Exhibitions of the 47th Angoulème International Comics Festival: Robert Kirkman, Walking Dead et autres mondes pop!

The basement of the l'Alpha Mediathèque, located behind the Angoulème train station, provided a temporary home during the course of the festival for the first-ever retrospective in France of the work of American comics creator Robert Kirkman.  While Kirkman's career spans over twenty years that started at Marvel, he is primarily known for writing the massively popular Image comics series The Walking Dead (as well as being one of the five partners at Image Comics, serving as its Chief Operating Officer). 

However, this exhibition did not aim to present a retrospective of Kirkman's career in comics. Rather, it celebrated his work by focusing on four of his creator-owned titles at Image that have been translated into French.  Visitors were guided through the respective worlds of The Walking Dead, Invincible, Outcast, and Oblivion's Song (in this order) via a scenographic immersion and thematic exegesis for each series. The production values of the mise-en-scene were superb to the point that they tended to completely overshadow the presentation of the comics that these worlds were based on. Reproductions of select pages and panels from each of the series were stylishly arranged as elements of the decor as if they were not meant to be read but to be integrated into the environment. Large panels presented lengthy paragraphs of textual analysis to intellectualize Kirkman's key themes of power, the family unit, and the relationship between them when social communities are forced to reinvent themselves in order to survive. Key quotes taken from interviews with Kirkman are blown up and isolated on the panel walls to serve as punctuation of these arguments.

First section: The Walking Dead

First section: The Walking Dead

 

The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead.

Second section: Invincible

Invincible

Invincible

Third section: Outcast

Outcast

Fourth section: Oblivion's Song

Oblivion's Song

A final section offers the opportunity to revel in images that highlight Kirkman's use and exploration of gore and graphic violence in these series, especially within the confines of the themes being illuminated.

Robert Kirkman's Little Museum of Horror

The exhibition concludes with two walls that provide festival-goers with their first and only presentation of original pages of comic art related to Kirkman's work. Unsurprisingly, they are pages from The Walking Dead drawn and inked by Charlie Adlard, who is given text panels to speak about his influences and his chiaroscuro approach to the series.

From idea to paper

By the end, it is clear that the physical environments of this exhibition leave a far greater impression in illuminating Kirkman's work than the accompanying text that analyzes it. The text itself is far too verbose, hammering its points to the extent that it becomes ineffective compared to the scenography. That's not to say that the text does not offer worthwhile observations to thematically link Kirkman's work in order to present him as an auteur. It's just that this exhibition is better at showing rather than telling visitors what Kirkman's work is all about.

Nick Nguyen

All photos taken by Nick Nguyen