I know very little about Ravi Thornton and Andy Hixon‘s upcoming The Tale of Brin and Bent and Minno Marylebone which Cape are publishing this summer, other than what the description says. But look at that cover. Yes, I know, we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover and all that, except I can tell you that not only do many readers pay great import to how a cover looks and how it makes them feel, so do we booksellers. And this one stopped me dead, I just loved the look of it and the sensation it gave me, a style somewhere between a wonderfully odd animation by the Brothers Quay and the art of Dave McKean. And over the years I’ve learned to listen to that little intuition that sometimes just tells me that a book is going to be one I want to read, even before I know much about it. And I think this is going to be one of those books. Straight onto my Must Read list…

The Art of Pho – motion comic trailer from Submarine Channel on Vimeo.

Now Julian has a new work coming from Cape, I’m Never Coming Back, a collection of interconnected short stories taking place across three continents and I’m delighted to say that today we have Julian talking us through a little of his new work:

Books take a long time to come out.

That’s just the nature of the beast. So when my first book with Jonathan Cape, The Art Of Pho, came out in 2010 I had already began to crack on with the second. My initial idea (and maybe something I will do in the near future) was constructed around a book of postcards. I proposed the idea to Dan Franklin at Cape who wasn’t sure it was a Cape thing but encouraged me to work on a book of short stories.

I had greatly admired Rutu Modans collection of short stories in ‘Jamiliti’ and one of my most treasured and dog eared books is the complete collection of short stories by J G Ballard. I wanted the book to sit somewhere between the two, but have the stories linked much in the same way as Robert Altmans ‘Short Cuts’ works, with stories brushing against each other.

The stories themselves draw upon a similar theme as ‘Pho’.. loss, food and travel and were greatly affected by a number of events that occurred during the drawing of the project.

I start with scrappy little ideas written down in note books. Often done in a flurry of activity. I might go a week or so of staring at a blank page or laying on the floor, as my old tutor at art school advised with mental blockages, followed by a a few days of intense scribbling. Then I close the book and leave it for a bit before returning to have a look at where I got to, what characters, scenarios still resonate, I ditch the rest and start to write.

Next I thumbnail out the pages, very rough and very quickly and move and push the story around on the page. After this I might work up a few pages in some detail in black ink but the vast majority of the pages remain very rough before I scan and work them up in the computer.

(Above: Rough sketch book work, below: Inked work scanned in computer and Final colour page - all art and pics in this post by and (c) Julian Hanshaw)

When I go to events such as Comica I’m always made to feel a little guilty by the amount of drawing people do in note books, having sketched things on their journey up etc etc. Drawing for me is quite a private thing.I tend to take reams of photos and keep scrap books from newspapers and magazines as my reference launch point. I print off the images I have gathered, retreat to my ‘war room’ where I lock the door and stick them on a wall and begin to draw.

(above: image from scrap book; below: photo of my wife looking from a plane window and enjoying a Bloody Mary. Image to inspire inside page of ‘I’m Never Coming Back’)

(Diverse locations: above: image from scrap book - Johnston Atoll; below: Camber Sands. The sign features frequently in the book)

My original pen and paper drawings are scanned into my PC and I then begin to draw with a tablet, which to some I know is seen as a ‘cop out’ or perhaps not in the spirit of ‘comics’ but it suits my approach and frankly the skittish nature of my mind, so I can come back and change colours etc.

You work in a way that suits you best! The downside is that I don’t end up with a lot of inked pages I might be able to sell… Also being somewhat dyslexic it helps that I can keep changing the text as it can be a long process correcting reams of mistakes.

Everything is drawn and coloured as I would do on a piece of paper, no ‘paint buckets’ filling the lines, as I want breaks in the colour and broken lines, moving it away from a computer file. I draw every line, every cross hatch, no digital reproductions etc…honest.

The use of colour is fundamental to my work. I do enjoy working with just pen and ink and think the works of say Joe Sacco, Nate Powell, Dave Cooper and Tony Millionaire are things of utter beauty.

