The Myriad First Graphic Novel Competition has unleashed some incredibly strong work onto the comics-reading public in recent years including The Black Project by Gareth Brookes (the 2012 winner), Hannah Eaton’s Naming Monsters (shortlisted 2012) and the upcoming For the Love of God, Marie! by Jade Sarson. The latter being the 2014 winner in a year when I myself was privileged to be one of the judging panel.
Ian Williams (right) was another of the 2012 shortlisted creators with his debut graphic The Bad Doctor being published two years ago by Myriad. The tale of country doctor Iwan James, it drew on Williams’s own experiences as a GP and fell firmly into the “graphic medicine” strand of comics. A term that, fittingly, Williams himself first coined a few years back.
You can read a full review of The Bad Doctor here at Broken Frontier but I said of it at the time “Replete with sometimes delicate, sometimes explicit observations about the foibles of human nature and the bureaucracy of healthcare, The Bad Doctor combines wickedly black humour with subtle characterisation that never fails to engage the audience’s empathy.”
Myriad have announced today that they will be publishing Williams’s linked follow-up to that acclaimed first offering, entitled The Lady Doctor, and to be published in 2018. The full press release follows.
Myriad is excited to announce the acquisition of the highly anticipated new graphic novel by GP and comics artist Ian Williams.
The Lady Doctor is the follow-up companion volume to Ian’s critically acclaimed debut, The Bad Doctor, about the life and times of rural GP Iwan James.
The Lady Doctor focuses on one of Iwan’s fellow doctors, 40-year-old Lois Pritchard, who is balancing her career as a Genitourinary Medicine specialist with a disastrous romantic life as well as a momentous decision regarding her estranged mother. Myriad’s Creative Director and Graphics Editor, Corinne Pearlman, bought World rights to The Lady Doctor from Kirsty McLachlan at David Godwin Associates and Myriad will publish in 2018.
‘From the moment we see Lois nipping out of the back of the surgery for a fag, we know we will get a good story!’ says Corinne Pearlman. ‘Ian has a lightness of touch and a wonderfully sly sense of humour that cuts across any worthiness of his achievement in the world of graphic medicine. He knows his comics and he loves to communicate using all the tools of his craft. We’re in for a treat.’
Ian Williams is also the author of ‘Sick Notes’, a weekly strip which appears in the Guardian chronicling the trials of the NHS. He has an international following as the founder of Graphic Medicine, a network of comics artists creating stories about health, and is series editor of Penn State University Press’s Graphic Medicine imprint, which publishes the US edition of The Bad Doctor.
The Bad Doctor has attracted widespread acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic and been celebrated with a range of award nominations. Highly Commended at the 2015 British Medical Association Book Awards in the Primary Health Care Category, it was also shortlisted for the Medicine Unboxed Creative Prize and longlisted for the British Comic Awards (Best Book), where Ian was longlisted in the Emerging Talent category.
Myriad is an independent publisher of fiction and graphic books based in Brighton, with a graphics list that has quickly become established as one of the most characterful and thought-provoking in the UK.
