In my opening 2026 Broken Frontier article I mentioned that this year we wanted to underline our commitment to covering socially relevant comics work with a renewed vigour. That will include books that may have slipped through the cracks the first time round such as today’s subject, Bex Ollerton’s Lavender Clouds. We didn’t entirely neglect it at BF as it was included on the ballot for last year’s Broken Frontier Awards but it’s an important collection of strips that deserves its place on our dedicated page of Comics Resource Lists.
Lavender Clouds is a compilation of “comics about neurodivergence and mental health”, shorter autobio strips that build up into a wider representation of Ollerton’s lived experience. Broken Frontier readers may remember our previous coverage of her comics contributions including our review of the multi-creator anthology Sensory: Life on the Spectrum and our dedicated interview with Ollerton as part of our British Comics Now coverage.
Originally beginning life as a webcomic Ollerton said of the project, in that aforementioned interview, that “I used to struggle with the vulnerability a lot more than I do now. I think for me, the biggest takeaway from making Lavender Clouds is that I’m just not afraid of that kind of vulnerability anymore, and I bring that into every aspect of my life.” This is, indeed, an extremely candid series of vignettes into Ollerton’s world living with mental health issues and neurodivergence, and there seems to be an element of the cathartic in the process of communicating this to readers throughout these pages.
Where Lavender Clouds succeeds so well is in its blend of unflinching honesty and sprinkles of humour. Ollerton moves from deep self-reflection to occasional lighter moments without the flow of the book ever feeling disjointed. Social anxiety and awkwardness, masking behaviour, coping mechanisms, breaking out of behavioural cycles, constant self-analysis, and emotional spirals are all explored with honesty and relatability, ensuring that this is a book that will educate, inform and, crucially, allow those with similar experiences to be assured they are not alone in them.
Ollerton’s deft use of comics’ visual language to convey these ideas is assured in this regard: powerful visual metaphor; inventive page layouts to convey emotional resonance; a clever use of colour to mirror the intricacy of depicted experiences and events; and considered use of lettering tricks to feed into the themes of strips. Topping this all with stripped back and accessible cartooning that, nonetheless, is actually extremely sophisticated in construction, ensures that Lavender Clouds is a book that will not only appeal to the individual reader but should also be on the shelves of every library’s collection.
Bex Ollerton (W/A) • Andrews McMeel, £12.99
Buy online from Gosh! Comics here
Review by Andy Oliver
