Comics & Graphic Novels

Cartoonist Kate Charlesworth presents a glorious pageant of LGBTQI+ history, as she takes us on a PRIDE march past personal and political milestones from the 1950s to the present day. Peopled by a cast of gay icons such as Dusty Springfield, Billie Jean King, Dirk Bogarde and Alan Turing, and featuring key moments such as Stonewall, Gay Pride and Section 28, Sensible Footwear: A Girl’s Guide, is the first graphic history documenting lesbian life from 1950 to the present. It is a stunning, personal, graphic memoir and a milestone itself in LGBTQI+ history. In 1950, when Kate was born, male homosexuality carried a custodial sentence. But female homosexuality had never been an offence in the UK, effectively rendering lesbians even more invisible than they already were—often to themselves. Growing up in Yorkshire, the young Kate had to find role models wherever she could, in real life, books, film and TV. A fascinating history of how post-war Britain transformed from a country hostile towards ‘queer’ lives to the LGBQTI+ universe of today, recording the political gains and challenges against a backdrop of personal experience: realising her own sexuality, coming out to her parents, embracing lesbian and gay culture, losing friends to AIDS. Kate’s ex-navy dad said to her: ‘You shouldn’t have told her, love… you should have just told me.’ But it turned out her mother might have known a bit more about life, too. Sensible Footwear: A Girl’s Guide has received many accolades since publication, awarded best graphic nonfiction by the Broken Frontier Awards 2019, longlisted for the Portico Prize in 2019 and shortlisted for the Comedy Women in Print Prize 2020.

Darryl Cunningham’s latest investigation takes us to the heart of free-world politics and the financial crisis, as he traces the roots of bankrupt countries to the domination of right-wing policies and the people who created them. Cunningham draws a fascinating portrait of the New Right and the charismatic Ayn Rand, whose soirees were attended by the young Alan Greenspan. He shows how the Neo-Cons hijacked the economic debate and led the way to a world dominated by the market. Smaller countries, such as Greece, have paid the price for joining a club that held impossible membership rules. He examines the neurological basis of political thinking and asks why it is so difficult for us to change our minds – even when faced with powerful evidence that a certain course of action is not working. Cunningham’s spare yet eloquent prose, perfectly complemented by the beauty and clarity of his artwork, delivers a devastating analysis of our economic world. Darryl Cunningham is also the author of Graphic Science (Myriad, 2017), Science Tales (Myriad, 2019) and Billionaires (Myriad, 2019).

In the 1940s a third of Baghdad’s population was Jewish. Within a decade nearly all 150,000 had been expelled, killed or had escaped. This graphic memoir of a lost homeland is a wordless narrative by an author homesick for a home she has never visited. Transported by the power of music to her ancestral home in the old Jewish quarter of Baghdad, the author encounters its ghost-like inhabitants who are revealed as long-gone family members. As she explores the city, journeying through their memories and her imagination, she at first sees successful integration, and cultural and social cohesion. Then the mood turns darker with the fading of this ancient community’s fortunes. The wolf, believed by Baghdadi Jews to protect from harmful demons, sees that Jewish life in Iraq is over, and returns the author safely back to London. This beautiful wordless narrative is illuminated by the words and portraits of her family, a brief history of Baghdadi Jews and of the making of this work. Says Isaacs: ‘The Finns have a word, kaukokaipuu, which means a feeling of homesickness for a place you’ve never been to. I’ve been living in two places all my life; the England I was born in, and the lost world of my Iraqi-Jewish family’s roots.’ Carol Isaacs will be touring The Wolf of Baghdad throughout 2019-2020 at various venues and festivals around England. For more information please check her blog. An excerpt of the book was longlisted for the 2018 Myriad First Graphic Novel Competition. The Wolf of Baghdad will be published in January 2020.

A chance spotting from the back of a refrigerated lorry of a poster marking Shakespeare’s 400th birthday spurs a refugee’s imagination to transport himself from his detention cell to a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at London’s Globe Theatre. As we move between the 21st and 17th centuries, Shakespeare introduces Hamid both to a promised new land, and to a series of well- known plays through which Hamid tells his own experiences: of interrogation, of his journey from home: crossing the sea, getting lost in the forest, his months spent in the Calais Jungle refugee camp, and his arrival in the UK in the back of a refrigerated lorry. In turn, Shakespeare teaches Hamid how to speak English and how to behave as he navigates the London Underground, and gives him a helping hand at the Home Office. The book is created in collaboration with award-winning theatre company Good Chance who have worked with Adin since meeting him in their pop-up dome in the Calais Jungle.

From the winner of the inaugural Myriad First Graphic Novel Competition, here is a darkly funny story of obsession, beautifully crafted in embroidery and lino-cut.

Getting yourself a girlfriend is easy, according to Richard. All you need is papier mache, string, soft material, a balloon, some old fashioned bellows, and a good pair of scissors. The difficult bit is keeping her secret.

