And one in such exquisite detail even more so.

Welcome back to the coverage of this year’s Quai des Bulles festival, courtesy of Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin. As mentioned in Part One, this is his report on the career retrospective interview of Pénélope Bagieu.

The interview took place Saturday at 2:30 PM in the Amphithéâtre Maupertuis, with Vincent Brunner interviewing.

30 minutes before the start, available spots were already thinning out. 15 minutes bore the start, there was no room left at all.

When Pénélope Bagieu entered the room, the audience broke into applause.

After a welcome message, a reminder of her exhibition, and a quick recap of her career, including her Eisner award, the interview started in earnest.

Brunner: How did she realize she wanted to become a comics creator, with so few examples, such as Claire Brétécher?
Bagieu: As far as her young self was concerned, the comics she read appeared out of thin air without anyone needing to be involved, and in fact she noticed female protagonists more than female creators. Later on she studied animation, then worked in illustration, at which point she started being commissioned for comics work as part of her job, and that turned out to be to her liking.

She realized she had been doing comics as a teen (typically girls playing sports, inspired by Attacker You), but she did not think of it at the time as being comics.

Brunner: So she created a blog, a new medium at the time.
Bagieu: She was not interested then in putting out a book; she had always been doing commission work, as she was hired straight out of school, so the blog provided her with a space to express herself freely: no need for any of it to provide a return on investment. In the end, it was a training ground for her to be able to make books eventually.

Brunner: And it provided her direct interactions with the public.
Bagieu: Not necessarily as interactive as with some since her blog did not have comments, but yes that meant being exposed to many people, but pre-Instagram standards. It was an ongoing entertainer job: back then when you went on holidays you used to ask another creator to cover your away days! Today she couldn’t imagine doing the same: she’s just too busy.

The blog removed some of the solemn aspect of books: she never stopped herself thinking: This joke is going to end up in a book and enter the public record! She enjoyed the lack of restraint. She found it nice for it to become a book in the end, but that was never the end goal. Now she has better outlook on the process: for instance, it has become apparent visitors do not necessarily translate to sales.

Brunner: This is where Joséphine starts.
Bagieu: It was a commission work, and her first character in fiction, so the matter was finding out in which scenarios, in which contexts, and between which characters she was going to be inserted. Once she had consistent characters, it was just a matter of coming up with setups such as the company party at which point the stories write themselves, even after 20 years.

Brunner: Then a movie.
Bagieu: Joséphine was a kind of training camp, and once it had stopped being fun to do, she stopped. She hasn’t regretted it, even when in Japan when she got asked for more at a signing (the Japanese public is more interested in the pictures than in the stories of comics of the French-Belgian tradition). She is proud of it being her first published book in Asia.

Brunner: Isn’t there always some part of treason when adapting for a movie?
Bagieu: To avoid feeling betrayed, you either do it yourself (which as a creator you always have the option to do, by law, as part of your moral rights), and you’re safe; or you put it in the hands of someone else and own up already that it’s going to be their work.

She find movies to be a source of frustration as compared to comics: in the latter, she can afford to put ellipses for instance, and one person can have total creative control, without sharing it with actors, the people responsible for lighting, sets, or props. That means it’s solitary work, but it’s fine for her.

Brunner: Exquisite Corpse was another milestone.
Bagieu: She had huge worries going into it: was she going to succeed, in particular when it comes to writing? But it didn’t matter in the end: she had fun working on it, and it was the start of a realization that once everything is said and done, the only thing that remains out of a book is the experience she has had working on it, as far as she’s concerned, so the only thing that matters is how much she enjoyed herself doing it.

Brunner: Does she follow any sort of process when creating a book?
Bagieu: She does write a synopsis ahead of time for validation, which is always a source of worries, but beyond that no particular methodology. So she works on her books in an almost school-like manner: plan, introduction, development, conclusion. Other creators may follow different methods: some start without necessarily knowing how the book will end.

Brunner: What form does this take?
Bagieu: A mix of words, arrows, roughs, sketches, in order the represent the staging in her head, and which only she can make heads or tails of it. They are literally impossible to display: it’s hard to even know which orientation the sheet is meant to have.

Brunner: And she has also worked with writers.
Bagieu: At the time of her being proposed La Page Blanche (which occurred before Cadavre Exquis), she requested being paired with a writer, and ended up with Boulet, which was great, in particular so she could concentrate on the illustrations, and moreso the colors: I handle the writing duties.

But she did get frustrated somewhat, as she missed not so much writing the story, as being able to stage it, which is the part she loves best. Stars Of The Stars* was another attempt at drawing someone else’s scenario, this time with Johann Sfar, who had initiated the project. None of this being out of the ordinary: there are no two pairs of writers and artists who collaborate the same way, no two writers who are alike. Sfar taught her a lot, she finds him to be an incredible storyteller.

In the end, she decided she did not want anyone else writing stories for her to draw anymore, even if she isn’t the best writer. And even if that meant leaving Stars Of The Stars stranded with a single tome.

Brunner: What kind of tooling did she use?
Bagieu: Back then, Photoshop and graphic tablet: it was just easier for her. Sometimes you have to find the right tool, as for California Dreamin’, but sometimes also get out of your comfort zone.

Brunner: On that matter, why did she draw this story?
Bagieu: First of all, she’s of course a huge fan. And she found Mama Cass’s story to be incredible and felt the need to transmit it. Her penciling came alive on the page, but any inking froze that, so she decided she would do it all in pencils.

This was her first long-haul book; she loved the feeling of spending 18 months with someone, so she came to appreciate creating biographies. If only she could tell of more women that way …

Brunner: What kind of documentation did she use for that?
Bagieu: Immersing yourself in a setting for the purpose of writing, that sounds fantastic! So she travelled to New York City, sleeping in a B&B in Greenwich Village and spending her days in cafés, and by the end of the week the book was basically written.

Brunner: To which extent does she embellish these life stories with fiction?
Bagieu: She prefers biographies that don’t lean heavily on factuals, as opposed to those that go on that date they did this then that date they did that: the biographies that made a mark on her were those from which readers received love for the person, doesn’t matter if there’s a 20-year time skip in the middle.

Which does not mean she gets to do as she pleases: there are extant relatives who could object. So she had to double-check biographical details: whether they were raised in a rich or poor family, the kind of siblings they had, etc. Her role is to provide embellishments and draw the lines between the given points as she prefers. Out of the truth, shape her own Mama Cass: the one she wants to see.

On that note, if you need background characters who nevertheless need to stay consistent from panel to panel, use your own relatives.

She’d rather introduce the subject to the reader and make him love them, rather than teaching him information.

Brunner: Did she hear from the rights holders?
Bagieu: They refused to license the lyrics, so yes she did hear about them … But other than that, when she went to Baltimore, she got feedback from someone from her parents’ generation that she did render well the high school ambiance, which she did not expect but was glad to hear.

Brunner: So what’s the relationship with Brazen?
Bagieu: Let’s do a Katia Krafft bio! No, it’d be better to do a Peggy Guggenheim one! Wait, what if I did 30 of them? She was looking for a format with Le Monde: what if she did women bios, told as children’s tales of sorts, and randomly said 30 as to how many, once every Monday? She went on to call her publisher, who said it’d have to be two books then.

