Bastien Vives Wins Prix Des Libraires For Polina



The young and prolific cartoonist Bastien Vives has won a library award designed to put the marketing forces of the library system behind his ballet story Polina in an attempt to support diversity in comics. What's interesting to me is that it's being portrayed as another milestone in the career of the 27-year-old Vives, a sign that his virtues in terms of art and formal presentation remain intact as he moves from indie-darling type works to more mainstream-accessible ones. Those are such artificial distinctions that it's hard to figure out how much of it is true, but it's noticeable when a cartoonist is treated as bigger than the prize they receive. I don't have access to the shape and nature of the backlash-- and this is a cartoonist that practically screams "there's a backlash" -- but Vives has certainly put together an impressive string of works and it's hard for me to imagine that someone in the English-language market won't invest in a relationship with the cartoonist at some point.

You can read some of the Vives' static-image strips here; there's a report from an gallery opening featuring original art from Polina here.
 
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