The International Comic Salon in Erlangen will be open to the public again from June 16th to 19th. In 2020, the festival, which takes place every two years, was canceled in its classic form due to the coronavirus pandemic and only took place as a digital internet event.
The program is more female, diverse and intercultural than ever before, according to a statement from the city’s cultural office. One focus of the festival is dedicated to comics and popular art from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The best comics of the past two years are awarded the Max and Moritz Prize.
The Japanese Naoki Urasawa, one of the most influential mangaka of today, receives the Max and Moritz Prize for his outstanding life’s work. 25,000 visitors are expected to attend the event, which takes place every two years.
The Comic Salon offers over twenty exhibitions, a program of lectures and discussions, comic readings, a comic film festival and workshops. The organizers say that “Children love comics!” would give young readers a festival within a festival.
More than 200 exhibitors – from publishers to universities to artists who publish themselves – present their program. Around 400 artists from all over the world draw live and sign their books.
Exhibitions are dedicated, among other things, to feminism in comics or the worlds of the feminist artist Liv Strömquist. Retrospectives look at the work of the former Charlie Hebdo artist and comic author Catherine Meurisse and the German artist and storyteller Birgit Weyhe, who also worked for the Tagesspiegel for a long time.
The “father of the graphic novel”, Will Eisner, will be honored with a large historical show with numerous originals, it said.
