"Sober Dog" Comes To An End

Top comics creator Nick Abadzis' strip The Trial of the Sober Dog, which started its run back in June last year (see news story), finished its run in the British daily newspaper The Times yesterday. If you missed it, the entire story is now free to read online on his blog.

Times readers have lapped up Nick's strip and more comics are in the offing thanks to its success. "The reaction has been really positive," Nick told downthetubes, "The biggest fan being Mr Editor-of-The Times himself, James Harding. Basically, he's happy because his readers are and my immediate editor (of T2) told me that she thinks they've turned the readers of The Times onto comics which is cool. That's nearly a million people!

"Looks like they're going to do more - [New York Times contributor] Rutu Modan [author of the critically acclaimed Exit Wounds] will be next." (View Rutu's online protfolio here on TheArtWorks)

As for whether Nick will appear in The Times again, he tells us he's busy with several projects at present, including organising an expanded, rejigged collection of Tale of a Sober Dog and finishing his next tale, Skin Trouble, for First Second before doing anything else. "I'm keeping a lot plates spinning right now!" he notes.

Trial of a Sober Dog 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…

Abadzis In The Times

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!