The winners of the Atomium Awards were revealed on Friday 9 September, the day of the BD Comic Strip Festival launch.
The festival has honoured comic book professionals for the past six years. This edition is no exception, with €95,000 in prizes that will be distributed between the winners.
Brussels is a hotbed of creativity and the comic strip industry is particularly well represented there.
Nevertheless, comic strip creation has been weakened in recent years and professionals sometimes have difficulty making a living from their art.
To support authors, the Brussels authorities have for six years now awarded the Atomium Comic Strip Prizes as part of the BD Comic Strip Festival. Most of these are cash prizes to enable the winners to finance their work. This year, €95,000 will be distributed between the nine prizes.
These awards were presented on Friday 9 September at a ceremony at Tour & Taxis, as part of the BD Comic Strip Festival.
Winners: Cyril Legrais & Alice V.D.M – Les oies cendrées .
The Raymond Leblanc Prize was launched 13 years ago by the Raymond Leblanc non-profit association, whose goal is to publicise, collect and preserve all the cultural heritage created by Raymond Leblanc, founder of the “Tintin magazine”, Éditions du Lombard, the advertising agency Publiart and the animation studios Belvision, among other things. Its goal is to reward the work of a young author that has not published more than two comic books. The jury’s opinion: “
A delicate subject treated with sensitivity and tenderness… A love story between two men with a significant age difference is not commonplace in usual comic strip representations.
The simple fact of featuring an older “hero” is not common. The strength of this project lies not only in the fact that it shatters taboos (sexuality of senior citizens, homosexuality, etc.) but also in the fact that it creates a beautiful story, enhanced by elegant cutting, which will soften the hardest hearts.”
Prize: €10,000 in cash, a €10,000 advance and a publishing contract alternating between Editions du Lombard and Editions Futuropolis.
