James Sturm and Joe Sutphin’s adaptation of Richard Adams’ 1972 novel Watership Down was announced as the seventh recipient of the Association of French Comics Critics and Journalists’ (ACBD) annual Prix Comics award for English-originated material. Translated into French by Pierre Clinquart and Hélène Charrier, it was published by Monsieur Toussaint Louverture in April this year. Watership Down’s French publisher will receive the prize at a ceremony in late October, during the weekend of St Malo’s Quai des bulles festival.
ACBD said about Sturm & Sutphin’s graphic novel (translation via DeepL):
“It is a story that is both terribly human and yet deeply animalistic, brought to life in words and drawings by Sturm and Sutphin. They have adapted the work with powerful sincerity. In a project capable of bringing together readers on both sides of the Atlantic, they make this dark and uncompromising tale even more accessible through precise drawings and immersive coloring.”
Watership Down, first released in English by Puffin in 2023, beat pretty tight – and varied – competition on the shortlist including the French editions of Craig Thompson’s Ginseng Roots (Casterman); Becky Cloonan & Tula Lotay’s Somna (Delcourt); James Tynion IV, Fernando Blanco and Jordie Bellaire‘s Worldtr33 (Urban Comics); and Juni Ba & Chris O’Halloran’s Robin: The Boy Wonder (Urban Comics).
Begun in 2019, Prix Comics is one of several awards bestowed by the Association of French Comics Critics and Journalists (l’Association des Critiques et journalistes de Bande Dessinée, ACBD), whereby nominees and winners are selected by member ballot. All eligible books had to have been published in French between August 2024 and July 2025.
Prix Comics, which selects the best work published in French sourced from the Anglophone sphere (USA, UK, Australia etc), complements the ACBD Prix Asie of translated work sourced from Asia (Japan, China, Korea, etc). Last year’s Prix Comics ACBD recipient was Will McPhail’s 2021 graphic novel In (Mariner Books), which was published in French by 404 Graphic as Au-dedans, in 2024.
[Ed. note: Corrected “sixth” to “seventh” in first sentence]
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