the book tour andi watson ending explained

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Although of course you end up becoming yourself – horror in the book tour.

Tom Shapira is back at SOLRAD with a review of Andi Watson's Kafkaesque graphic novel THE BOOK TOUR, published last month by Top Shelf.

I’ve always considered Andi Watson to be a pleasant artist. Exceedingly so even. When I look at his pencil work on Love Fights or Glister , I find myself filled with the desire to boil water in a kettle and make myself tea and biscuits. Just looking at these simple (yet precise) lines gives me the sort of emotional comfort one needs in this day and age — a rest, a dream. Watson’s new release, The Book Tour , on the other hand, is not restful; it’s almost the opposite in fact, closer to being a nightmare. It’s still identifiably a Watson book, though, he has not shifted his style considerably since I last saw his work, only now he utilizes the same skills to make the reader uncomfortable. 

In The Book Tour , minor writer G.H. Fretwell ventures on a tour to promote his new book. Things seem to fall apart from the get-go: Fretwell’s luggage is stolen from him, no one shows up at the signing events, his publisher keeps extending the tour while trouble brews at home, the food is lousy. Also, there is a killer on the loose and wherever Fretwell goes everyone seems convinced he’s got something to do with it. The word Kafkaesque seemingly wrings itself into being. Indeed, the very name and description of the novel Fretwell wrote, Without K , evokes Kafka’s ghost.

Conjuring Kafka brings with it certain expectations. We have been told, repeatedly, that in the world of Kafka people are persecuted for no reason. Josef K, in The Trial , is generally seen as an innocent man, hounded by an authority he does not understand. It’s such an accepted piece of literary interpretation that I knew it before I even opened page 1 of The Trial . Just like one doesn’t need to crack the covers of Animal Farm to know what Orwell thought about Stalin.

However, just because something is accepted doesn’t make it true. In his memoir, The Discomfort Zone , Jonathan Franzen writes about studying in Germany and having his teacher force him to re-examine The Trial : “What was actually on the page, as opposed to what I’d expected to find there, was so unsettling that I’d shut my mind down and simply made believe that I was reading. I’d been so convinced of the hero’s innocence that I’d missed what the author was saying, clearly and unmistakably, in every sentence.” Josef K is abusive towards his neighbor Fräulein Bürstner, but the book is so persuasively written from his point of view that we simply fail to note these abuses unless they are pointed out. 

It’s unclear whether Josef is ‘guilty’ of whatever mysterious crime he is charged with, but it is obvious that even if he was, he would fail to acknowledge it. In his own mind, he is forever the victim. Watch Orson Wells adaptation of The Trial (1962), in which Anthony Perkins plays Josef K just two years after he shot to stardom as Norman Bates, look at the constant nervousness and coiled anger within Josef. It is not just a simple story of a man being bullied, there is something sinister beneath that man’s surface. 

Does Watson imply that Fretwell is a killer? No. That is never in doubt throughout The Book Tour . Yet we must not mistake his suffering for decency. Halfway through the book people are astounded to learn that he is completely unaware that there’s a killer on the loose, especially considering how often we see him bury his nose in a newspaper. Even the reader clocks the fact before he does. When asked about his ignorance of what appears to be national news, Fretwell can only answer that he only reads the literary supplement. Except he does not really read it, he’s simply searching for a review of his new book. 

In short, this is an individual who is predisposed to assume that if things go bad, it is because the whole world is against him. Fretwell is an author with no interest in the world around him (a bad author, in short). His book, about a travelling salesman who suspects his wife ran away, is thus an echo of his self-centeredness and general distrust towards others. No wonder he has problems at home. To see yourself in him, in his persecution and pain, is also to reflect on your relation to the world around you.  

Watson still has the same straightforward esthetic developed throughout his previous output. The characters’ features are narrowed down to the minimal number of lines which renders them almost like caricatures. Faces are simple but extremely expressive. With a single line shift, Watson is able to change the whole mood of conversation: a fake smile (worn by a professional businessman) easily becomes a blank expression which then becomes boredom. Watson has iron-grip control of his figures and character acting; you can always tell what everyone is feeling (and how their words contradict their emotions). This is important because The Book Tour features a lot of talking heads, one long conversation piece after another. It’s a story about people constantly lying to one another, framed in the language of professional manners.

  There’s a growing sense of dread and paranoia throughout the proceedings. Whenever we turn, the world seems to slide from “uncaring” to “downright sinister”. It reminds me, oddly enough, of Eddie Campbell’s work in From Hell , not so much in the visual likeness (Campbell is far more detail oriented and naturalistic in his characters) but in the mood it builds. From Hell was about a world that was utterly indifferent to the fate of the protagonists, harsh and cold on both physical and emotional levels. The Book Tour also depicts such a world. 

With a few carefully framed shots of book stores, buildings, and small rooms Watson is able to suggest a sense of place and the mood it brings with it. The repetitive nature of the page layout and design (we are constantly witnessing events from the same angle) becomes an intentional tool of the artist. It’s a cramped and tight comic about a person who is constantly feeling strangled. After a while it appears as if Fretwell is in prison, and we are looking at him through the bars.

But if life is a prison, it is one Fretwell built around himself. Whatever happens to him, wherever events take him, he responds to them with the same blank stare and quiet indignity – never wanting to make a fuss, never shouting, never challenging. When he actually ends up in physical jail, it doesn’t feel like much has changed: his behavior, his routine, his thinking. Look at him on the cover, a man alone surrounded by a pile of books, looking straight at the readers without showing a hint of emotion. His strange and terrible journey didn’t change him in the slightest, it simply helped him to understand what he always was.

