THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH 2025! 2017 Broken Frontier ‘Six to Watch’ creator Peony Gent has never been one to shy away from a longer title for her projects and her latest comic All the Effort You Are Making Will Ultimately Pay Off (subtitled a year of moments, collected) is no exception. It’s fitting though for a creator who constantly rewrites the perceived rules of comics to such great effect to not feel bound by the constraints of concise naming conventions. Gent always approaches the page with her own unique vision and this most recent addition to her series of poetry comics (originally available as part of the ShortBox Comics Fair and debuting in print at Thought Bubble) is another showcase for her inimitable style.
All the Effort You Are Making Will Ultimately Pay Off is described as a collection of moments from Gent’s life over the last year. It’s perhaps not as intense as some of her previous work but that makes it no less profound. “What is happiness anyway? Does anybody know?” she asks as the comic begins before it launches itself into a sequence of vignettes; teasing snippets of her life as isolated moments hint at a wider reality, and discrete scenes ask the reader to form their own connections with the depicted experiences.
Interspersed with quotes – some literary, some otherwise – that complement mood and tone, Gent allows us to share the displacement of living with friends and family in the midst of a house move, of gentle walks across the Downs observing the changing surroundings, the simple joy of eating noodles, and chasing a mouse around the house. Existential considerations often finding themselves rooted in the simple and the everyday.
One of the great joys of poetry in comics form is the way in which we are led to interact with words and imagery, the latter often more reflecting the former rather than acting as a literal depiction. In All the Effort You Are Making Will Ultimately Pay Off Gent’s customary visual abstraction again allows us to immerse ourselves in the moment with a more immediate connection, rather than observe events in a literal fashion. Buy this, read it, and then read it again to find yourself experiencing it with an ever changing relationship with the page. Another essential comic from the UK’s most innovative practitioner in the medium.
Peony Gent (W/A) • Self-published, £12.00
Review by Andy Oliver
Peony Gent will be at Table C30 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
