Accused of sexism in 2016 for its 100% male selection, the Angoulême International Comics Festival surprised more than one this week by announcing that three authors were in the running for its Grand Prix. In addition to Quebecer Julie Doucet (Dirty Plotte, Maxiplot), the French Pénélope Bagieu (holy witches, Strata) and Catherine Meurisse (Hormonal Life Scenes, The young woman and the sea) thus find themselves in the race. This is a first for this prize created in 1974 and awarded since 2014 by professional comic book authors.
“I am in shock! exclaims laughing Julie Doucet, reached by telephone by the Homework. I really didn’t expect that. This is completely crazy. Suddenly, three women… What’s going on? I hope this is some kind of turning point. There are hardly ever any women nominated for this award. »
In fact, there are so few women named that the Collective of comic strip creators against sexism had called for a boycott of the 2016 Grand Prix: “We recall that for 43 years, Florence Cestac has been the only woman to have received this distinction. . Claire Brétecher, pillar of the ninth art, never received the Grand Prix herself, leaving in 1983 with the prize of 10and anniversary (award having never prevented its winners from being eligible for subsequent Grands Prix). »
In the process, the French cartoonist Riad Sattouf (The beautiful kids, The Arab of the future), embarrassed to be in the running for this prize, had announced this on his Facebook page: “I therefore prefer to give up my place to, for example, Rumiko Takahashi, Julie Doucet, Anouk Ricard, Marjane Satrapi, Catherine Meurisse (I will not make a list of all the people I like eh!)… I therefore ask to be removed from this list, hoping however to be able to reinstate it the day when it will be more equal! Thank you ! »
Persistent barriers
Since then, the Japanese Rumiko Takahashi (My Boss’s Dog, A bouquet of red flowers) won the 2019 Grand Prix. Julie Doucet could thus become the third woman in the history of the Festival to win this honor. “When I found out about that prize, listening to Radio-Canada, I thought it was the other prize. I really didn’t understand, ”says Julie Doucet, still stunned by the news.
This other prize she is talking about is the Heritage Prize of the Angoulême International Comics Festival. Created in 2004, it has crowned only two albums written by women, Moomin (2008), by Tove Jansson, and The green thumb and other stories (2020), by Nicole Claveloux and Edith Zha. This year, Maxiplot (L’Association), a feminist anthology of raw illustrations inspired by the experience of the Montreal cartoonist and produced between 1987 and 1999, published in France in 2021 and in Quebec in 2022, is one of the seven selected albums.
“I have the impression, especially in France, that it’s like an ideal moment for the publication of Maxiplot, with everything that has happened since the #MeToo movement from a feminist perspective. We can see it clearly with these appointments of women in Angoulême. I’m a little misplaced to talk about the subject, because I stopped doing comics in 1999. I’ve done comic-like projects since then, but I’ve stayed away from the middle. I know there are a lot more women than before, but that doesn’t make it much easier. In 2016, the proportion of women working in the field was estimated at 12%.
In addition, the author, who will be conspicuous by her absence from Angoulême, will publish on April 19 Time Zone J (Drawn & Quarterly), where she recounts her tumultuous affair with a French soldier in 1989: “It’s more or less a return to comics. In a way, I revisit it. It’s drawing, it’s narrative, but there are no little boxes. It’s a bit difficult to describe, but let’s say it’s very dense. It’s wall-to-wall drawing that continues over 130 pages. I don’t know when it will be published in French. »
The 49and Angoulême International Comics Festival will take place from March 17 to 20. The names of the winners of the Grand Prix and the Heritage Prize will be announced on March 16.