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Tom Shapira

Tom Shapira is the author of Curing the Postmodern Blues (Sequart, 2013) and The Lawman (PanelxPanel, 2020). His articles about comics have appeared in The Comics Journal. Haaretz, Shelfdust, PanelXPanel and others.

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• TCJ Archive

The Book Tour

J. Caleb Mozzocco | February 3, 2021

Andi Watson

Andi Watson’s The Book Tour is the first book for adults that the prolific cartoonist has both written and drawn himself in almost 20 years, and during its creation Watson’s ever-evolving art-style was in a particularly interesting place. 

The trend line in his cartooning over the last few decades has been for his character designs to grow increasingly simplified and abstracted—perhaps because so much of his recent work has been directed toward young readers, perhaps not—to the point where his characters were approaching a hieroglyphic level of simplicity. Here one can quite clearly see his supreme skills as a cartoonist, his characters all rendered with as few dots and curving lines as possible, resulting in a wide plethora of different looking people. The world they live in and move through, by contrast, is one of far greater complexity. In fact, when it comes to his backgrounds and environments, Watson’s Book Tour can look crowded, even cluttered with detail. It is quite in contrast to his most recent book, Kerry and The Knight of The Forest , in which one of the title characters is depicted as a one-eyed shape in an environment similarly built out of one of the most simple of organic shapes, all rocks and trees.

The cover of Book Tour , which finds protagonist G.H. Fretwell in an over-stocked book shop, is one prime example of The Book Tour’s highly detailed settings; the opening pages, show the twists and turns of quaint urban environments as the reader’s eye wanders through the city, seemingly seeking out Fretwell, is another, perhaps better one.

The charmingly named Fretwell is a minor British author embarking on a tour to support his latest work, the novel "Without K",inspired by his wife Rebecca, who spells her name without a K. Nothing seems to be going right for Fretwell, however, starting with his having his suitcase full of copies of the book stolen at the train station. From there Fretwell visits a series of bookshops to conduct signings, none of which seem to attract a single interested reader or generate the sale of a single book—although he does come awfully close at one point. Meanwhile, Fretwell’s accommodations grow worse and worse each night, as his hotels gradually get seedier and seedier, and he never seems to be able to catch his young son on the phone when he manages to call home. 

Our author—whose blank, guileless expression Watson creates with a pair of dot eyes, another dot for a mouth and a distinctly-shaped u for a nose, all set within a round-chinned head shape that includes a head of hair in the outline—is at first completely unaware of the killings. In fact, when the policeman he consults regarding the theft of his suitcase refers to everything that’s going on these days, it is originally presented to the reader as a joke, given the quiet, empty police station. The only part of the newspaper Fretwell reads is the arts coverage, to see if his latest book has received a review yet or not. 

News of the killings won’t stop coming to him, however, as he’s increasingly expected of being the killer, based on a few coincidences—the loss of his suitcase, the fact that he was the last person to see one of the victims alive—and, most amusingly, the fact that the doesn’t seem at all like a killer. It’s never the ones you suspect, right? And what could be more suspicious than someone who doesn’t seem much like a killer at all? 

Despite the grisly crimes that provide an important plot element, Watson stays with Fretwell throughout, so we don’t ever see the killer’s handiwork, nor is there much meditation upon it, except of the sort that might make it into conversations. There’s a classy, classic look to Watson’s style here, as each panel often looks a little like an early 20th century illustration. Hopefully Watson’s adult fans won’t have to wait quite so long before he makes another graphic novel with them in mind.

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Newcity Lit

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The Dangerous Lives of Novelists on the Road: A Review of The Book Tour by Andi Watson

by Brian Hieggelke | March 11, 2021

• Book Reviews
• Comics/Graphic Novels/Cartoonists

Spend some time around a novelist or two and you’re bound to hear horror stories about book tours. Though many readings are well attended and rewarding for both the author and the audience, when those events are held in remote cities where the writer doesn’t know anybody, after going through all the inconvenience of traveling alone, too often, attendance turns out to be negligible. In “The Book Tour,” a graphic novel by Andi Watson, G. H. Fretwell takes his new novel, “Without K,” on the road. Arriving in the big city, presumably London, he endures one miserably attended reading after another, while progressively suffering an increasingly lower-class grade of hotel as his publisher, who also seems to be ghosting him from an expected meeting, keeps extending the tour without explanation. Fretwell’s not particularly introspective it seems, mostly fretting about getting his updated itinerary, finding his next hotel, and where he’ll get dinner, preferably alone, usually steak. The story has all the makings to be as tedious as his existence is in this particular moment, but when one of the bookstore clerks goes missing and the police want to talk to Fretwell since he was the last person to see her, his Kafkaesque life (“Without K,” get it?) gets much more so, and the 272-page graphic novel comes to life as a bona fide page-turner.

Watson sets the book in some kind of timeless past version of a city, in black-and-white, where Fretwell always wears a sort of Edwardian suit, and analog telephones have rotary dials. The shops are the epic bookstores of the imagination, with shelves to the ceiling in infinite deserted aisles, echoing the streets of the city and its vintage edifices and equally empty streets. At times I imagined this was Jack the Ripper’s London, a notion reinforced by Watson’s vintage drawing style. 