But I am always drawn in by colour. I remember as a child, often buying comics lured in by the colour front covers only to feel somewhat dissapointed when I would remove them from their plastic bags to see the innards were black and white. Clearly it scarred me!

Notable favourite use of colour are Shaun Tan’s ‘Lost Thing’ with its use of sun drenched streets and cool shadows. Seths ‘George Sprott’ an outstanding use of a minimal palette. M Sasek’s ‘This Is The Way To The Moon’ which, like my Ballard book, is well thumbed. Also Chris Ware, Dan Clowes George Herriman, Priit Parn….there are however too many to list.

With I’m Never Coming Back, due to its number of locations and indeed time, I have been able to play with the palette. With ‘Sand Dunes…’ its a rather sepia-looking piece, reflecting both the nostalgic feel of childhood and also the dusty inviroment of Denge.

With the story set on Johnston Atoll I wanted to give it a feel of an old sun bleached image left too long in a shop window, this is where his memory is filled with light even if the words remain out of grasp. Countered with the cold loneliness of his mundane bungalow where everything is painfully real..

I don’t really want to break down the stories and talk too much about each one as sometimes I find shining too much light on a book/song etc can undermine it. I know there are some songs that when the meaning or the reason for its existance has been explained, I’ve never been able to enjoy it as much.

However, I will say just a few things on each tale:

BERLIN:

I live in a village near Rye on the south coast and had recently been to Berlin for the first time. I was utterly smitten with the city and it warmed my heart that it was just a number of train rides away. An ode to the Euro Star if you will, the train in general and my desire to spend more time in Berlin.

(above: Berlin, U Bahn entrance as seen in the first short story)
HEATHROW:

I did live in New Zealand and have a tendency for my sentences to rise at the end every now and again. I have a love/hate relationship with airports and flying. They are simply buildings and a nature defying act that have to be tolerated for the pay-off at the end of the flight. Also I’m often filled with an unsettling feeling of awe and melancholy when I travel, and Heathrow with its relentless churn was perfect for an area of limbo, a place where senses are heightened and a world of possibilities lay through the departure gates.

(above: early rough from sketch book. This page stayed pretty much the same in the final version)

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES:

Truth or Consequences in New Mexico or T or C as its known, is a small town in the high desert that I happen to drive through a number of years ago and soon became aware that just some 30 miles north Richard Branson was building his Galactic Space Port. The future seemed to be leap frogging this small town.

WINCHELSEA:

As I’ve mentioned I live by the coast in an area that is Britain’s only desert and has an other worldly feel. It has the sound mirrors of Denge (more later), a huge firing range where when I’m cycling at night you can see the flares and tracer rounds in the distance, but I guess it is odd for its normality. After years of living in South London where everything is cranked up to 10, down here, there is just a strange humming of oddness…I would not be surprised to see a fella dressed as a deep sea diver, who everyone had just excepted, and then you also shrug your shoulders and think ”…sure….why not?’…

(above: photo of my local beach; below: me at Lydd firing range, between Camber and Dungeness. The strange limbo nature of this range inspired more than one story in the book)

TUCSON:

Tucson. Ahh Tucson. Another place that the more time I spend there the happier I am . Of course I’m not naive enough to forget that I’m on holiday there and so everything feels good: I can stay up late drinking and eat Tacos at 4am if I wish. With this in mind I wanted to put someone in the position of having their hand forced and never coming home from holiday. Maybe something we all theorise about after the third margarita… but that’s just the booze talking …isn’t it?

(above: photo of my room at The Congress, below: sketch from 4th AV, Tucson)

CHRISTCHURCH:

I lived in Christchurch when I was in New Zealand. As a child we would have earth quake drills where we would have to ‘duck and cover’ and get under our desks when a low rumbling noise was played through the PA that linked all the classrooms. The story was written before the unfortunate and horrific earthquakes that shattered the city in 2011. The hotel in the last panel sits right at the base of mount Teide and when staying there, having an over active imagination and being an eternal pessimist I was expecting the volcano to crack open the island at any time sending the wave tearing into the Eastern Sea board of the US, which they think it will do at some point.