Set in an English suburb in the early 1990s, The Black Project by Gareth Brookes is the story of Richard’s all-consuming passion for creating ‘girls’ from household objects. But as his hobby begins to flourish, his real-life friendships and family relationships deteriorate. Richard is an unreliable narrator, and the reader responds to his loneliness and his dogged attempt to find a companion while being horrified by his warped creations. The novel’s focus is on the divide between childhood and adulthood; where sex, perversion, and the grotesque feature in their many forms.

The world of Zara’s 15-day drug-induced coma, which she describes as ‘being trapped in a nightmare state that you can’t wake up from’ is rendered as a full-colour fantasy, with mythological creatures appearing out of nowhere as she battles to protect her three children against the forces of evil that threaten to engulf her. Meanwhile, her husband Dan tries to keep family life going as he faces the most difficult task of all: preparing the children for the likely loss of their mother. 

 An extract from COMA was shortlisted for the Myriad First Graphic Novel Competition 2018 and longlisted for LDComics Awards 2019.

During the cold war, the US government sought to establish an overseas military presence in the Indian Ocean. This graphic novel is a shocking account of British complicity in the forced exodus of the Chagos Islanders from their homeland to make that plan possible. Between 1965 and 1973 the inhabitants of the Chagos archipelago were forcibly removed from their homeland and dumped in Mauritius and Seychelles. Diego Garcia, the largest island in the group, was leased to the USA by the United Kingdom to accommodate the largest US military airbase outside the US mainland. The agreement continues until 2036. Florian Grosset’s searing account of the eviction, and the harsh life faced by the Chagossians after their displacement, looks back to the first generation of slaves who arrived on the archipelago and the lives of their descendants. It charts the present-day diaspora of Chagossians, their fight for the right to return through protests and court cases, and the different strategies still being used to keep them away from their land. Although in 2016, the British government denied the right of the Chagossians to return to the islands, the islanders continue to fight for the right to return, many of them now to a homeland they never knew. In February 2019, the International Court of Justice ruled that the UK decolonisation process of the Chagos islands was unlawful and that the UK should end its control of the Indian Ocean archipelago, which includes a US military base.

A moving, surprisingly funny, and inspiring graphic memoir by a woman who lost her two-year-old son after heart surgery, Billy, Me & You is a bracing and memorable account of recovery after bereavement. Nicola Streeten’s little boy, Billy, was two years old when he died following heart surgery for problems diagnosed only a few days earlier. Ten years later, Streeten revisited her diaries and notebooks made at the time: this wonderfully vibrant narrative recounts how she and her partner recovered. Gut-wrenchingly sad at times, her graphic memoir is an unforgettable portrayal of trauma and our reaction to it – and, especially, the humour or absurdity so often involved in our responses. As Streeten’s story unfolds and we follow her and her partner’s heroic efforts to cope with well-meaning friends and day-to-day realities, we begin to understand what she means by her aim to create a ‘dead baby story that is funny’. Streeten is the first British woman to have published a graphic memoir.

When Gina came into Ottilie’s life she hadn’t expected to fall in love and thought that was all behind her. She was unprepared for the emotional turmoil that would overcome her. For a start, Gina was a fox – or that’s what people said she was. How could she become so in love with a dog – which didn’t even look like one – when she had a husband and two children of her own? As we follow Ottilie’s love affair with Gina, we identify with the emotions and share heart-stopping anxiety when Gina goes missing. Ottilie has no wish to disguise her own state of besotted affection, and this beautifully observed study of human and dog is viscerally real. It will appeal to anyone who has ever had a dog, cat, budgie – or even a fox. Talking to Gina, a debut graphic memoir, has been based on hundreds of daily drawn records of Ottilie Hainsworth’s life. Her command of facial expressions and body language, of both humans and dogs, combined with a beautifully simple and fluid penstroke, and the direct, heartfelt epistolary text, draw the reader in to feel her love and pain.

Ari lives in a small town in Finland. He rarely leaves his apartment or has any visitors. He spends his days sleeping or sitting in front of the computer, chatting to his viewers and playing music on YouTube. His stream is continuous and compelling: there is something uniquely intimate about this unadulterated presentation of his self.

For over a year Muchitsch watched Ari’s live stream on Cyberman.tv. He was unaware of her project, but she interacted with him through anonymous online conversations using the pseudonym L.B._Jefferies – a reference to the protagonist of Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Rear Window’, who watches his neighbours across the courtyard – and embracing the analogy of Muchitsch’s own voyeurism. Cyberman is isolated in a frame on his stream as well as in Muchitsch’s beautifully painted panels on the page. The author also sits alone, in front of her computer screen, as she watches Ari through a frame and documents his life.