Watson’s a British comics writer who’s pursued an eclectic range of work, including some work for Marvel and DC, but most recently making work for the young-adult audience. This, apparently, is his first book for grownups in some time. I look forward to another. 

The Book Tour Andi Watson  Top Shelf Productions, 272 pages

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Andi’s Newsletter

The Book Tour

The proud author raises his glass of prosecco to the applause of the nation’s literary elite.

“Speech, speech,” they chant, eager to witness the author’s legendary ability to win over a crowd with his wit and easy charm.

The author blushes and tries to modestly wave off their demands. The chants grow louder. It’s clear the cream of the book world won’t be denied the pleasure of hearing the great orator. The author, showing startling agility, bounds up onto a chair, clears his throat and addresses his adoring readers…

That is what would have happened if I wasn’t launching a new book in November 2020. As it is I am back in lockdown in England for another book launch. Kerry and the Knight of the Forest came out in July (and is still available, perfect Christmas gift etc etc) and now The Book Tour .

And yet it is a source of great excitement for me as it has been a long time coming and it’s a book I am immensely proud of. I am extremely bad at tooting my own horn (not a euphemisim) and often hide behind self-deprecation but I honestly believe it’s one of the best things I’ve done.

I will celebrate from the kitchen, pour myself a glass of cava from the already opened bottle from Phil’s birthday , raise a glass to my literary heroes of Maupassant, Beckett, Pinter and Pam Ayres and address the giddy, bustling and entirely imaginary crowd of my book launch.

The advantages of an imaginary crowd are legion. Firstly they turn up in numbers, you don’t have to provide them with oceans of free booze, they only say flattering things, there’s no need for awkward small talk, they arrive in my own kitchen and are polite enough not to mention the grimy corners of the skirting board and they aren’t breathing on each other in a potential super-spreader event.

It has all the upsides and none of the downsides.

Of course, if this is the future of book promotion then the events of The Book Tour would never happen. Mid-list writer, G.H. Fretwell’s small humiliations and embarrassments that spiral nightmarishly out of his control wouldn’t occur. I would not have been inspired to describe his misadventures and the world would have never appreciated that, "Watson’s adeptness at capturing body language and facial expressions combines with nuanced dialog and a keen sense of irony to create a hugely entertaining page-turner." —  Library Journal  (starred review)

Swings and roundabouts.

Not to belabour the point or crudely make plain my pretext for starting a newsletter in the first place but: buy my book!

UK readers can support their local independent comic shop or bookstore if they have a mail-order service.  Bookshop.org  and  Hive are useful. OK Comics  and  Gosh  are two UK comic shops who support a wide range of titles. Order from the fine folks at Page 45 and your copy will come with a signed bookplate. Although UK comic shops might not receive their shipments until next week.

Naturally it’s widely available online. There is also Kindle and comixology .

I also have a  A3 giclee poster  for sale at my store and it looks amazing.

I hope you enjoy the book,

A page-turning, Kafkaesque dark comedy in brilliant retro style, this graphic novel watches one man try to keep it together while everything falls apart.

★ ★ ★ Official Selection of the Angoulême International Comics Festival ★ ★ ★

"A darkly humorous read."  —  Booklist

"Watson neatly balances moody atmosphere and light comedy... [a] deadpan funny riff on artistic insecurities."  —  Publishers Weekly

"Andi Watson's retro line and daring dialogue make this graphic novel a British delight."  —  Le Monde

" Watson’s adeptness at capturing body language and facial expressions combines with nuanced dialog and a keen sense of irony to create a hugely entertaining page-turner." — Library Journal  (starred review)

"A darkly humorous read."  —  Booklist "Packed with black humor. We were carried away by the tempo of the drawing."  —  RTL "A real treat. Between Ionesco and Beckett."  —  France Inter "Black comedy, delicious and scathing."  —  Télérama "A little surrealist gem."  —  Comixtrip "Andi Watson embarks the reader on an adventure that mixes absurdity and dark humor. It almost feels like a new Raymond Carver."  —  Franceinfo "A fascinating maze in which we lose our bearings."  —  Les Inrocks "A little masterpiece of tongue-in-cheek humor."  —  dBD "Whatever the anxieties that led to the genesis of this book, they have allowed a beautiful exorcism... funny and chilling."  —  Trois Couleurs "Andi Watson gives  The Book Tour  the best of his art."  —  Livres Hebdo "Brilliant... a Kafka-like tale that immediately proves captivating."  —  aVoir aLire "A clean line that gives full measure to a Kafkaesque atmosphere."  —  Canal BD "Andi Watson delivers an offbeat graphic novel, with absurd dialogue recalling Monty Python."  —  Let's Motiv "Delicious suspense that bathes in the absurd."  —  BoDoï "A fantastic and breathtaking story."  —  RTBF

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Graphic Novel Review: The Book Tour by Andi Watson

Posted on september 22, 2020 at 10:54 am by gene ambaum.

British author G.H. Fretwell is on a tour to promote his new novel, Without K, and nothing is going right. Someone has stolen his suitcase, and no one is buying any of his books. After a night alone in his hotel room he’s questioned by two policemen about a missing bookstore clerk because he was the last person to see her. He find himself the center of a criminal investigation as his “book signings” get stranger and his accommodations seedier. What is the mystery’s relationship to the book Fretwell wrote? Why does everyone think he’s guilty? And why hasn’t a review of his book appeared in the newspaper? It is, as you may have suspected, very Kafkaesque.

