WATCH: Jersey comic artist's touching firefighter story wins global award

Tuesday 08 December 2020

A Jersey-born comic writer's touching story of a firefighter with life-changing injuries and his young son has scooped him in an international award.

Tom Dearie won the Grand Prix award at the international Komiksus Awards last month in Poland for his short comic, ‘F is for Fire'.

The story is told from the perspective of a young boy whose firefighter father is caught in accident which leaves him with life-altering injuries. Together, the pair have to come to terms with the trauma and aftermath of the incident, and face their fears together.

Discussing the origins of the story, Tom said it simply came from the fire station he and his girlfriend live opposite of in their home in Warsaw.

Pictured: The initial idea for the comic stemmed from the simple image of a fire station opposite Tom's home in Warsaw.

“I’d had this idea of doing a short story about doing a firefighter for a while,” he explained. “The competition had a very set entry requirement in terms of pages and things like that – and I thought this is the one about the firefighter.

“Originally the son was going to be an arsonist, but as I wrote it, it changed, I storyboarded it quite quickly and it became a lot more sensitive; about the father and the son, and actually about the father’s phobia and the son developing his own fears.”

Before Warsaw and before the award though, Tom was an aspiring artist in Jersey: “I went to De La Selle, and Mark Blanchard was my teacher for A Levels and GCSE. As a kid, I loved cartoons and drawing cartoons, and he was really a massive encouragement to me, the teacher who really pushed me.”

Among cartoon favourites like The Simpsons, he also remembered Jersey artist and cartoonist Edmund Blampied, whose pictures hung on his dad’s wall, as a significant influence.

It was the discovery of literary oriented comics that would sow the seed eventually leading to his award winning story though, with Tom saying that works like Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust-study, MAUS, opened his eyes to the possibilities of a medium he had previously thought only reserved for the likes of Spiderman and Batman.

WATCH: Tom accepts the award (25:50).

After time spent in London, where he did an MA in painting, Tom shifted away from painting into illustration, eventually moving to Warsaw with his girlfriend. While he makes his living off of editorial work, he has spent the last year and a half writing comics as a hobby.

In fact, it was only at the behest of his girlfriend that he entered the competition: “Because of covid, the festival got pushed back, and then it became a digital festival and I almost forgot about it or that I’d even entered it.

“Then one day an email came through saying I’d won the grand prize and I was totally surprised, I couldn’t believe it really!”

Following the award, Tom is aiming to continue writing comics alongside his editorial work and other artistic ventures, with the aim of eventually writing something longer than his short comics, akin to a graphic novel.

Pictured: Tom's story concerns a father and son who have to address the impact of his phobia of fire.

Reflecting on his passion for the art form of comics, he recalled a quote from a cartoonist he had heard: “They said it’s for people who weren’t good enough to be painters and weren’t good enough to be writers, but were just good enough writers and just good enough drawers to make something out of it.

“And I think it’s something like that for me – I’m probably not good enough to be a successful writer and I’m probably not good enough to be a successful painter, but I feel like this is a vehicle for me to do both simultaneously, so that I can write my own stories and enjoy drawing and developing that skillset as well.”

But, despite the self-deprecating comments, an international award after only a year-and-a-half of writing certainly suggests success on both the artistic and writing horizons for Tom Dearie.