Flake

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AO: Throwaway Press published your original solo collections of work in Meanderings and The Practical Implications of Immortality, and you’ve also self-published Catastrophising. The absurdist slice-of-life humour of those collections where the incongruous is embedded into the everyday gives them a very distinctive flavour. What most appeals to you about that kind of fantasy autobio approach? And is there something almost cathartic about the self-deprecating way you present yourself in your strips? The colors are desaturated, veering towards gray tones, and the large amount of panels greatly reduces the pacing, building the sense of stillness (and perhaps loneliness) one may experience up north. The unhurried pacing lends the narration the sense of a documentary speaker, slowly remarking on the quirky stories of the inhabitants of Dobbiston, which gives every unexpected gag time to land. (You can almost imagine Emma Thompson or Stephen Fry doing the audiobook version, since the script has that quietly bemused tone.) Full of irresistible puns... A meld of Alan Bennett and the American comic-book artist Chris Ware... and also Tom Gauld. -- Tim Lewis * Observer * David Campbell, judge and publisher of Everyman’s Library, commented: "This year’s shortlist was especially strong with a number of very credible potential winners. We had none of us, I think, expected a graphic novel to win, but we were all captivated by Flake." Dooley is deft at employing a Chris Ware-like sense of ennui... Flake is principally comedic, comedic in the way that Magnus Mills is comedic or Wallace and Gromit... We will watch to see what he does next with baited breath. * Bookmunch *

Lewis, Tim, ‘Dear dairy: one graphic novelist’s fixation with the world of ice-cream vans’, The Guardian, 15 March 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/15/matthew-dooley-flake-ice-cream-graphic-novel. Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuthA Puff of Smoke – An Exhibition of Sarah Lippett’s New Jonathan Cape Graphic Memoir Comes to East London this November This is not to say the narrative is without sadness: it’s there both in the physical fabric of the rundown town (graffiti, stained walls, broken signs), and the touches of personal unhappiness: Howard’s memories of his father’s brutishness, and a melancholy visit to his mother in her retirement home. But the emotion remains very understated, very British. And just as the greys of the unlovely town are leavened and uplifted by the dreamy pastels of the ice cream vans, so too is the emotion leavened with humour. The trip to the retirement home, for example, is also gently hilarious – as Howard hands out his lollies to the old folks, one elderly lady asks querulously, ‘Do you have one that’s a little warmer?’ The banality of British small town life is captured to perfection in this graphic novel under the guise of 'ice cream van turf wars'. I loved it all. The drawing style and inking really brings home the story even more and I can 100% see why it won an award!! Since 2014, the guiding light of So Many Damn Books has been to feature books that were good to read, drinks that are nice to drink, and people who are interesting to talk to. Matthew Dooley, winner of the 2020 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize comments: ‘Flake was published on 2nd April, amidst a huge, bewildering global crisis. It’s been a very strange experience. Winning the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize means it’s just got stranger in the best possible way. I’m surprised, overwhelmed and elated to have won. Now, how on earth do you chill a bottle of champagne that big..?’

Howard’s life as an ice cream van owner is a quietly unambitious one. The highlight of his day is doing the crosswords for a couple of hours before work begins or chatting with local museum worker Jasper, a failed TV quiz show contestant and ardent campaigner to have the local downgraded hill reclassified as a mountain. This sedentary lifestyle is about to be disrupted however when rogue ice cream vendor Tony Augustus re-enters his life. The mercenary Augustus has swept through the North West of England, dispatching such industry legends as Professor Scrumptious and Dr. Frisbee’s Ice Creams of Distinction in his wake, and subsuming then into his icy empire. Judge Sindu Vee described the winning graphic novel as "a rare joy: a laugh out loud story with characters you want to meet again and again". AO: How much of a game-changer for you was winning the 2016 Cape/Observer/Comica Short Story Prize for ‘Colin Turnbull: A Tall Story’ (above)?

The Lost Loiners – Anna Readman Lends an Unlikely Humanity to the Monstrous in Her Troll Illustration Zine Seeing your work in print for the first time is a massive thrill and DRC were amazing at finding new people on the small press scene and giving them that opportunity. Perhaps more importantly, I became good mates with Gary and Kirk, the guys who edited DRC. Comics is a solitary pursuit for the most part but the small press community is a very friendly and supportive one. I don’t think I’d have persisted with making comics if had been just me sending them out into the void. Feeling part of the community is a big reason I make comics. Off Life #11 – The Emerging Talents of Darren Cullen, Brigid Deacon, Alex Potts, Grace Wilson and More Get a Welcome Anthology Spotlight Puppers reading! Christopher got a dog! Everybody is reading Ali Smith’s “The Accidental” for ~some~ reason!