Watson is one of my favorite artists, and the way he uses a 12-panel grid for layout in this book is masterful. It’s clear he had as much fun drawing the bookshops as he did the streets and alleys. This is a surreal, fun bit of bookish anxiety.

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Amanja Reads Too Much

comics, nonfiction, everything in between

The Book Tour, Graphic Novel Review

The Book Tour by author and Illustrator Andi Watson

The Book Tour is an odd little graphic novel that follows the author protagonist as he attempts to promote his latest book release. Along the way he experiences unusual circumstances that place him a little too close to an ongoing murder investigation.

He deals with every little thing going wrong . As he doesn’t fix a single problem, they build into bigger and bigger problems along the way. Note to self, don’t just accept stolen luggage or unplanned itineraries. Seriously, take control of your life in any ways that you can.

The graphic novel is simply drawn, it evokes feelings of classic New Yorker cartoons. Everyone is plain in appearance and no one even has much personality. Just enough of each character is shown to get a feel for the general idea of a character that they are. You are trusted to fill in the blanks.

The main character is the plainest that plain can be. He is so meek and timid he basically just lets anything and everything happen to him without a fight. His whole book tour is going completely wrong and he doesn’t stand up for himself once. It’s honestly quite obnoxious.

The book blurb discribes The Book Tour as being “Kafka-eqsue.” I think that’s shooting a bit high. People just throw that phrase around without thinking about what it would actually mean. The Book Tour is a mildly surreal story in how far the author goes down this path of mistaken identity and happenstance but it’s hardly Kafka. It’s more purposefully vague and pusillanimous.

All that being said, I did find myself intrigued by the mystery. I did want to know what happened and why and if it would get settled so in that sense the book was a success. However, I was unsatisfied with the ending. Or, unsatisfied with how the protagonist finished his story. He’s a weak man, one unworthy of a happy ending, so maybe it all does work out. Gosh, how sad is that?

It’s one of those stories where you want to yell at the main character, who’s doing all the wrong things, and just smack some sense into them. Stand up for yourself! Take your fate into your own hands! Don’t trust that stranger you idiot! But he does it all anyway. He never learns from his mistakes.

The Book Tour is a quick read and I can definitely think of worse ways to spend an hour. If you like books where the bulk of the conflict is between you and the book itself then this one is definitely for you.

3/5 books 📖📖📖

Also check out more Comic Books for Adults

in order to keep me up to my ears in books please use the following amazon affiliate link to purchase this book. It’s at no extra cost to you and would help me a lot. Thanks!

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MICHAELKAMAKANA

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• Feb 4, 2022

The Book Tour (book review) Andi Watson

210522: eerie, excellent, exasperating. never been on book tour but this seems to capture its strange nature, in everything from just following a stranger's orders because he talks of your 'itinerary', to having nobody who wants you to sign your book, to your elusive publisher, to being mistaken for murderer (!). this is graphic kafkaesque: easy to read, easy to imagine. fun, fast, the art is great 'retro', the dialog sketched in comic misunderstandings and omissions. and you really cannot imagine a better name for the protagonist...

the city is vaguely continental european, resembling paris mostly, and the streets are cobbled, carless, buildings looming steeply, and the various bookstores visited are local and not big box. the city seems attractive until you learn what is happening and see how fretwell is mistreated. there is something effective in the open, gentle line which characterises both buildings, books and people. facial features are alluded to, not fully closed, though individuals are recognisable, for this is not herge-style 'ligne claire' but reminds me of certain new yorker cartoons...

Andi Watson on The Book Tour, Kerry and the Knight of the Forest, and comics for kids vs. adults

In this interview, Andi Watson talks to Popverse about his long-spanning career from independent comics to big five publishing.

Cartoonist Andi Watson has had a varied career, starting in the indie scene with graphic novels like Breakfast After Noon and Slow News Day, then branching into comics for kids like his Kerry and the Knight of the Forest. Most recently, his breakout hit The Book Tour has made it's rounds in the awards circuit both in France and in the US, becoming an official selection of Angoulême International Comics Festival and garnering a nomination for the Eisner for Best Graphic Album.

Watson's varied career is owed to his ability to attack each new project with a completely new style and tone, and in that way, he has been able to cross over the boundaries of genres and audience type. In this interview with Andi Watson, we talk about the first comic that really had an impact on him, how he shapes his style for each project, and what he's reading right now.

Popverse: How did you get into comics, Andi?

Andi Watson: Well, I read them as a kid obviously. I read Peanuts in the newspaper, I read Star Wars Weekly, and I read The Beano-- which is a British humor comic for kids. Then I kind of fell out of it, and I got back in via role playing games and thrash metal— you know, the whole Anthrax being big fans of Judge Dredd, and then there was role-playing-games with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I kind of edged back in, and almost straight away when I was like 19, I picked up a copy of Love and Rockets, and that kind of slowly, I didn't realize at the time, but that kind of ruined my life.

Because yeah, I eventually became a cartoonist, but it was really picking up that one book, a collection called Ape Sex , which was from Titan Books in the UK, that really blew my mind as to what you could do within the medium. I was at the right age at 19, and punk rock, and all the rest of the music and comics and arts coming together— it didn't immediately make me think I could do comics because I didn't think I was good enough, because it's really hard obviously.

What specifically about Love and Rockets stood out to you?

