Andi Watson

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Andi Watson

Born Andrew Watson
1969
Kippax, West Yorkshire, England
Nationality British
Area(s) Writer, Artist
Notable works Breakfast After Noon
Slow News Day
Love Fights
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Namor

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

Watson has also worked for more mainstream American comic publishers with some work at DC Comics, a twelve-issue limited series at Marvel Comics, with the majority at Dark Horse Comics, moving recently to Image Comics.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Andi Watson was born in the Wakefield Infirmary and raised in Kippax, West Yorkshire by 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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 limited series for Slave Labor scripted by Watson with art by Simon Gane. Recent solo work, like Glister[1] and Princess At Midnight, has been published at Image Comics.

[edit] Work for hire

Andi Watson has worked as the writer on a variety of licensed properties, most significantly a 2 year run on the first Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics from Dark Horse Comics and Marvel Comics' Namor.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Andi Watson on Glister, Newsarama, May 25, 2007

[edit] References

[edit] External links

[edit] Interviews

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andi_Watson"
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