The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Last weekend, the Observer/Cape Graphic Short Story prize was announced. Our post on it is here, together with rather a lot of comments. Even before the winner’s announcement I had been thinking it would be nice to put up a few of the “non-winners” as the quality of the work looked really high. But since the competition ended, more and more strips have been posted and there’s quite a heated conversation going on about the rights and wrongs of the winning entry.

So before we start looking at the “non-winners” I’d just like to clarify a couple of things:

1. The Cape/Observer competition was just that – a competition. The judges picked the winner based on their opinions. You might have picked differently. I might have picked differently. It doesn’t matter. The judges decision, as they say, is final.
2. This series of posts is not intended as a slight on the winner and runner-up, more a celebration of the quality around the competition this year.
3. And that title above is obviously tongue in cheek! Because, like it says on the Random House Graphic Short Story Prize page:

“We ended up receiving an absolutely record breaking number of entries this year. Quantity was without a doubt matched by quality and the judges … had an extremely hard task on their hands picking just two winners. The increase from two to four pages of the Observer Magazine allowed for the development of some fantastic narratives and ambitious artwork.”

So over the weekend we’ll be running a few of these “non-winners” for you and you can see for yourself exactly how high the quality was. We’ll just put the first pages – it’s then up to you to go and investigate further…..

One very nice idea that came from the comments on our original post, was Frances’ idea to set up a Cape/Observer Flickr photostream to showcase the entires. And here it is – and it’s filling up very quickly. Like most Flickr groups it requires registration, but that doesn’t take too long.

Also, Khaled Abou Alfa writes to let us know that he’s thinking of putting something together around the entries – details here.

Okay, these are the entries we’ve seen so far……

The Winner for 2009: Vivien McDermid – Paint (available to read here: page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4, or online here.)
Runner Up 2009: Joff Winterhart – Days of Bagnold Summer (available to read here: page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4.)

Khaled Abou Alfa – Coffee Beans
Dan Archer – The Right To Return
Francesca Cassavetti – Age Of Innoncence
Frances Castle – Sherwin’s Cottage
Jason Cobley & Simon Harrison Davies – Hugo The Zombie
Natalie d’Arbeloff – The D.O.B. Question
Rob Davis – How I Built My Father.
David Enker – The Sleeper.Paul Francis – Tower Hamlets
Moel Fox – Cow
Nigel Gilbert – Starcross’d
Hannah Forward – Richard
Key NG – Flu Fighters
Mickey Lam – Fwendly Fruit’s Zany Adventure
David Litchfield – Bill and Joyce
Jim Medway – Paul Crystal, Graphic Designer
James Milroy – Waiting For Banksy
David O’Connell – Blip
Luke Pearson – Some People
Aidan Potts – Ropomo
Laurie J Proud – Aubrey
Hugh “Shug” Raine – Maryl
John Riordan – Olympus School
Sally Romagueras – My White Dad.
Paul Shinn – Digital Love
Thorsten Sideb0ard
Martin Simpson – Tinned Peaches
Sion Smith and Charlotte Rose – Fire Sermon
Matilda Tristram – Sloth & Spiders
Maddy Vian – IDEAS
Andi Watson – Derek’s Dreadful Dungeon Diversion