It was just the right book at the right time. It really took me a few years to think could I do this myself. Anyone who looks at Jaime's draftsmanship— it looks like too high a mountain to scale. I did a degree in graphic design and illustration. For my last project I thought, "I'm never going to get a chance to do this again because I'm going to be illustrator, and I'm going to go live in London"-- complete fantasy.

I decided I was going to do a comic. I hand drew it, and I color copied it. I did a screen-printed cover, and I did baseball cards and a t-shirt for my final show. I thought that would be it, but then I went to live in London and tried to start an illustration career. I was incredibly naive about how difficult that is straight out of college, so I had a lot of time on my hands, in between schlubbing around my portfolio to various companies. I mean, this was the days when, 30 years ago maybe, you actually did take a physical portfolio around town. Sorry, I'm very old. Between that, I just started to do comics. I'd been bitten by the bug.

I knew I wasn't very good, but I really wanted to get better. My first book was called Samurai Jam , and then I did three issues at a small press, just about copying it myself. Then I sent it to Slave Labor Graphics. It took them maybe six months to reply— this is all by mail back in the day. They replied and said, "Yeah, we'd like to do it," and they kind of warned me that, you know, this is quite small stakes, the world of independent comic books.

But that's how I got hooked, and I never quite unhooked myself from the medium because I think that thing that motivated me then, still motivates me now— just trying to get better and explore those different things you can do with the medium and the freedom that it gives you. There's no barrier to entry, really. That's what really encouraged me early on. Anyone could do this if you've got paper and pen, and you've got time, and a slight problem with your brain that means that you are obsessive enough to do this or dedicate time to this.

Here I am, incredibly. I wish there had been an off ramp somewhere on the way, I'd get distracted by trying to find a living or something practical like that, but I'm silly.

So you went from self-publishing for your school project to publishing with an independent press. How did you make the jump to a Big Five publisher?

I guess many, many years. It was really when the graphic novel thing took off again. I went through the first one with Maus and Watchman and The Dark Knight and all that, so the late 80s, maybe, and that seemed to be the moment when graphic novels were really going to take off. But no, they didn't, and they still don't have them for adults really. For around the younger age, like Middle Grade and YA, they have taken off. So there's a market there, there's opportunities, there's slots to pitch to publishers.

Really it was Gina [Gagliano] who dragged me onboard with Random House Graphic. I've known Gina for a long time; we'd email back and forth for years and years. She started this imprint up at Random House, and we were talking about something else, and she said, "You want to pitch something?" I pitched this Kerry [and the Knight of the Forest] book. It wasn't quite my first dip into the book publishing world, cause I'd done a book called Princess Decomposia and Count Spatula for First Second. So yeah, I'd kind of been 'in' a little bit before, but this was a really big book, like 240 pages, and it felt like I had entered the world of book publishing which has a different culture and moves at a different pace and has a different feel to independent comics, which is much more Wild West, seat-of-your-pants kind of stuff.

Back in the day, I'd just say to my editor— like at Oni Press with Jaime [S. Rich], who was my editor there, I'd say, "I'm gonna do a story about a couple who are unemployed, and they work in a ceramics factory in the Stoke-on-Trent area in England. " And he'd say "Yeah, cool let's do that," so it was very different back then.

Within the book publishing world, it's much more formalized; it's much more bureaucratic. It's less seat-of-your-pants, but professional, I guess. There are upsides to both worlds, although I probably prefer the world of independent comic books in that it's a bit more freewheeling.

So now I'm in the book publishing world doing Middle Grade stuff. I did that Kerry book. I'm now working on a book called Punycorn; I'm contracted for two books for that.

Tell me about Punycorn.

Punycorn is a funny fantasy story starring an underpowered unicorn hero. It's kind of a traditional fantasy in that there's a quest and there's a bad guy who's trying to take over the world. It's really a metaphor for the kid who is picked last for sports. He belongs to world of superpowered unicorns who are heroic and can do everything and have amazing powers, and he's the runt of the litter, if you like. He's, like me, very bad at football.

The Punycorn character goes off on a quest to save the world and meets friends who have similar disadvantages, and they of course save the day because it’s a fantasy story. It's nice when the evil overlords are beaten. Unfortunately, it's usually only in fiction, but I hope it happens in real life someday as well.

Fingers crossed.

Going back to Kerry, which is a great classic adventure in the way that you're describing Punycorn as well. Can you tell me how you built that visual world, how you designed it? You mentioned that you have an illustration background, so, how did that apply to the design of the book?

The design was kind of the starting point really, because it was inspired by a short animation called the Hedgehog in the Fog [dir. Yuri Norstein, written Sergei Grigoryevich Kozlov]. It's a classic piece of animation. It's very poetic and very kind of Russian as well. It's very textured and atmospheric, and it's set in a forest, and that was my starting point. I started from the idea of a dark forest— traditional fairy tale stuff, which I'm really into. I used Chinagraph pencils on watercolor paper to get textures and shapes and get the feel of an oppressive forest environment.

That's my starting point for the character. From there, it's like, what kind of person goes into a dark scary forest when they don't have to? That's where the story took off really— that this character Kerry has to travel on a shortcut through the forest to get medicine to his parents who are sick, where he meets a knight of the forest who isn't the knight that you expect he'd be.

Speaking of art style, you've drawn in a lot of different styles throughout your comics career. How do you develop your artistic voice for a specific project?

It's definitely about the specific projects. For the Kerry book, it was about the textures and the atmosphere, the texture of the bark, the wood, which set off my thinking of how to capture that on paper.

