Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 10:10:45 -0500
To: [c--m--x] at [indra.com]
From: bart beaty <[b--ea--y] at [po-box.mcgill.ca]>
Subject: A'leme Diary (1/2)

I wrote and sent this yesterday but it hasn't shown up, which means I'm the
victim of another size glitch and that my original post may show up some
time or it may not. Sorry for the inevitable duplication. Feel free to
delete all of it unread as it's self-indulgent trivia.

bart

I'm not sure what kind of A'leme diary this will be but I know that if I
write it Desmond will be forced to try to top it and that might get him
posting again after his 40+ hour plane trip. I'm not sure how much I have
to report this year, but what the hell....

TUESDAY/WEDNESDAY:

Pretty minimal running around for a pre-A'leme day. I was bringing almost
nothing with me this year except some copies of the Journal to give to
people whose work I'd reviewed, and a Fidele Castree mini for Mark. Plane
left reasonably on time by Air France standards (ie. only 45 minutes late)
and I was able to sleep for most of the trip so I arrived in Paris on
Wednesday morning at about 9:00 am. Clearing customs was a nightmare as
they had about three international flights arrive at the same time and only
people checking passports for some reason. No real worry though since I had
a several hour wait at CDG to take the train which was leaving at 2:00. Sat
and read a very exceptionally bad courtroom drama chosen for the flight
because it was a) long and b) something I could throw away should the mood
hit me, or should I run out of space in my bags. After 350 pages I tossed
it in the garbage before boarding the train (it was Eyes of a Child by
Richard North Patterson, I think). Slept the entire train ride to A'leme.

Arrived in town at 5:00, a little worse for wear but feeling not as bad as
in years past. At the hotel I met Christiane and Ana Merino (who some of
you will know from ICAF/SPX) and learned I was sharing a room with Desmond.
I moved my bags into that room, but shortly afterword I found out that I
actually had my own room and I moved upstairs to the room that Paul Socolow
had last year. This room had a heater that didn't work, that was nice.

After catching up a bit (and running into Yvan and Olivier, busy setting up
their booth) Ana and Timo (who runs a shop in Tampere, Finland -- and soon
one in Helsinki) adjourned to the Chat Noir where we drank a few beers with
some of Timo's friends. Timo explained to me all about cell phone culture
in Finland, which is actually strangely fascinating (or maybe I was just
jetlagged). At some point we went to get our credentials, which was a
little screwed up this year but not too badly screwed up that it caused
worry in the end.

Back at the hotel for dinner Mark and Uli and Desmond had returned from the
Leyrat distillery, ashamed at themselves for having been bad guests. Dinner
for 28 ensued as everyone who was staying at Le Palme took up a whole room
to eat. I was sitting with the guys from Oog & Blik and Het Raadsel and
with Joost Swarte, and we had quite a nice dinner conversation. They were
somewhat surprised to learn that Zozolala had fared well in an
English-language comics awards, even if it was only on the internet. The
bad news at the dinner was that Stakhano are going on hiatus for a year,
and maybe breaking up. They had no new books out this year and will be
spending a year working on new projects for different publishers (Eric had
a book out from Soleil, which I didn't get but will get eventually from
Mouette). Bad, bad news.

After dinner we went to the Chat Noir and also to the Mercure (the Gallery
was closed, I think). On the way we ran into Paul Gravett and his posse,
which included Ed Hillyer, Andy Konky Kru, Darko and others that I'm
forgetting due to the fact that I was really tired by that point. I'm not
really sure what we did at the Chat Noir but I'm going to guess that it was
drink beer. I called it a night early on and I think I was in bed by 2:00

THURSDAY:

