The TOREADOR

Nimes, France

The Coliseum

There's a statue out in front that is pretty cool.
Upon closer inspection, the French have a high opinion of the masculinity of a Bull Fighter.



You decide.

Tom

The Rest of the ANGOULEME' FESTIVAL

Friday began with the obligatory "action shot" of all the SEQA's as they prepared to save the festival from the hordes of super-villains who were about to descend on the town of Angouleme.

We met some practicing artists in one of the Residences run by Magelis (thanks again to Geraldine Zannier for taking us to and setting up this visit.) Everyone loved all of the artists, but in particular they liked the work of Julien Mauffre. His style of BD illustration was very clean and entertaining with good black placement and texture use. I'd recommend any book by him that you can find. He (and the others) are published by Delcourt.

Saturday began with some BIG, heavy snow flakes descending to the earth in a peaceful and beautiful pattern. The problem is ... many of the female SEQA's were dressed for fun and not for snow. Jolie Menzel took a good butt fall on the wooden bridge over to the festival. She survived, but her Uggs were not the best shoe for the day. She had fun anyway, as did we all.

The problem with Saturday was ...

... EVERYBODY was here that day. It was so hard to get around. It was just about as bad as being at the San Diego Con. It was so much harder to get to anything and with it being spread out over the whole town (unlike San Diego which is all in one building), you would put some mileage on you shoes by the end of the day.

Once the snow stopped, we were left with only wet pavement so that they interesting sights of the festival were able to come out and play. Such as ... costumed people on stilts. I got to high-five this one. She kept twirling around and using the whole volume of her skirt to wrap around people as they walked by.

The final oddity of the con to mention is that ... the French love their American style burgers. So much so that they have a fast food place called QUICK Burger and for their wall decoration they show a scene of Americana ...

... a PHILLIPS 66 Gas Station. Now, that spells A-M-E-R-I-C-A-N!!!

We made it back to Lacoste in time to get some rest and prepare for classes. Our group got back at about 5:30. The group of students who went to Barcelona didn't get back until about 11:00 p.m. so they were all VERY tired on Monday.



One last thing that I saw on the way back ... NUKE PLANT!!!
European nuclear power. Awesome. I wonder how good their regulations are?