A friend at Bookspread reports from the Salon du Livre

The Salon was divided in, roughly, five zones: comics and manga, children’s books, e-books, French publishers and international stands (Argentina, Nordic countries, Lebanon, Hungary and Poland were among them). The only book in English that I found was a fake guide to Beirut, but there was a stand with Chinese comic artists. The reference publishers (Art, History, Press, Religion, Linguistics…) were scattered all over the place and nobody showed them love. I immediately gravitated towards the comics and manga zone. In Spain, there would have been two old men in the comics section and a couple of twenty-to-thirty somethings perusing the mangas. Comics and manga are a very small subculture in Spain. In France, however, they consider comic an art form AND they have the best Japanese translators, so I wasn’t surprised when I had to elbow some ribs to get to the New Arrivals shelves. There were many reprints of Manara, a whole stand with the Angouleme winner Le bleu est une couleur chaude (“Blue is a warm colour”), by Julie Maroh and lots of wine-related manga. Motoro Mase, the creator of Ikigami, a very dark seinen manga based in a dystopian future very influenced by Death Note, was doing a round table that would be followed by a signing. Seinen is a subset of manga aimed at an adult male audience, but he was  answering questions to a crowd composed of 13-year-old girls that were looking at him like he was Robert Pattinson. I hope he gets to stay in Europe for a while, at least until the situation in Japan clears a bit.

>more