It’s been pretty much all Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin, all the time this week. Below find his general thoughts on a standout comics festival in the plague year, and we’ll see him the next time something catches his eye and he puts up the FSFCPL Signal.

?Comic book festivals always leave me physically exhausted at the end, but not the Pleine Page Festival (well, except for my fingers). After France went back in lockdown October 30th, Lise and her accomplices set up this virtual festival on her Twitch channel to compensate for the festivals that couldn’t take place in 2020, and while it can’t replace a proper festival, take a look at this lineup! When it comes to programming, the quality is on par with the best festivals, with additionally a large focus on matters of interest to this blog. As a result, you can now enjoy on Fleen the transcripts of:

• The interview with Pénélope Bagieu
• The panel Is Being Known Necessary To Be Published?, with Cy, Marie Spénale, and Sita, moderated by Lise
• The panel Why Choose Self-Publishing?, with Yatuu and Lisa Mandel, moderated by Aurélien Fernandez

But that doesn’t mean the other events were uninteresting! For instance, in a traditional festival I always check what’s next for me about 5-10 minutes before the end of an event so I can get to the next one in time, if necessary. Well, even if this time I was in front of my tablet I ended up doing the same, even though that was going to be the next thing on the channel anyway, because I was eager to see what was next.

So I also followed with interest her interviews with Cyril Pedrosa and Mathieu Bablet. Thankfully for my fingers, the programming alternated these with more contemplative events where artists would draw, either competitively, or cooperatively, or as a reward for lottery winners, or just as a drawing lesson.

All the while, the event went smoothly, or as smoothly as can be expected for a pandemic-era virtual event: Lise was never any less professional than a mainstream newscaster in the face of trouble, even though I had pegged her more as a wordsmith; I guess I failed to account for her video activities on YouTube and Twitch. For instance, when it turned out Cyril Pedrosa would be unable to be present at the programmed time, she arranged to record the interview the previous day, and except for the disclaimer at the beginning that we would be unable to ask questions because of that, that was integrated as seamlessly as possible in the event.

The success of this event shows Lise has got the best rolodex of any of us in this beat, and the team to organize anything. So congratulations to her, Fernandez (co-host and provider of drawings for the lottery), Fanny (who handled backstage activities such as the video feeds), and a Matthias who could be seen passing books to Lise while she was on stage. I hope this was only the first of many such events to come.

For those keeping track at home, that’s about 8000 words from FSFCPL, which is a frankly unreasonable number of words to crank out at this most soul-crushingly hectic magical time of year. As always, our thanks to him, and a sincere hope for a restful remainder of the year. Personally, I’m thinking that he earned the Odinsleep.

Spam of the day:

We..have..a..surprise..for_UPS_Customer

Is that supposed to be UPS as in United Parcel Service, or as in uninterruptible power supply. Because I’m probably about a year from having to replace the battery in the UPS, and I order most of my stuff specifically asking for Postal Service delivery because the postal service is awesome.