Brunner: How did she settle on which ones to write?
Bagieu: She had settled on about 2/3rds of them right away, and the last third came during the course of the project: she got heaps of suggestions, not to mention those who did not make the cut and still regrets. Some who were suggested she passed on because she found them to be sufficiently well-known already, but it could also be because their stories did not connect with her. But sometimes it was love at first sight, such as when Lisa Mandel suggested Phoolan Devi¹ to her.

Brunner: That was quite a synthesis work. What was her process?
Bagieu: Oh yes, there we do learn information. She started the week with their biographies, then she’d have about two days to write and draw their chapter. This was a good exercise, as with such constraints this is what hit her that remains, and in particular their switch: the trigger, the one event where they go I’m done playing by the rules, I’m going to live my life how I decide (either in terms of career, lifestyle, etc). That was in fact her main contribution to the animated version: confirming, and in some cases reminding, of where that spot happens in the stories.

Brunner: How did she handle the publishing schedule?
Bagieu: She did do a few ahead of time, for use in rainy days and the like. But the immediate feedback kept her very motivated, as opposed to her latest book which she was done drawing back in May but isn’t out yet … (Author’s note: at the time this interview was conducted)

Brunner: No sequel then?
Bagieu: No, she’s sticking with the 30 she initially committed to. Tove Jansson never lost sight of her priorities in life, and she’s taken that in turn: she knows that if she works on something she’d rather not work on, readers will notice.

Brunner: So she has no regret on any particular one who did not make the cut?
Bagieu: No, not on one in particular, and anyway there’s nothing stopping her from from discovering more women and reading their biographies.

Brunner: And it was not intended for children specifically, was it?
Bagieu: And yet, there they are.

Brunner: Which leads us to The Witches.
Bagieu: As far as she’s concerned, the children audience is demanding, as you can’t bluff your way out, which is especially the case for drawings: she holds children book illustrators in highest esteem. So when she inadvertently brought a younger readership, she realized it was not necessary to write in a way that targets them. As a result, when she got the offer to adapt Roald Dahl, she was less afraid to do so.

That still meant some pressure, especially for backgrounds: she herself as a young reader demanded to be able to witness everything, down to the smallest detail. Luckily, everything was there in the book already: scary antagonists, funny moments, actual action. He was pretty much the only writer in children’s literature to introduce somber themes.

When she first read the book she was aged about the same as the protagonists, so it helped her get back to the right frame of mind.

Brunner: And it’s a book about grandmothers.
Bagieu: She drew a lot from her own grandmother, as part of generally making an imprint on the story: rather than being an illustrator like Quentin Blake, she was adapting the book and so needed for it to become her own, so the grandmother went from being Dahl’s to being hers as a result. As well as making a character into a girl.

Brunner: Yes, that Bruno character.
Bagieu: He made no impression on her at all, so she wondered: why is he here at all? Let’s replace him, and as we’re at it by a girl who is interesting, has her own backstory, and serves some story purpose.

Brunner: Haven’t witches evolved since then?
Bagieu: It was complicated to adapt The Witches in 2020. But it mattered for them to remain fairy tale witches, as that is what worked for her at the time, because they were impressive. But there is the grandmother who exposes and is a different kind of witch.

Brunner: What were the rights holders like?
Bagieu: A single person in fact, who was open to anything that made sense. He was very settled on some aspects: the setting being England for instance. But he accepted a female character who made sense. He reminded her of an important theme: the grandmother has to love her grandchild no mater what, and it has to be shown.

Brunner: And she created it on the road.
Bagieu: During her Brazen promo tour, so she remembers every page being done in a train or in a waiting room. The iPad was very useful for her: for instance the pencil effect, as seen in this page.

Brunner: And we get to her latest, Strates, set to release on November 10th …
Bagieu: And available at the Gallimard booth ahead of the public launch.

Brunner: Where she gets back to autobio, with moments that made an impression on her.
Bagieu: On the blogs you take highlights out of your life and make scenes out of them, without really exposing yourself: everything has to be made into comedy. Here she collected deeply personal stories, some of which aren’t funny. But it’s a jigsaw puzzle of elements that built her, out of very diverse subject matters, even if some of them appear unimportant at first glance.

Brunner: There is not even any consistent page count.
Bagieu: She’s trusting the reader to follow. This one story she wrote down ten years ago. Then years later she did three in a month. This was originally a cathartic process not meant for anyone else, but eventually she decided she should not be afraid to make a book out of it.

For this, she redrew some of the oldest ones. She thought to herself that if this was enjoyable to make, it would have to be enjoyable to read. But it’s still not easy for her, as she puts herself bare in these pages. With any luck, she hopes it has some universality and impresses other people in turn.

Audience Member: She went from bios, to an adaptation, to autobio; what’s next?
Bagieu: She does not know herself. About one week before heading into it in earnest, she’ll know. It’s never the same thing twice, because she easily gets bored. Right now she wants to do colors, painting, as Strates is in black and white; if she’s still in that state of mind in a few weeks, she’ll attempt a few pages, and if after three pages it’s still too hard, she’ll give up.

Audience Member: What would be her advice for starting out?
Bagieu: She’s not comfortable providing such advice: she started out in days that are now fully gone, and wouldn’t know how to start over today. But people today are lucky to have Instagram, even if that imposes a format constraint, which she could get bored of: she worries about Instagram formatting stories for swiping as early as inception, for fear of there not being nearly as much of an outlet for them otherwise.

Also, there are some things that shouldn’t be shown right away and need to mature, because feedback on them would catch the ego in too fragile a state.

But it is key to generally show, otherwise you never work up the nerve to do so.

Don’t worry about what pleases the public, as you’re never going to be able to hold that up in the long run: you’re going to get sick of it. Same for artificial constraints: your work as to be personal, and that comes from drawing a lot; that is how your style comes, you don’t decide it.

Existing in an era of abundance requires being demanding with the editing side: you have to demand being backed up and respected, so be careful. You must speak with other creators so as to avoid being alone, to counteract the tendency of being solitary already.

Audience Member: Do woman creators earn less?
Bagieu: Yes, big surprise here: statistically advances are lower for female creators. There has always been female creators (and readers) but now they’re spreading to other parts of the book chain, such as editors.

Things have changed in the last ten-fifteen years, and besides feminization, some commercials successes have forced the attention on them; but women creators are still invisibilized in many cases, or assigned to some boxes, etc.

It’s not the worst occupation in that regard, but not the best either. But now female creators are banding, under the descriptively-named umbrella of Collectif des Créatrices de Bandes Dessinées.

Audience Member: (Author’s note: a young girl who happened to be next to me) How did she learn how to draw?
Bagieu: As the audience member did: pencils and paper which was laying around, then art school after high school. But there are some self-taught creators, who draw better than her.

One additional piece of advice, on that matter: she herself drew a lot because she was made to treat paper and pencils as mundane: the paper won’t serve for any other purpose since there’s a bill on the other side, the pencils are old but abundant, so she was free to draw a lot. The opposite of the shiny Caran d’Ache painting set. Given disposable materials like old markers: you go ahead.