For The Book Tour , which was my grown-up book, I found I couldn't do the story until I had the art style. If you have one but you don't have the other, then I don't have a graphic novel because I need both to work in harmony together. As soon as I find both, then it's like Bam! I'm writing away. It's finding the right tone of the artwork for the correct tone of the story, and sometimes it involves changing the art style to fit the story or vice versa.

That's the unique part of graphic novels, I guess. You have to have the visual and the story element, and they have to work together. There has to be an alchemy there and they have to inspire and bounce off each other.

The reason I change art styles between projects is not only so it suits a project, but also to stop me getting bored, because you do an awful lot drawing. And if you do an awful lot of drawing in one style, you know, it's 250 pages or something, it's just tons and tons of work. After that, I'm eager to switch styles or try new things to stop me getting bored. That's really what's kept me in the medium, the challenge of being able to do new things and explore new styles and different stories.

What does the process of figuring out that style look like? Are you sketching? Are you doing thumbnails already?

Something like Kerry, before I actually started drawing, I did a fair amount of visual development. I played around with different materials and different coloring approaches until I felt I had the right way of working. Often, it's something that I've done in a sketchbook years before and thought, yeah, this is good, it's in my head, I've made a note of it, however it's not appropriate for the next project. Kind of like keeping a notebook, if you're a novelist. You have the style that you know will work for something, but you don't have the story yet for it. For Kerry, it was a style I worked on maybe three, five years previously. So, quite a long time. I knew it was a good style and would be a way of working that would keep me interested for about 250 pages.

When I had the Kerry story and a publisher onboard, Boom! the two went together. Immediately, I had the way forward. But that's just the starting point, the art style and the story. It's really the start of the process because then I tend to write script next, and then I work on thumbnails, and then I'll start doing the pencils and inks, and then I'll do the color. I'll integrate the lettering and the speech bubbles at the same time. It's important for me to keep all those things in my head at the same time.

There's a lot of work that goes into it, and what you see in a book like Kerry is the tip of the iceberg. I have free to download, on my Gumroad , all the thumbnails from that book. That's two hundred and fifty pages of thumbnails I did in pencil, which are kind of cool in their own way because they're more expressive and loose. You lose some of that in the finished book. But yeah, you may do a draft or two of that, and that will interact with the script again. So you go back and do another draft of the script. It's a very organic process, and that's the way I like it because there's always something new to discover on each step.

If I know exactly what the book is going to be immediately when I'm working on the script, then it's kind of dead really, in your hands. You want to be adding new things and discovering new things every step of the way even down to the way you color it, and then that effects the atmosphere and the tone of the story. So again, it's another thing that keeps me interested.

Maybe I have an attention span problem, but I have to always have an apple dangling, a carrot dangling in front of me constantly pulling forward until I've finished the book.

You just mentioned, The Book Tour, which is an incredible, weird graphic novel about an author on tour who is just having the absolute, most impossibly bad time of his life. Where did that idea come from?

I've done my share of signings and I've also heard other people's anecdotes about it, but it really started maybe a couple of decades ago. I got a book of Atget, a French photographer, a book of his photographs. He was around the end of the 20th century. He took photographs of Paris, generally when there was no one around, these very atmospheric street scenes, and I thought, "There's a book in this"-- 20 years ago. Like I was saying, I didn't have the story for it.

However, when The Book Tour began to gestate a bit more, I had this idea of an author who goes on tour. Initially, it was the story of the author who never meets any readers, he only meets writers. So that's my first draft approach, and then I add this book of Paris photographs as reference, which this would be the place where this story was set, and I had my own experiences, and then the story changed. There was an idea of a murder mystery element as well. So again, there's something new to explore, as I develop, as I do another draft. Things get together like a snowball, like the story and art are a snowball at the top of the hill and you push it down and gradually it grows in size and more interesting ideas get involved and folded in.

Eventually, it grabbed me enough that I was willing to spend the year working on it. I had no publisher interested; I just completed it off my own back. I was thinking, "Maybe this would be my last book," for various reasons. I thought, "Well, this is it. This is the one book I want to do. I'm gonna do it my way. However I want to." I had real problems finding an English language publisher, but my French publisher picked up, and then it kind of went from there.

The art style for that was kind of a reaction against what I'd done before. I'd been using a brush earlier in my career, and I really wanted to use a pen again, and working with watercolor paper with a pen breaks the line. It was the right art style for that story, a nervous kind of angsty line to it. As soon as I knew I had the right art approach and I had the location and the character, I was away.

It was a long process of drafting scripts, thumbnails, and then the actual murder mystery story kind of introduced itself or became more prominent after I started drawing it. I went back and did more work to develop that, and I think that was the key to its popularity really. A genre element that captures the reader, and the way it's folded into the story about boring details of being an author or the horrors of having a cold breakfast or whatever. The contrast between those two elements was what made it accessible as a black comedy.

If you don't mind sharing, what made you feel like this was going to be last book?

I'd kind of run out of options. As far as The Book Tour goes, before that, I'd done an entire graphic novel which hadn't found a publisher, which is the equivalent of a 'novel in the drawer' or whatever people often have at their start of their career. But I was, hopefully, in the mid of my career. The book before that was another graphic novel that only found a publisher in France and nowhere else.