DENGE:

Having first submitted The Art Of Pho to Cape Dan liked it but could not commit to it. I reworked it and re- submitted it; again Dan rejected it but suggested I try for the Observer/Comica award. I had already pencilled something but this rejection fuelled my desire to prove to myself that my decision to leave the world of animation where I had worked for some 13 years was the right one and not as it seemed then, a rather rash option. Upon hearing I had won the award with ‘Sand Dunes and Sonic Booms’ I seem to remember I got a little giddy and needed a lie down.

(above: photo from the Denge Sound Mirrors open day I attended; below: roughs from the sketch book)

JOHNSTON ATOL:

The final story is an ode to Test Match Special. I adore cricket and would happily be playing on any given day during the summer and to that effect I play indoor cricket during the winter. Its like ‘Fight Club’ where a group of addicts get together and get our fix before summer comes back round.

When the cricket is coming from hotter foreign climes I adjust my work schedule around the cricket, often for a number of weeks I end up in a nocturnal pattern with TMS on at all times. This story encompass my love and my deepest fear. This is the one place I had/have not visited so relied on a lot of Google images and the like.I hope that one day I might be able to stand at the end of one of the huge runways that criss cross the island and perhaps play a classic cover drive.

FPI would like to thank Julian for taking the time to talk us through some of what inspired the stories in his forthcoming collection; I’m Never Coming Back is published next month by Jonathan Cape. You can keep up with Julian’s latest work and news via his website.

One of the comics works I am most looking forward to this spring is Guy Delisle’s Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City, coming from D&Q in the US and Canada and Cape in the UK. I love the unassuming and unpretentious way in which Delisle actually lets himself live in the other culture that he is writing about, not judging, just taking it in and then reproducing it in a lovely, deceptively simple but very effective art style that makes those other lands, peoples and cultures very accessible and understandable. His previous comics-as-travel-lit works like Pyongyang and especially his Burma Chronicles are among my favourite comics works and I am excited to see what he makes of the Holy City that has been a crossroads of history, culture, trade and faith for centuries. Our chums at D&Q have dropped us a line to say that Guy is embarking on his first ever North American tour, from NYC to Boston to Los Angeles and north of the border to lovely Toronto. I am quite jealous – if you are in one of these cities do yourself a favour, get the book and go see Delisle.

NYC Tuesday, April 24th 7PM Housing Works with Desert Island

BOSTON Wednesday, April 25th 7PM Harvard Bookstore (Cambridge)

WASHINGTON DC Thursday, April 26th DC 7:30PM Politics & Prose

LOS ANGELES Saturday, April 28th LA 5:30PM Skylight Books

IOWA CITY Monday, April 30th 7PM Prairie Lights

MINNEAPOLIS Tuesday, May 1st 7:30PM Magers & Quinn

CHICAGO Wednesday, May 2nd 7PM At the Oak Park Library with Book Table

TORONTO Thursday, May 3rd 7PM Carlton Cinema with TCAF

TORONTO Saturday, May 5th & Sunday May 6th Toronto Comics Art Festival

And in the meantime you can always check out Guy’s website, which is also available in English, here, and Foreign Policy has a substantial set of preview pages from Jerusalem online to whet our appetites, have a look.

By Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot

Jonathan Cape

Mary Talbot’s father is described on the very first page as “my cold mad feary father“. It sets a tone, establishes the essence of James S. Atherton, noted Joycean scholar, and writer of perhaps the greatest book on Finnegan’s Wake published. But here, he’s first and foremost Mary’s father, and fairly typical in many ways of fathers of post-war Britain. Cold, distant, a figure engulfed by smoke in another room, someone to visit rather than play with.

