengths that I thought were too long for an installation and may have worked better as

an accompanying pamphlet. Further down the road at the margins of the city center lies the Musee

d' Angouleme, the city's antiquities museum that played host to the infamous

"Kinky and Cosy Experience."

Fig. 13. Kinky a11d Cosy.

Having never before read this award-winning comic from Belgium nor seen its animated series, I was pleasantly surprised by the setup of the exhibition, which focused on communicating the strips' madcap comic sensibi lity over any notions of artistry or historical importance. Visitors were herded into four separately-connected rooms that represented phases of the 'Experience' wherein your brain was first washed, a pill was then taken, and your mind expanded to jive with the mindset of the twins Kinky and Cosy, whose philosophy is to impose rather than be shy or polite. Amusing animated sequences helped structure the interactive experience, with the twins instructing participants to put their head in a washing machine, answer inane questions with a two-button handheld box lowered from the ceiling, and play a touch-screen arcade console to demonstrate the extent that the pill had taken effect. The exhibition ended with a long hallway showcasing all of the

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artists involved, each with a page of original art and photos presented as mug shots, accompanied with evidence bags pinpointing the object of their crime. The whole enterprise was silly, well-installed and a refreshing change from the seriousness that often accompanies comics exhibitions atAngouleme.

Fig. 14. Mug shot of Nix, creator of Kinky and Cosy.

The final venue that houses major exhibitions in central Angouleme is the Espace Franquin, which is big enough to offer two large rooms for installations. The first exhibition that was immediately visible upon entry into the building is the one dedicated to the French BD writer Fabien Nury. I was particularly looking forward to this exhibition -- not so much because of Nury himself, whose work I do like and appreciate based on the three series that I' ve read, -- but more so out of my own curiosity as to how an exhibition focused on the work of a writer would be handled. The walls of the room were divided into sections that covered his oeuvre in chronological order, each featuring original art from these series accompanied by dual commentary from Nury and the associated artist beside each page. I thought this worked quite well as the exchange between writer and artist really brought to light the extent and the limits of the collaboration involved in the creation of the page, and by extension, the books. In some cases, reproductions of rough page

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Fig. 15. Dialogue between Fabien Nury and Sylvain Vallee with original pencils and final finished page.

sketches were also provided to visualize the evolution of their collaboration. One of the observations that was brought forward in the exchanges

between writer and artist is how much ofNury's writing is influenced by the cinema, and how his artist offers suggestions to the final vision that either reinforce or enhance that cinematic influence, or instead finds an entirely new comics-based language to get the same effect across. The final d isplay of the exhibition, located near the exit, consisted of two flat standing glass cases showcasing the books and films (in the fom1 of DVD cases) that serve as Nury's main influences. Unsurprising to see were lots of celebrated American genre fiction -- noir, westerns and war in particular -- that helped bring this exhibition full ci rcle.

Finally the President's exhibition awaited me downstairs. The Calvin and Hobbes show at Angouleme was a slightly-truncated version of the one exhibited at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum in Ohio. The thematic breakdowns were the same (Influences, the Seasons, Attack of the Tiger, Characters, Sunday strips) but there were fewer originals for the Angouleme show. A fai r share of digital reproductions were printed and

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( d\Vi N Ho\)bf-s

Fig. 16. This way to the President's exhibition.

integrated into the exhibition to compensate. But the originals on display along the perimeter walls of the Salle Iribe were a marvel to behold, especially Watterson's Sunday papers and watercolor illustrations. I found that the curators of the exhibit, Jenny Robb and Caitlin McGurk, successfully walked a fine line between introducing the strip to new audiences and reaffirming one's nostalgia for it. Seeing the originals gave me a new appreciation for Watterson at the level of craft -- his drawings are so damn clean to the point that they contribute to the comic timing of each strip. The publishers have never been fully able to capture the warmth and brightness of his watercolors in print so I was very happy to see those originals. It was also nice to see the

Fig. 17. Watterson's tools of the trade.

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size of the Sunday papers in their original form - I just don't think newspapers offer that kind of space anymore. Nice touches were the inclusion of his tools of the trade, as well as some of his pre-Calvin work.

