If you live in the English-speaking comics world, there's a good chance you've never heard of the Festival International de la Bande Desinée, which happens every January in Angoulême, France. Even if you have, it may just be as a vague rumour about some Bizarro parallel world where comics are taken seriously as an art form, cartoonists are worshipped nearly as pagan gods, and the government throws piles of money at everyone involved.

It is all that and more. Sort of. For me, writing about Angoulême is a lot like being there, communicating in a language you know imperfectly: there's a lot going on, and it's easy to get bogged down in the details.

The Festival has been going for 31 years, and I've been going for the last 14. It is arguably the greatest comics event on the planet, the main show for European comics and the Mecca for alternative comics fans and creators from all over the world. Besides fanboys and girls, France still has a large mainstream comics audience, adults and children who wouldn't code themselves as "fans", but who regularly buy "BD albums" ("BD" being short for bande dessinée, the medium, whereas "albums" refers to the books themselves).

For four days every year, these folks literally fill the town up to its 12th century parapets. I imagine it must be hell for the one guy in Angoulême who hates comics. His neighbours probably keep him under guard, tied to a chair in his kitchen, while they read TINTIN stories to him in a futile attempt to convert him. Or maybe they eat him. A lot of time at Angoulême makes you think like that.

As you may have heard, the French call BDs the... ahem..."ninth art". BDs are seen as an important - and exportable - part of French culture. The Festival receives financial support from the local, regional and national governments, and, with its massive international TV, newspaper and magazine coverage, support from corporate sponsors craving street cred with the younger demographics. This year, that group included Lipton Tea and the car manufacturer Citroen.

Angoulême is very different to US and UK conventions, which are traditionally based around used comic marts. In a lot of ways, Angoulême is more like a stepped-down version of film festivals like Cannes and Deauville. At the heart of it are gallery and museum exhibits of BD art that are scattered throughout the city, connected by a free bus service. The main venue for exhibits is the nation's permanent, year 'round comics museum, the Centre National de la Bande Dessinée et de l'Image, a multi-million euro glass and metal structure built into the city's ancient walls. During the Festival, though, there are a dozen or more other locations housing exhibits and events.

Besides the exhibits, the two main temporary buildings on the Champ du Mars house major and minor publishers, who sell their current albums, as hundreds of fans line up to have the creators sign them, usually with sketches added gratis. Fanzines and small press items, as well as related toys, are sold in the massive Bulle New York building. Back issues are relegated to street vendors and a building on Rue Marengo.

Angoulême is always the last full weekend in January; this year it was the 22nd - 25th of the month. In the best years, attendance has been regularly claimed at 400,000. This wasn't one of the best years, with the numbers quoted closer to 150,000, but even a weak year in Angoulême is to my mind better than virtually any other comics event in the world.

Over the years, the festival has changed the city. Angoulême, once a centre for a dying paper industry, has been retro-fitted as France's centre for BD creation, animation and computer graphics, with art schools emphasizing comic art, and also has become a town reliant on the annual influx of tourists the Festival provides. There's much more riding on it than there is on your average comic-con, and one of the things that has always fascinated me is the big fiscal numbers and complex politics going on.

This was a transition year for the Angoulême Festival, with a lot of events happening that will determine its future. This year's President, Régis Loisel, proved to be critical of the event, especially the annual awards, which he called "very elitist", while Jean-Marc Thévenet, leader of the Festival organizers, defined a new plan for branding Angoulême and making it a "cultural entrepreneur" that would extend its influence in France and the rest of the world. This was backed up by France's Minister of Culture, Jean-Jacques Aillagon, who showed his commitment to BDs by tripling the Festival's budget from 61,000 to 192,000 euros.

