I've always fantasized about moving to France. I've visited often and even lived at times with friends in Paris and various towns around the country. Most of my books have been published there, and the comics community in France is a family. Everyone knows everyone. At the many comic shops and festivals I've been to over the years I have consistently received warm welcomes. I suppose you could say I'm a Francophile when it comes to comics.
One month ago I was having a signing at a little comic-book shop in the 11th arrondissement in Paris. It was rainy out and not a lot of people showed up, but the mood was good, and the shop owner was more than hospitable. There was another American author there, cosplaying as "unemployed man." We were both signing, drawing, and chatting with the shop's clients. After the signing we all headed to a little Korean restaurant nearby to talk comics and drink Korean beer. It was a good time, something that seems to happen often when I'm in that city in the company of other comic-book lovers.
The following day I met up with my friend Nicolas in the same neighborhood. We walked down the little boulevards and sleepy alleyways talking comics. During the stroll we passed through the narrow Rue Nicolas Appert. A month later, terrorists would come to that same street, shouting praise to Allah and executing their victims. I had no idea at the time that we were walking right below the editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo. My friend told me all that later.
The methodical, horrific murder of the Charlie Hebdo team is a bigger deal for the French than most of us realize. The French live and breath comics; they have a special relationship with them, a relationship that goes back to childhood, when they were reading Asterix and TintinÑFranco-Belgian staples of the medium. This massacre, for some, was like seeing a beloved part of their childhood assassinated.