It quickly becomes obvious, in the gentle, sepia toned pages detailing Mary’s childhood that her father felt far more at home in his literary world than he did in the bustling, boisterous house beyond. His work always seemed to come first, his anger quick to rise, his isolation, always shrouded in smoke, a cold, distant figure of authority. The tap, tap, tap of the typewriter a continual presence:

Yet there were moments where he let affection through, where the cold, distant scholar became a father, for just a little while, as Talbot says; “his moments of full attention were magical …. but he was still my feary father“. It’s this contrast, the sadness you can read into the words that gives the tale such power.

But Dotter isn’t just about Atherton and Talbot’s childhood, this graphic novel carefully, intricately, delicately, expertly weaves it’s way through two lives, all connected by father and daughters.

As well as her own life growing up in 50s Northern England, Talbot details the life of James Joyce’s daughter Lucia. The differences are obvious; a Northern middle class upbringing of post-war Britain in nostalgic sepia contrasts vividly against the literary glory of Joyce’s world, money spent before received, never staying long, continually transient, eventually washing up in Paris, where Joyce’s star was on the rise. But so was his daughters in time, her life as Joyce’s “dotter”, the ever-present assistant was nearly left behind for a promising life as a dancer, her absolute passion sadly cut short through injury.

Just like Atherton, Joyce was never the supportive father, another link to Mary Talbot and her own “cold mad feary father“. This man who lived in such changng times, who wrote such modern works could never see beyond a woman’s role as wife and mother. Lucia’s dancing dream was a mere phase, something silly and to be put aside for marriage in his eyes. And the loss of her dream is what did for her in the end, a life played out in institutions, her mind as lost as her dreams of dancing.

It’s all about fathers and daughters, and the oft times troubled relationship between them. Both Atherton and Joyce were driven, obssessive characters, consumed by their work, priorities switched round, children coming second too often. Both men were capable of tremendous moments of tenderness and care, but just as Atheron would swiftly return to his smoke filled room and Joyce, Lucia would all too quickly find her father would all too quickly leave and be back to Joyce as well.

What really makes Dotter Of Her Father’s Eyes so compelling is the manner in which the biographical sits alongside the social commentary; the changing times, the gender politics, the way both writer and artist seemlessly mark the passage of years. And there’s a sense of great empowerment, alongside great loss, the memoir and the social commentary. Seeing Mary’s world change, seeing how she not only survived her father’s world but moved on, succeeding where Lucia could not. The final section, as we see Lucia’s descent to institutionalised madness contrasts markedly with Mary’s uplifting release from her childhood – that’s the magical, wonderful moment.

The contrasting tales mesh so well, as the narrative shifts from one to the other, their young lives playing out, if not in harmony, then certainly in sympathy. Both have young loves, both dream, both aspire to be more than their fathers really ever want them to be. But sadly it’s only Mary who breaks free, only Mary who comes out of it all intact and happy.

Surprisingly it also becomes, for those of us with daughters, something of a teaching manual as well. I’m nothing like the father my father was, nothing like Atherton, but here there’s a two-page sequence where I can see a little bit of myself and my reaction to my Molly.

Two pages that made me sit up and analyse my own parenting, worry that perhaps this was something I could be guilty of, and caused me to alter how I deal with my own daughter. So as good as Dotter is as social commentary, it’s unexpected role as parenting self help book is what will stay with me.

Bryan Talbot’s art is visually as rich and interesting as his wife’s story. Had I not known this was Bryan Talbot I don’t really think I’d have realised. The man can alter styles so well, and this Euro-styled clear line meets classic British comic art is something very different from his work previously. And it’s a really, really gorgeous style, full of warmth, beautifully detailed.

The brilliance of Talbot’s art comes from the simplest of things; the decision to make each time period – Mary and Bryan in the now, Mary’s childhood and that of Lucia, a different colour scheme, different framing style, different page layout. It’s obvious, yet simple, and so effective as to float past without question, the eyes and mind simply understanding, without thought, what the artist intended. Brilliance.