I was thinking, "Yeah, I'm really not on a good track here. Things are on a downward spiral." It didn't look that promising. I thought [The Book Tour] was a good book and I was totally behind it, but I couldn't find an English language publisher. So I sent it to my French publisher, and they were enthusiastic, and it picked up momentum and it was nominated at Angouleme and stuff. Things kind of went from a trough to a peak. Which is probably what you have to expect if you're going to have a career of any length really, but also it's the nature of the business in that you've enjoyed relationships with publishers and with editors, which are very fruitful for periods. The time I spent at Oni Press with Jamie Rich, who was my editor there, brilliant. We had a really good time, and then Jamie left, and then things changed.

There's just the peaks and troughs, the ups and downs of the business end of things, which is separate from the creative part. You can be doing the best work of your career, and if there's no one there to support it or take it on at a publisher, then you're really in a bad spot.

Do you have any materials and tools that you like working with the most? Or does it depend on the day?

It mostly depends on the project, but if I'm at the end of a project, I'm usually sick of those tools and approach. At the start, I'm very enthusiastic, and it's the same with any part of the process as well. I'm starting scripting, it's usually exciting. Then after you're getting towards the end of a story, it's a bit of a grind. It's the same with coloring. I've just started coloring the first Punycorn book. It's exciting— I haven't done any coloring in ages, so yeah, it's brilliant. 200 pages in, I'll probably feel less excited.

At the minute, as far as materials go, pens on watercolor paper. I find it works for me for the stories I'm telling at the minute, but it really depends. In fact, for the Punycorn book, I've been doing it on Procreate, so I've been using the iPad for the first time. That's been a new exciting development for me. Totally appropriate for a middle grade book with a cartoony style with funny animal characters. Would not be the right approach for The Book Tour which yeah, needs that scratchy line.

It's very analog.

Exactly. I felt that I needed to put physical pen on paper for that book. Just something in my head said that would be the right approach. Whereas this approach for using the iPad for Punycorn feels certainly right; you want quite luxurious brush lines and lots of quite bright colors for a fantasy world. Where The Book Tour is obviously this monotone work of a Third Man, neo noir sort of story, thinking of a story that maybe was from the 50s or something, that you'd see on the cinema screen.

Is there a big difference for you between writing for children and writing for adults?

It's good to work with an editor when I'm working on a Middle Grade book because of these very fine definitions between what's Middle Grade, what's YA. I mean, I don't read voraciously in these areas. I just kind of get a story that I really want to tell, and then I rely on an editor to guide me to make sure I keep within the guidelines. Not that I'm doing gratuitous violent scenes or anything, it's just a very specific emphasis and tone and how the characters react and how they behave.

There are real expectations of how you tell a story for children in a certain age group. I'm not sure if that's specific to the US, and I'm British, and I don't recognize the signals or whatever, the way you're supposed to do things. I'm not saying that I'm doing things completely wrong, and then an editor's going to have to put me on the straight and narrow all the time. It's quite subtle, small things.

Do you have an example of something that wouldn't have occurred to you, but an editor pointed out?

I would say a character like Punycorn, they suffer self-doubt, which I see as a positive aspect to a character, whereas an editor might see that as… whining. It's just a small difference slightly, but if the readers perceive your characters are whiney or ungrateful or something, it can really affect how they relate to that character. So, I rely on this second pair of eyes to guide me to some extent.

The Book Tour, for grownups, I just do totally on my own back. There's no editorial input at all, and I just rely on my own instincts. But then, there are fewer limits on what you can do in a graphic novel for adults. I think as long as you've got a good vision, that you know what you're doing, then yeah, I can work my way through an entire graphic novel for adults and not really need too much a second opinion to bounce off of. Sometimes that can be a bad thing in that it effects your confidence or, for someone like me who second guesses themselves a lot, it can continue to build a spiral.

But with books for Middle Grade, I found it really useful to have an editor to help me and just navigate the waters of doing stuff for kids. I'm not a kid anymore obviously, and it's been a long time, and my daughter is grown up as well. The further away I get from reading that kind of material more regularly, the more I rely on an editor's advice.

Speaking about reading, are there any comics or books or movies that's exciting you right now?

Right now, I am reading New Grub Street by George Gissing . It's a Victorian novel about the life of a middlebrow writer. It strikes so many chords about being a freelancer even today, it's unreal. I'm not quite halfway through, but just the pull and push of writing for the market and writing to what you feel is your best work. It's all in there. This is a book that was published in 1890 or something like that, but I'm reading it shaking my head, thinking "Wow." Every freelancer in every creative industry should read New Grub Street by George Gissing, and you'll kind of know what you're in for from the start. It should be on the curriculum of any kind of art course or college. It's a real eye opener that creative people have been going through the same processes for centuries.

I think George Orwell described it in a review as "not enough money," which is a central problem of the novel, but often the way for cartoonists as well.

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The Book Tour

by Andi Watson

ISBN 978-1-60309-479-5 - Diamond: JUL200575

$24.99 (US)

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A page-turning, Kafkaesque dark comedy in brilliant retro style, this graphic novel watches one man try to keep it together while everything falls apart.

