THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH 2025! Alison Sampson’s work has been seen over an incredibly wide-ranging number of genres over the last decade or so. She’s a remarkably versatile artist and writer, and also incredibly passionate about the idea of comics community; something we will return to with Alison later in our Thought Bubble Month at Broken Frontier. Today, though, she’s chatting with us about her career in comics to date, how her background in architecture informs her comics practice, and the potency of comics in communicating lived experiences…
ANDY OLIVER: From Marvel super-heroes to the Tori Amos Little Earthquakes tribute, all the way through to socially relevant anthologies like Won’t Back Down! and renowned genre fiction books including Department of Truth, your comics practice has been incredibly wide-ranging in scope. What, for you, have been some of your career highlights to date and why?
ALISON SAMPSON: It is very hard to pick favourites. I don’t think there’s much I haven’t seen as a highlight. Some things have been difficult, either to draw, or in process, but to me, everything is exciting and I have tried to make it fulfilling for myself by pushing the art. In the spirit of actually answering the question, though:
Winnebago Graveyard (above): my creator-owned book with Steve Niles, Stephane Paitreau, Aditya Bidikar and Image Comics. Aside from putting the whole book together, this book was very meaningful to me- after something like twenty five years of work for hire in another discipline, owning and being personally credited for my own work was a very emotional experience. I’m massively grateful to Image Comics for giving me the opportunity and when I went on my own to present it at Image Expo in Seattle, I cried.
Hit Girl: India (above): Triona and I were paid a lot of money and essentially left on our own to produce art from Peter Milligan’s excellent script. With some of the best work of Triona’s career, we went all out to make the story and the girl our own, and literally took the book to the actual streets of Mumbai. There’s real potential for this to be a colonialist piece of work, but we hopefully made something that is a bit more than that. And- the book is dedicated to my friend Kiron, whose daughter and life’s work Raman wears her mother’s wedding sari in the story. Kiron passed away the day after the last issue was out, and this book is a remembrance for her, both in the making and the pages.
Sleeping Beauties (above): If comics is a long game this is a good example. There was probably nine years between Chris Ryall giving me my first portfolio review and offering this job. It was honestly quite difficult to make, but in the end, things came together and IDW made a final beautiful single book that we are very proud of. Also, my weird pandemic adventure book.
The Department of Truth (above): I loved drawing this, it felt like a book that was reaching for something ambiguous, about ideas. I’ve felt inspired by Martin’s work and the influence of this book goes far beyond my contribution to its pages. It has helped me take more good risks and set me on a new path art-wise. I want to take more risks, life is too short not to, and this book shows that attitude can work. Also, a cool team all round with Tiny Onion. Suffice to say, I would like to work with them again.
Tori Amos: Little Earthquakes for Z2: My first time writing and drawing my own work and it went OK! (The anthology was nominated for four Eisner Awards). My first sequentials after my cancer treatment. A credit to the editor, Rantz Hoseley, who encouraged me and left me to it.
Won’t Back Down!, an anthology with Trina Robbins in aid of Planned Parenthood (below): This was another writing job and I asked to work with Sayra Begum because of her talent in depicting ordinary domestic life. We tell the apocryphal story of a small crime across the background of working class homes, the supermarket and the hospital in a small northern town in the late 1960s and the mid 1980s. Maybe not the story you’d expect from me, but very, very close to home, and Trina told me the tale needed to be told. She will be remembered as perhaps the coolest person in comics, she treated everyone she worked with so well, felt strongly about what is right and did what she said she’d do. In times like these, we need more Trinas.
AO: Arguably your work has probably most been associated with horror/supernatural comics. Is that a genre you naturally gravitate towards or has that just been circumstance? Are there any genres you haven’t worked in that you would love to have a crack at?
SAMPSON: I would like to draw more books which were not just narrative but suggestive, that are about a bit more than themselves. Comics have so much potential to represent ideas and to make things incarnate, so more of that. Also I would like to draw a portal fantasy (the kind of the book The Amber Spyglass is), a witch book for the Pratchett Estate, an allegory, a non-superhero book about godlike power, an Adrian Tchaikovsky book (fantasy OR sci-fi), a food driven procedural set in a sci-fi future scripted by an exciting new writer. I like the journey and the challenge, and I am interested to see what shows up. But yes, I do like horror and the supernatural. It’s the messiness and ‘inside-out’ qualities I think.
Cover to Let Her Be Evil
AO: I first covered your comics back in 2014 at Broken Frontier and over the years I have always been so impressed with its strangely hypnotic blend of realism with an often kind of dreamlike quality. Who and what do you count as inspirations for your style and can you also give us some background on your creative process and the mediums you work in?
SAMPSON: Probably my biggest inspiration is the art, illustration and architecture of the third quarter of the 20th century, so anything from Brian Wildsmith to Stig Lindberg to the Case Study Houses to Lebbeus Woods and Archigram. And crossed with that, my design training at The Bartlett School (I’m told if you know I studied there very much comes clear), my actual working methods as an architect, and my architect’s exploration of actually what people are about and what they bring to the party. I work with a range of real people, and mostly digitally. If I’m going to do that, I want to press for all the advantages- I draw in white as well as black and grease pencil and glitter as well as (digital) ink. I choose my collaborators well and push them to experiment for themselves. So what you say makes sense. A lot of it is about architecture (we build dreams) tempered by aesthetic things I like and grounded in the real.
Art from Acid Box
AO: Does that background in architecture ever inform your comics storytelling in any tangible way?
SAMPSON: Yes. People think that is about drawing buildings, but that is like saying bananas are the only fruit. What architecture brings to comics is so much more than that. It is better to think of architecture as the space we inhabit, rather than the walls that define it, just as the space for a story is perhaps defined by gutters, but it isn’t the gutters, it is all the rest of it. I need to write the ‘What is Architecture?’ book before I can fully answer the question. There’s a lot to say.
AO: Two years ago you were a real champion for the late Trina Robbin’s anthology comic Won’t Back Down! which supported women’s reproductive rights. What do you think is the particular power of comics as a form in communicating socially conscious stories and lived experiences so eloquently?
SAMPSON: Inclusivity, accessibility, and an exemplar of why I’m in this business at all: comics bring art at its highest level to the people. Who I know from my architecture experience are fully capable of engaging with art in all kinds of ways. Also, especially in these times, the medium may be increasingly helpful in its ambiguity, when voices are silenced, to keep a message alive.
Cover to The Nice House on the Lake
AO: And, finally, what’s next for Alison Sampson? Are there any upcoming projects you can tell us about?
SAMPSON: More comics and whatever comes through the door. Something old, something new, something borrowed and (currently) something *Blue*. I’ve got a LOT of drawing to do and you should be hearing about what in 2026.
For more on Alison’s work visit her website here.
Interview by Andy Oliver
Alison Sampson will be at Table B4 in the Comixology 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