'Angoulême is like a stepped-down version of film festivals like Cannes and Deauville.' Despite his enthusiasm, Monsieur Aillagon skipped the opening ceremonies of the Festival. This job is traditionally performed by the Minister of Culture, the town's mayor, and visiting dignitaries such as last year's Princess Mathilde of Belgium. This year, the job went to Christophe Salengro, the president of the fictional country of Groland, an "anti-Monaco" that's the subject of a popular comedy series on Canal +. Festival Président Loisel, adding to his reputation for cantankerousness, chose not to attend, and others objected that the choice of a TV character turned the opening into a transparent publicity stunt.

Tintin, the plucky boy reporter, has always been an important symbol in Angoulême, where a huge bust of his Belgian auteur, Hergé, sits in one of its busiest streets. In fact, one of the truly whacked business concepts of an earlier political season was to construct the giant red rocket from DESTINATION MOON with a theme park around its base. This year's festival was, however, seriously de-Tintinized.

In previous years, the awards given out at the Festival were called the Alph'art Awards, a reference to Hergé's unfinished Tintin album, TINTIN AND THE ALPH'ART. Now they are the Palmares du Angoulême. Part of the branding process, I assume - but there's always the possibility of some conflict with the Hergé estate. TINTIN AND THE ALPH'ART, assembled from the creator's notes and sketches, was finally published this year.

The award winners are selected by a jury made of cartoonists and various arts and media types. Manu Larcenet's LE COMBAT ORDINAIRE, about the daily life of a press photographer, won the Prix du Meilleur Album, while Juanjo Guardino won best artist for his work on BLACKSAD, TOME 2: ARCTIC NATION, an adventure parable of racism featuring humanized animals.

An important change in the awards was the internationalisation of the key prizes. In the past, they were only for Franco-Belgian BD, with a special award for Best Foreign Album. Now, translated works have been assimilated into the general awards. This allowed Neil Gaiman to win the Prix du Scénario for SANDMAN, TOME 4: LA SAISON DES BRUMES and Japanese manga auteur Naoki Urasawa to win the prize for best series for his futuristic thriller 20th CENTURY BOYS.

The awards have always been involved in the conflict between mainstream BD and more experimental, alternative BD. In recent years, the awards success of alternative albums from publishers like L'Association and Editions Cornelius has caused rancour among more populist authors. This year, President Loisel, the writer and artist of two hugely successful series - a very non-Disney, PETER PAN series, and LA QÛETE DE L'OISEAU DU TEMPS, a sexy heroine barbarian adventure series - came out on the side of the mainstream.

In an interview in the local paper, Charente Libre, he talked about the "elitist" awards: "In the selections, there were people I did not know. Larcenet... the Japanese... There are authors whom I adore and whom I would have liked to see appearing in the selection, especially for the prize of Best Album... I said to those who made the preselections that I had reservations about their choices...

"I believe a prize would have to be created for 'Discoveries'. Larcenet could have taken this prize. I would not have found it shocking that BLACKSAD would take the Best Album prize. Without shutting out certain BDs, it is necessary that the prizes be diversified. Angoulême must be like a good soup, a good mixture."

Clearly this more populist festival was in the minds of the jury of former présidents, led by Loisel, who selected the winner of the Prix du Ville du Angoulême, who becomes next year's Président. Breaking with tradition, they chose Zep, a young Swiss cartoonist .

At 36, Zep - who took his pen name from the band Led Zeppelin - is a superstar of European comics. His bigfoot style tales of TITEUF, the lovelorn schoolboy, started ten years ago, and have sold over one million books, been translated into 14 languages and spawned massive merchandising products. He's also held in high regard as a creator by professionals and fans, on a level similar to some newspaper comic strip artists in the US.

Still, his winning was a surprise. The award is usually given for career achievement, and has traditionally gone to the creators who built the modern BD industry in the '60's and '70's. A major factor in the choice, though, has to be that after 31 years of the Festival, there aren't that many still-moving members of the old guard left who haven't been président.

In an interview with the news website Swissinfo, Zep said: "Maybe the jury wants me to retire - I was very happy to receive it, because it's handed out by a jury made up of the winners from previous years: people I always dreamt of meeting, to see if they were for real. So to get to meet them, but also to be selected by them for the prize, was out of this world... Winning the prize means I also get to be festival Président next year and I have to organise international exhibitions: There's a big budget, so I'm very excited."