Audience Member: What kind of representation, of feminine role model did she have?
Bagieu: No, she did not know women who drew, or even the people who did: the question of who were creating comics did not occur to her. She did love Mafalda and anime as they featured girls, they were part of the action. Sometimes stories were stereotypical girl stories: rivalries, pests, etc., but it was cool to have girl protagonists. For her the golden era of French-Belgian comic book heroines starts now, with the female creators who are 20-25 today.

Audience Member: What kind of pressure does she have after her previous successes, in particular Brazen?
Bagieu: Now everything she does will be widely read as being from the creator of Brazen. Including when unrelated, such as Strates. But in the worst case, she has already put out a best-seller, so that’s something taken care of already. She’s in awe of the other creators who can keep doing books in a series, because she on the other hand has to be passionate about her work. It helps to be well backed up, and not necessarily driven to what will make the most money.

And that will wrap this year’s report from St Malo. As always, we at Fleen are grateful for the contributions of FSFCPL, and all the hard work he puts in to keep us informed of the state of webcomics in the French tradition.

Spam of the day:

The ZoomShot Pro is the new tactical zoom for smartphones and tablets that resists all types of terrain and that with its magnification up to X18 will allow you to take the best photos outdoors without the need to carry a professional camera.

Make up your mind and decide on your audience: are you trying to scam warrior wannabes with the tactical angle, or serious photographers. This is just muddled.

_______________
¹ Editor’s note: Phoolan Devi, the Bandit Queen of India, was the one subject in the original French edition that was omitted from the US/Canada translation of Brazen.

Last week ended badly, post-wise (it ended worse for me and my students), but although I wasn’t able to come up for air in time to see it, Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin came through with a recap of a Pénélope Bagieu interview, which is absolutely worth your time. Today, we cede to him the pride of place of the last post of Fleen’s 14th year, as tomorrow is 15 December and the blog’s birthday. More on that tomorrow, let’s get to the news from European shores.

As part of the Twitch-hosted Pleine Page Festival , Bagieu spoke with host LiseF (en Franĉais), which most everybody reading this will not understand, but which you can now get the gist of. Let’s dive in.

After the introductions, the interview began with Bagieu recapping the genesis of her adaptation of The Witches for the benefit of those who missed it from previous coverage.

• On the matter of the reception, she was worried about the British public, where Roald Dahl is sacred, more than about the US public. In the end it went well, not the least because it was well-supported marketing-wise, even though some aspects do not necessarily make that easy to do: for instance, the smoking habit of one of the main characters could have doomed this book to be placed out of the reach of children.
• On the matter of her additions, she sums it up as changed a lot of things while keeping the original spirit. She added what she would have wanted to see at the time: while she had no trouble with the fate of the main character, she wanted to make it less sad if not less hard by him having a friend. So she inserted a girl character to that end, even if she felt such a character was missing at any rate. More generally she tried to make the setting somewhat more contemporaneous.
• On the matter of the 2020 movie adaptation, she finds the trailer absolutely bonkers, which she expects from Robert Zemeckis, and appreciates the atmosphere similar to the children horror of the era of her childhood. She was eager for the private projection she was to receive two days later.
• On the matter of further adaptations, she is not interested, while she appreciated the opportunity she does not want to make it an habit of making comics adaptations. Furthermore, the other books — she mentioned Mathilda in particular — tend have more of an associated imagery, especially since illustrator Quentin Blake was able to provide feedback to Dahl priori to publication, making him sort of a co-author.
• On the matter of her Harvey award (for California Dreamin’) and Eisner award (for Brazen) having ever been a goal for her, she answered not really, or maybe only post-facto. She was already impressed of even having been nominated for her Eisner, and had even hesitated to show up to the ceremony since she didn’t think it was possible for her to win. Now don’t get her wrong, it’s a fantastic feeling and she couldn’t touch the ground the evening after the ceremony, but once that is past her life is not changed in any way. Later on in the interview, she mentioned misplacing the smoking pipe from the Harvey Awards statue.
• On the matter of her work always publishing in France first, she told that when she lived in the US, she tried to make a book intended for the US market on the prodding of her editor, but there are many constraints, many codes: all edges must be filed away for instance, so she was always rethinking her project and it ended up being artificial. The initial spark is fragile to begin with, so if you add self-censorship to that … she got feedback on the order of that is quite French, so she realized she wasn’t that interested: why bother in the first place? Her creation process is selfish, she pleases herself first of all, then in the end considers everyone else. While for a US story, she took the example of a project meant for early teens which was to take place in a school setting, which she visualized as that from Saved By The Bell*, but she was told it wasn’t like that, and this matters: it ended up being a pain in her ass. She reminds us these kinds of projects are long-running, so it must be somewhat enjoyable for her not to burn out.
• On the matter of her goals in life, she answers the main one is to make a living out of comics, and that is hard enough already that wishing for more is not obvious. She is already grateful to be able to make a living out of it, so her goal for now is to keep doing so.
• On the matter of her making drawings at an early age, she answers she did, already with bubbles, first with animated cartoon characters, then her own characters but still involved in sports, influenced by Attacker You. She then did a drawn diary, which carried over to her blog. She did recently locate one of these notebooks, with liberally borrowed plots centered around rhythmic gymnastics.
• On the matter of her participation to Inktober, she mentions hardly participating before, but this year, lacking any active book project, and her various activities being performed on iPad, she jumped on the occasion to draw on paper. Inspired by a Cindy Sherman expo she saw, she tried to feature artists that aren’t already known. Then, she was a jury member for a podcast award which led her to discover Légitime Violence, which ends on Abbé Pierre’s address on inaction in the face of injustice; as a result, she put her works up for sale for the benefit of his foundation. She had a hard time putting a price to them, and after she did she still had doubts, but in the end they sold out so quickly (around a few minutes) that she didn’t realize what happened. So she’s up to doing it again next year.
• On the matter of it being a goal to contribute in this way, she answers it helps coping when working in such a way that aligns with her principles, a bit like taking a stroll when having pins and needles. It’s an outlet for her overflowing revolt. She hates comics being reduced to teaching tools, but she admits it can be useful to deliver a message, more so that a 5000-line pamphlet, as she did for Bloom). It’s a bit of the same process that has led a group of artists to draw portraits of shame of the French representatives who voted to approve the global security bill. If she had some other skills she would use them in a similar fashion: it’s a selfish process which evacuates her overflowing anger. Now she has to consider her audience and not over-solicit them, but also has to consider leveraging them when needed.
• On the matter of her impostor syndrome, if any, she answers having it, of course; it never completely goes away for artists, and merely showing her creations results in a lifetime subscription, so she had to learn to live with it, to cope. How does she do it? It is important for her to remember past experiences. She can’t always shake doubts that her family and friends are sincere when they praise her for being talented, because of course they’d say that, but they are sincere. Every time she shows her work she feels like the student who has to show her exposé to the whole class. The same goes for her fans: of course they’d be nice to me”. Conversely, one hater can be enough to shatter the mood, while on the other hand she glosses over praise.
• On the matter of her promotional activities on TV and radio, she reports being used to it by now: it is a machine so well-oiled with preparation that it’s not her work that is being put to the test. It ends up being always the same questions such that it’s like following a script. The first times, she was terrified of making a blunder; now she ends up being familiar with every show, so she’s in bring ’em on mode, for instance when a show contributor ends up attempting to mansplain life to her. However, she remains afraid of drawing with children: they have no inhibitions. But when it comes to doing the 50th promo show for her book, on the other hand …
• On the matter of advice for handling that, she has a few. The biggest challenge is remaining calm: she mentions rewatching herself and being surprised at how angry she appeared. As a woman she’s not supposed to be angry: even the most violent retort she must deliver as a lady, even in front of a polemicist who is on the other hand allowed to make being angry his whole shtick. She thinks of it as being in the local bar, rather than on TV. She’s not looking to convince her opponent as much as the audience. And she keeps the option of saying I won’t come to be the token feminist and decline the invitation. While she may look preternaturally calm, inside she’s boiling with rage.
• On the matter of unexpected questions, she mentions being taken by surprise by Augustin Trapenard asking her What is brazenness? In such a case, she can’t just drive on autopilot. But when she heard Céline Sciamma in the same situation and struggling as well, it helped reassure her that she wasn’t alone. And she does appreciate complex questions that make her think about it. For instance, she was asked whether the boy at the beginning of The Witches plays with toy cars because that is how his parents died, and she never thought of it that way! That kind of questions can make her rethink herself.
• On the matter of whether she told these stories about women as a way to cure her impostor syndrome, she answers she didn’t see it that way, and it was always a personal project, but it couldn’t help but influence her in the end. Telling such stories of women who take their destiny into their own hands was bound to galvanize her and filled something in her, she absorbed it like a sponge. Furthermore, each one did it in their own way.
• On the matter of whether female reader reactions make her feel she is helping them, she answers the ones who write her already belong to a favorable environment, with many having teacher parents for instance; she already belongs to their environment. She has a lot of appreciation for parents who prod their children into writing her letters, send these, etc. These motivate her to keep going. She keeps them in a box, and answers them on paper.
• On the matter of her role in the Brazen animated series, she answers having had very little. She validated them of course, but when she first met the team she knew the project was in the right hands. Her main contribution was reviewing the scripts and pointing out when they had missed something which she felt important, but otherwise she did not have any reproach. She cried for each episode of the final product, especially when considering it was to air during children’s prime time.

