THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH 2025! Over a decade ago at Broken Frontier Tom Murphy reviewed the Chrissy Williams and Tom Humberstone-edited poetry comics anthology Over the Line calling it “a selection of fresh and stimulating work that isn’t afraid to step beyond formal barriers.” It’s an area of comics that we have explored a lot in the subsequent years at Broken Frontier including the work of Peony Gent, Trinidad Escobar, Olivia Sullivan, Aleesha Nandhra and many others. Williams and Humberstone have a new poetry comic I Know the Way Out debuting at Thought Bubble this year.
In their combination of words and images poetry comics can, of course, range from the more literally representational to a blend of the two that may on first reading feel disconnected or oblique. Towards the latter end of that spectrum is practice that often asks us to draw more personal interpretations from that synthesis; meaning that can twist, change or evolve on later revisitations. Indeed poetry in comics form is a solid example of work we get more from if we look to experience it as much as we actually read it.
First of Many
I Know the Way Out presents three poems from the duo: ‘First of Many’. ‘Static’ and ‘I Want to Run Away to the Woods’, all illustrated with a carefully selected colour palette by Humberstone that gives them a haunting, alluring quality. Each embodies a kind of melancholy existentialism; reflections on the world around us that feel oddly both universal and yet specific. Thoughts on disconnection in ‘First of Many’; purpose in ‘Static’; and escape in ‘I Want to Run Away to the Woods’. All feeling interconnected and complementing each other when placed together in sequence.
Static
What makes this so re-readable is that the juxtaposition of poetry and accompanying art feels often simultaneously incongruous and entirely appropriate. A detached, stripped back, expressionless figure walking alone through an ethereal yet symbolic environment in ‘First of Many’ eventually to muse “Here I am surrounded by real people/None of whom I feel able to love” as the real world slowly creeps back into focus. Or a gull at the sea’s life acting as seeming visual metaphor for the themes of ‘Static’ as the lines “We’re all looking for meaning/A sense of direction/As we work.”
I Want to Run Away to the Woods
Ultimately this is work where the lines between authorial intent and reader interpretation are blurred and that’s part of why it’s so intriguing. Every reader will take away something different from the pages of I Know the Way Out and that’s the power of experimental work like this.
Chrissy Williams & Tom Humberstone • Self-published, £12.00
Review by Andy Oliver
Tom Humberstone will be at Table C36 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
