Signing in France

I've just returned from a trip to France to which I was invited by my French publisher Dupuis. The central event of the trip was the "Salon du livre et de la presse jeunesse" in Montreuil, a children's book fair in a Paris suburb. It was a big event and I signed many Wormworld Saga books at the Dupuis booth on Saturday and Sunday. I also met two fellow comic artists, Christian Darasse and José Luis Manuera and I had a wonderful time discussing with those comic veterans the future of comic book authors, editors and publishers.

From left to right: Christian Darasse, José Luis Manuera and me

A drawing I did for the Dupuis team

Before I signed in Montreuil at the weekend, on Friday, I traveled to Lyon where I was invited to sign at the comic book shop "La Bande Dessinée". It was a very interesting experience to see a French comic book shop from the inside and to talk to the people. Comic book shops in France seem to be quite different from those in Germany. There's no card playing stuff there and all in all it feels more like a normal book shop. All sorts of people come visiting it and you could clearly see that comics have a very different status in France compared to Germany.

"La Bande Dessinée" comic book shop in Lyon

Every artist who's signing at "La BD" is asked to contribute a drawing for the "wall of fame" of the shop. The following drawing will from now on be on permanent display among amazing artwork from many other comic book artists:

This was my first time signing in France and it was a wonderful journey. The city of Paris alone was absolutely inspiring and it is actually great timing that I visited it right before starting my work in Chapter 7. I'll be able to use a lot of things that I've seen and experienced in the upcoming chapter.