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Andi Watson

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File:Andi Watson Love Fights cover.jpg
The cover to Love Fights vol 1

Andrew "Andi" Watson (1969 - ) is a British cartoonist and illustrator best known for the graphic novels Breakfast After Noon, Slow News Day and his current series Love Fights.

Andi Watson was born and raised in Yorkshire to working class parents. He studied foundation art at Dewsbury college followed by a graphic design / illustration course at Liverpool Polytechnic (now Liverpool John Moores University). He currently lives in Stoke-on-Trent.

Early Works

For his final degree show Watson produced the small press comic Samurai Jam along with t-shirts and bubble-gum cards. The comic was rooted in skateboarding and punk rock culture and artistically influenced by Japanese Manga, specifically Akira, and the American alternative comic Love and Rockets. Three issues were produced by 1993, photocopied with covers spray-painted with a stencil, which generated some interest within the British small press comics scene.

Watson approached various American publishers and was taken on by Dan Vado of Slave Labor Graphics in 1993 who published four issues of Samurai Jam. These were not a success, due in part to the wildly different art styles Watson employed with each issue, but Vado kept the door open and Watson returned in 1995 with Skeleton Key, a monthly 16 page comic that ran for 30 issues and cemented his reputation.

After Skeleton Key Watson moved to Oni Press with Geisha, a graphic novel about a robot girl artist. Rather than approach the issue of her being a robot Watson used the story to examine the ideas of fake and real. The book was an artistic bridge for Watson between the manga-inspired Skeleton Key and his current, more European, style.

Later Works

The Geisha one-shot comic marked a dramatic shift in Watson's style, bringing in stylistic influences from European creators such as François Avril and Dupuy and Berberian, but retaining the slow pacing of long-form Manga. This came to fruition with Breakfast After Noon, a "slice of life" story set in the industrial city of Stoke-on-Trent in Britain. This was followed by the novella Dumped, a love story produced in association with the BIG festival in Turin.

Watson returned to Slave Labor in 2002 with Slow News Day, a graphic novel set around a small town British newspaper which dealt with English attitudes to Americans and the theme of big versus small audience.

He followed that with a one-shot featuring the fox spirit Kitsune from his earlier series Skeleton Key, this time in a tale set in medieval Japan, scripted by Woodrow Phoenix.

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

Work for Hire

Andi Watson has worked as the writer on a variety of licensed properties, most significantly Buffy the Vampire Slayer from Dark Horse Comics and Marvel Comics' Namor.

List of Significant Works

  • 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)
  • The Complete Geisha (Oni)
  • Breakfast After Noon (Oni)
  • Kitsune Tales with writer Woodrow Phoenix (Slave Labor)
  • Dumped (Oni)
  • Slow News Day (Slave Labor)
  • Love Fights vol 1 (Oni)
  • Love Fights vol 2 (Oni)
  • Paris (Slave Labor)

References

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