The 49th edition of the Angoulême International Comics Festival opened on Wednesday evening March 16 with a concert of drawings ” dedicated to Ukraine “. On this occasion, the most prestigious award in the world of comics was awarded: the Grand Prix de la ville d’Angoulême. And it is a woman, the Canadian Julie Doucet, who wins this prize.
Julie Doucet is the fourth designer to be so distinguished since the creation of the festival, located in the east of France, after Claire Bretécher, Florence Cestac and Rumiko Takahashi. The Canadian made a name for herself in the world of the 9th art with very inventive, “underground” albums, before abandoning this medium about fifteen years ago.
The 52-year-old artist is not one to enter boxes. She even accumulates paradoxes, starting with the latest, by winning the most prominent distinction in Franco-Belgian comics while Julie Doucet has a reputation for being very discreet and she has abandoned this medium 15 years ago.
Reaction of Canadian author Julie Doucet after receiving the Grand Prix de la ville d’Angoulême 2022.
Godzilla flooding Montreal with his menstrual blood
It is through the fanzine, a small amateur comic book magazine, that she invests the 9th art after her higher studies. In the early 1990s, this Quebecer published alone, and in English, an issue entitled Dirty Plotte, where we find stories featuring a fantasized double… She takes shape, for example, like Godzilla flooding Montreal with her menstrual blood. The young woman imposes herself in a predominantly male environment.
Spotted by underground New York circles, published in France by the Association, Julie Doucet abandoned comics in the 2000s, preferring to explore all the possibilities of graphic arts. Concentrating on her formal research, she composes stories or writes poems from cut and pasted words. And today, she now finds herself, reluctantly, under the spotlight of the media and comic book enthusiasts.