A graphic novel which draws a bleak vision of a future Scotland beset by rising tides has been assembled by a team of award-winning authors and artists including Irvine Welsh.
IDP: 2043, which will be launched in August at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, is the the Trainspotting author's first writing for comics, working with graphic artist Dan McDaid on his part of the story. The project was overseen by Scottish crime writer and graphic novelist Denise Mina, after starting life as part of the Stripped programme of graphic novels at the 2013 festival.
"It was a bit of a shot in the dark – it could have not worked," said Mina. "I used to hate collective books – there used to be a fashion for them, with everyone taking one chapter, and what actually happened was that everyone fell out with each other, or people didn't hand stuff in. I tried to shape the story so nothing was contingent on anything else, but actually it all worked out."
As well as Welsh, the graphic novel will include sections from Mary Talbot – the author of the Costa-winning Dotter of Her Father's Eyes – working with artist Kate Charlesworth, and the co-creator of 2000AD Pat Mills, working with graphic novelist Hannah Berry. Mina herself worked with the celebrated French graphic novelist and illustrator Barroux, with graphic novelists and illustrators Adam Murphy and Will Morris completing the team.
Set in Scotland in 2043, IDP – short for internally displaced person – "follows the catastrophic effects of a small rise in sea levels on the country's heavily-populated low-lying areas and how society reimagines itself in the face of a huge population shift in a world of scant resources", said publisher Freight Books, announcing the graphic novel.
"I came up with the overarching story and then gave everyone their basic outline," said Mina. "[It imagines a world] where it isn't that we'll lose a lot of land, but that everyone will have to move - we'll all be refugees. There will be a point where we have to look at how we live together, and when all our basic premises will be open to question … Gender and race will become unimportant, in the face of the pragmatic decisions we will have to make."
The story also, she says, includes a hired assassin, while Welsh will be filling out the back story of an "evil overlord who's conducting things from behind the scenes". "He's done a brilliant job," she said. "He's written about who he is and how he came to be that guy – he's written a horror story, a Tales from the Crypt-type thing."
Mina and Freight Books hope the graphic novel will be a "showcase" for the genre. "We wanted to show what comics can do – really it's for the people who don't really read comics. There are people who read all comics, and then there are people who are slightly intimidated by reading them," said Mina. "A lot of comics are very inward-looking [but] comics are such an interesting format, and such a unique way to tell a story."
Nick Barley, director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, said "he was "thrilled that we will be able to launch our very own graphic novel".