At this point Lise fetched question from the chat log:

• On the matter of sharing her first works, she answers they look like run of the mill children drawings.
• On the matter of advice for beginners, she advises showing your work often first of all, even if it’s the hardest thing in the process, and paradoxically not take too much into account any feedback, which is not necessarily constructive. Indeed, it’s important to show in order to get into the habit early.
• On the matter of her selection process for comics project ideas, she answers she is always having sprouts of a book idea, and she waits and sees which ones stick and keep obsessing her: either she gets bored with the idea eventually, or she keeps following it.
• On the matter of the lockdown hampering her artistically, she confirms being completely blocked on all fronts, and ended up doing nothing but eat. At the beginning she put pressure on herself to use this opportunity, and in the end nothing came out of it, including after the lockdown by inertia of the block. She has zero remorse, as this is a difficult time.
• On the matter of finding her style between Pénélope Jolicoeur and The Witches, she answers you do not so much find your style as having one already and refining it. There is not secret about it, you have to draw a lot, and thank God she did improve on the technical front. It’s important to copy first, it’s OK, and then keep drawing and it will affirm itself.
• On the matter of the indispensable comic book according to her, she points towards her Instagram recommendations, then all of Anne Simon published by Misma, for having a complex universe, incredible characters, and stunning artwork; they can be read in any order. And of course her reviews on MadmoiZelle.
• On the matter of her current book projects, nothing, as discussed. But despite the unfavorable context, she does have an idea that is eating at her, so it will end up having to be done.
• On the matter of a feel-good podcast recommendation, she answers the Distorsion podcast, made by people from Québec, so their accent is surprising at first but she got used to it after one episode.

As always, we at Fleen thank FSFCPL for his efforts to share what’s going on in the world of Eurocomics. We’d literally have had no idea about this interview without his hard work translating and summarizing.

Spam of the day:

CAREDOGBEST™ – Personalized Dog Harness. All sizes from XS to XXL. Easy ON/OFF in just 2 seconds. LIFETIME WARRANTY.

Got a harness, and Martingale collars. And a thing I learned recently: the French word for greyhound is levrette and that position de levrette is the French term for doggy style. Fun fact!

And taking the time to produce either would prevent me from getting you to the latest festival report from Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin, and we can’t have that.

Thanks to Ted Naifeh, I now have my cosplayer identity: Unkempt Superman. At first I thought this was about my hair: I haven’t bothered cutting my pandemic hair, plus the bad weather outside wasn’t doing it any favors. But I realized my attempts to help fellow festival-goers identify my costume (this was on Halloween’s day), namely having my cape stick out of my collar, and my shirt being open in front, doubled as painting the image of a Clark Kent who had barely had time to change back from his superheroing duties. So I’m definitely keeping the image of a superhero that goes increasingly unkept as the festival progresses; in fact, as soon as masks are off (vaccines providing sterilizing immunity can’t come soon enough), this will include increasing amounts of stubble.

This year, Quai des Bulles took advantage of November 1st (a holiday in France) falling on a Monday to go from three days to four, and while this was a good way to compensate for the cancellation of last year’s edition, this also meant this was my first four-day festival.

As the first large-scale festival in months (remember the 2021 edition of Lyon BD had limited scale, and no publisher presence), this was the occasion to reconnect with some creators, such as Cy, which I hadn’t seen (except through a screen) since the release of her latest work, Radium Girls (to be available stateside from Iron Circus in 2022), so lining for a signing with her was a no-brainer. But also the occasion to meet creators I had never seen in a festival before, such as Gally: she has illustrated l’Esprit Critique (a McCloudesque treatise in defense of critical thinking) and created Mon Gras et Moi (My Fat And I), so of course I had her sign both.

And I of course couldn’t skip having John Allison sign one of his Giant Days collections at the Akileos booth (where Naifeh was as well). While Akileos does not have all the interesting adaptations of non-cape English language sequential art (the adaptation of Witch Boy was found elsewhere), they do publish the French editions of Stand Still Stay Silent, of Jen Wang’s recent works, of pretty much everything by Raina Telgemeier, and as you may have guessed those of Allison and Naifeh. While I had caught a glimpse of Allison at Angoulême in 2020, Angoulême also is a big mayhem and I couldn’t manage to meet him at the time. So many thanks to Akileos in general.

Also returning were the fairy tale performances, the drawn concert performance, the painted shop windows, exhibitions (including one of Pénélope Bagieu’s works), and various events such as movie projections. In fact, it would be easier to list the differences: the previously mentioned extra day, the absence of in-hall food options (which was a relief to me), way fewer small scale meetups in bars or the like (which is fortunate, because I don’t think I’d have attended them; in unrelated news, cases were already on the rise at the time in France), and most significantly, an impressive pipeline for validating the mandatory health pass (either vaccination, certificate of remission from COVID-19, or a recent test) before you were given the festival bracelet, valid for the day, that would allow you to enter the festival spaces. In the end, while there were lines at times, everything otherwise went smoothly all things considered, which is testament to the festival organizers.