Woke up blessedly late and got to the Festival for 11:00. Mark and Desmond
had left without me so I wandered the halls on my own, trying to figure out
where everything had been moved to this year and what needed to be picked
up. Ran into the crew from Les Cartoonistes Dangereux which included Brad!,
Liz, Faz Choudhury, Charles Adlard and Jonathan Edwards at that moment. We
ended up talking about Top Notch, of all things. I checked in with the guys
at the Freon booth, the Stakhano booth and the Amok booth before going to
lunch with Christopher and Jean-Paul Jennequin from Comedie Illustre. We
talked about the books CI has put out, self-publishing in France, problems
with selling their books in the US in translation, whether they should
attend SPX (speaking of which, I kept running into Greg Bennett and his
wife all over the place, an unexpected surprise) and so on. Jean-Paul told
me about Bethy's plans and his translations of Roberta Gregory and Stuck
Rubber Baby for that publisher.

After lunch I talked to a number of publishers about some columns I may be
writing and generally toured around. Had a long conversation with Daniele
Cauzzi about Schizzo and the Centro Fumetto for a forthcoming column,
caught up again with LCD and also with the gang from Actus Tragicus whose
new book, Jetlag, looks just really, really great. Also in the IR I talked
to Fred and Martin (from Mouette, and Spoutnik fame) who showed me a
photocopy of their second graphic novel (the first being Brian's Chere
Julia) which is by Michel Rabagliati who has never done comics but whose
work is very slick indeed. This one could be a real winner (it's called
Paul a la campagne, if I recall correctly). Also on Friday I finally caught
up with Jessica Abel and Matt Madden on a few occasions and heard about
their trip so far and their voyages to come.

At night we (Mark, Desmond and I) had dinner with the Actus gang, which was
very nice. I told them about their Goodie success and everyone threw bread
at Yirmi when it was learned that he made the finals in Best One Shot.
Trust me, the new book is going to get some serious votes this year in the
anthology category. We also heard about their plane trip home last year,
which sounded nightmarish. After dinner we headed to Chat Noir
(predictable? Us?) and again to the Mercure. I had a lengthy conversation
with Fred, Martin, Jessica, Matt, Andy Konky Kru and Alfred Eichholz (who
didn't say much, just drew faces on coasters) at Chat Noir. We told
Jessica, Matt and Alfred that they could get a free cab, but they couldn't
(sorry!).

At the Mercure that night I had a very long chat with Charles Berberian. He
had just won the Alph'Art and was in a giddy mood. I later talked to Dupuy,
who was in a funny mood -- he was convinced that they had absolutely robbed
Pasal Rabate and that Ibicus deserved the award more than they did. This
wasn't false modesty, this was a firmly held conviction -- he seemed to
feel really guilty. I was still pretty tired so I went to bed pretty early,
sometime around 3:30 or so.

FRIDAY:

Desmond, Mark and I were up and out at a reasonable hour and heading to
Bulle New York, wanting to get that hall out of the way in one trip. Mark
and I spent some time looking at original art and saw some breathtaking
pieces by Avril, Yslaire, Loustal etc. etc. The Bilal pages were really
nice but at 35,000FF ($7,000US) a little steep for us.

Down at the end of the hall were the fanzines, drastically reduced in
number this year from the last couple. There were several booths of great
import though. The first was the Drozophile, Atrabile, Bill booth. All
three are from Geneva and they do some of the most breathtaking small press
books anywhere. Drozophile had a book by Ab'Aigre (sp?) which was 48 pages,
each a hand pulled seriegraph of ten colors. Words can hardly do it
justice, but at 740FF I couldn't afford it in any way. Next to them was the
Shockorigel booth, featuring beautiful hand silk-screened mini-comics that
have been discussed here before. I snapped those up. Next was the Bries
table where we chatted with Ria, Matt, Jessica and Alfred while we waited
for Mark (who took 2 1/2 hours to shop at just those three tables). In the
meantime I talked to Joost Swarte again (who was checking out the lovely
production at Shockorigel) and to Simon Bosse who was over from Montreal.
He offered Mark a copy of Mucus de Puce #1 that I had just given him, and
he let us know that Fidele has moved to BC and apparently produced a second
issue that no one has seen yet.

