The Playwright

This is much closer to being a character sketch than a (graphic) novel – not too much happens, there are no substantial crises, and so on. This is not in any sense a bad thing, since it’s one of the most incisive and profound character portraits I’ve seen in comics.

The titular character is a middle-aged single man, who fantasises about a love life he has never really had. He’s a successful writer of plays and the occasional TV show, but he worries enormously about everything and is low on social skills of any kind.

Eddie Campbell may be the best artist ever to depict all this. Not only is he one of comic’s greatest ever cartoonists, his style is a great fit. The sexual fantasies could be lurid and could overwhelm the story in other hands, and the loose, even scratchy artwork is perfect for the dreary middle-aged life the story offers. He’s also great at capturing a person in one drawing – you know a lot about the protagonist from the very first image in this book.

I also think the format suits the story – there’s something about the newspaper strip shape, the regularity of the three-panel layout, that imposes a rather monotonous repetitiveness, which of course echoes the man’s rather dull life. Better is the fact that this is in colour – we’ve not seen colour Eddie Campbell often enough, and Eddie uses a loose but beautifully modulated style in the tones that matches his drawing magnificently.

This is a relatively small work, but just about every moment of it has its pleasures, thanks to sophisticated and restrained writing and superb art that fits the text and extends it in multiple directions. Beautiful.