MYRIAD WEEK!
We’re championing the output of Myriad Editions this week at Broken Frontier with a series of reviews, interviews and features on the publisher’s recent and upcoming projects. This wouldn’t be a proper celebration without a nod to Myriad’s past successes, though, so each day we’ll also be looking back on a couple of books from their back catalogue along with links to relevant BF reviews and interviews.
Today we take a look at The Bad Doctor by Ian Williams and Nye Wright’s Things to Do in a Retirement Home Trailer Park…When You’re 29 and Unemployed…
The Bad Doctor
Another book to emerge from the supportive environs of the Myriad First Graphic Novel Competition, the project that became Ian Williams’s The Bad Doctor was shortlisted for the 2012 incarnation of the contest.
Williams, himself a practising GP and the founder of the Graphic Medicine website, formerly self-published comics under the pseudonym Thom Ferrier. His name will also be familiar to Guardian readers for his Sick Notes strips in the paper looking at the current state of the NHS.
Focusing on the world of country GP Dr. Iwan James The Bad Doctor is an examination of the titular protagonist’s life in a small rural community, the many colourful characters who come into his practice and his working relationship with his colleagues.
But Iwan has his own demons to deal with – a secret past living with OCD, powerfully illustrated in some memorably designed pages by Williams. An engaging character study full of bleak humour and wry observational wit, The Bad Doctor is the first in a planned trilogy of books with sequel The Lady Doctor next on the scedule.
BF soundbite: “Graphic medicine with true heart, this is a testament to the value of the Myriad First Graphic Novel Competition in nurturing exciting new creative voices.” – Andy Oliver
Read the Broken Frontier review here
For more on the work of Ian Williams visit his site here and follow him on Twitter here.
Buy The Bad Doctor here.
Things to Do in a Retirement Home Trailer Park… When You’re 29 and Unemployed
Myriad have always had a canny eye for strong graphic medicine/graphic memoir work and Aneurin ‘Nye’ Wright’s Things to Do in a Retirement Home Trailer Park… When You’re 29 and Unemployed is a fine example of that.
The book is an autobio account of Wright’s time as a full-time carer for his terminally ill father who was suffering from the effects of emphysema. With a subdued colour palette and its main characters depicted throughout as a blue minotaur (Nye) and a debilitated rhino (his father) it’s also a visually distinctive entry in the graphic medicine strand.
Things to Do in a Retirement Home Trailer Park recounts in almost list form the various activities that Wright undertakes during this time from the practical – dealing with medication and doctors – to the more reflective as he begins to come to terms with his father’s situation.
Moving, playful with the form and darkly witty in places this is vintage earlier Myriad output and work that makes us anticipate Wright’s second graphic novel Noni’s Wedding all the more keenly.
Broken Frontier soundbite: “This is not just a poignant study of the complexities of the father-son dynamic or of coming to terms with parental mortality, it’s also an often very funny memoir. Not least because of Nye Wright’s portrayal of his father’s irascibility, his own self-deprecating wit and some choice moments of darkly humorous dialogue.” – Andy Oliver
Read the Broken Frontier review here and interview here
For more on the work of Aneurin Wright visit his site here and follow him on Twitter here. Buy Things to Do in a Retirement Home Trailer Park… When You’re 29 and Unemployed here.
Catch up on all our Myriad Week coverage so far here.
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