Desmond, Mark, Alfred and I ate lunch at one of the street vendor places
(mmm, pork grease) and then headed back to the main halls where I picked up
some more books and talked to some more people about more proposed columns.
Eventually I ran into Fred and we went off to the Freon exhibition (I liked
Thierry's piece the best) and the stunning Stefano Ricci exhibit of pages
from Anita. To get to that you had to climb the bell tower of the city hall
but it was worth the claustrophobia inducing staircase. Those pages are
just thick with paint and plastic, it was amazing really.

Later just hanging around I noticed that Mark Kalesniko was signing at the
Paquet booth, which was odd. They have recently translated his Pete Duel
book and we had a nice chat about the work he's doing now. I really don't
know why his work doesn't get more attention in the US.

At close to closing time I saw Mattotti signing at Seuil with almost no
line so ran to the hotel to get my copy of Stigmates while Mark waited in
line. Mark got a great sketch in Mattotti's new 400 page sketch book
collection (it's a real jaw-dropper) and I got a fabulous drawing in my
book. In the space of ten minutes I saw Mattotti do five drawings in five
different styles -- line drawing for Mark in the book of line drawings,
brush and colour in mine, pastels in a copy of one of his kids' book,
pencil crayons and water colors in another kids book, just water colours in
a final book. Amazing. Just after that Loustal sat down next to him. He
wasn't signing but agreed to do a little drawing if I bought a copy of his
new book, which was no problem on my part. We had a nice chat with him as
he remembered Mark from a couple of years ago. He's doing a book with
Charyn about New York's Little Odessa district. So in the space of five
minutes I met and got drawings from two of my absolute favorite artists.
Loustal, fwiw, was big on the work of Dan Clowes these days (Clowes had two
books debuting at the Festival -- Vertige Graphic had Ghost World, and
Cornelius had Like A Velvet Glove in a really, really nice edition)

Friday night we had dinner at the Geneve with the guys from Stakhano, the
guys from Freon (this year bringing along Ricci and Barbier) and the guys
from Amok (which included Isidro Ferrer, Raul and Sylvain Victor this
year). That was somewhat odd. Aside from the fact that our party was
enormous and unwieldy (we sat at T-shaped table for 26 or so that made Mark
and Ana seem to be bride and groom, with Olivier as best man and Joan as
maid of honour), we had weird seating juxtapositions so that Alex Barbier
could basically scowl at Cartier all evening from behind those funky wrap
around shades. I think he was really appalled, actually. Weirder still I
met Cartier's brother, who seems crazier than Eric. I also met Terry
Nantier from NBM but really didn't talke to him all that much. Desmond and
I really spent much of the dinner debating the relative merits of hockey,
rugby and cricket. My but the man does get worked up about the need to beat
South Africa.

After dinner Mark, Eric, Joan, Sophie and I headed to Cafe Creed to see the
work of the students from the art school, which gets high marks for
presentation. Mark and I felt that there was an awful lot of work that
would get rave reviews if it showed up at SPX in English but later Jessica
and Johanna (who's working on her own new anthology up in Finland)
disagreed, arguing that it was all style without substance. That
disagreement happened at the Gallery, finally open so that Baudoin could
get funky with the girls on the dance floor. Mark decided that we had
arrived ten beers later than the dancers and we needed to catch up so he
ordered two cognacs and four beers so that we could pound those down. Bad
news was that the beer was Desperado (with added Tequila flavor!) which
turned out to be utterly undrinkable, really vile and flat.

