Comic Books

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/20547838

I was drawn to this graphic novel by its Liverpool setting. A brief flick revealed colour-suffused images of landmarks that I’ve come to love thanks to my scouse husband: the curved iron and glass roof of Lime Street station; the twin clock towers of the Royal Liver Building; even the space-age crow’s nest that sits atop St Johns Beacon, AKA the Radio City Tower. Chris Shepherd, who drew and wrote Anfield Road, grew up in the city, and his affection for it, even in the bleakest of times, can be felt on every page. When he gives us a series of drawings of the magnificent but (at the time the book is set) sorely neglected St George’s Hall, the murmuration of starlings that rises above it eventually forms the shape of a heart.

In the end, though, it was Shepherd’s story that made me hang around. A bildungsroman set in the 1980s, it’s about a teenage boy called Conor who lives with his grandmother, Mary, in a terraced house in Anfield Road, home of Liverpool FC. For Conor’s peers, this is a dream address. When the art teacher at their comprehensive asks the class to draw their heroes, the boys all sketch the Liverpool striker Ian Rush, the picture copied from the cover of Look-in magazine. But Conor has never even been to a match. His dreams are of London, where he hopes to attend art college, and by doing so escape his dysfunctional family.