The "9ème art" of the Graphic Novel

Images from the Cité du Livre website

Festival de Bande Dessinée, Cité du Livre, Aix-en-Provence

For some reason I've never been here before. For some reason it's taken this bibliophile seven

months to figure out that there is a place in Aix-en-Provence devoted to literature, a place whose name in Google Translate produces variations on the theme of Book City, Book Estate and Book Ghetto.

The books, they are huge. We have discussed before how I feel about books. Books which I recently blabbered about in a vlog are here reproduced in thirty-foot-high concrete form and act as a simple external wall to the Book Ghetto. They are huge. I felt a few tears when I first saw them.

Hidden unjustly away behind the gare routière, the Cité du Livre played host this month to a graphic novel festival whose speakers ranged from authors to graffiti artists, and whose slightly shabby walls were transformed into booths full of first drafts, coloured panels and authors' notes, pop-up shops and travelling art shows in the back of old Citroën vans.

What brought me there was Jacques Ferrandez's new graphic novel version of Camus' L'Étranger. The existentialist classic, the handbook for absurdism and alienation, one of the twentieth century's greatest works, in a comic book? This I have to see. If anything, the immediacy of emotion communicated by something this well-drawn is perfect for Mersault's highly charged story. The exhibition shows different stages of the original artwork; first of the oppressive heat of Algeria, the warped face of Mersault's victim, then the cool, dreariness of the prison, in two different rooms. The second even has bars on the windows.

Outside, the sun is shining and the staff are sitting down to lunch. More giant books stand between us and the real world, and a couple of graffiti murals are taking shape. In other rooms, authors are signing books and giving talks, or professional screen-printers are giving demonstrations to hesitant members of the public. Wandering through it all is rather like stumbling into someone else's party, not entirely sure whether or not you should introduce yourself to the host.

But of course, the locals walk around like they are meant to be there, and even if they're not, they're going to stay anyway. Someone said there would be canapés. And look, George's booth is covered in monochrome stick-figure people, let's colour them in. The children's magazine has filled this exhibition space with illustrations that channel a child's imagination into blocky screen-prints, with stunning attention to detail and an interactive element which, they highlight, is "sans nouvelles technologies".

The distinction between graphic novel and comic book is an important one, and one which authors are prone to play with- Even Ferrandez allowed himself a few bubbled "Paow!"s in L'Étranger's beach scene. And Herr Seele, creator of Flemish legend Cowboy Henk, dances through this distinction so you can never really tell where he is. Another absurdist masterpiece, Cowboy Henk is a moral agent constantly improvising and hoping for the best- whether that means stripping down and getting on all-fours so a lonely cow doesn't feel so bad, or simply doing what he wants when propositioned in a lift - "And they said I should always take the stairs!"

With a wink and a flex of some cartoon muscles, Cowboy Henk distinguishes himself from Camus' Mersault, but not by much. These two characters are both making up morality as they go along, but exist in very different worlds. In the comic book – sorry – graphic novel world, Cowboy Henk is free to skip in and out of the X-rated section (and, yes, the exhibition has an X-rated section as well), while Mersault has to live either in the glaring sun or between prison walls.

A comic book or graphic novel done badly can reduce any story to the Piff-Paf-Pow! Of Batman and Robin, but done well, this is an incredibly resilient form of art and one which is too often overlooked. There being pictures involved by no means makes these stories simple or silly- though Asterix and Obelix were fighting the Romans with unusual amounts of gusto, they were expressing national tensions in the wake of the country's occupation during the second world war. There has even been a graphic novel interpretation of the Bible.

As for the Cité du Livre, I'll certainly be looking out for future events. It's often the case in France that big public events don't have a facebook event or really an online presence at all, but when you stumble into the party, there are always more than enough people there.