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SLOW NEWS DAY #1 (Best of the Week!)
Highly Recommended (10/10)
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Slave Labor Graphics
Writer/Artist: Andi Watson
Price: $3.50 US |
Breakfast After Noon completely turned me around on Andi Watson, as I had been a little underwhelmed by Geisha and Skeleton Key, but the more realistic BAN (collected into a trade this week) was one of my favorite stories of 2000. Slow News Day is shaping up to be even better, based on a great premise and a stellar first issue. As he did with Breakfast After Noon,
Watson is writing a distinctively English book but making it thoroughly friendly
and accessible to anyone who has never visited or lived in the country. This
time, that's accomplished through an American protagonist, who often needs
things explained to her as much as the reader might.
Slow News Day
begins with Katharine, our protagonist, arriving in Wheatstone and showing up
for her job as an intern at their local paper. Of course, she finds infighting
between the advertising department and her reporter boss and a generally hostile
environment, which immediately clues us in to one of Katharine's strongest
character traits: She's adaptable and not easily flustered. In the space of a
few pages, Katharine is dismissed rudely, thrown into the midst of an ongoing
argument and then challenged to prove herself capable of doing her job, but she
never really loses her cool. She makes her points, whether through sarcasm or
forceful statements, but mostly she seems to be settling into a new adventure
fairly easily.
I'm astounded by how much information Watson
works into this story while he's writing a fairly straightforward plot. This
issue is essentially about Katharine arriving, going to take photos and get a
story and then looking for an apartment. In the space of that plot, though, we
discover a lot about her, Wheatstone, the reporter she's working with, the head
of advertising and the general climate of the paper in general. There are hints
that her mother was from Wheatstone and that she has an interest in seeing the
paper raised from a mediocre weekly to something better that she remembers,
there's indications that Katharine has a relationship back home and we
definitely get the feeling that Owen, the reporter, is at the end of his rope in
his professional and personal life.
The interaction between Katharine and Owen
is one of the high points of the book. Katharine has a certain American naivete
and arrogance, illustrated through asking things like "the American or the
English way?" when asked to spell the word "centre" and through her refusal to
back down when Owen is baiting her about football/soccer. Owen seems to have a
certain disdain for things American that doesn't help his reaction to
Katharine's arrival, which he sees as just another symptom of the lack of
respect he gets at the paper. Together the two of them get some dialogue that
highlights the differences between American and English society (as when
Katharine suggests flashier pictures and headlines) and in so doing highlights
the differences between the characters.
Andi Watson tackles subject material that is
rarely seen in comics, the sort of normal life stuff that is covered in almost
every other medium as part of the mainstream. He gives it a quirky and stylish
edge that makes it utterly entertaining even as its familiar and easy to grasp
for any reader, and his art style reflects the strengths of his writing, clean
and simple but also incredibly expressive.
Breakfast After Noon was one of my favorite stories of 2000. Slow News Day is shaping up to be one of my favorite stories of
2001.
Email Randy Lander comments about this review. |
