The Bulle en Herbe competition was created by Virgin Megastore both to support cartoon strips as a genre and to promote the creativity of young people working in this area. A major national competition was held between 1 October and 31 December 2006, aimed at all budding artists. The theme for this year's contest was "The Weekend", and Virgin received over 150 entries! The judging panel was chaired by Jean-Pierre Dionnet, who works with both Enki Bilal and Frank Margerin.

On Saturday 24 March 2007 at the Virgin Megastore stand at the Salon du Livre book fair in Paris, the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation awarded the first Bulle en Herbe prize to Hazaël-Massieux for his cartoon strip, "Les Pingouins", which features heroes in the tradition of Garfield and Snoopy. "The idea's a bit wacky," says the artist, "but these creatures have some characteristics that are very similar to people." By turns philosophers and poets, obsessed and depressed, one day the penguins decide to try out a whole new idea in their community: the weekend! 

For this first piece of work, Hazaël-Massieux was awarded prize money of 3,000 euros and his cartoons were published in the group's partner publications: Le Figaro magazine on 24 March 2007, the April issue of [dBD] magazine and issue no. 85 of Virgin! magazine on 4 April.

Although at age 31 Bernard Hazaël-Massieux's cartoon heroes are more likely to be Marc-Antoine Mathieu, Manu Larcenet and Christophe Blain than Snoopy and Garfield, he is still passionate about "this fantastic medium that allows you to tell all kinds of stories in either a realistic or an imaginary way...and humorously too!" Now a multimedia project manager in an advertising agency, at one time Hazaël-Massieux worked in the cinema, and he sees many similarities between cartoons and film, "because cutting and rhythm are very important to both." This passionate cartoon enthusiast has created his own blog all about cartoon strips, to which he has been contributing since June 2006.

To read his blog, please, click here