Stay tuned, I should soon be done transcribing the interview Vincent Brunner did of Bagieu about her whole career, but in particular her latest release, Strates.

We at Fleen, as always, thank FSFCPL for his contributions, and will share the Bagieu interview as soon as it is ready.

Oh, Last Week With John Oliver, you find the best things to spend money on and you’re sending them on tour to the Cartoon Art Museum in January and I need to find some way to see them in person. It’s not on the website yet so let me quote the press release liberally:

The Cartoon Art Museum is pleased to announce that it will host a public exhibition of The Last Week Tonight Masterpiece Gallery in January thanks to the generous patronage of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. The Last Week Tonight Masterpiece Gallery will complete its national tour in San Francisco at the Cartoon Art Museum as part of John Oliver’s effort to showcase his unique art collection and to highlight museums that have been impacted by the global pandemic. The Cartoon Art Museum has been awarded a $10,000 donation from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver to facilitate the exhibition, and the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank will receive a $10,000 matching donation.

The three works featured in the Masterpiece Gallery include a painting of talk show host Wendy Williams preparing to eat a lamb chop; a still life of ties painted by Judy Kudlow, wife of Fox Business Network host Larry Kudlow, and Stay Up Late, a painting by Pennsylvania-based artist Brian Swords, which depicts two anthropomorphized rats engaged in an act that inspired Oliver to proclaim the piece “high-quality rat erotica.” [emphasis original]

In non-rat erotica news:

• The Quai des Bulles Festival will be in St Malo, France between 29 October (that would be Friday, the day after tomorrow) and 1 November (that would be Monday). If my rudimentary (at best) French is to be believed, it’s the 40th iteration of QdB, which is a nicely auspicious round number. Folks like Pénélope Bagieu will have public meetups, and creators such as John Allison, Cy, Pascal Jousselin, and Rodolphe — all mentioned on this page, some more than others — are expected to be in attendance.
• For those on the correct side of the Atlantic, but perhaps not the correct side of the Channel, Thought Bubble will be held in the Harrowgate Convention Centre in Yorkshire a mere two weeks later; the likes of Cecil Castelluci, Sarah Graley, Ron Wimberly, John Allison, and Marc Ellerby will be guesting, and exhibitors will include Avery Hill Publishing, Doug Wilson, Tiny Wizards, and Widdershins — also variously mentioned on this page.

It’s a weird time for comics shows, and the spread-out festival type appears to have a better shot at keeping guests and attendees safe than the massive nerd herds of the super shows, but all the same — get your shots, keep your distance, and wear a mask. Reports from the shows as practicality and time allow.

Spam of the day:

This is because it’ s shown that if these lethal toxins accumulate in your body they can ATTACK the pancreas and liver…making it virtually impossible to regulate your blood sugar…

Please peddle your bullshit to somebody who does not know that the purpose of the liver is to remove toxins from the body, and that very little can damage it apart from prolonged alcohol abuse or certain mycotoxins you get from eating the wrong mushrooms. Milk, coffee, orange juice, and black tea do not come from the wrong mushrooms.

Received in the Fleen mailbag from reader Alexander Rogers yesterday:

I had a webcomic question that I figured you would be well placed to answer. I recently read about an upcoming Jennifer Lopez / Owen Wilson movie called Marry Me, which is based on a webcomic by Bobby Crosby. (Apparently this webcomic started in 2005.) Universal Pictures has announced a release date of February 2022, and principal photography was all done in 2019.

Assuming this picture gets released, and assuming the Nimona film is (very sadly) never brought to light, would this mean that Marry Me would be the first film to be based on a webcomic?

Excellent question, Alexander! Couple of things to get out of the way before we tackle the substance of your query. First, we should note that, prolific as he his, Bobby Crosby is not the only person involved in the creation of Marry Me; due credit should be given as well to the the artist, Remy “Eisu” Mokhtar.

Secondly, the film adaptation of Nimona — which was as close to complete as you can get — was killed by those rat bastard cowards at Disney earlier this year and has as much chance of ever seeing daylight as Let’s Get Francis¹.

Thirdly, and for our purposes here today most importantly, we have to broaden our viewpoints beyond equating webcomics with [North] American (or possibly English-language) webcomics, as the two are not equivalent.

In this respect, we at Fleen are lucky to have a pair of resources to bring us wider perspectives²: Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin and the invaluable Ryan Estrada. The former could tell of comics creators who’ve worked in the milieu of BD web alongside print, and have seen work adapted to film: Joséphine, The Rabbi’s Cat, The Big Bad Fox³, and numerous others. But maybe not what you were looking for, since they aren’t directly taken from webcomics.

So let us look to the other side of the globe, and South Korea; webcomics are a much, much bigger deal there than we can comprehend, occupying a niche convergent with manhwa and fully equivalent to the manga industry in Japan. There are so many webcomics that hit widespread popular consciousness off the major aggregators that movies are inevitable; in fact, Estrada gave us a list of 13 of them more than seven years ago; heck, Estrada tells us right at the beginning that Kangfull is a Korean webcomic artist who has had just as many film adaptations of his work as JK Rowling.

Fleen doesn’t have correspondents in Japan or China, and doubtless there are webtoon aggregators in each country sending comics to movies, but I was able to find two after a short search: Nigakute Amai from Japan, and Go Away, Mr Tumor from China (the latter chosen as China’s submission for Best Foreign Language Film consideration at the 2015 Oscars).

But let’s restrict ourselves to what I think the intended scope of your question was, given that you wrote to an English-language site in the US: will Marry Me be the first adaptation of an English-language webcomic making it to theatrical release? There’s Polar, based on the webcomic of the same name, but it was released by Netflix via streaming. So despite starring Mads Mikkelsen, I’m going to disqualify it.

But the answer is still no, because the movie of We Bare Bears was released as a simulcast to North American theaters a couple of months before it released to TV. The movie, naturally, was adapted from the TV show, which was in turn based on creator Daniel Chong’s original webcomic, The Three Bare Bears. Not a direct leap from webcomics to the movie screen, but I think the lineage is undeniable. Crosby & Mokhtar are following on a path blazed by Chong.

Spam of the day:

I handle influencer relations for LeggingsHut. Great to meet you! I stumbled across your account and thought your content would be perfect for us.

and

Our team operates an extremely popular bra and intimate wear blog. We’ve had a few of our avid readers mention your site recently, so I took a look and I’m happy to say that I was really impressed! I’m interested in a possible article exchange between both of our sites as I am sure it will strongly benefit our sites in terms traffic.

I’m not sure which of these two, independently-sent spams is more implausible and/or desperate. My guess is that you don’t even know who Cora Harrington is, you fakers.

_______________
¹ IMDB doesn’t even have a listing for Nimona anymore; it existed as late as two weeks after Blue Sky was axed, but has since been memory-holed.

² And even so, we could use more. Live in a part of the world with webcomics and nobody talking about them? Get in touch!

³ From the work of, respectively, Pénélope Bagieu, Joann Sfar, and Bejamin Renner.

