Taiwan was the only Asian country to send an official delegation to this year’s Angouleme International Comics Festival, which ran for four days and ended yesterday in Angouleme, France, event organizers said.
Taiwan’s booth opened on Thursday and was visited by festival deputy artistic director Fausto Fasulo, Laos-born French comic book writer Loo Hui Phang, and representatives from the French, Italian and Spanish publishing industries.
Nicholas Galiano, head of French publisher ChattoChatto, said that Japan has dominated the Asian sector of the French comic book market for more than 10 years, but he has for a long time paid attention to talented young writers and artists from Taiwan.
Photo courtesy of the Taiwan Creative Content Agency via CNA
He has sought to introduce Taiwanese comics to the French market to give local readers a fresh, unconventional experience, he said.
ChattoChatto adopted a strategy of downplaying authors’ nationalities to steer readers’ focus toward stories and art styles, Galiano said, adding that Taiwanese comic books tended to stand out with readers.
French readers have been attracted to the unusual plots in Taiwanese comic books, he said, adding that the first edition of Taiwanese artist Wu Yu-shi’s (吳宇實) comic book Ocean-Colored Polari has sold out.
ChattoChatto received feedback from readers that the diverse storytelling in Taiwanese comic books differs from Japanese comic book plots, which tend to feature simple narratives, Galiano said.
“You can browse ordinary comic books quickly and not read them again, but it takes more time to read Taiwanese comic books,” he said, adding that there is always something new to discover when you read a Taiwanese comic book a second time.
Pam Pam Liu, a Taiwan-based freelance illustrator and comic book artist who was an Angouleme artist-in-residency winner in 2019, said Taiwanese comic books are popular at the fair.
As evidence, she said that her work was stolen from the display on the first day of the show.
“Somebody must like it that much,” she said.
An increasing number of French are interested in Taiwanese comic books, she said, adding that many publishing houses asked her whether she has any comics suitable for publication in France.
“Future cooperation is highly likely,” she said.
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