Blank Slate have 5 new books out this week, all ready for Thought Bubble at the weekend…. so here we are, at number 3 for the week. So far we’ve previewed Hector Umbra and Dinopopolous, and My Skateboard Life.
Time to look at one of THE books of the year, certainly the one that’s really caught the attention of the comic masses….
There’s been lots and lots of attention to Nelson over the last few weeks, and I really wanted to have a review of the book done already…. but life got in the darned way again. It has a habit of doing that.
However, I’ve had a look through, I’ve read the first few chapters, and I really, really can’t wait to read the rest. And yes, every penny of profits from the first print run of Nelson goes to Shelter, the housing and homelessness charity. Great book and money to a great cause. You really can’t go wrong.
“Nelson is a 250-page collaboration between 54 of the UK’s most exciting comic creators. It is an unprecedented experiment to create one complete story – a collective graphic novel.
London, 1968. A daughter is born to Jim and Rita Baker. Her name is Nel. This is her story, told in yearly snapshots. Each chapter records the events of a single day, weaving one continuous ribbon of pictures and text that takes us on a 43- year journey from Nel Baker’s birth to 2011.
Based on an original idea by Rob Davis and co-edited by Davis and Woodrow Phoenix, Nelson celebrates the incredible diversity of talent in British comics today. Creators known for their editorial and national newspaper strips unite with those from humour comics such as the Beano, The Dandy, and MAD Magazine joining a wealth of talent from children’s books, indie publishing and webcomics, with the science fiction and superhero worlds of 2000AD, Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse.
Part exquisite corpse and part relay race, Nelson spans decades of British history and a myriad of stylistic approaches in telling the story of one woman’s life by 54 creators, in 54 episodes, detailing 54 days. The result is a surprising and compellingly readable book that is sad, funny, moving, poignant, ridiculous, heartfelt, and real. This is a story like none you have seen before.”
These are just the pages from chapter one by Rob Davis, along with the very first image in the book from Paul Grist. I was going to do a quick look through the other artists, but we’ve already shown you enough of the other art here. On top of that if you fancy seeing a selection of pages, Alison at Space In Text has a lovely selection here.
But too much attention so far has been paid to the IDEA of Nelson, the exquisite corpse bit of it, the multiple artists involved. Not enough has been talked of the fact that it’s one complete story. And based on what I’ve already heard said, and the first few chapters I’ve read of it thus far, it’s a bloody great complete story…. and I wanted to show you the start of it:
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