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| Cover art by Rob Davis |
Nelson – Paul Grist, Rob
Davis, Woodrow Phoenix, Ellen Lindner, Jamie Smart, Gary
Northfield, Sarah McIntyre, Suzy Varty, Sean Longcroft, Warwick
Johnson-Cadwell, Luke Pearson, Paul Harrison-Davies, Katie Green,
Paul Peart-Smith, Glyn Dillon, I.N.J. Culbard, John Allison, Philip
Bond, D’Israeli, Simone Lia, Darryl Cunningham, Jonathan
Edwards, Ade Salmon, Kate Charlesworth, Warren Pleece, Kristyna
Baczynski, Harvey James, Rian Hughes, Sean Phillips & Pete Doree,
Kate Brown, Simon Gane, Jon McNaught, Adam Cadwell, Faz
Choudhury, JAKe, Jeremy Day, Dan McDaid, Roger Langridge, Will
Morris, Dave Shelton, Carol Swain, Hunt Emerson, Duncan Fegredo,
Philippa Rice, Josceline Fenton, Garen Ewing, Tom Humberstone ,
Dan Berry, Alice Duke, Posy Simmonds, Laura Howell, Andi Watson,
and Dave Taylor (w/a)
Blank Slate
Books, £18.99, ISBN: 9781906653231
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| Sarah McIntyre |
Part anthology, part bildungsroman, part
tag-team-comics-challenge: Nelson is
a truly unique book. What began as an
inspired idea by cartoonist Rob Davis, as an attempt to bring together his
favourite cartoonists, now arrives as a 250-page graphic novel featuring 53
other creators — and “creators” they are, as they help shape a fully-formed
life in these pages — representing the modern face of English cartooning.
Nelson is the
story of Nel Baker, from her birth in 1968 to the present day, told in
(roughly) yearly installments. Each
vignette was written and drawn by a different artist, detailing one day in
Nel’s life, and created sequentially so that every installment would build upon
the story that had gone before. The
results are remarkably cohesive and the shifting styles from year-to-year
actually help to evoke the ever-changing nature of Nel’s life, her moods, her
surroundings and the zeitgeist of each era.
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| Kate Charlesworth |
For, as much as Nelson is the story of a person, it is also the story of a
nation. Every episode manages to
perfectly evoke the culture and history of England at the time — and with all
its eccentricities, this is a quintessentially English book, and it would be wrong
to bemoan the lack of any Scottish, Irish and Welsh cartoonists in its pages…
even if they did manage to sneak a few ex-pats into the mix. The culture on display is a typically
working-class one because, like so much of the country’s art, British comics
have always gravitated towards kitchen sink realism. As such, Nel can be seen as living symbol of
the country around her — a modern Lady Britannia, a parallel often underscored
by her adoption of the military regalia of Admiral Nelson, her namesake and
that of her brother.
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| Rian Hughes |
Indeed, one of the most formative of
Nel’s experiences is the death of her twin brother, Sonny, at an early
age. Without him, Nel feels incomplete,
“half a person,” and grows up haunted by his ghost, aching for what she has
lost. Against a background of the
miners’ strike, burgeoning gay rights and politicised art in the ’80s, it’s
easy to read Nel’s early life as an exploration of Thatcher’s politics, and her
brother as a representation of the country the British so desperately wanted. For all its grimness, the ’80s produced some
wonderful, reactionary art (some have argued that Thatcher was the best thing
to happen to music) and, as she grows up we see Nel produce this type of art
herself and inch towards becoming a cartoonist herself.
Frequently the historical details are
peppered around the background in the form of artifacts — newspapers, badges,
snatches of conversations. In much the
same way is Nel’s life built with the accumulation of detritus in her
surroundings — the Nelson statue, the Arabaian
Nights book, Beano fan-club badges, old Misty comics — and part of the beauty of the exquisite corpse nature
of the book is seeing subsequent cartoonists picking up some of these small
details and developing them into fully fledged stories. What’s even more exciting is seeing the
friendly rivalry between the creators play out across the pages, with several
episodes ending in challenging complications.
Often, these lead to some of the book’s most intriguing turns, like the
introduction of home-school Tabitha who is initially sheltered from the outside
world, but over the course of Nelson
grows as a counterpoint to the central character — Hopey to Nel’s Maggie.
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| Josceline Fenton |
That comparison to Love and Rockets is probably quite apt,
as this is one of the few other comics where, by the end, we feel like we have
been there with the characters throughout their whole lives, and it is
astonishing just how cohesive the entire volume feels. Part of that may come down to a shared
sensibility and experience of the world between the various creators, but also
due to their high levels of talent. Even
a cursory glance at the talents featured here will give some sense of the
pedigree at work, from newcomers like Harvey James and (recent Graphic Eye
interviewee) Josceline Fenton, through ubiquitous names of English cartooning —
Philip Bond, D’Israeli, Hunt Emerson — to the types of artists who are
recognized outside the world of comics like Rian Hughes and Posy Simmonds.
Although it might come as a disappointment to discover that Simmonds contributes
a mere one panel to Nelson, the power
of that single image and its single word resonates much more powerfully than
many of the other, longer strips.
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| Carol Swain |
In fact, very few of the
contributors disappoint and it’s to the credit of editors Rob Davis and Woodrow Phoenix that the end
result is as strong as it is. Not only does it tell a very powerful narrative — one that is a beautiful example of literary graphic storytelling, no less — but also showcases the brightest stars of English cartooning, bringing them together in a way that demonstrates the community that has evolved between them. It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes an entire country to tell her life-story.
-- Gavin Lees
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