Drawing inspiration from writing lives
It follows last year’s Goliath, his masterly re-telling of the biblical story of David and Goliath from the giant’s point of view.
Gauld’s new book takes its title from a typically concise single panel illustration portraying a sombre-looking group representing Proper Literature, who are tut-tutting their disapproval of Science Fiction, as depicted by the cheerful figure hovering above them.
As with the rest of the strips in the collection, its inspiration lies in the Review’s letter page.
Gauld explains: “The Review section always had an illustration on the letters page but they wanted somebody new for it. I had done a few illustrations for the Guardian and the art director, Roger Browning, knew I drew comics, so he asked me to do it and made the image size a little bigger.
“The brief was to illustrate one of the letters on the page. After working on it for a while I realised three things: 1) Many people don’t read the letters at all. 2) Sometimes the letters are a bit dull and 3) People, including my bosses at the Guardian, tended to respond best to the ones where I went off on a bit of a tangent. So I decided that I’d make cartoons which were inspired by one of the letters but worked on their own too.”
As a child, Gauld used to enjoy drawing what he describes as silly cartoons for the amusement of his friends, but it wasn’t until he was in the final year of his degree at Edinburgh College of Art that he started getting into storytelling.
Gauld moved to London and finished his MA at the Royal College of Art in 2001. It was there he began putting out comics with Simone Lia, of Fluffy fame.
“Simone and I sat next to each other at the Royal College of Art. I was drawing comics and she was making children’s books, but I persuaded her to try making comics and she turned out to be brilliant at it. We decided we’d publish a comic in time for our graduation exhibition. We actually ended up making one comic together and one solo comic each in time for the show.”
By 2003, Gauld was receiving commissions from Time Out magazine and The Guardian, filling in for Posy Simmonds. That series was called Writers At Work and featured celebrated writers grappling with the banalities of daily life as they attempt to surmount writers block.
“I wasn’t long out of college and was really nervous about filling in for Simmonds, so I was having trouble coming up with an idea. I think this is why the strips are mainly about writers unable to write,” he says.
My cartoon for Sarurday's Guardian: http://t.co/zgYp7pYiLZ
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) July 14, 2013
*You’re All Jealous Of My Jetpack is published by Drawn & Quarterly.
