When the Wind Blows: The bestselling graphic novel for adults from the creator of The Snowman

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Raymond left school aged 15 to study painting at Wimbledon School of Art. After completing a typography course at the Central School of Art, and two years of National Service, Raymond went on to the Slade School to study painting. His first work was in advertising, but before long he was winning acclaim as a children's book illustrator as well as teaching illustration at Brighton College of Art. Wrong Genre Savvy: Jim and Hilda think the coming nuclear war will be like the Blitz and the Second World War. They learn the hard way that it is not. Outliving One's Offspring: Though they never realize it, Hilda and Jim's son Ron, who's mentioned early in the story but doesn't live near them, is almost certainly dead after the bomb hits. Unlike his father, Ron is implied to know full well how useless the governments "advice" is, and isn't even going to bother. Hilda Bloggs, Jim’s wife, has a view of the world that is, if anything, even more naïve than that of her husband. While Jim is keen to keep abreast of current events, Hilda believes that newspapers are “full of rubbish,” except for the horoscopes. Some of Hilda and Jim’s characteristics are taken from Briggs’s parents, who feature directly in his later biographical graphic novel Ethel and Ernest: A True Story (1998). Artistic Style

The reader is invited to look inside the private country home of Mr. and Mrs. J. Bloggs,and observe the daily goings on of a naive, stiff upper lipped, British couple as they struggle to make sense of an impending nuclear strike by the Soviet Union ("Ruskies"); these struggles acting as comic relief (military acronyms are another instrument for humour in this poignant little Graphic Novel). The Bloggs's compare the "current" situation to their now romanticised view of WW2 (something that only the distance of time can achieve), and their discussions are liberally peppered with the innocent mistakes so common with the elderly. This adds genuineness to their characterizations. The fear of the times, and ultimately the dropping of "the bomb"(presumably in London) is realistically conveyed through Briggs's simplistic caricatures. Just as Mr. and Mrs. Bloggs are isolated from any news of the actualities, so too is the reader, allowing Briggs to fully alert us under his terms, as to what the threat of full scale nuclear war and fallout would mean. I thought of that a lot when reading this, as Mr and Mrs Bloggs are absolutely adorable cats. They are the quintessential old couple, concerned with regular habits and interacting with fond little jibes. Their love for each other is realistic, simple and tender, and their innocence absolute with adorable misunderstandings that slowly become sad or deadly as the story goes on. Their attempts to guard themselves from the foretold destruction are ineffectual, but based on the only information they're given. Their faith in the government and society continuing after the bomb drops is based on their childhood recollections of the blitz, where the postman would climb over debris and bomb shelters were decorated. A colourful, almost fond time for the pair when they were too young to fully appreciate the horrors, and now too old to realise this a new and thouroughly different kind of war. Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Hilda points out they could have used their root cellar instead of a makeshift shelter built out of wooden doors. Though it's debatable whether they really would have lasted much longer had they sheltered in the cellar given the radioactive fallout in the air and rainwater. She praises it for its unusual approach towards genre, saying: “It’s unusual for a single film to be both pre- and post-apocalyptic. Briggs and Murakami capture the quotidian lives of Hilda and Jim prior to the blast, which makes the film's unblinking refusal to look away as the couple succumb slowly to radiation poisoning later even more heart-wrenching. They aren’t just people trying to survive in the aftermath of unimaginable destruction, they are an everyday couple. Imagine if we’d seen Mad Max popping to the allotment to spend the afternoon quietly pottering. That would of course be ludicrous, but it's to the credit of When The Wind Blows that both halves of the film are so fully realised, bisected by the catastrophe which post-apocalyptic films often elide.” Cosy Catastrophe: Deconstructed. Jim and Hilda both lived through the Blitz when they were young, so they adopt the same attitude towards nuclear war. That attitude turns out not to help them at all, since it has blinded them to the true horrors of war and the aftermath of nuclear war is much worse than the Blitz. It also doesn't help that the instructions the British government provides for dealing with the fallout are completely useless.

Cooke, Rachel. “Raymond Briggs: Big Kid, ‘Old Git’ and Still in the Rudest of Health.” The Observer (August 9, 2008): 20-21. THE BOOKSRaymond Briggs' parents have proved an important source of inspiration to the author/artist. His father was a milkman; his mother a former lady's maid. Raymond's unique characterisation of Father Christmas is based on his father - "Father Christmas and the milkman both have wretched jobs: working in the cold, wet and dark." His parents also influenced the character of Jim and Hilda, the victims of nuclear fall-out, in When The Wind Blows.

Adaptational Jerkass: It's very downplayed, but Jim only calls Hilda a " stupid bitch" when trying to get her into the shelter in the animated adaptation. In the comic, he only calls her a " Stupid Fool". Absurdly Ineffective Barricade: The "shelter" that Jim builds by inclining a door against the wall was absolutely useless in preventing exposure to radiation - justified in that he was just following the (mostly worthless) instruction book on how to survive nuclear war issued by the government. Headache of Doom: The first hint Jim and Hilda have been exposed to radiation are the headaches and shivering spells they suffer in the wake of the initial blast. There's a brief scene that shows they live in Clayton, which is very close to Leeds. Leeds itself was a city that produced munitions during WW 2, and due to its manufacturing usage would have been one of the cities targeted in a nuclear war scenario.If you think about it Ron's behavior, while jerkish, makes sense, as, unlike his parents (and probably many others), he knows the severity of the situation and the most likely outcome, thus he doesn't really do anything because, in the end, what his parents did proved to be futile (it's all but stated that they die, the film is more overt with it). If anything because of how dire and futile the situation is (or would be), Ron was probably losing his mind and living in denial (not unlike what happens with the "Denial" stage of Grief), combining Fridge Horror with Fridge Brilliance.

Mostly I just wonder why the Soviets - or whoever - would bother to nuke what appears to be just empty countryside. I suspect they had their reasons. Happily Married: Jim and Hilda are an old married couple and are so sweet and innocent, all of which is just used to drive home the true horror of what becomes of them harder. Gravett, Paul “‘Where Is the Use of a Book Without Pictures or Conversations?’ Coming to Terms with the Graphic Novel in Europe.” Third Text 21, no. 5 (September, 2007): 617-625.Tragic Mistake: Downplayed; the Bloggses mistakenly think they're only supposed to spend two days in their makeshift shelter rather than two weeks. However, given that the blast blew out their house's windows and scattered radioactive dust and debris all throughout the interior, and the shelter wasn't sealed off from the rest of the house, their mistake really just sped up the inevitable a little.