Colin is an ambitious door-to-door salesman on the verge of ‘making it’ as the owner of his own sales office. And the future is looking good. First thing I’m going to buy when I get my own office is a Porsche Boxster… But when the terms of his promotion change without warning, Colin and his team find themselves with just five days to achieve a new sales target – and to prevent his rival, Paul, from being promoted in his stead. Colin has to keep his disgruntled team from ‘negging out’ while a gang of ruthless debt collectors are getting even closer. Of course, everything is going to be fine, more than fine, in fact. Meanwhile, he runs out of coins in the phone box and the boss isn’t taking his calls. As Colin’s grasp on reality dissolves, we see how the relentless focus on positive thinking – in the face of exploitative management, pay and conditions – leads to delusion, vulnerability, failure and, finally, human tragedy. Set amidst the rain-lashed estates of southern England, The Opportunity is a darkly disturbing, stylish and compelling character study, set to become a classic of graphic noir.

Much is known about scientists such as Darwin, Newton, and Einstein, but what about lesser-known scientists – people who have not achieved a high level of fame, but who have contributed greatly to human knowledge? What were their lives like? What were their struggles, aims, successes, and failures? How do their discoveries fit into the bigger picture of science as a whole?

Overlooked, sidelined, excluded, discredited: key figures in scientific discovery come and take their bow in an alternative Nobel-prize gallery in a colourful novel by Darryl Cunningham.

Antoine Lavoisier: the father of French chemistry who gave oxygen its name, Lavoisier was a wealthy man who found himself on the wrong side of a revolution and paid the price with his life.

Mary Anning: a poor, working-class woman who made her living fossil-hunting along the beach cliffs of southern England. Anning found herself excluded from the scientific community because of her gender and social class. Wealthy, male, experts took credit for her discoveries.

George Washington Carver: born a slave, Carver become one of the most prominent botanists of his time, as well as a teacher at the Tuskegee Institute. Carver devised over 100 products using one major ingredient – the peanut – including dyes, plastics and gasoline.

Alfred Wegener: a German meteorologist, balloonist, and arctic explorer, his theory of continental drift was derided by other scientists and was only accepted into mainstream thinking after his death. He died in Greenland on an expedition, his body lost in the ice and snow.

Nikola Tesla: a Serbian American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. A competitor of Edison, Tesla died in poverty despite his intellectual brilliance.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell: a Northern Irish astrophysicist. As a postgraduate student, she discovered the first radio pulsars (supernova remnants) while studying and advised by her thesis supervisor Antony Hewish, for which Hewish shared the Nobel Prize in physics while Bell Burnell was excluded.

Fred Hoyle: an English astronomer noted primarily for the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis – the process whereby most of the elements on the Periodic Table are created. He was also noted for the controversial positions he held on a wide range of scientific issues, often in direct opposition to prevailing theories. This eccentric approach contributed to him being overlooked by the Nobel Prize committee for his stellar nucleosynthesis work.

Any one of these figures could have been awarded a Nobel prize. Not every scientific discoverer was lauded in their time, for reasons of gender, race, or lack of wealth, or (in the case of Lavoisier) being too wealthy: in the 21st century, there are many more reparations and reputations to be made.

Darryl Cunningham is also the author of Supercrash, Science Tales and Billionaires.

This is Marie. Excuse the hair – she’s had a long night. Armistead Maupin meets Ab Fab in this sparkling, sexy comedy of manners that celebrates the life and loves of Marie and a cast of LBGT characters. Marie is a girl with the gift of understanding, who is often misunderstood. At home and in her Catholic sixth form, she confounds family, friends and teachers with her innocent attempts to make everybody feel loved. As we follow Marie from the 1960s to the 1990s, we find out what it means to be a spirited young woman from a religious household who believes that maybe, just maybe, God doesn’t care what you do with your body as long as it makes you happy. Because really, what harm can come from loving people? With exuberant art and trademark lightness of touch, Jade Sarson shows us how attitudes to love, sexuality and religion have changed over the last fifty years. A beautiful Japanese-influenced graphic novel, this is the debut by the winner of the Myriad First Graphic Novel Competition 2014.

A unique graphic novel of a small-town community creates a mini-Middlemarch with a Wicker Man twist in a beautifully drawn murder mystery. Blackwood is set in a rural town in middle England where the residents are determined to preserve the status quo – at any cost.

A pair of murders have occurred 65 years apart, uncanny echoes of each other, in the ancient woods beside Blackwood. Evidence and local lore suggest overtones of ritual or of the occult, but despite thorough police investigations, no charges are made. Peg, in her nineties, and her great-grandson, 11-year-old Mason, hold clues to the town’s secrets, but Peg’s dementia dismisses her as unreliable, and no-one wants to listen to a child. Hannah Eaton deftly handles her cast of townspeople with warmth, humour, and humanity, reserving special sympathy for the outsiders – both victims and investigators – who dare to penetrate the community’s closed doors.

Blackwood gradually reveals the dark soul of a town where local politics and the human heart conspire to preserve its way of life at the expense of truth or justice. Blackwood both harks back to days of folklore and is a harbinger of future times in the political landscape we now find ourselves living in.

Hannah Eaton’s second graphic novel follows her much-acclaimed debut, Naming Monsters (2013); an excerpt from it was shortlisted for the 2012 Myriad First Graphic Novel Competition and for the Graphic Scotland 9th Art Award.