★ ★ ★ Nominated for the Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album: New ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Official Selection of the Angoulême International Comics Festival ★ ★ ★

"Watson’s adeptness at capturing body language and facial expressions combines with nuanced dialog and a keen sense of irony to create a hugely entertaining page-turner." —  Library Journal (starred review)

"A darkly humorous read." — Booklist

"Watson neatly balances moody atmosphere and light comedy... [a] deadpan funny riff on artistic insecurities." —  Publishers Weekly

"Andi Watson's retro line and daring dialogue make this graphic novel a British delight." — Le Monde

"Packed with black humor. We were carried away by the tempo of the drawing." — RTL

"A real treat. Between Ionesco and Beckett." — France Inter

"Black comedy, delicious and scathing." — Télérama

"A little surrealist gem." — Comixtrip

"Andi Watson embarks the reader on an adventure that mixes absurdity and dark humor. It almost feels like a new Raymond Carver." — Franceinfo

"A fascinating maze in which we lose our bearings." — Les Inrocks

"A little masterpiece of tongue-in-cheek humor." — dBD

"Whatever the anxieties that led to the genesis of this book, they have allowed a beautiful exorcism... funny and chilling." — Trois Couleurs

"Andi Watson gives The Book Tour the best of his art." — Livres Hebdo

"Brilliant... a Kafka-like tale that immediately proves captivating." — aVoir aLire

"A clean line that gives full measure to a Kafkaesque atmosphere." — Canal BD

"Andi Watson delivers an offbeat graphic novel, with absurd dialogue recalling Monty Python." — Let's Motiv

"Delicious suspense that bathes in the absurd." — BoDoï

"A fantastic and breathtaking story." — RTBF

Upon the publication of his latest novel, G. H. Fretwell, a minor English writer, embarks on a book tour to promote it. Nothing is going according to plan, and his trip gradually turns into a nightmare. But now the police want to ask him some questions about a mysterious disappearance, and it seems that Fretwell's troubles are only just beginning…

In his first book for adults in many years, acclaimed cartoonist Andi Watson evokes all the anxieties felt by every writer and compresses them into a comedic gem of a book. Witty, surreal, and sharply observant, The Book Tour offers a captivating lesson in letting go. — a 272-page, B&W graphic novel with French flaps (6.3" x 8.9")

• THE BOOK TOUR @ NewCity
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• Published: 17 February 2021
• ISBN: 9781603094795
• Imprint: IDW Publishing
• Format: Paperback
• RRP: $59.99
• Contemporary fiction
• General & literary fiction
• Graphic novels & manga

The Book Tour

• Andi Watson

A page-turning, Kafkaesque dark comedy in brilliant retro style, this graphic novel watches one man try to keep it together while everything falls apart.

Upon the publication of his latest novel, G. H. Fretwell, a minor English writer, embarks on a book tour to promote it. Nothing is going according to plan, and his trip gradually turns into a nightmare. But now the police want to ask him some questions about a mysterious disappearance, and it seems that Fretwell's troubles are only just beginning...

In his first book for adults in many years, acclaimed cartoonist Andi Watson evokes all the anxieties felt by every writer and compresses them into a comedic gem of a book. Witty, surreal, and sharply observant, The Book Tour offers a captivating lesson in letting go.

Also by Andi Watson

Praise for The Book Tour

"Andi Watson's retro line and the art with which his daring dialogue dramatizes any situation makes this graphic novel a British delight." -- Le Monde "Black comedy, delicious and scathing."  -- Télérama "A little masterpiece of tongue-in-cheek humor." --dBD

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• Published: 17 February 2021
• ISBN: 9781603094795
• Imprint: IDW Publishing
• Format: Paperback
• RRP: $65.00
• Contemporary fiction
• General & literary fiction
• Graphic novels

The Book Tour

• Andi Watson

A page-turning, Kafkaesque dark comedy in brilliant retro style, this graphic novel watches one man try to keep it together while everything falls apart.

Upon the publication of his latest novel, G. H. Fretwell, a minor English writer, embarks on a book tour to promote it. Nothing is going according to plan, and his trip gradually turns into a nightmare. But now the police want to ask him some questions about a mysterious disappearance, and it seems that Fretwell's troubles are only just beginning...

In his first book for adults in many years, acclaimed cartoonist Andi Watson evokes all the anxieties felt by every writer and compresses them into a comedic gem of a book. Witty, surreal, and sharply observant, The Book Tour offers a captivating lesson in letting go.

Also by Andi Watson

Praise for The Book Tour

"Andi Watson's retro line and the art with which his daring dialogue dramatizes any situation makes this graphic novel a British delight." -- Le Monde "Black comedy, delicious and scathing."  -- Télérama "A little masterpiece of tongue-in-cheek humor." --dBD

Related titles

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Sign up to our newsletter using your email.

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The Book Tour Paperback – November 17, 2020

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• Part of Series The Book Tour
• Print length 272 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Top Shelf Productions
• Publication date November 17, 2020
• Dimensions 6.44 x 0.65 x 8.88 inches
• ISBN-10 1603094792
• ISBN-13 978-1603094795
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Top Shelf Productions (November 17, 2020)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1603094792
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1603094795
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.18 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.44 x 0.65 x 8.88 inches
• #742 in Literary Graphic Novels (Books)
• #765 in Self-Help & Psychology Humor
• #4,682 in Fiction Satire

About the author

Andi watson.

Andi Watson is a British cartoonist, writer and illustrator who has been nominated for four Eisners, two Harveys and an official selection of the Angoulême International Festival. He has written and drawn graphic novels in a wide variety of genres and for different age groups for publishers as diverse as Random House, Walker books, First Second, Harper Collins, DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, Image and Top Shelf. His work has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, German, Portuguese, and Turkish. He lives in Worcester with his wife and daughter.

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Andi Watson

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18 November 2020

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