• In the middle of the Salle Iribe was a large rectangular space whose interior functioned as a makeshift movie theatre. Excerpts from the film "Stripped," a 2014 documentary about the hi story of American newspaper comics, were being screened inside. It played as the centerpiece for a quick exhibition-within-an-exhibi tion that functioned as an historical overview of the com ic strip while also offering the first recorded interview with Bill Watterson. The walls outside the theatre were lined with texts and digital reproductions of newspaper pages. It provided the necessary information for the casual spectator to grasp the history and tradition that Watterson is working in, as well as definining his role and place in it.

--.:a~-

Fig. 18. The start of the exhibition-within-an-exhibition.

Unfortunately, I was unable to squeeze in the time to see the rest of the exhibitions on the program. I particularly regret not being able to see the exhibition celebrating the Belgian independent publisher L'employe du moi as I was interested in learning more about the collaborative aspect of their identity in relation to the longevity of their publication. I also missed out on several of the exhibitions in the CIBD that were aimed at younger audiences -- the Anouk Ricard show "Anna and Froga" and the 3D exhibitions of Thierry Smolderen and Aleaxandre Clerisse's panoramic Le secret du ruban monde au Tumulte and Matthias Picard's Jim Curious. I'm also ashamed that I neglected to spare some of my time in my schedule to check out the work of the young talents trying to break into the scene: Gui llaume Chauchat's Lignes and the Sillages show exhibiting the work of the artists-in-residence at the CIBD, two of which are American ex-pats Matt Madden and Jessica Abel.

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That said, I am pleased that I was able to see as many of the exhibitions as I did. This year featured a very wide range of approaches and appreciations, and though the exhibitions each displayed their own strengths and limitations, it was the sheer breadth and scope of the program that was impressive. The broad scope of the exhibitions alone helped reinforce the fest ival's reputation as Europe's pre-eminent international comics festiva l. The Charlie Hebdo tragedy may have cast an unfortunate shadow on the festival but it also provided a rallying point to remind us of the importance and power that comics can wield in the world beyond the page. Nowhere was that made more plainly evident than in the impromptu exhibition that directly confronted the tragedy via the vis ion of its own pages.

Nick Nguyen

" Landscape of Death: Jacques Tardi and the First World War" and "Joe Sacco: The First World War -The Battle of the Somme." Jnternationaler Comic-Salon Erlangen 2014, Germany, June 19-24, 2014.

One striking aspect of the 2014 " lnternationaler Comic-Salon Erlangen" that I attended in the old university town of Erlangen, Germany, near Nuremberg, was the contrasting staging of two exhibitions of comics art on aspects of World War I by Joe Sacco and Jacques Tardi. Sacco's The First World War -- The Battle of the Somme was an installation of his historical

Fig. I. Sacco exhibition-wide view. Photo by Michael Hill. June 2014.

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narrative, graphic work The Great War as a large format open-air exhibit in one of the main squares of the town, the Schlossplatz. The panels, or should I say, the singular panel of which the comic is comprised, had been

• enlarged and mounted on display boards arranged in a long series of folds, simulating the unfolded concertina effect of the book's folded packaging. Seeing it spread across the square magnified the considerable task that Sacco undertook in drawing this epic work of one day of the Battle of the Somme and contriving to contain it and its narrative across time in one panel.

His wordless comic is structured around a single seemingly-endless panel that has been folded into 24 segments that unfolds from its slipcase in one piece. It depicts events in a continuous, cinematic-panning take, spread across time and space with soldiers assembling, attacking, retreating, and fi nally returning to their lines and trenches. The unfolded published comic is too long for a table and has to be spread across the floor of a room or two or down a long corridor. In Schlossplatz, in its larger format, it mirrored this effect as it ran right across the width of the square necessitating a "reading" while walking approach and, with so much detail drawn by Sacco to read, it required several passes to take in.

Fig. 2. Sacco exhibition-walking view. Photo by Michael Hill. June 2014.

The panel's details included a view of the trenches and the movement of the soldiers from them into the hosti lities of"No Man's Land," their exposure to artillery attacks, and its associated shrapnel, plus machine gun, rifle, and pistol fi re. The increased scale afforded by the outdoor presentation in a public place underlined the detail and indicated the massive amount of work that Sacco had undertaken in the drawing and research of this project.

In contrast, the comics art by Jacques Tardi was exhibited indoors. Low level lighting created ·a somber mood appropriate to the theme while also protecting the original art which showed corrections such as the whiting-

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