One hundred authors from today, with either pencils or computer, confront themselves to one hundred creations belonging to the "Musée de la bande dessinée". Here is the simple idea as imagined by the "Cité internationale de la bande dessinée et de l'image", and expected to bear fruitful results, with the exhibition 100 per cent. In other words, it is a way of building an original bridge between present and past creation at the worldwide level.

Of course, the dialogue between today's creators and the great names of the past is primarily graphic. Practically, 700 plates from the "Musée de la bande dessinée" were selected and gathered in a specific online data base and one hundred authors from all over the world were each asked to echo the plate of their choosing among the data base in a plate of their own.

The authors had a carte blanche and could work freely, either paying a tribute or making a comment, a pastiche, a replica, an interpretation, etc.

In the end, the casting is quite impressive on both parts, past and present. There is a number of French and European authors, of course, but there are also numerous authors from America (North and South) as well as a significant group of Asian authors - notably Japanese, Korean and Chinese ones.
Between past masterpieces and contemporary innovations, legendary plates and enthusiastic or emotional tributes, the whole set creates a network of unexpected genealogies, as if to underline, between correspondences, filiations and allusions, the universal reach of comics.

Throughout this large exhibition, you may discover how echoes have formed between E.C. Segar and Florence Cestac, Moebius and Kazuichi Hanawa, Frank Bellamy and Jochen Gerner, Alberto Breccia and Lorenzo Mattotti, Milton Caniff and Jessica Abel, George Herriman and Jean-Christophe Menu, Uderzo and Kang Do-ha, Hergé and Goosens, Robert Crumb and Ahko, He Youzhi and Lee Hee-jae, Burne Hogarth and Matti Hagelberg, and so many others...

After Angoulême, the exhibition will go to Paris, and then Bilbao before travelling to other cities. For the occasion, all the plates (cultural documents and original creations) will be collected and published in a catalogue also including translations, technical notes and comments.