Gilbert Pictures

We’re all on the alert for paying opportunities these days and I clearly wasn’t the only one to spot the Observer/Random House/ Comica Graphic Short Story competition.

I had a fledgling story that I thought could fly. An ageing ‘loner’ goes back to the village where he grew up and where the inhabitants have good reason to resent and fear his return. Told in first- person narrative, the picture panels initially show just the shadow cast by the protagonist onto the inhabitants and scene of the village. Only at the close is he actually shown, and then in the crucial landscape that made him what he is. These panels (hand rendered watercolours) were assembled into page compositions with text all in Photoshop.

Having seen the competition prize-winners posted this week it occurs to me that by comparison my entry must have appeared to the genteel judges as jarring, unpleasant, sexist and latently violent. And there I was thinking I had come up with quite a striking little number, a little bleak perhaps, but laced with some bitter chuckles.

What was happening here? Aren’t comics supposed to be jarring, unpleasant, violent and funny all at the same time? Here in the UK I’m thinking Beano (before emasculation), 2000AD, Viz, the If Chronicles…… And that’s just in my lifetime- the English tradition has always embraced the garish, the ribald, the gruesome, the grotesque, and been totally ‘upfront’ about it.

So I had clearly made a mistake, made a wrong call. These well-mannered winners are part of a new ‘form’ – they are this thing called ‘graphic short stories’. Looking at both this and last year’s winners there are clear characteristics to the form.

First and most obviously is the childlike ‘naif’ drawing and colouring that is complemented by the ‘teenage’ looped handwriting for lettering. I’m not sure whether this is a ‘style’ as such, maybe an affectation to distance the works from the accomplishments of cgi enhanced graphics (and all their values and associations) or an open acknowledgement of a limitation in technical skills that are no longer studied or taught in their traditional ‘hand-made’ manner? It could also be seen as charming, tactile, and, paradoxically for a shared style, individually expressive- clearly the judges all think so.

This ‘look’ entirely suits and draws out (sorry) the best in the subject matter. Parents and children (the getting of ‘golden’ moments), husbands and wives (eternal misunderstandings), pets and humans (sometime talking cats).

So I’ve learnt something but unless I undergo a change of heart both in inspiration and style I won’t be returning to this competition next year. It’s no place for my kind of stuff.