President Emeritus André Julliard, quoted in Charente Libre, took a practical approach to the TITEUF phenomenon, saying Zep, "has the immense merit of having brought back to European BDs a young public largely lured away by the mangas". Another juror, Frank Mangerin said: "Like TINTIN was the hero of the artist of my time, TITEUF is destined to become the model of the next generation... Zep will be a good président. He is dynamic, popular and available."

The fact that several of the major awards were one by non-Europeans is in itself an issue (I count Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN as American, I should point out). French-speaking Europe may be the last non-Asianized mass comics culture. In recent years, with the Balkanisation of English-language comics, those of us who love the medium have dreamed of a new mainstream comics market. It just didn't occur to us that we wouldn't be a part of it. The growing popularity of manga and anime in the French Market is a big thing.

'TITEUF has sold over one million books and been translated into 14 languages.' The changes are so significant that mainstream foreign media took notice. In an excellent article in the Financial Times, 'Astérix and the Marauding Manga-Maniacs', Jo Johnson wrote: "Manga-mania is sweeping the country. Japanese 'graphic novels' - many of them violent and pornographic - last year accounted for almost a third of the 1,860 new comic books published in France, according to Livres Hebdo publishing weekly, compared with about 20 per cent in 2002 and less than 10 per cent in 2001." Now that he other shoe has dropped, and Europe, and Angoulême, are faced with a manga invasion, it's time to get defensive in Viélle Angoulême. Wagons are circling as we speak.

A buzz concept among many gaijin is that the Japanese don't really want to be American; they want to be European. For many reasons, the European and Japanese comics cultures have found many common bonds over the years, and have influenced each other more than either has affected US-style comics. In the mid-'90s, to some extent following a major Japanese exhibition at Angoulême, Franco-Belgian publishers began co-publishing books by European creators with Japanese companies like Kodansha. These were half-breed albums - longer books, smaller in format, and in black and white, rather than the shorter, large-format, full colour hardcovers that have defined French BD. The best, to my mind, is Baru's crime epic L'AUTOROUTE DU SOLEIL, which came out several years ago.

Besides all this, there was a comics convention going on. I caught a few of the major exhibits.

Loisel was the subject of the major show at the CNBDI, which is continuing after the Festival until April 30th of this year. The exhibit was designed by his son, Blaise, and features personal photos, letters and childhood Disney knock-offs mixed in with his later professional work in a maze constructed out of junk kitchen items, pipes and even a toilet (featuring art from a book of defecation cartoons). We get to follow his career through the decades, from his first pro work, through the US underground-influenced stuff in comics like TOUSSE BOURIN in the'70's, where I first encountered him, to his most recent work in his two major series.

Loisel's version of Clochette (Tinkerbelle) from his PETER PAN - busty, g-string clad and, well, sweetly slutty - was the spokesmodel for the various Festival publications. This says a lot about the French. Loisel is a terrific draftsman, especially fond of drawing naked women. At times, Peter Pan himself seems an afterthought in his work, with Clochette and various nymphs and mermaids running the show. In light of the recent fuss in the US over just one of Janet Jackson's breasts being exposed during the Super Bowl half-time show, it's refreshing to recall the complete lack of censorship in this and other exhibitions at the festival.

Dave McKean's Narcolepsy show at the Hôtel Saint-Simon was an excellent introduction to his comics and post-comics work. Showcases featured virtually all of the CDs he designed covers for, and the walls were filled with massive digital prints of his recent photo manipulations, as well as pages from earlier physical work. In a dark corner of the room featuring his videos was his first HELLBLAZER cover, a construction combining a painting with a singed child's doll, which still resonates creepiness in the modern world. The original pages from my favourite McKean work, MR PUNCH, fascinated me as the midpoint between his drawn work and his Photoshop imagery, an almost collage approach using layers of acetate drawings.

