Time For Lights Out

Product Information

I don't know how to rate this, as a book about death, depression, getting old and dying, which this is, it couldn't have done a better job, so 5 stars for achieving what the author set out to do.

Raymond Briggs: ‘Everything takes so bloody long when you’re

It is a poignant work that deserves its place among the best of bittersweet later-life graphic memoir alongside Maus by Art Spiegelman and Our Cancer Year by Harvey Pekar. I recommend Time for Lights Out for fans of Briggs's books for adults and who don't mind macabre meditations on mortality. Categories: British Comics, British Comics - Graphic Novels, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News

A beloved genius of storytelling and illustration. Rachel Cooke, Observer, *Graphic Novel of the Month*

Time For Lights Out by Raymond Briggs - Penguin Books Australia Time For Lights Out by Raymond Briggs - Penguin Books Australia

Most of my ideas seem to be based on a simple premise: let's assume that something imaginary - a snowman, a Bogeyman, a Father Christmas - is wholly real and then proceed logically from there.' Raymond Briggs was born in London in 1934, and studied at Wimbledon School of Art and the Slade School of Art, London. Unflinchingly staring old age and death down, Briggs has produced something so far beyond the irascible Father Christmas or the lugubrious Fungus the Bogeyman that, while his work is noticeably in a similar vein, comparison is impossible. The essence of being able to draw from memory (is) to be a mini actor. If the figure is to walk jauntily with its nose in the air, you have to imagine what that feels like.' This s a very depressing book. Well, the subject is not the most cheerful one, but many of us have happy moments even after 70!I just didn't enjoy this, it is so negative and depressing, this is hard to read without sobbing or at least feeling really down afterwards. There is an honesty about the vulnerabilities and losses of aging and the ever-present sense of walking with death. There is a little of the joys, such as the brief appearance of his partner’s grandchildren. I think that more could have been made of this as the gloom does threaten to overwhelm. Some of the joy and love shared between him and his, sadly now late, partner could have sat alongside the death of his wife some decades ago. There are gains as well as losses. Briggs is aware of his grumpy old man stance and skewers himself through the occasional appearance of ‘Prodnose’, who some might remember from Beachcomber columns.

Raymond Briggs - Wikipedia Raymond Briggs - Wikipedia

It's all done in a variety of sketches, text snippets and poetry. The art varies from rough pencils to finished pencils, to full inks, mainly in shades of grey. It all adds to the sombre feel. Some of it feels like he just wants to get it on paper while he still can. Mortality, especially your own, is never going to be an easy topic, this was always going to be a dark book, I'm just a little sad at how depressing and self indulgent some of it is. Yet despite that, it still has its moments that are incredibly touching. He's still a master of his art. The drawing varies from hasty sketches to beautiful drawings with purposeful shading and depth. I believe this is representative of how Briggs felt throughout composing this book, moving from unsettled to focused philosophy. He also shows off his poetic side in Time For Lights Out with some witty and plain-speaking free verse. Rhymes do sometimes occur and normally for a good reason. The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival.Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Star Trek Explorer (previously known as Star Trek Magazine) and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War and “Dan Dare”. The ‘Now’ section presents Briggs as a seventy-something year old who surveys himself as an old man and is somewhat annoyed that this is what he has turned into. On walks he finds the hills are harder to climb. His days are marked out by routines he and his partner doggedly adhere to. He observes that he has become less tolerant of other people’s appearance and behaviour. All of this is written with unflinching insight and wry humour. Briggs recognises his foibles and failings. Although poignant in places there is no expectation of sympathy. Drawing is Feeling”– Raymond Briggs talked about his craft during the Raymond Briggs: Snowmen, Bogeymen & Milkmen, which aired on BBC Two last year

9781787331952: Time For Lights Out - Briggs, Raymond

In Fungus the Bogeyman I wanted to show the petty nastiness of life - slime and snot and spit and dandruff, all this awful stuff which is slightly funny because it detracts from human dignity and our pretensions.' In some ways all of Raymond’s books have been about death,” noted Dan Franklin, associate publisher of Cape who acquired the title for the publisher.”Here he confronts it head on in a book that is honest and truthful and very touching. Ethel & Ernest was the very first book on the Cape graphic novel list. It’s wonderful to be publishing him again.” An extraordinary exploration of old age in words and pictures, by the much-loved author of The Snowman and Ethel & Ernest. I always loved Briggs's books as a boy, especially classics like Fungus the Bogeyman and Father Christmas. Now in middle age, I was really looking forward to what seemed to promise some more mature reflections on life and death along with more of Briggs's beautiful drawings. But there's much to console here. The section on his wife Jean is heartbreaking, especially with the photos, her short physical illness bringing to an end a still young life dominated by schizophrenia, but his love for her is expressed in so many different ways, even in the matter of fact tone in which he reflects on not having children. This makes his references to his enjoyment of 'the grandchildren' later, via his partner Liz, all the richer.Time For Lights Out, Raymond Briggs’ exploration and contemplation of old age and death, is published by Jonathan Cape today. We are thrilled with the critical reaction so far. Creating Comics: Comic Artists Christopher Jones and Matthew Dow Smith mind probed on Panel to Panel There are poems, letters, facts and drawings all about death, dying and getting old. Descriptions of Raymond's wife's illness and death, his parents deaths. We even meet a well loved dog character but only as she is at the vets being put down. I can see that this is the aim of this book but I would have loved to have shared a nice memory of his dog or wife but no, literally nothing positive in the whole book. He talks as if he longs for death to relieve him of his horrible life but at the same time he complains of the things he has to do to live longer. Ironically he has lived quite a long life so far. Craig Brown in The Mail on Sunday summarises that Time For Lights Out is a ‘category-defying rag-bag of drawings, poems and 犀利士 I've always loved this author's work so when I saw this "new" book on the library shelves I simply had to borrow it. Briggs published this book in 2019 and he was telling the stories of many old men, but also his own. He passed away less than 3 years afterwards, aged 88. That's pretty impressive.