We hung out at the gallery for a while and marvelled at the yellow sweat
shirts that the Festival was fruitlessly trying to sell (apparently they
lost hundreds of thousands on those hideous, hideous things) and then made
our way back to the Mercure where I met Milo Manara, which was a lifetime
goal of mine 15 years ago. Still, it was a quiet night so we went to bed
around 5:30

SATURDAY:

Slept until noon-ish. Did very little all day because it was so crowded
that you could barely move in the tents. We had lunch with Paul Gravett,
Juhani and Andy Konky Kru. Juhani and Mark talked cigars, which may be an
even more rarified topic than comics. After lunch I had to go down to the
train station to see about changing my ticket for the next day to a later
train (which I did).

In the IR I chatted with a bunch of people, including the guy from Edizione
Topolini whose house was raided for selling Thomas Ott and Brian the Brain
comics. They're holding a fund raiser for him on Feb 12 and 13th in Italy
and his cause has become a large issue. He's been totally fucked since the
police took his entire stock. Look for more details in an upcoming Comics
Journal. Bad news though

Mostly though on Friday I just wandered around, trying to cut through
crowds and talk to the people I had yet to chat with. Spent some time at
the Freon and Amok booths watching everyone sign and talking to Stefano
Ricci and Alex Barbier, neither of whom I had the chance to talk to at
dinner the night before. I went to the Espace Jeunesse to see Berberian
give a chalk talk but there were no seats left (he later told me kids
walked out on him left and right!). The Espace Jeunesse was really odd this
year, with a beach theme with beach chairs and umbrellas -- but also with
mechanical objects in cages. It was odd.

At some point Desmond and I watched Mark buy a duffel bag so he could get
his comics home with him. I had my doubts about the worthiness of his Nike
bag but Desmond made a convincing argument against the trendy yellow and
black snowboarder model that I was pushing for.

We left before closing, but after watching the press trail Dupuy and
Berberian through the halls to various publishers. Ah, the price of fame.
We had dinner with Ana, Uli, Christiane, Kai and Max at Passe Muraille,
which is an amazingly good restaurant. My veal was incredible. Ana and I
left in the middle of dinner to watch Boucq pronounce next year's president
from the balcony at city hall. The temperature had really dropped that
night and Ana was freezing to death and the crowd booed Boucq's stalling
and hamming it up. Crumb's election was greeted with some enthusiastic
cheers but mostly shrugged indifference from a large crowd that might have
been 80% press people in the end. Back at the restaurant Max was pleased to
learn he'd won two Goodies.

Back to Chat Noir again where I met Ulf K. for the first time, and had a
long conversation with him. Nicholas de Crecy was there as well, as was the
usual gang of suspects. We all made our way to the Gallery for bad beer
(the only non-Desperado option was only marginally superior) where we
stayed until about 4:00 before heading to the Mercure one final time. There
we were crammed in like sardines and Matt, Jessica and I talked to
Berberian before Jessica attacked a poor defenseless plant. She's a savage.
No one thought Desmond was a good rapper but Mark and I thought he was
hilarious. Cuno made me tell the story of how I got my name again, and he
told me he's told it to half a dozen people, which I thought was odd
behaviour. In the end we went to bed around 5:30 or so, but Mark had been
trying to leave for a good two hours.

SUNDAY:

Got up around 10 and waited for the shower for a long time. Finally a
couple who I'm not even sure were staying in the hotel sheepishly emerged.
Wasn't sure I wanted to go in after that. We settled our accounts and then
Desmond, Mark, Ana and I made our way to the train. We almost missed it
(again) and I think I hurt my arm carrying Mark's bag to the train
(something I'm conned into doing each year for some reason). Two hours on
the train passed relatively painlessly. I ate cookies for lunch because the
sugar kept me in a state of semi-alertness.

