ARC FESTIVAL 2026! The Colossive Press Colossive Cartographies series is one of those absolute gems of UK small press publishing that will hopefully be finding an entire new audience of readers at ARC Festival this month. If you’re coming to the range for the first time via our event coverage these foldout zines come from a wide range of creatives, encompassing not just comics but practitioners from other areas of the visual arts too. Over seventy of them have now been published by Colossive, acting as either perfect entry points into the practice of unfamiliar names or an opportunity to see old favourites doing something a little different.
Colossive Cartographies #71 (‘Autoloop’) from Matt Canning is most assuredly comics, though, and comics of the most inventive nature, playing very much into the very specific language of the form. This one is a little difficult to summarise effectively without giving away the fun of the reading experience but it centres on a protagonist and his stolen (or is it?) hat. Two colour-coded parallel narratives loop around each other before converging in an unlikely, somewhat meta fashion.
It’s a very clever use of the form from Canning that shows an adept understanding of the medium with likeable and vibrant cartooning. Pick this as your Cartographies starting point at ARC and pick up a few more of these accessibly affordable gems of zines while you’re there.
Matt Canning (W/A) • Colossive Press, £2.00
Review by Andy Oliver
Colossive Press will be tabling at the ARC Festival comics fair on July 11th-12th. For the full details on everything ARC has to offer check out their website here.
