THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH 2026! Studio Ghibli meets gothic horror in Wilomina: The Land of Dreams and Nightmares, the wonderfully weird new graphic novel from creative duo John Chalmers and Sandra Marrs. Taking readers on a fantastical journey through Nocturna, where talking cats, spider witches and all manner of strange creatures lurk, this is an adventure that finds the perfect balance between the whimsical and the downright unsettling. We caught up with John and Sandra to chat about the curious origins of Wilomina, building a world where dreams and nightmares collide, finding the funny side of the frightening, and why graphic novels are such a special medium for young readers…
BROKEN FRONTIER: Wilomina: The Land of Dreas and Nightmares takes readers on a wonderfully strange journey through Nocturna, a world where dreams and nightmares collide. Where did the idea for this story first come from, and how did you go about building such an imaginative and unpredictable world?
SANDRA MARRS: It started with a compulsion to draw a room with giant eyeballs in curtains, and a little girl and a cat coming into the room through a door. Straight away I knew there was a story there, but I wasn’t quite sure what it was. Then John came back from a walk and said: “the girl is on a train on her way to visit her mum in hospital, and she meets a talking cat and then the train tries to eat them”.
JOHN CHALMERS: And the story just poured out of us. We’d been having a difficult time, because my mum was in hospital. We ended up with insomnia and when we did sleep, we were having weird dreams and really vivid nightmares and crazy dreams. All that must have seeped into the story, but we wanted to make something that was funny, and a page-turner, a thrilling adventure. So that the darkness in the story is balanced with a lot of humour.
BF: Your graphic novels are such a fantastic marriage of words and pictures. How does your creative process work as a duo? Do you tend to have a clear vision of the story and its visuals from the outset, or do ideas evolve and surprise you as you work together?
CHALMERS: Every time we work together it’s different. I’m always writing and hoping Sandra will be amused and inspired by what I’ve written, Sandra is always drawing.
MARRS: We work together on story ideas. Then we build a synopsis together, and for Wilomina that happened really quickly, over a month or so. Then John writes as I layout the story, he’s always a chapter or two ahead of me. I edit his writing as I’m laying out, so we both have an input. The characters begin to come alive as we work on them and develop the pages. Our editor gives us lots of feedback and we edit a lot at every stage. But yeah, you do end up surprised by the result, as it comes to life.
CHALMERS: It was only once the book was finished that we realised what Wilomina: The Land of Dreams and Nightmares is really about.
BF: There’s a lovely balance in Wilomina between the whimsical and the genuinely creepy, with talking cats and spider witches sitting alongside some rather terrifying monsters! How do you approach finding that sweet spot between enchanting and unsettling, particularly when creating a book for younger readers?
MARRS: The secret is definitely having a talking cat. Seriously, it’s probably a mixture of experience and the sheer pleasure we get out of being creative. We wanted to make something that was thrilling and light, with dark undertones. Having funny dialogue in the middle of a tense scene for example, bright colours, happy characters.
CHALMERS: It’s important that young readers have a sense of hope, even when faced with horrible things that are outside their control.
BF: The artwork in Wilomina is full of wonderfully vivid colours, unusual creatures and fantastical landscapes. How did you approach creating the visual identity of Nocturna, and were there any particular influences or inspirations behind its look?
MARRS: The visual identity came by itself, and I don’t know how to colour any other way than with vivid colours. We love Studio Ghibli, but are also big fans of old horror classics, like Curse of the Werewolf and Night of the Demon, Netflix series like Stranger Things and Wednesday. It’s also a synthesis of all the GNs we’ve made.
CHALMERS: We wanted to create a fictive world that readers could believe in and lose themselves in. But it was important to keep the story readable and moving forward. Dreams can be very weird and dream logic doesn’t always hold up. So, we hoped to find a balance of strangeness and excitement.
BF: You’ve been creating comics together for many years now, and have seen the medium grow enormously in that time. What changes have you found most exciting, and what do you think makes graphic novels such a special way to tell stories for children and young readers today?
MARRS: Seeing traditional children’s book publishers taking on comics in really exciting! At last, there’s an outlet for people like us. Since screens have appeared, first with TV in the 1950s, then smart phones in the 2000s, there’s been a decline in reading, which is accelerating. Yet comics for kids are growing. Kids have interests, they have time, and the mix of light text and images is appealing. It’s like a movie in your hands, but your brain is more active, and it’s fun.
CHALMERS: It’s great to see the graphic novel develop as an artform. They’re really an utterly unique medium: dynamic and anarchic and funny.
From Metaphrog’s adaptation of The Little Mermaid
BF: This year’s Thought Bubble marks your first visit to the convention since before the pandemic! What are you most looking forward to about being back, and what would you say to readers who might be discovering your work for the first time?
MARRS: Making comics can be isolating. Conventions are a great way to feel part of the crowd. We look forward to the buzz, meeting creators, seeing what everyone is up to, and meeting readers old and new.
CHALMERS: We’re at table B51, in the Kids’ Zone, Bubbleboy Hall. Come and say hi! We hope you’ll like Wilomina: The Land of Dreams and Nightmares.
Buy online from Gosh! Comics here
Interview by Lydia Turner
Metaphrog are at table B51 in the Bubbleboy Hall at Thought Bubble.
Thought Bubble 2026 runs from November 9th-15th with the convention weekend taking place on the 14th-15th. More details on the Thought Bubble site here.
Read all our Thought Bubble 2026 coverage so far in one place here.
Poster art by Núria Tamarit
