Katsuhiro Otomo Wins Grand Prix Award At Angouleme Wire reports have lit up in the last 45 minutes with news that the cartoonist Katsuhiro Otomo has won the Grand Prix Award at this year's FIBD in Angouleme. That means he'll be president of next year's festival. That role means he'll be the focus of press attention and a shaper of the show itself with a likely personal retrospective and a likely additional show related to his work or an area/cartoonist about which he's passionate.
Otomo is the first person from the great world comics tradition in Japan to win the honor, which means it's incredibly overdue. I remember for a while under the old system thinking that Jiro Taniguchi might sneak in some year. With a more populist-oriented voting system rather than pure peer-review Otomo makes perfect sense. I think he's a great cartoonist and Akira is a great work, so I'm super-happy about this.
It also surprised the shit out of me, because I thought they voted during the weekend. It makes sense that you'd get the PR benefit of announcing as the show got underway, though.
The five cartoonists who were slain in the Charlie Hebdo killings received a special Grand Prix honor.