Likewise the choice of colours is a master-stroke. Full colour marks out the modern of course, but Mary’s childhood is soft pencil line, sepia toned English rural scenes, as though we were drifting dreamily back there ourselves. And Lucia’s life is rendered in blue, something that accentuates the more extravagent lifestyle so neatly.

In switching between the triple threads; present day remembrances, cream coloured childhood, and Lucia’s blue tinged childhood, both Talbots create something rather exquisite, flowing from time to time deftly and with grande grace. As well as a memoir of two childhoods, this is a work of deft social commentary. And so beautifully done, a beautiful tale of fathers and daughters, of changing society, changing times, illustrated so perfectly by an artist absolutely at the peak of his powers.

Dotter impressed, Dotter amazed, Dotter is a wonderful piece of graphic memoir. As good as the masterpiece of the social commentary meets biography that is Raymond Briggs’ Ethel And Ernest? No, not at all. That has every moment of intense social commentary that Dotter has, it has all the personal revelation and growth, all the moments of changing times…. and it has more, much more, it has a love story more powerful than any other I’ve ever read and I can barely think of it without tearing up just slightly. I’ve read it many times, and never been less than weeping by halfway through.

Still, by my reckoning that makes Dotter of her Father’s Eyes the second best graphic memoir of social commentary I’ve ever read … that’s no mean feat.

The Art of Pho – motion comic trailer from Submarine Channel on Vimeo.

For this first Commentary of 2012 I’m quite delighted to be welcoming to the blog a writer who may be making her graphic novel debut but who is certainly no stranger to other forms of writing and certainly intimately familiar with the lovely world of literature. Please welcome Doctor Mary Talbot who tells us about one of the books that has been on my Must Read radar for several month, ever since her husband and collaborator on the book, Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, was kind enough to show me some pages last year. I know quite a few of you are also looking forward to reading Dotter, which is published by Cape at the start of February, so without further ado I will hand over to Mary and Bryan to tell us more about what promises to be an unusual and fascinating work combining biographical elements, literature, gender, history, society and more:

Dotter of her Father’s Eyes presents two coming-of-age stories, taking place at different points in the twentieth century. By intertwining these stories, I explore aspects of social history:  gender politics and social expectations, shifting notions about ‘acceptable’ behaviour.

The idea for the book started when I took early retirement, giving me more time to write. Bryan suggested I try my hand at autobiographical writing, producing a graphic novel script that he would illustrate. Some previous plans of his for a collaboration had sadly fallen through, with the untimely death of the Australian narrative poet, Dorothy Porter. He suggested a couple of draft titles: ‘James Joyce and Me’ and ‘What a Piece of Work’ (actually the title of one of Porter’s books). To be honest, I was a bit bemused at the prospect of autobiography. ‘Whoever would want to know?’ I thought, ‘So, my father was a Joycean scholar, so what?’ I gave it some thought anyway and, vaguely aware that Joyce had a daughter, I looked into that as a possible angle. As it happened a biography of Lucia Joyce had come out not long before (Carol Shloss’s Lucia Joyce: To Dance at the Wake, published Farrar Straus Giroux). I was blown away by the tragedy of Lucia’s story – that was what I was interested in writing about. It’s that biography that I’m reading in this train journey scene, part of the opening sequence:

As you can see, there’s a transition from present to remembered past. I love the colour/sepia contrast. In the script the description for the bottom panel was just something like ‘heap of boys playfighting’. Bryan introduced the small girl watching them. It improves the character focus a lot. He did that with quite a few panels – adding the young me as the viewing subject.

I really enjoyed evoking life in northwest England in the 1950s and 60s. I wanted to bring out how different it was, how much has changed. Television was still quite a novelty; not many homes had one. I nearly included my first experience of the moving image at age five: traumatised by going to see Bambi! It didn’t fit in, though. Shame.

