Bill Bragg

Graphic Novels - Shortlisted 2010

Bill Bragg has been working as a freelance illustrator since 1998. This combined with a long-time love of reading graphic novels led him to apply to the RCA in 2003 where he spent two years experimenting with the form and developing stories of his own. Whilst there he also founded LE GUN magazine with a group of friends, initially as a place to publish all the exciting work they saw happening around them. The magazine is now an established art annual.

An important piece of work for Bragg was a wordless novel he drew during his MA, called Journey of a Stranger. The stimulus for the piece came after a trip to East Berlin in 2004 when he had the idea of someone not being about to turn left out of their front door for 30 years. The resulting story is about a man who leaves his flat and takes a train journey out of the city for the first time in 30 years and the thoughts and memories this unearths as a consequence.

In December 2008, Bragg started a comic strip for Icon magazine entitled Marcel’s Appendix, which follows the surreal urban wanderings of an overly earnest architect called Marcel Salami. Bill has worked for a broad range of publications in the U.K. and the U.S.A. including: The Folio Society, The Guardian, The New York Times, Saatchi and Saatchi, The Independent, The Sunday Times. As well as his focus on graphic novels, Bill has also been working on a much longer book since 2007 with writer James Caddick.