⁴ I was able to find one Japanese webtoon-format manga adapted to live action: , and I’ll wager there are others.

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.

Heya. If you read yesterday’s blogiversary victory lap, you know that I read some emails out of order, and thus on Monday we had Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin’s recap of Pénélope Bagieu’s interview, but not the initial framing post about the online festival it was a part of. We’re continuing today with highlights from the festival, and we’ll run a summary post with the overview later rather than try to insert it in the past. I mean, if I’ve got the ability to go back and do things in the past I’m not wasting that on fixing a blog post sequence error, not when there’s Powerball jackpots to win. We at Fleen, as always, than FSFCPL for his ceaseless efforts to bring us the news of bandes dessiné3ss web.

The panel was titled Is Being Known A Prerequisite To Being Published?, and began with introductions: in particular Marie Spénale is known for Heidi In Spring and Wonder Pony, and Cy for Real Sex From Real Life, Radium Girls, etc.

[Festival host]Lise: Do they think being known is a prerequisite to being published?

Spénale: No, she wasn’t know at the time of Heidi so she veers towards no: the prerequisite to her is building a file for the project to present to a publisher, no need for subscribers, as far as she can tell.

Lise: So could being known influence the process?

Spénale: It can be brought up as a strength point, a bonus, so it can be useful, but not a prerequisite.

Cy: It can be a double-edged sword; first, she agrees that it is not a prerequisite, subscribers mean nothing when it comes to sales in the end. And when she submitted the file she built for Radium Girls, her editor when forwarding to the publisher mentioned she made YouTube videos, to which the the latter allegedly reacted Ah, another book from a female YouTuber. In the end he opened the file and the project was made, but it could have started better.

Spénale: She once was introduced in an article as blogger Marie Spénale, which may not necessarily be flattering.

Lise: As for Sita, she started making a name for herself with her YouTube channel, then Instagram account; did that help getting to make webtoons?

Sita: No, it can help, be brought up to strengthen the case, but what’s really important is knowing the field and having the right contacts. The contacts she made when she made YouTube videos in turn led to knowing the editors and publishers to contact.

Lise: All three of them have an Instagram account, does a creator have to have one?

Cy: Have to would be presumptuous; there are no hard rules, each creator can employ different means. She no longer has any portfolio proper, as Instagram has taken up that role for her, more specifically her Instagram feed (as opposed to stories, which she uses for food pictures, etc.)

Sita: She has two accounts, one for drawings and one for book reviews. It takes a lot of time to do right, as well as energy, so it must be accounted for rather than put all your energy to it to the detriment of working on your files, universes, etc. It did earn her commissions, some of them for communication campaigns.

Spénale: She sees her Instagram account more as a display window for readers than as a professional tool.

Lise: And all three also have a YouTube channel, why?

Sita: That originally was for book reviews, everyone had a blog already and she felt it was the right time to get into YouTube; then for her own drawings on top of that. She wanted to create things she appreciated herself, and be able to better reach English-speaking audiences. Oh, and receive book recommendations herself. At the time she did not intend to create books, she had only begun to get back into drawing and was a developer by trade, creation only came later.

Cy: She was getting tired of answering always the same questions, so the intent was being able to send a link for an answer; her first video was on crayons. Then she started publishing speed drawing videos, captured using an iPad in suspension. It can be a versatile medium, with many possible formats, so she published animated GIF, vlogs, explanations for the general public, ad debunking, etc. Community management is a job in itself, so it can take time. She’s having fun, if that weren’t the case she’d stop. There is something of a disdain towards YouTube creators, such as EnjoyPhoenix even though it requires a significant skillset. At some point making a comic book was in fashion with YouTubers, and not all of it was good, as would be the case for any such category in accordance with Sturgeon’s Law, but the negative branding of YouTuber comic book remained.

Sita: Which intersects with the disdain towards comics for children and licensed comics.

Spénale: The main interest for her was experimenting, in particular with longform content which she couldn’t do as well on the blog she already had. Then she worked on her Instagram with short formats, if not instant. She’d like to go back to longform, but it takes time.

Cy: It does take a lot of headspace, and must be done as a batch, instead of answers which can be done as bite-sized work items as questions come.

Spénale: Yes, it does take a lot of time; she did it on the influence of Cy. She did have to invest on it when Wonder Pony, meant for children, was to be released: the publisher hardly promoted it, so she had to take that into her own hands.

Lise: What about Twitch, then?

Cy: She was already a consumer of Twitch livestreams, such as Boulet’s, and opened hers on the prodding of Gauvain Manhattan (who since stopped doing so). She has done a lot of them in the last two years; it allowed her to survive when doing Radium Girls because she’s a hermit, and draws traditionally which means she has to work on her drawing table, so streaming allowed her to exchange with people. It allowed her to have feedback on her work. Now she sometimes feels up to it, sometimes not: it requires some concentration for instance. She does it with her mobile phone using the Twitch app. At the beginning she was uploading with her 4G connection and had to closely watch her credit, now it’s OK.

Sita: Same, she started hitting the ground running, this summer, she wanted to livestream as a fundraiser for BLM/George Floyd, she had no hardware and had to improvise. She appreciated the Twitch community and kept doing so with her phone used as a webcam which wasn’t great, but she kept doing so in the same way so as to survive during the tunnel where she is doing nothing else but draw and starts hating it. And obviously, she never streams client work.

Spénale: Not yet, she has all the necessary hardware, obviously she wouldn’t stream client work either. But wouldn’t spoilers be an issue?

Cy: On the other hand, it would be hard to spoil Radium Girls [Author’s Note: a book telling the story of women who painted clock figures with radium-laced paint so these would be visible in the dark. Without any precaution to speak of]. Anyway, the speech bubbles are done later, and in the end the plates are done over such a long stretch of time that it would be hard to follow that way, not to mention she’s only ever had 80 viewers maximum.

Spénale: So yes, one of these days, though YouTube does consume a lot of her time already.

Lise: So Twitch is more of a community building tool than a portfolio, as Instagram on the other hand appears to be?

Cy: Maybe, but also a very selfish one, it allows a more intimate bubble than Twitter, YouTube, or Instagram allow. There is indeed more of a community feeling, of direct feedback: she feels less on a pedestal to her viewers there. Though of course pests exist there too.

Sita: Artist Twitch is different from the remainder of Twitch, especially in the French-speaking sphere where this is still niche.

Lise: Does it take time away from the job?

Cy: Oh yes.

Spénale: it does take time, but is it time away from her job as a creator? It’s a leisure activity in the end, as if she’d taken up pottery.

Sita: She creates a Webtoon, on a platform which is not really a publisher, so she does a bit of her own outreach, and uses Instagram for that: she schedules posts as a community manager would. And she did a whole campaign when her work came out.

Cy: It is part of the background of her work, and couldn’t tell how much time it takes her. There is no community management to speak of when publishing a comic book in the French-Belgian tradition, and she isn’t paid for that part of the work. She does not fault her publisher for Radium Girls, but for Real Sex From Real Life she invested in her social networks, which amounts to unpaid work. So it’s disheartening when there is no online followup when a comic book comes out.