The nuances of class differences were something else I wanted to evoke. Those fine distinctions, between people living in the same neighbourhood, must totally mystify outsiders: taste in interior décor, eating habits, the presence of books.

We added a few footnote comments. The first of them is on this page. I wasn’t keen on the way Bryan had drawn my mother – in an apron as worn by the stereotypical 1950s American housewife! So we made a joke of it. I like the way it highlights the collaboration and adds an element of meta-textual commentary.

Gender politics is a key concern of the book. In the two storylines – Lucia’s and my own – I show how gender expectations constrain girls and women. Lucia matures to become an accomplished performer of modern dance. This makes her altogether too modern for her mother, who dislikes her aspirations for a professional life and frequently belittles them. Father and daughter are closer, but he is apparently oblivious to her plans. The consequences for Lucia are tragic. In my case, the fact that boys and girls are supposed to be and do different things was first forced on me when I started school. This is what we’ve represented on Page 17 here:

It’s odd – I used to use this scenario in seminars, talking about gender segregation with students (I taught on gender and language for decades). I could have done with this page as a visual aid! At the school I went to, difference was quite literally inscribed in stone.

Bryan and I both grew up in Lancashire – Wigan, to be precise – and my schooling was Catholic. A distinctive feature of that particular cultural milieu in the 1950s and 60s was the annual ‘Walking Day’, as represented on Page 22. Here’s also some of the visual reference Bryan was drawing on to produce the page:

After scrounging old photo albums from my family, I scanned quantities of pictures that Bryan then made selections from. The collage of photo fragments is what he worked from at the drawing board.

Bryan was making scripting suggestions from the start, but it was once he started bringing the script to life on the page that his enrichment of the story really started to shine though. The staircase page is a fine example of how his visualisations went beyond my expectations. It’s a lovely piece of design, while telling the story beautifully.

I had a lot of fun researching les années folles in 1920s Paris. Lucia and her family were right there in the thick of things, living in the centre of Paris. The place must have been positively thrumming with creative activity. Lucia developed a passion for modern, expressive dancing, eventually performing it herself. One of her teachers was Margaret Morris (a pioneer of dance as therapy and still a big name today). She became something of a role model. The page below shows Lucia seeing her dance for the first time:

Lucia’s tragic story must have been getting to me, because I actually dreamed this image! What astonished me was that Bryan actually drew it, on the basis of my two or three line description (and a certain amount of arm waving).

There’s a mass of biographical material available on James Joyce and his family, but there isn’t that much directly about Lucia, apart from the biography by Shloss I’ve mentioned. I needed to maintain focus on Lucia not her father or others in the family. They were such a dysfunctional family, it was hard not to get sidetracked. Then I had decisions about how much to include on Lucia’s mental illness, incarcerations and treatments. Eventually I decided to represent them over just a few pages, as a single cataclysmic event.

Bryan adds:

I developed a style that I thought suited the material and the artwork is coded so that the reader is in no doubt as to which thread they are reading. The few present-day sequences are drawn in clear line style with flat colours. The autobiographical sequences are in soft B pencil and watercolour wash on textured watercolour paper, with touches of spot colour. In Photoshop, I made the washes sepia and the paper pale yellow. The Joyce family sequences are inked with a dip pen and shaded with a watercolour wash, tinted blue in Photoshop, on smooth paper. I used spot colour in Mary’s sections to approximate the way that memory renders some things more vivid that others.

I had to do a lot of research in order to evoke the atmosphere of Paris of the 20s and 30s, and Lancashire in the 50s and 60s. I also, of course, could draw on my own memories of Wigan and of Mary’s family home.

Regarding Page 37, mentioned by Mary above, the staircase was based on one I’d seen recently inside the Courtauld Institute of Art, where I’d attended an academic conference on comics.

Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes by Mary and Bryan Talbot is published in February by Jonathan Cape (UK) and Dark Horse (US). FPI would like to thank Mary and Bryan for kindly taking the time to tell us more about the book; you can also learn more from Mary’s own site here and Bryan’s site here. Mary was also kind enough to share some of her favourite works of 2011 recently in our annual guest Best of the Year posts, you can see what graphic novels, books and films took her fancy here. Mary and Bryan will be doing a signing in London’s fine Orbital Comics on February 3rd at 5pm and Orbital is also hosting an art exhibition from the book from February 2nd to March 2nd.

Jonathan Cape are celebrating 5 years of their Graphic Short Story Prize by releasing Shorties! – a 125 page e-book collecting together both the winning entries from the first 5 years and a selection of the best entries selected by Bryan Talbot.

The collection cover is of course by Adam Cadwell, whose thoughts on it, and his cover design process, can be seen at his blog. Shorties also includes Adam’s 2007 entry Spilt Soda.

Shorties! is available to read in many ways… online and iBooks version here or in full at the Guardian website here.

But first, a couple of my faves that made it into the book….

Jim Medway

Laurie J Proud

Paul Gravett kindly lets us know that the Observer/Cape/Comica graphic short story competition and prize will be continuing this year, the fifth time it will have run, which is good news for Brit comics and comics creators. I did worry that in our current climate of slashing cutbacks that something like this might have been vulnerable and I am glad to see instead they plan to build on the previous years and continue with it. From this year’s description:

“For its fifth year, The Observer/Cape/Comica Graphic Short Story Prize  has just been announced, inviting UK residents to submit a four-page comic on any theme, with the winner receiving £1,000 (the runner-up £250) and getting their story published in The Observer Review and on the Guardian and Vintage websites. This Prize has really galvanised the creative comics scene in this country, stimulating more people to try their hand at sequential art to express themselves. It has also led to several fresh British voices having their debut graphic novels published by Jonathan Cape.

Regular jury members Observer literary critic Rachel Cooke, Random House Creative Director Suzanne Dean, Cape publisher Dan Franklin, Paul Gravett, Comica Festival director, are joined this year by the pioneer of UK graphic novels Bryan Talbot, of Luther Arkwright, Alice In Sunderland and Grandville fame, and David Nicholls, acclaimed author of One Day and a writer for film, television and theatre.”

The Graphic Short Story prize is a cracking way for new talent to try their luck and also a nice boost to the profile of the British comics scene and some of the brilliant talent we have in our islands, not only offering some support to creators but raising the profile of the medium to a wider audience outside the comics community (and kudos to the Observer and Guardian, they have been very good at reviewing and supporting graphic novels for a good while, well done them).

(a page from In Room 208, last year’s winner, by and (c) Stephen Collins)

The deadline for the 2011 competition is the 14th of October – full details can be gleaned from the Cape site and you can see some of the previous winner’s works here. You can listen in to a conversation Paul had with Stephen Collins, winner of last year’s prize, here. And as always do let us know if you are entering and share your entry online, we’d love to have a round-up of some of the entrants, there are always some great short comics works and it would be nice to highlight them. As usual the winner will be announced during November’s Comica Festival in London; Paul is also telling us that they hope to have an exhibition of winners and various entrants to go along with this, I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about that later on in the year.

A new collection of Daniel Clowes work coming soon from Jonathan Cape? Oh yes, indeedy! Mister Wonderful: a Love Story, collects the tale first serialised in the New York Times Magazine, plus some forty pages of new material, following Marshall: middle-aged, unemployed and divorced, waiting nervously for a blind date with Natalie, a woman his sole remaining friend (his ex-wife having taken the rest) has set him up with. Except she doesn’t appear after ten minutes, twenty, half an hour, an hour… Marshall finds himself looking at any single woman coming in wondering if one may be Natalie, wondering if the entire thing was a mistake to even try, when she finally does arrive late, apologising. And it’s then that things really start to begin.

Well, that’s what they tell us about the story, but let’s be honest -  they had us at new Daniel Clowes collection, didn’t they?

(all art by and (c) Daniel Clowes, Mister Wonderful published in the UK by Jonathan Cape in April)