Abadzis In The Times

By John Freeman on May 30, 2008

Clearly not content with taking over The Guardian with the wonderful Cora’s Breakfast (see news story), Nick Abadzis reveals The Times will be serialising his new graphic novella The Trial of the Sober Dog, serialised in The Times every Monday from 2 June 2008 for the next six months.

The story centres on the person everyone knows or knew: the person at school who was thought most likely to succeed. A chance encounter at a private view sees friends Marco and Petra encounter their old school rival Joe Chase again after many years. It seems he has indeed lived up to his potential… but things aren’t always what they seem. No matter how it seems to observers, nobody can have it all…

Told through observations, anecdotes, flashbacks and musings by different narrators, each episode shows a different aspect of Chase and multiple reasons why he might still be nicknamed The Sober Dog…

The Times relaunch on 2 June features The Sober Dog as its new T2 Monday strip in full colour. Every episode will be available to read online, the day after publication at Timesonline.co.uk/soberdog

“Graphic novels – comics – in The Times?” says Nick. “It’s all true. Follow the exploits and observations of the Sober Dog and his “friends” every week!”

Here’s a trailer for the first episode:

In the run up to the launch of The DFC there was a bidding war between various British newspapers for the rights to serialise Philip Pullman’s new strip from the title, The Adventures of John Blake.

It seems that a knock on effect of that, and the raised profile of comics in newspapers spearheaded by The Guardian (who won the bidding war for the Pullman strip) might well spell a resurgence of interest in newspaper comics, albeit in longform rather than the traditional three to four panel strip. And not before time!

About the Author
Latest Posts

John Freeman

John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.

He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.