Spénale: She did start her own channel to make up for the shortcomings of her publisher, so being known was a double-edged sword: her publisher was expecting her to come up with content for promotion on her Instagram, even though that is not her job, fundamentally.

Cy: She got Why don’t you put it on your Instagram? for commission work. And the same goes for some media outlets: when she gets begged to retweet e.g. interviews of her, then who’s promoting whom, exactly?

Spénale: There is the more general issue of not all books being well-supported marketing-wise, because of the general strategy to flood the market, so publishers tend to offload that to the creator if they are known.

Lise: So creators need to do their own communication and community management?

Sita: it’s a role we add to our activities if we are already present on social networks. Some creators are content not doing any of that and more power to them.

Cy: It depends on more than social network activity, even for those already “famous” there: the reader demographics matter a lot. So for books targeting the 12-30 years old range, of course it matters, but readers of history-based comic books are not reachable through social networks. Of course for Real Sex From Real Life the social networks were squarely the target market. Don’t expect an Instagram account to be the key to fame: it’s frustrating and you end up begging for reshares. Nothing happens in a day: she has been on Instagram for 10 years, and found her public there.

Spénale: The matter of the pubic reached is interesting, we do bring a certain public, for instance when signing she sees young women who are less traditionally present on festivals.

Cy: When she signed in a very cool library led by three women, they were impressed: You got women coming to signings!” Cy: Don’t they read comics? Them: Yes, but they don’t come to signings.

Spénale: There is an interest in shifting the balance of power with publishers, it brings new points to the table, she can point to her own community and tell she doesn’t need them as much as she would if she didn’t have it.

Sita: Which is why she wanted to publish on the web first. It’s hard to get published, unless you’re willing to accept pathetic terms, having a public bring some weight when negotiating.

Lise: Does Cy agree?

Cy: She agrees, but it has to be made into a strength, to be brought up on the negotiating table: I bet as much on you as you do on me, and I see our relation as teamwork, rather than the publisher doing her a favor by publishing her. She would like for her promotional work to be properly accounted for by having the publisher pay her for it, but she has been unsuccessful so far.

Spénale: They’re already underpaid when published, with the reasoning being that the publisher brings them fame and the symbolic value of being published, but when any of their YouTube videos accrue many more views, this reasoning from the publishers loses a lot of its value.

At this point Lise fetched questions from the chat log:

• How do they balance these additional efforts with their core creator job?

  Spénale: You have to realize that, and bring it up with the publisher. Given Cy’s reach, she’d better use it as a negotiation point to help her position.

  Cy: To change the relationship you have to stop being passive in front of contracts, so unravel them, even if that’s complicated. She has a good relationship with her editor, but her contractual relationship is with her publisher, with the contracted rights going for 75 years after her death. If all creators start negotiating to add clauses accounting for the value they add when promoting, things are bound to change.

• Are social networks a way to diversify revenues?

  Sita: She doesn’t earn anything from social networks.

  Cy: YouTube money exists, but doesn’t even begin to compare with the time load. Twitch may be more substantial, but only if you become a Twitch partner, and then it becomes closer to mini-patronage. But you can have the occasional benefit.

  Sita: Yes, not so much the social networks proper than people coming with offers.

  Spénale: Social network revenue is insignificant in her experience.

  Cy: However when selling original works the buyers do come from her Instagram audience.

For the record, this is nearly 5000 words from FSFCPL in the space of two posts. I really have to buy him a drink sometime.

Spam of the day:

%title – You must stop spam – Black Friday – Get 70% off

Okay, ignore that complete amateur hackjob subject line, and let me note that this spam came from Chastity Goodchild, who sounds like a Pilgrim trying to sound like a Bond girl. Amazing.

Iced 15th Birthday cake with burning number candles over a pink background with copyspace for your greeting and wishes

Today is 15 December. And while through inattention and writing some posts that were queued up before this page was announced the actual day that this site went live is not known, today is the day that the blogiversary is celebrated. Sort of like how the Queen of England has an official birthday, or all thoroughbred horses are considered to be born on 1 January.

It’s been 15 years, 4293 posts (including this one), 3940 written by me (again, including this one). Lot’s happened in that time. Wrote some good stuff. Wrote some hard stuff. Made some mistakes¹. Made some of the best friends of my life. Rough estimate is that we’ve raised north of US$12,000 for worthy causes in the past four years through the Fleen Fight For Fungible Futures Fund. I’m not sure how long this page will continue (nobody’s certain of anything in the depths of a pandemic that has been grievously and intentionally mismanaged), but as long as I’ve got opinions — and, like T-rex, I got opinions — I’ll be here to share them with you.

If you like what we at Fleen have done here, head over to Jon Rosenberg’s store or Patreon and support him, since he’s the one that basically browbeat me into doing it. Sincerely, thanks for that, Jon. I’m a better person because of it.

Happy fifteenth Fleensday. Stay safe, read good comics, we’ll do it all again in Year 16.

Spam of the day:

You should add website protection from unwanted messages As we’ve had contact with you in the past, I think your website is not protected from spam, you have to protect it

You’re spamming me to say that you want to protect me from spam? Kind of undermining your own message there, Slappy.

_______________
¹ Case in point: Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin sent several posts worth of info regarding the Twitch-hosted BD festival that occurred recently in France, and because I was short on time and read them out of order, I posted yesterday’s Pénélope Bagieu interview without the context that would have been provided by what should have been the first post. We’ll sort that out, promise.

Specifically, of the second :01 Second collection of Check, Please (subtitled Stick & Scones). This wraps up Bitty’s four years at Samwell, and presumably resolves the cliffhanger that Year Four, Chapter 22 (posted at noon today) has left us on. Unfortunately, the incompetent, malicious grifter in the White House has ensured that this is not a functional world, everything is disorganized, and review copies haven’t made it out to everybody on :01’s list because — and let me clear, this is important — people not dying is more important that me having an ARC to write about today.

So when I’m able to get a copy of Ngozi Ukazu’s sure-to-be triumphant conclusion, I’ll let you know. Until then, you can read very nearly the entire story online, and as a special treat we have Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin here to tell you about what’s going on Europe-ways.

I have news from the civilian zone, and news from the front.

On the civilian zone, the #coronamaison has become really big. How big, you ask?

• How about that much bigger after having received contributions from the (paid) illustrated prints for March of both Maliki and Laurel (also remarkable illustrations on their own rights), as well as many others since we last spoke of the project: Julie Manassero’s, Mathieu Bablet’s, Ozlisky’s, and Mifflue’s) caught my eye, but Gally’s has got to be the most remarkable of the bunch.
• How about big enough to have not one, but two sites that catalog the different creations so far?
• How about having the template being mass-printed by Sud Ouest for its readers? You know, the local newspaper that covers Angoulême?
• How about being used for remote schooling work everywhere in France, for art therapy, or for an illustration student work prompt?
• How about being realized as a 3D paper template [PDF] by an outreach society for the architecture trade?
• How about being mentioned in the friggin’ New York Times?
• How about big enough to have the template be hijacked by the web presence of a widely broadcast TV program: not only did they not credit the creators, but they even added their own copyright to the template … (this has been fixed since then). Fortunately, the #coronamaison was also featured on TV with proper credit at least two times, both times with an interview of #coronamaison architect Timothy Hannem, and once with an interview of #coronamaison inventor Oscar Barda. We at Fleen eagerly await the forthcoming TV interviews of #coronamaison project lead Sandrine Deloffre and coronamaison promoter Pénélope Bagieu.
• And how about, finally, being violently dismissed (no link, he does not deserve the attention) by everyone’s least favorite paedophilia enabler? Yes, I think all #coronamaison principals are going to wear his disapproval as a badge of honor.

