At Angouleme, Swiss artist Panchaud wins the award for best comics album.

Swiss artist and writer Martin Panchaud won the Fauve d’Or for the best album of the year at France’s prestigious Angouleme International Comics Festival on Saturday.

His book, “The Color of Things”, tells its story using the codes of video games, with characters represented by coloured circles. It was originally published in German.

Earlier this week, Franco-Syrian cartoonist Riad Sattouf picked up the festival’s highest accolade, the Grand Prix, for his autobiographical series “The Arab of the Future”.

With the festival this year celebrating its 50th edition, a special prize went to Japan’s Hajime Isayama, author of the global bestselling manga series “Attack on Titan”.

The 34-volume series has sold more than 100 million copies worldwide since the first album appeared in 2009.

Fellow Japanese manga creators Ryoichi Ikegami and Junji Ito received honorary awards at the festival, which featured exhibitions of their work.

Comic books are booming in France. Market research firm GfK said sales in 2022 for the first time accounted for more than 25 percent of the total book sales market.

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