THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH 2026! Skai Campbell (aka Skhoshbell) recently spoke about the origins of his Jungul Man-Thology comic in his spotlight Broken Frontier ‘Six to Watch‘ interview here, saying:
“I was on a trip in Côte d’Ivoire as part of a job I was working at the time, and had to stay in this forest reserve for a month. It was such a cool place but I wasn’t used to that kind of travel, and I felt really out of my depth. As a way to get through this, every evening when I had some downtime I would use the pages of this a6 notepad to make teeny A8(?) zines about this character called jungle man who would be having idiotic misadventures in jungle all whilst complaining about how much of a drag the whole thing was. I think the exaggeration in it was really a way of me to release all of my anxieties and stresses about how the trip was going, and it gave me a nice thing to look forward to in the evenings.”
Jungul Man-Thology was his very first attempt at self-publishing so there is admittedly some rawness around the edges but it’s also representative of the kinetic energy and finely tuned pacing that led to me choosing Campbell as part of this year’s Six to Watch. The cast is a quirky one – the titular and inexplicably lost Jungul Man around whom the action revolves; philosophical, anti-establishment termite Maeby; kind-hearted, vegetarian leopard Eden; and self-described badass black panther Jade.
The majority of the strips are based on a four-panel, one-page layout building up to a punchline. Some characters interact while others, particularly Maeby with his continued existential ponderings on the tediousness of life in the colony’s mound, exist in their own narrative bubbles. Campbell manages to get plenty of mileage out of the running gags as Eden’s attempts to live a meat-free life are frustrated by Jade, and Jungul Man’s quest for survival gives us plenty of slapstick humour.
The comic’s one longer-form adventure is by far its funniest and technically most impressive as Jungul Man’s consumption of a hallucinogenic mushroom sends him on a high that allows Campbell to really play with the form in a metatextual way, cleverly breaking the fourth wall, and using the very structure of the comics page as part of our hero’s delirium.
Backed up with a plethora of sketchbook material as extras Jungul Man-Thology Plus is incredibly good fun. It would be a shame if we didn’t see a lot more of this cast of characters in the future.
Skai Campbell/Skhoshbell • Self-published
Visit Skai Campbell’s website here
Review by Andy Oliver
Skhoshbell/Skai Campbell is at Table B9b in the 2000 AD 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