And now for the front lines. I mentioned Solange Baudo, aka Soskuld, a few times here. She is a nurse’s aide but also chronicles her work in a comics blog, starting way back from her studies. However, about five years ago she quit the hospital to get a formal training in illustration and comics with the aim to work on that full time, which she has now been doing for the past year.

Until last week. Now it’s part time.

Because last week, she has again donned the safety gear and started working in a clinic for 12 hours shifts after volunteering on MedGo, as she relates in a riveting testimonial (French-only, sorry). Yes, in a COVID service near Paris, an area hard hit at the time of this writing.

Solange, we at Fleen salute you, and you can be assured that, the next time we meet, I’ll have something for you. I’m thinking a cake. A big one. But the best support I can give you right now is for me to stay at home.

As always, we at Fleen are grateful for FSFCPL’s observations from the heart of Europe. Rester en sécurité, mon ami.

Spam of the day:

Doctors can’t explain why this insane method passes every lab test …

Let me stop you right there. It’s because you’re full of shit and there are no lab tests. Fuck off.

And we’ll get to that in a moment. In the meantime, I trust you’ve seen that MICE has postponed its exhibitor registration, to be re-evaluated in June, that BOOM! Studios has made Hope Larson’s first Goldie Vance graphic novel free to read, and Diamond (a blight on comics in general) has announced it’s not going to be doing anything for a while. Having a monopoly on distribution in the comics direct market is an awesome idea, you guys.

That one story today, thought? We lost a giant in the world of comics. Albert Uderzo, illustrator and co-creator (with René Goscinny¹) of Astérix, died at the age of 92. It was unrelated to the current global crisis, not that there’s a good time or way to die, but reports are that he died in his sleep of a heart attack after feeling tired for a couple weeks. In the grand scheme of things, I’d be happy to have that one. Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeapin is working on a suitable remembrance, which we will have in the next day or two.

But while Uderzo’s death was unexpected, the ongoing effects of the novel coronavirus are not, and FSFCPL has some words from our European desk about how the [web]comics scene over there is reacting.

In these times of lockdown it seems that publishers left and right are dropping digital comics to read for free, but in that they are merely following in the footsteps of webcartoonists, who have already moved on from that to the next thing: creating works where you can contribute. Yes, you.

• Many creators have posted the inked layer for comics plates or illustrations, for everyone to color; not particularly unexpected, but this is a classic exercise and is worth a mention. We can report that Riad Sattouf, Pénélope Bagieu, Marie Boiseau, Norbert, Thorn (twice), Fabien Lambert, Marion Barraud, Timothy Hannem (where you can also look for the hidden 20 cats), Alice Des where you can also look for some objects — instructions only in French, sorry), Marion Poinsot, Julie Gore et Eric Wantiez, Aurélien Fernandez, and Sandrine Deloffre are doing so (careful, some of these links may expire shortly).
• Let us stay with Deloffre a bit longer: those are taken from her book called Les Cartes de Désavoeux, which I will roughly translate as Ill-Wishing Cards. Kind of a mirror universe Hallmark or American Greetings, though omitting any IP, thankfully. And she has posted the instructions on how you can do your own, which I will translate as best as I can manage:
  1. Trace a round shape with a round object (e.g. glass, soccer ball, the cap of a Pringles can, swimming pool, …)
  2. Define a goal: to whom? Why? How much do you care about this person? Do you have means of defense in the event of an aggression?
  3. Settle on a pattern an apply it on the outer surface of the previously traced round shape (e.g. flowers, stars, golden statues representing Vercingétorix, penis wearing a sombrero …)
  4. Settle on a message combining subtlety and realism and inscribe it upon the center of the circle while applying yourself. Don’t hesitate to overdo it.
  5. Gift the ill-wishing card to someone who deserves it. (e.g. nobody, because nobody deserves this card, because everyone walks in isolation in this long putrid and foul-smelling sewer we call life, we walk alone and we will die alone, eaten up by our cats, except if we’re allergic).
• On the initiative of Bagieu, an idea by Oscar Barda, critical contributions by Deloffre, and a template by Hannem, the Coronamaison (translated hastag #coronahome was suggested by Moemai, should you need one) was born. The prompt: you draw the house floor along with its decoration/companions/pets/food/windows where you would want to be locked down, ideally.

  It kind of exploded, with #coronamaison having now thousands of hits on Instagram, though I think they are best seen on Twitter, where they remain (mostly) uncropped; alternately, Hammen is retweeting pretty much all of them. Of particular notice to your correspondent are Obion’s), Boulet’s, Luppi’s, Moemai’s, Maitre et Talons’, Jakuboy’s, Margaux Saltel’s, and of course Bagieu’s, Deloffre’s, Hannem’s, and Barda’s.

• Meanwhile, Maliki offers a dialogue-free version of her latest strip, for you to represent what your timeline is looking like in these days of lockdown (and yes, Animal Crossing vs Doom has already been done).
• Every day, Lewis Trondheim proposes a challenge where he posts the first three panels of a strip he just created, to see if you can guess the punchline in the fourth panel; the challenge being that your response must be in the form of a drawn panel, even badly. Be sure to follow him closely, as some have managed to find the solution in 10 mere minutes.
• Meanwhile, Boulet proposes a game he co-created with his goddaughter Maya, where the game is mostly a pretext to draw hybrids; many creations can be seen in response to his tweet. Note that they need not be as elaborate as his barbarian Slowbro.
• And Erwann Surcouf, on his side, proposes the randomized comic story generator he created for Spirou magazine a while back; no English version of the instructions appears to be available, unfortunately.
• We complete by a digression though French law Twitter, where Solinette proposes we liven up the form where we French must attest for ourselves the business we have for going outside our home (e.g. buy basic necessity goods or bring out the pet), and that many of us (your correspondent included) have to fully copy by hand, for lack of a printer at home. Every day: they’re dated. Yes, it’s France, of course we have to have bureaucracy even between one and oneself.
• Still in French law Twitter, Maitre et Talons encourages children to draw in support of healthcare professionals to thank them like she or Deloffre do. She also wants you to send her photos so she can draw herself in them.

And remember: wash your hands, sneeze and cough in your elbow pit, practice social distancing, and for the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s sake, stay at home. You have more than enough to keep yourself busy now.

Fleen, as always, thanks M Lebeapin for his reportage.

Spam of the day:

It looks like you’ve misspelled the word “remeniscences” on your website. I thought you would like to know :)

Nobody tell her.

_______________
¹ Who died more than 40 years ago. For that matter, Uderzo retired nearly a decade ago, turning over writing and art to Jean-Yves Ferri and Didier Conrad, respectively.