While waiting to know at the end of the month the rewards of International Comic Strip Festival Angoulême, other important award ceremonies have taken place, or are to come. Like the 2025 edition of Artemisia Prize of women's comics, co-founded in 2007 by Chantal Montellier and Jeanne Puchol, which aims to “to highlight female production in comics, ever more abundant and talented, for the script and/or the drawing.“In this context, American comics have not been forgotten, with two award-winning albums.
Garçonnes and Victory Parade awarded at the 2025 Artemisia Awards
The organization of Prix Artemisia has just revealed the eight winners of the 2025 selection, following the votes of a jury composed of Chantal Montellier, Isabelle Beaumenay-Chaland, Julie Scheibling, Patrick Gaumer, Pascal Guichard et Christophe Vilain. Concerning American comics, the two awarded titles and authors are:
- For the Pioneer Awardthe incredible Garçonnes: the forgotten authors of the Roaring Twenties of Trina Robbinstranslated and co-edited by Marie-Paule Noël and published by Bliss Editions.
“A book about female comic book authors from the Roaring Twenties? Short bob haircuts, the abandonment of the corset, shortened skirts, the charleston, cigarettes and the right to vote. On this new feminist freedom of the early 20th century, Trina Robbins is carrying out enormous research work and going back in time through comics. It lists authors who are unknown today and even forgotten, but who have revolutionized the 9th art. They marked their era and it is high time to rediscover them. Trina produces a very successful large format matrimonial book that showcases their beautiful designs. Trina Robbins, this unworthy old lady, left us this year, leaving us two magnificent testaments, Garçonnes and Last Girl Standing, a title already rewarded by Artémisia.“
- For the Resilience Prizel’album Victory Parade of Leela Cormantranslated by Jean-Paul Jennequin and published by Editions Here and there.
“Victory Parade is a unique work that immerses us in the 1940s in the United States, already with the traumas left by war and Nazism. Rose is one of these workers who participated in the American war effort as a welder on a shipyard. Her husband is at the front. Rose has a complicated daily life, between her lover, a crippled veteran, her overly sensitive daughter and Ruth, a young German Jewish refugee whom she houses and who will become a professional wrestler by provocation. A look at the Shoah from the angle of female work behind the scenes and waiting. All carried by a design which, from the cover, evokes both Otto Dix and El Vibora. A remarkable book that will remain in our memories.“
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Two albums already noticed in other selections or awards: we had the pleasure of awarding Boys the first Claude Vistel Prize for heritage comics for First Print Awardsand the album also competes in the heritage selection of the next FIBD. Victory Parade reached the final of the selection of Prix Comics of theACBD. And since we are not sectarian, here are also the six other awarded albums:
- Grand Prize: Comrade Cuckoo, a German animal in the German forest, by Anke Feuchtenberger (Futuropolis)
- Out of Competition Prize and Tribute: Social Fiction, by Chantal Montellier (Les Humanoids Associés)
- Extraordinary Prize: Tonight, It’s a Nightmare, by Nicole Claveloux (Editions Cornélius)
- Influence Prize: Simone de Beauvoir: I want everything from life, by Julia Korbik and Julia Bernhard (Steinkis editions)
- Society Prize: What I know about Rokia, by Quitterie Simon and Francesca Vartuli (Futuropolis)
- Poetry Prize: Human, by Joanna Folivéli, (Deux Points editions)
So many welcome reading ideas to start the year off right! THE Artemisia Prize will be presented during a ceremony which will take place on January 9, 2025.
