Flake

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I really enjoyed the premise of an underdog fighting to make ends meet and preserve his dad's legacy, as well as how everyone in the community rallied together to help one other achieve their dreams. A while ago, the 35-year-old graphic novelist realised that Mervyn King, the erstwhile governor of the Bank of England, shared his name not only with the world’s fourth-best darts player but also a high-ranking lawn and indoor bowler, whose day job was as a pest controller. A graphic novel about ice-cream turf wars in an English seaside town has won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comedic fiction. Flake, Matthew Dooley's debut graphic novel, tells of how this epic battle turns out, and how Howard - helped by the Dobbiston Mountain Rescue team - overcomes every obstacle and triumphs in the end. It is, indeed, a very funny book, but it’s also a somber reflection on the mundanity of working class life in the north of England.

There’s overt optimism at work in the narrative – in Howard’s quietly contented marriage, in his small kindnesses, and his friendships, and in the series of events that lead to the happy ending. The monotonous pacing of Howard’s life, for example, is carefully echoed in tightly structured pages where very little variation can occur from one panel to the next. Like this father before him, Howard is an ice-cream van man – a master of his craft, with all the local knowledge and subtle skills:“Identifying the best places to stop.Catastrophising, his most recent self-published comic, is the perfect example of the kind of worldweary reflections on modern living that have ensured his droll, philosophical meanderings have become essential reading since he first came to prominence in much missed anthologies like Dirty Rotten Comics and Off Life. Tony was born of one of the Families, but not into it, and this has given him quite the chip on his fishy shoulder.

The shortlist was selected over a lively online judges’ meeting, with the usual glasses of Bollinger champagne.

Flake is principally comedic, comedic in the way that Magnus Mills is comedic or Wallace and Gromit. He is also a co-organiser of the annual UK Small Press Day and has been a judge or committee member for the Myriad First Graphic Novel Competition, the British Comic Awards and the SICBA Awards.

Victoria Carfantan, director of Champagne Bollinger - UK, says: ‘We are very proud of our long-standing relationship supporting the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. My partner said she struggles to tell the difference in my work between something that is funny and something that is sad,” says Dooley. And given the entrenchment of the ‘obligatory edgy’ as the norm, Flake’s celebration of such pleasures seems almost subversive. The ending is rather brisk compared to the rest of the book, and consequently feels slightly abrupt, but by that point it has managed to satisfyingly wrap up most of its storylines, and all while bucking what would’ve been the conventional outcome of Howard and Tony’s story. The lateral thinking and succinct wit of Tom Gauld flow freely too, along with stylistic influences from Chris Ware (the facial forms, colouring, occasional boxed layout plus the odd “AND SO.A stunning first graphic novel by a Cape/Comica/Observer graphic short story competition winner - a tale of a skirmish in the ice-cream wars that is worthy of Alan Bennett**WINNER OF THE BOLLINGER EVERYMAN WODEHOUSE PRIZE FOR COMIC FICTION****A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR**A stunning first graphic novel by a Cape/Comica/Observer graphic short story competition winner - a tale of a skirmish in the ice-cream wars that is worthy of Alan BennettIn the small seaside town of Dobbiston, Howard sells ice creams from his van, just like his father before him. The visuals are so pleasing, with symmetry and soft colours, and the humour accompanying them is quiet and hilarious at the same time. For longer-term fans of his work there are a couple of in-jokes that will delight with their implication that Flake takes place in a wider shared “Dooleyverse”.

This sedentary lifestyle is about to be disrupted however when rogue ice cream vendor Tony Augustus re-enters his life. He’ll be joining a long line of witty winners from the past two decades, including Helen Fielding, Ian McEwan, Terry Pratchett and Nina Stibbe. It's only out from Jonathan Cape in the UK at the moment, so I recommend you hot-foot it to Book Depository. Dooley, who spends his weekends playing lawn bowls at Wimbledon Park bowls club, doesn’t deny that there’s something of himself in these anachronistic creations. Full of irresistible puns … A meld of Alan Bennett and the American comic-book artist Chris Ware …and also Tom Gauld.

We’re also both sharing resources and more good places for donations from our individual accounts but we wanted to let y’all know that we’re standing with you, as individuals AND as a show. Dooley has always been a subtle visual storyteller, the inherent sophistication in his use of the form easier to miss for his prioritisation of craft over ostentation. Wuster, Tracy, “Scribbling to excite the laughter of God’s creatures”: Some Thoughts on “Mere” Humor, Entertainment, and Pleasure, Studies in American Humor, 4. This is the drink we drank and the recipe is how you can make it if you wanna make it, and The Accidental is the book we read and talked about, along with many others.