THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH 2026! We’re all very aware by now of the form-pushing ambitions of the WIP Comics community group when it comes to their annual anthology. Over the years we’ve had dual themed books, a newspaper-style collection, a grab-bag of assorted zines, infinite comics, and double releases in landscape and portrait formats.
Mike Armstrong
This year is no different with Dreams and Nightmares: A WIP Comics Anthology coming with a literal twist. Each double-page comic requires the reader to turn the book around in their hands as they read it. The result is a collection of highly inventive comics as the artists involved approach that initial brief from multiple angles. A phrase that is both a fitting definition of their presentational styles and also a very appropriate play on words. This time around the remit is a dual one because artists are also required to position their stories around a dream and nightmares theme. (Rather than publishing whole comics here and ruining the reading experience we have snippets of the strips to tease you.)
Rosario Cutuli
There are around 5o contributors to this latest collection, all at various stages of honing their craft and their storytelling skills (which is what the WIP Comics group is all about after all) but some of the strips that particularly caught my attention included the following.
Judy Powell
Mike Armstrong gives us a looping sequence about recurring dreams about flying and falling that uses a disorienting arrangement of images to capture the accompanying feelings. Rosario Cutuli provides us with an aerial shot of two sides of the afterlife that on the one hand is one discrete image and yet on another is a busy sequential morass of heaven/hell iconography to build our own narratives around.
Dzook
Dzook offers a palindromic comic full of twisting, turning silent panels while Judy Powell does something more slice-of-life by juxtaposing dreams and nightmares in the form of the housing ladder and its contrasting ideas of the joy of owning one’s own home and the struggles that surround that ideal, coming to a hopeful epiphany as a result. Again, Powell really manipulates the page, and as a result the reader’s eye, in my favourite offering in the book. And AJ O’Neill is on form with an introspective piece that reminds us of how to utilise lettering as part of the comics toolbox to push theme and emotional tone.
AJ O’Neill
Another WIP Comics book that doesn’t simply platform emerging artists but also says “hey comics are a remarkably complex form – just look at what they can do!” Two excellent reasons to pick this up in Harrogate.
Abass Yekeen, AJ O’Neill, Anait Melkonyan, Andreas Cealera, Asia Kazub, Bavo Van den Eynde, Bee Poole, Ben Nunn, Caroline Tjon, Charlie Etheridge-Nunn, cyber_husky, Fergo, Greg Donert, Hanna Gwynn, Harvey Hamer, Jack Waugh, Jenny Bouvier, Jenny Hackett, Jenny Picco, Joe Stone, Judy Powell, Lara Callaghan, Linden Davis, lomcia, Lucia Fioretti/kitsuneart, Martin Bangratz, Mary Bluestocking, Mike Armstrong, Miki Shaw, Nancy ArtMusic, Nick Bryan, Paul Dale, Pete Hobson, Peter Morey, Ralph Knight, Rosario Cutuli, Ross Hopkins, Saneeta Ram, Stephanie Malia, Tristan Spill, Will Hudson, Zubair M Chaudhry • WIP Comics
Visit the WIP Comics store here
Review by Andy Oliver
WIP Comics are at Table B1a in the Redshirt 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
