Georgie Wreckage is a sketchman on a newspaper, illustrating the news. He sees, draws and is haunted by gang wars, ferry disasters and dismembered corpses. But Georgie’s world is under threat. Colour printing is coming, photography is breathing down his neck. There are inventors everywhere and everything is changing.

The future is in the funny papers but Georgie can’t be funny. He can’t make things up. Then a chance encounter leads him to draw a young street vendor named Pinfold and he is cursed with sudden success. Meanwhile, Pinfold’s life is never quite the same again.

Funny Papers is full of energy and exuberance. Even at its darkest, when Georgie moves among the criminal, the dispossessed and the poor, it fizzes with life. It captures a period of dramatic social and technological change, where nothing is certain and everything is in motion. There are plenty of resonances with today, not least Pinfold’s struggle to maintain his identity in the face of his more vivid and ‘real’ cartoon counterpart.

You don’t need to be a fan of comics (I’ve never really got them) to enjoy this book. I raced through it and am looking forward to reading the sequel. ( )