This was a great retrospective of McKean's work, and I'm sure a key moment in the life of some young artists in the crowd seeing it for the first time. We've become so used to his work that it's sometimes hard to remember how extraordinary it was when it first came out (even though I kept buying multiple copies of SANDMAN issues because I couldn't tell the covers apart).

André Julliard, the heir to the ligne claire drawing style, who now spends much of his time drawing the classic BLAKE ET MORTIMER series revival, had a nifty outdoor exhibit outside city hall. It featured drawings of 36 views of the Eiffel Tower. The artwork was on glass cases scattered around the grounds, but appeared to be digital prints rather than originals, which I find disappointing. Meanwhile, some of the best original artwork I saw was in the Lipton Tea exhibit. The drawings were from Geo magazine, which for the last two years has sent Europe's top cartoonists to points around the world to draw their impressions. The Moebius illustration exhibited, a simple watercolour from somewhere in North Africa, remains one of the best drawings I've seen in years.

While the primary emphasis remains comics, the impetus of the expanded Angoulême is clearly to move further into BD-related media, such as films, TV and video games. One event, co-sponsored by the regional Charente Development, was an all day symposium on BD and film, whose guests included Jan Kounen, director of the long awaited BLUEBERRY film, based on Giraud and Charlier's classic BD western. From the screening reports I've seen, the film, which has since been released in Europe, owes more to the pop mysticism of Giraud's 'Moebius' sci-fi work than to the realistic Western world of the BLUEBERRY albums.

A high point for me this year, as for the last several years, was the annual meeting of the Platinum List Group, a bunch of comics scholars led by comics-dealer-turned-historian Bob Beerbohm, who are opening up an entire new century of comics history - well back to the early 1800s, when Rodolphe Töpffer roamed the Earth and invented the graphic novel. This year, the groups meeting included semi-formal presentations on early comics, and it's likely that next year it will become a formal part of the Festival programming, open to the general public.

In Angoulême, you have to just accept that you can't see everything. Among the many events I meant to get to and didn't was an exhibit dedicated to Rahan, the popular barbarian BD character, and a series of simultaneously-translated "International Encounters" featuring creators including Joost Swarte, Enki Bilal, Seth, Chris Ware and Chris Claremont. I also missed a stage adaptation of Will Eisner's graphic novel, THE BUILDING.

There was a lot more I haven't room to mention: the nights of extreme beverage consumption with the international gang at Le Chat Noir and other local joints, and, for that matter, the comics I bought. Let me recommend a couple, though: Blutch, Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim's DONJON MONSTERS: MON FILS LE TEUR and Erik Kriek's latest issue of GUTSMAN.

Blutch, Sfar and Trondheim are artists who work in both alternative and more mainstream BD, and MON FILS LE TEUR is part of an anthropomorphic fantasy series with bits of extreme violence and some adult scenes. Blutch is one of my favourite artists these days, and his scratchy style is a great counterpoint to all the adventurous goings on. Meanwhile, Erik Kriek, from Amsterdam, has been doing GUTSMAN, his deft and ingenious silent comic, for several years now. It's a superhero parody that's turned into a strange romantic triangle with Gutsman, his estranged gal Tigra (supported by her all cat-suited family), and Erik himself. I bought issue #8, and he's now released a TPB of the earlier issues. Good stuff.

Like I said earlier, this was my 14th year at Angoulême. Figure four days each trip; that's fifty-six days over the years, almost two months of my life spent in a city dedicated to comics that - I'm told - vanishes Brigadoon-like on Monday morning when the crowds are gone and the streets are swept up. I often think about staying an extra day, or visiting some other time of year, but even despite - or because of - all the politics, there's comics magic there. I don't want to lose it.

Jim Wheelock is a Los Angeles based writer, illustrator and graphic artist, whose credits include MASKS OF SONAMBULO and TRAILER PARK OF TERROR.

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