Andi Watson

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The title of this article is ambiguous. For the jazz musician Andy Watson see Andy Watson .

Andrew "Andi" Watson (* 1969 in Wakefield , Great Britain ) is a British comic artist and illustrator and is known for the "graphic novels" Breakfast After Noon , Slow News Day and his current series Love Fights .

Andi Watson was born in Yorkshire and raised by working class parents . He studied art at Dewsbury College, followed by a graphic design and illustration course at Liverpool Polytechnic. He currently lives in Stoke-on-Trent .

In German, Watson's works are mainly published by the small publisher Modern Tales / Eidalon.

Early work

For his thesis, Watson produced a small edition of the comic strip Samurai Jam along with t-shirts and chewing gum cards. The comic is rooted in skateboard and punk rock culture and has been artistically influenced by the Japanese manga , particularly Akira , and the American alternative comic, Love And Rockets. Three issues were produced in 1993, photocopied and stenciled on covers that aroused some interest in the British short-run comics scene.

Watson sought access to various American publishers and was accepted in 1993 by Dan Vado of Slave Labor Graphics , who published four editions of Samurai Jam. These were unsuccessful, partly to blame for the far too different art styles Watson used in each issue, but Vado didn't block himself, and Watson returned in 1995 with Skeleton Key, a monthly, 16-page comic book that ran 30 issues ran for a long time and cemented its reputation.

After Skeleton Key, Watson went to Oni Press with Geisha, a graphic novel about a young artist who is a robot. Rather than delving into the fact that she is a robot, Watson used the story to explore the ideas of real and fake. For Watson, the book was an artistic bridge between the Manga-inspired Skeleton Key and its current, more European style.

Late work

A oneshot followed up on the original geisha miniseries marked a dramatic change in Watson's style. He brought stylistic influences from European artists such as François Avril and Dupuy-Berbérian (Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berbérian), but kept the slow narrative style of the long manga. This worked in Breakfast After Noon, a story about "a slice of life" in the industrial Midlands of Britain. This was followed by the novella Dumped, a love story produced in collaboration with the BIG Festival in Turin .

Watson returned to Slave Labor in 2002 with Slow News Day, a graphic novel for a small British town newspaper that explores the English attitude towards Americans and the subject of "Big Words - Small Audiences".

His current work is the romantic comedy series Love Fights and Paris published by Oni , a graphic novel for Slave Labor, scripted by Watson with Simon Gane as the artist.

Commissioned work

Andi Watson has worked as a writer on several licensed products, most importantly Buffy the Vampire Slayer from Dark Horse Comics and Namor from Marvel Comics .

List of significant works

Works published in Germany to date:

• The Complete Geisha (Oni) (Eng. "Geisha" at Modern Tales / Eidalon)
• Breakfast After Noon (Oni) (German at Modern Tales / Eidalon)
• Little Star (Oni) (German at Modern Tales / Eidalon)

So far only in English:

• The Complete Samurai Jam (Slave Labor)
• Skeleton Key v1: Beyond The Threshold (Slave Labor)
• Skeleton Key v2: The Celestial Calendar (Slave Labor)
• Skeleton Key v3: Telling Tales (Slave Labor)
• Skeleton Key v4: Cats and Dogs (Slave Labor)
• Skeleton Key v5: Roots (Slave Labor)
• Dumped (Oni)
• Slow News Day (Slave Labor)
• Love Fights vol 1 (Oni)
• Love Fights vol 2 (Oni)
• Paris (slave laboratory)

Web links

• Site of Andi Watson (Engl.)
• Literature by and about Andi Watson in the catalog of the German National Library