France Comics Interview

Met this top chap Christophe Colin from France Comics a few months back at Angouleme who scribed a quick interview of Contraband's development. Folks keen to see a french version of a Contraband sample can drop us a line and we'll get a free pdf off to you asap...

18 Hours...

That's how long it is until we're in Angouleme. Its been a long-term ambition of mine to attend this festival and I can't believe that its taken me this long to achieve it, considering how close I live to France.

I haven't been able to find out exactly who'll be there but I know that Paul Gravett is going for sure. I haven't met Paul in a while and I'm looking forward to seeing him again and showing him Contraband. I've known Paul since I was a young teenager and we used to visit the monthly Comic Marts in London together - over 30 years ago! - and it was Paul who published some of my early comic strips in Escape magazine, that he edited with Peter Stanbury. Escape was an influential magazine in the 80's and published early work by, and interviews with, many influential artists, including Dave McKean and Eddie Campbell...and José Muñoz, who is the President of this year's Angouleme committee.

This is the front cover of Escape 1 (c.1982), drawn by yours truly and hand-separated by Peter Stanbury (no computers to do that task back then!)...



And here's a link to an article by Paul on the history of Escape

We hope to be able to regularly post observations and pics from Angouleme so drop by again soon. Phil

Phil's in France

Phil flew to France on Saturday and is staying with his in-laws in the Midi Pyrenees - Lot region before driving North to Angouleme on Wednesday. Here's a photo of him standing outside Restaurant Morgues in the nearby village of Peyrilles, which he used as reference for a scene in Contraband. The scene is actually set in Belgium and Phil also used some artistic licence to introduce trees in the foreground.





It turns out that the owner of Le Morgues, Jean-Claude is a big BD fan and was well-pleased to have his restaurant featured in a comic book. Phil would like to point out that Jean-Claude is no where near as grumpy as the barman featured in Contraband: "We eat at Le Morgues everytime we visit Fiona's parents, and they've been living in France for over 15 years now. If you're in the region, call in for a meal or a beer and tell them that "L'artiste de la Contrebande m'a envoyé"".

Contraband Hitting the Shops

We're proud to say that Contraband is now printed and heading to shops. The official release date is 6th February, and that's when copies will be turning up in your local store, but we've got some advance copies to take to Angouleme next week. So if you're attending the festival and want to have a look then simply come up and ask - Thomas will be wearing his ubiquitous paisley tie and Phil will be in red.

Angouleme and Contraband

We've been laying low knocking out a few early interviews for Contraband while finalizing our schedule for meeting French and Belgian publishers at Angouleme next week. We're excited with the response so far as 1/2 dozen publishers have set up a time to chat after liking our blog sample. Phil heads off Saturday to spend a few days visiting relatives south of the city (the SLG folks had our first few dozen copies sent there directly from the publisher!) I fly in Wednesday and after picking Phil up at the hotel, we'll tear straight off to the event. I have to say it's been a tad tough contacting a few of the right people at these publishing houses so we'll start hunting them down in the festival halls the moment we arrive.


Here's a snippet of an upcoming interview conducted with Peter Jaffe from top comic site Comixology talking about our trip to the continent:

PJ - A lot of the story takes place in Belgium, which has a great comics tradition closely connected to the French bande desinnée. Is Contraband being distributed (translated or otherwise) in France and Belgium?

TB - I’d love to get Contraband into non-english-speaking markets. I think the comic’s art and storyline could attract a fairly strong readership in plenty of North European countries. Phil recommended we attend France’s Angouleme BD festival in late January so we’ve picked up some pro passes for the trade exhibition. And couple of nice folks from a social networking site were kind enough to translate our first chapter and synopsis into French & Flemish - so we’ll have something to hand these guys. It’s funny but being a kid growing up in North Bay (near the Quebec border) I studied French until I was 13. And there were lots of European publishers’ BDs floating around in classroom. Casterman, Delcourt, Glenat. Here we are 25 years later and we’re going to show some of these same companies Contraband..."

Bringing Contraband into Belgium

Scanning through the bdangloume.fr site I can see that this is indeed one monster show - it is said to be 2nd largest comic event in the world with nearly 1/2 million fans invading this tiny french town east of Bordeaux. And I'm amazed how many small indy Belgian pubishers say they'll show up looking for unique albums of sequential art. So we've created a Flemish/Dutch version with the help of a solid chap I met on comicspace.com: Rembrand Le Compte - who was nice enough to translate the first few pages into Flemish for us last Fall. He's currently working on his own sequential art and reporting on the latest and greatest of the thriving Belgian market - so when you get a sec, go check him out here.

Going to Angouleme

We've decided that we're going to attend the big comics festival in Angouleme, France next January. This is one of the biggest conventions in the world with over 300,000 people attending over the 4 days and we're really looking forward to going, especially as our book will have been published by then.

Here's a new page. Poor Toby's getting himself roughed up by Jarvis:



Click on the image to see larger version.