In Paris Desmond and Ana went to their hotel and Mark and I waited for his
friend, Dominique-Paul, who was to drive us to the airport. He arrived
finally but the roads were just jammed (uncharacteristically so for a
Sunday) and then we couldn't find the proper terminal. Mark arrived a
non-Air France approved 25 minutes before take-off for his international
flight and then had to sprint through the terminal, never to be heard from
again. After an hour I caught my flight, delayed an hour and a half while
they searched for bags of people that hadn't been let on the plane so that
they could take them off. All this happened directly below my window and I
watched them toss my bag full of comics onto the tarmac, but it lived to
tell about it. I hadn't wanted to check my bag but the weight limit for
carry on is 10 kilos (22 pounds) and when they weighed my bag (which I
swore up and down was lighter than that) it came to 34 kilos. The woman
just glared at me.

Uneventful flight marked by minimal sleep and a bad movie (Antz) that I had
hoped would at least be cure. No problems at customs (odd for Montreal's
airport, where wasting your time is a creed to live by) and then home to
dinner and a videotape of a really boring Super Bowl.

Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 10:11:03 -0500
To: [c--m--x] at [indra.com]
From: bart beaty <[b--ea--y] at [po-box.mcgill.ca]>
Subject: A'leme Diary (2/2)

Just to be complete, here's what I seem to have brought back with me. The
pile is about two and a half feet high it looks like. As Desmond would say,
this is the good shit:

(List in order from smallest to largest)

-the Moga Mobo Adventskalender, a gift from Mark these are 24 full colour
mini-comics, each of which is about 2"x1" or so. Published by Verleihnix I
noticed that Ria had these for sale at the Bries table if people want to
pick them up.

-all twelve of Schokoriegel mini-comics, numbered 1-13 but missing #8.
These are beautifully produced books that I'll review in the Journal

-three by Baudoin (Mat, Piero and the newest: Le Chemin aux Oiseaux,
written by Nadine Brun.Cosme) from Seuil because I didn't own them. Plus De
Crecy's M. Fruit II (which I thought I didn't own, but it turns out I do).
These were given to me by the woman in press relations after she refused to
give me the Mattotti sketch book to review on the reasoning that no review
would help sales of that book because any Mattotti fan that saw it would
buy it immediately, and non-Mattotti fans (can such people really exist?)
wouldn't bother to read the review. I couldn't argue with that kind of
logic!

-Fred the Clown (by Roger Langridge), Aunt Connie and the Plague of Beards
(by Jonathan Edwards) and The Malice Family (by Faz Choudhury) all from Les
Cartoonistes Dangereux. Brad! passed these along to me and I'm glad he did.
These are nice looking packages (the all have polka-dotted covers, in
green, blue and pink) that should earn them some Goodie notice in
Production Design. The Langridge book in particular looks hilarious, I may
read that tonight

--Fromage Confiture by Frederik Peeters (Atrabile) a McKean-esque looking
mini-comic lovingly produced. Looks great

-The Game, a Madden/Abel sketchbook exercise where each draws in the style
of another cartoonist. Mark, Desmond and I all assumed that Jessica had
done the Paul Pope drawing, and we were all wrong.

-Jetlag by Actus Tragicus. This is a sixty-ish page book of stories all of
which were written by Etgar Keret and illustrated by the five AT artists. A
real gem, soon to available via Robert I would suppose. Robert, can people
order these from you yet?

-Eumefius, a mute mini-comic (big one at that, spiral bound on really heavy
stock) by Nicolas M., who I know nothing about but the strips made me
laugh. I got this from Ria's table

-Cedre et Sequoia, by Christophe Poot, is a large graphic novel from
Cinquieme Couche, who gave me a lot of stuff to review for the Journal in
my special column: Comics that are even more theoretical than Freon's

-Desmond gave me four issues of See Saw, a mini produced by Adam Jamieson,
Sophie McMillan and Timothy Kidd. One has a Jamieson tribute to Krazy Kat,
making me think there's something going on with New Zealanders and that
strip.

