Broken Frontier

Slow News Day collects all six issues of writer Andi Watson’s 2001 mini-series of the same name. In recent years Watson has come to prominence for many of his creator owned projects – including the recent Clubbing for DC’s new Minx line. His mini-series and graphic novels tend to deal with the various complexities of inter-personal relationships of all types from parent/child, to friendship, to hostility even. For Slow News Day he delves into office politics, rural newspaper reporting, the differences between men and women and the cultural clash between American and British sensibilities.

American Katherine Washington is a writer just starting out when she lands an internship at a small, rural, weekly, English paper. The struggling Wheatstone Mercury has seemingly sold its soul to advertisers and Katherine finds herself paired with the paper’s only remaining reporter, the prickly Owen Holmes. In between writing stories about local school soccer teams, missing gerbils, and puff pieces to bolster the advertisers, Katherine comes to know and appreciate her complex co-workers and their equally complex lives.

As Katherine begins seeing beneath the surface of her colleagues she hides a secret of her own. She has an ulterior motive for being at the Mercury and that reason may end up threatening the relationships she builds. It also may end up forcing her to make a choice about where her future will go.

Slow News Day was originally published as a six-issue mini-series but this collected edition truly reads as smoothly and seamlessly as if it had been written as a graphic novel from the start. There are no obvious breaks in the story and no clichéd cliffhangers to interrupt what is a slow, witty, very personal feeling story.

Watson plays off of themes and dichotomies here – the idea of the American abroad, the fish out of water, the urbanite in a rural setting, culture clashes, "men are from Mars women are from Venus", etc. While most of this plays out in the changing relationship between Owen and Katherine, some of it comes through in Owen’s own relationship with his father as well as that with his lover and co-worker Nicole. Just as Katherine must change her outlook on life, Owen is forced to shed some of the comforts he clings to and venture out into the unknown.

Throughout the story Watson struggles to avoid making his characters stereotyped and, in fact, the breaking down of stereotypes is one of the major themes of the story. For the most part Watson succeeds in his aims but Katherine’s boyfriend, Brett, remains a little too much of a stock figure and a convenient one at that. Another slight weakness to the story is that the ending is a bit telegraphed. The nice thing is that, even though you know what is coming, you still end up smiling when it gets there.

Watson also handles the art for this story and he provides a spare, angular, simplistic design to everything. Despite this, the figures remain nicely expressive and the settings are easily amplified by the reader’s imagination.

Slow News Day is partly what it says on the wrapper – a nice, slow story that you can take your time reading and enjoying. This is a smart, witty story with a dry, British sense of humor that easily crosses cultural boundaries.

Slow News Day is available from SLG Publishing priced $12.95 (ISBN 1593620802).