Raymond Briggs

[hitmouse]

Author of Father Christmas, Fungus the Bogeyman, The Snowman, Where the Wind Blows, Ethel and Ernest, amongst many others has died aged 88.
One of the great children’s illustrators. Lovely technique with coloured pencils. Also, I think, a sublime sequential comic artist.
Most famous for the film of The Snowman, but I first discovered him aged 8 or 9 when I found Father Christmas in my school library in the mid 1970s. It is a brilliantly uncompromising, almost wordless comic with FC as an overworked, lonely and rather grumpy and otherwise decent ordinary working-class man. Made absolute sense to me then: there was no attempt at being cute or having a tidy ending, but it was funny, sympathetic and engaging, and the clever thing was that it was immediately understandable to a young kid.

 

[Rodders]

RIP Raymond.

I'm rather embarrassed to say that as a man of 52 years, i still haven't seen Where The Wind Blows or The Snowman.

 

[Mr Cairo]

RIP Raymond.

I'm rather embarrassed to say that as a man of 52 years, i still haven't seen Where The Wind Blows or The Snowman.

I was always convinced that here the wind blows was shown in our school around teh same time we were shown Threads (nightmare) and Apaches (Also nightmare) but after he died I realised it couldn't have been out until much before 86. The Snowman I actually watched for the first time about 2 years ago during the start of lock-down. both are actually quite moving.

His death is sad news but I have gotten to the age myself where most of the people that I admired or was aware of as a child are reaching the end.

 

[Ian Fortytwo]

RIP Raymond. Love his stories.

 

[Pyan]

Loved Fungus the Bogeyman, shocked by Where the Wind Blows. A consummate storyteller.

RIP, Mr Briggs.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Another sad loss. What a great man he was. Ethel & Ernest is a fave.

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

... is it bad that I assumed he passed away years ago?

We had a copy of "Fungus the Bogeyman" that I re-read obsessively when I was growing up. I may be reading too much into it, but I think it was ahead of its time in showing that other ways of life can be valid.