-Daniele gave me nine issues in the Schizzo Presenta line, which range from
the interesting looking to the brilliant looking. Particularly catching my
eye are the books by Maurizio Ribichini and Sandro Staffa. I'll be cracking
the dictionary to write about these

-J. Manix gave me a copy of her English-language Sketch Book to review for
the Journal

-Matt recommended Gutsman Comics by Erik Kriek to me by basically acting
out some of the strips, so I went to Oog and Blik to pick that up. They
were nice enough to give me a copy of this wordless comic, which is just
great

-From Comedie Illustre I got four books in French that are typical American
pamphlet size: Pour les yeux de Cerise, Il Pleut, "O" and Co., and Le
Mystere des Femmes Volees

-Comedie Illustree also gave me copies of the first three Christopher books
in English and the first three Peyraud books in English. All of this will
go into a large review of their work

-Strange Weather Lately is a book by the Scot artist Metaphrog, who I
talked to a few times at the Festival. What I have is the sixth issue. He
told me a tpb of the first five is forthcoming. Is anyone reading this?
Thoughts?

-Frederik Peeters also did Brendon Bellard, a brilliant looking book from
Atrabile. Gone are the McKean influences. This newer book tells a man's
life history in 40+ pages by featuring his life in a one year on one page
format. Looks marvellous

-Also from Atrabile: Tom Tirabosco's L'Emissaire, an oddly formatted book
(maybe 4 inches high, by 10 inches wide) that is just stunningly
beautiful.Looking forward to this one a lot

-Insolite is the new Loustal book from Seuil, which collects 45 single page
strips in b/w. Mine has a spiffy drawing in it though

-Stigmates by Lorenzo Mattotti was the book the Seuil woman gave me when
she how sad I was that I couldn't get a copy of the sketchbook. Mine has an
awesome drawing in it now

-Bile Noire is the anthology comic from Atrabile, I picked up the fourth
issue of that one

-Brian the Brain is Miguel Angel Martin and it looks hilarious, but it also
got its Italian publisher in hot water with the cops. He gave me a copy of
that and the Ott book (which I have now in German and French editions also)
so that I could write about his problem in the Journal. He also gave me a
copy of the Italian edition of Che that he put out, which got him into no
trouble, but which found me basically jumping up and down about when I
learned he had published it. What a gorgeous book!

-Casablanca, Vesperale and Matinale are all books by Christopher that go
into the Comedie Illustre review alongside Mine de rien #2 and #3,
Superheros by David Scrima and Cleet Boris and Massonet's Le Frigo. Whew,
that's a lot of Comedie Illustre!

-Daniele also gave me copies of Schizzos #3-#6 which I'll struggle to read,
but which look great

-Four new books in Amok's Collection Feu!: Le doute by Sylvain Victor, Le
Pont de l'Ange by Olivier Bramanti,  Exils by Ferrer and Toro and Un Temps
de Toussaint by Rabate and Zamparutti. That Rabate book was flying off the
table. Actually, Amok seemed to be having a hugely successful festival from
what I could see. You could almost never get close to their table and
people always seemed to be buying from them

-9e Art #4 has a cover by Marc-Antoine Mathieu and an interview with him
(yay!), and also a large section on the fiftieth anniversary of French
comics censorship. Looks like another great issue

-F. is a book by Damien Rocour and Michel Squarci from Cinquieme Couche.
They also gave me copies of the their anthology (five issues, one of which
is mammothly huge), and Xavier Lowenthal's Cotton Schwob. Look for a review

-Mark pointed out Hanco Kolk's work to me at Oog and Blik's stand and I
snapped it up. Two issues of Meccano are now mine, and they are stunningly
beautiful.

-Last, but definitely not least, Drozophile '98 is a huge (30x42) anthology
about soccer, every page a silk screened masterpiece. I can smell the ink
from here. A very generous gift.

That's it (I think, there may be things in my bag still). All in all I had
a very good time at the Festival and came home not entirely exhausted. I
even managed to stay within my budget (a very real concern for me this
year), so I must say that I'm very glad that I went. Not a single moment of
stress in five days makes the thought of five months of non-stop work on my
dissertation a little easier to face.

bart


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