Sncf.com Video News brings you the winner of the Fnac-SNCF Prize and highlights from the 37th Angoulême Comics Festival.
What was your first reaction when you discovered that you had won the Fauve Fnac-SNCF Readers' Prize at the 37th International Comic Festival?
Michel Rabagliati: I was completely shocked! My publisher had woken me up with the news, and I couldn't believe my ears. The fact that 'Paul à Quebec' was among the fifty or so titles in the Official Selection was already amazing as far as I was concerned. I was really excited that it had been selected out of the mass of books that appear every year in France - that was almost enough for me. So imagine how I felt when I heard that I'd received an award!
Beyond the book's popularity in the online vote, what attracted the seven members of the prize jury at Angoulême was obviously the theme of mourning...
Michel Rabagliati: I fill my stories with emotional material that is often very intimate and personal to me. What I recount in this book actually happened to my partner Carole. That helped me to be honest with the readers, and to draw out the emotional as well as the amusing moments that accompany this kind of life-event. Because life goes on even when death strikes at our friends or loved ones. Children keep running and laughing while it does its work. I didn't think that such a personal book would touch readers quite like it has.
What readers find so powerful is surely the fact that even though your characters come from Quebec, they go through things that we all experience, regardless of culture and background. The fact that your characters are ordinary middle-class folk is pretty unusual for a comic strip.
Michel Rabagliati: Yes, my heroes are normal people who wear lined cotton trousers and slippers. French readers might think it a bit odd, but the Quebecois sometimes say that I don't show Quebec City enough in this story. But the action happens in a completely ordinary suburb - it could just have easily have taken place at Levallois-Perret! Which must be what explains why my books have been translated into Italian, Spanish, etc. After all, they do say that we're increasingly living in a global village.
Paul is your alter ego, your fiction double - why did you decide to name him Paul rather than Michel?
Michel Rabagliati: It's true that I talk about my life in the Paul series, but it would have been a bit egocentric to give my name to the character. I needed some distance and I wanted a name that was common and down-to-earth, not a super-hero name! The titles of the series also reference the books 'Martine Goes to School', 'Martine Goes to the Beach', etc. It's gently ironic...
