THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH 2025! Can it really be an entire eight years since Hannah Berry’s last work in comics in the pages of the Broken Frontier Award-winning graphic novel Livestock? Of course in subsequent years her involvement in the community has veered off in different directions including her time as the UK Comics Laureate, her role in the Comics Cultural Impact Collective, and overseeing not one but two UK comics creator surveys. I think we can forgive her the lack of comics in the circumstances…
And what a comic to return on. Berry’s newest offering 5 More Minutes may be just 20-ish pages in length but it’s one of the most starkly affecting comics you will read this year. It’s also a very difficult comic to review in some respects because it hinges on a slow build-up to a moment of almost subdued dread that the reader needs to experience for themselves.
What starts as a story depicting an everyday mother and child visit to the park proves to be something far more profound. We observe the nuances of their relationship as subdued mum and exuberant daughter play on the swings, talk about classmates, and sing nursery rhymes. The contrast in their demeanours is a marked one that becomes all the more telling as events progress…
Berry describes the comic as being about “parenthood and existential terror” and that’s reflected noticeably in her art; one foot in realism and the other in a moody nightmarishness. Atmospheric colouring adds much to this near nihilistic sensibility. It’s almost beautiful in its meditations on our insignificance, solitude and ultimate helplessness. In this quiet introspection 5 More Minutes is a deeply unsettling and indeed terrifying comic. A human drama that will leave you more disconcerted than any overt horror comic could ever hope to do. Welcome back, Hannah Berry.
Hannah Berry (W/A) • Self-published
Review by Andy Oliver
Visit Hannah Berry’s website here
Hannah Berry and the Comics Cultural Impact Collective (CCIC) will be at Table G3 in the Bubbleboy Hall at Thought Bubble.
Thought Bubble 2025 runs from November 1oth-16th with the convention weekend taking place on the 15th-16th. More details on the Thought Bubble site here.
Read all our Thought Bubble 2025 coverage so far in one place here.
Poster by Ng Yin Shian
