Angouleme 2005

[le Richard]

It was a funny trip. When Don Rosa arrived in Paris airport on thursday, because
of a trike, he could not get any train so he travelled in a fan's car (Daniel's,
who was the only one to go to the airport). Don Rosa was
sleeping, and it took them 1 hour to find out his car at the airport, and Don
and her wife were a bit tired. They went to Daniel's house, who then
used her wife's (better) car (the first one was a Renault 11 if you can see
the kind of car it is :-).
 They travelled the entire day (I wasn't here) and had a soiree with
Angouleme's organizators, the Finnish and French editors, and Cavazzano.
At the hotel Mercure where they arrived, there were people from Hachette,
Pascal Pierrey, A. Hillmarcher, from Picsou mag., Manu Herbreteau (ex-Picsou)
and others.
On friday we visited the Picsou exhibition (I met other French fans from the
Picsou forum there).
Don did a drawing together with Zep. The exhibition was very original. Manu had
made money bills and coins for the visitors to steal, there was a policeman
(editor of Les requins marteaux) to guard the number one dime and telling the
children to not come to close (!). A Scrooge bin, 2 meters high, was left
half-open (with the usual signs "get out" "you're too close" etc.). This was a
bit different than the previous exhibit I had seen in Italy or Netherlands,
mainly with originals and comic-book pages.
There were also many originals, mainly from Cavazzano, the Trick or Treat
painting by Barks and a lot of reproduction of Don Rosa pin-up pages, Carl
Barks paintings, and different nice statues of Magica de Spell in his Vesuvio
barrow, and others.
On afternoon, Don Rosa and Cavazzano did a conference, that we attended. I
discussed a bit with Luca Boschi, from Comicon festival and AF, and also a
contributer to Disney magazines in Italy. I had a couple of hours with
Cavazzano (I asked him about the Super Picsou geant covers credits for inducks,
obviously). I met F. Petrossi also, from Disney Europe, who speaks French
fluently, and R. Santillo, the "head" of Acaddemia Disney, and also a writer. I
spoke in Italian with them, although it was not easy.
On evening, we went to several disco-fiesta with Daniel and Pascal (not
Pierrey, another fan) where we found people from Hachette again. Luckily Daniel
had made an organizator pass, and could tchatch to get in in most parties. One
time the person at the entrance of the Glenat fête told him "it's my party, I
invite only those I want" (he was a bit young to be Glenat's boss :-). He asked
Daniel "do you know me", Dan said "no" and then he said "ok you can enter".
We went to various other places until very late. Every drink was free, and at
the end, some people were badly drunk.
Then I came back to sleep at an inhabitant's place, at a girl's home 10 km
from Angouleme (when I entered in the dark, I could not find any bed so I
just slept on the floor and got waked up by a couple in the other room all
night-morning). The girl was nice, she gave me apples to eat as a recomfort when
I woke up. On saturday, I met Xavier and Gilles, so the French Inducks team was
complete for the first time.
Don Rosa later told me he was far from Angoueleme this day with the rest of the
organizators/editors, and due to wrong organization, he could not go to the fan
autograph session. People were a bit upset, which was unfortunate. (There were
so many people at one time, we were asked to help...). I was told later that
the Picsou exhibit was number 1 of all Angouleme's exhibits! so that was really
a huge success, especially for Angouleme's 200,000 visitors.
The reason a Picsou exhibit was held in the first place is because of Zep, the
creator of Titeuf, who is a big fan of Carl Barks. Maybe we'll see more of this
in the future.
Don Rosa then went to Paris, and spent a couple of days there, visiting of
course Montmartre. We've bring him and her wife at the very old and good Balzar
restaurant -only known of Parisians- near Saint Michel with a couple of fans
yesterday evening. Don did fan drawings to all of us, very detailed ones. When
I saw him in action (I filmed him), I was quite impressed! It was a child's
dream (Pascal's words). He did a first sketch with pencils, "inked" with a stylo
bic over, erased the epncils and coloured with Daniel's colour pencils.
Amazingly, he even inked on Pascal's pencils! he was quite an attraction in the
restaurant.
Was really unforgatable! ......

(photographs will follow as soon as I get them all...)