Designed to shine a spotlight on the often overlooked world of small press, self-published and altcomics.
Columns · Eyecatcher · Small Pressganged
In a year when for many simply treading water was an understandable achievement in itself, Ed Firth bucked the trend with a profile-raising 2020 that saw his Myriad First Graphic…
The last time we reviewed the work of Robyn Smith at Broken Frontier it was when we covered her collaboration with writer Jamila Rowser on the short comic Wash Day…
Columns · Eyecatcher · Small Pressganged
Hope On is an anthology that, like so many slice-of-life offerings from the self-publishing world over the last year, materialised as a by-product of the current global situation. Edited by…
Columns · Eyecatcher · Small Pressganged
In comparison to my previous experiences of Grace Helmer’s slice-of-life/autobio work Speck is a very different comic indeed. And yet within its fantastic, millennia-traversing narrative there are, perhaps, certain existential…
Columns · Eyecatcher · Small Pressganged
As redundant an observation as it is to make, 2020 was a challenging year for the UK comics self-publishing community. In a time of continuing uncertainty, and with real world…
Columns · Eyecatcher · Small Pressganged
The medium of comics, as any aficionado is aware, constantly plays with our perceptions of time. It asks us to make inferences about time’s passage between pages and scenes, to…
Columns · Eyecatcher · Small Pressganged
Riffing on the “Exquisite Corpse” storytelling set-up Idiot Corpse is an anthology exercise in narrative experimentation from Aled Lies, Dylan Wyn Owen and Shehzad Ahmad (with a striking cover by…
Columns · Eyecatcher · Small Pressganged
There wasn’t much to celebrate in 2020 but one thing we could take some joy in was that, despite everything, there was still plenty of amazing self-published comics work to…
Columns · Eyecatcher · Small Pressganged
A personal reflection on my journey through pregnancy and pregnancy loss. Following the urge to acknowledge the existence of our lost babies – too precious to deny or forget. Talking…
Columns · Eyecatcher · Small Pressganged
It goes without saying that 2020 has been a year replete with diary-style comics documenting the strangest nine months of our lives. In time, of course, they will be an…
Columns · Eyecatcher · Small Pressganged
Fondly sending up a certain decades-old bastion of fantasy magazine publishing (the clue is in the anagrammatical title) Robert Wells and Phil Elliott’s Malty Heave makes a welcome end-of-year return…
Columns · Eyecatcher · Small Pressganged
I have expressed sentiments like this before on many occasions at Broken Frontier but I never tire of repeating them. One of the greatest joys of our championing emerging creative…
Spinning out of his autobiographical Dunce series (described as “an alternative universe, where Calvin has grown up and moved to Norway”) Norwegian cartoonist Jens K Styve’s comic Dunce: Brego follows…
Columns · Eyecatcher · Small Pressganged
I would argue that Lord Hurk and, in turn Fancy Butcher Press the small press imprint he runs with Kevin Ward, have been criminally overlooked on the UK small press…
Given how many comics creators are on the team at Broken Frontier we have an unwritten rule on the site. While we may cover their work in terms of features…
Columns · Eyecatcher · Small Pressganged
At the East London Comics and Arts Festival in 2019 David Biskup’s There’s Only One Place This Road Ever Ends Up won the ELCAF x WeTransfer Award. The prize gives…
In Meredith’s bleak world the ultimate sanction is to find oneself IND-XED – a societal classification that negates someone’s very existence. The subject becomes a non-person, their identity cancelled and…
If you associate Peter Morey’s name with the hard-hitting and earnest autobio comics like Endswell or with his psychogeographical zines then his new comic Animal Spirits will come as something…
“What I’ve Looked for in My Life is a Way to Just Live in the World” – John Porcellino Talks About His Decades of Minicomics Practice and New Drawn & Quarterly CollectionsFebruary 17, 2021
Thank You, Annie Koyama! – Paying a Broken Frontier Tribute to the Inspirational Koyama PressFebruary 5, 2021
“I Want There to Be Many More Stories About and by These Kinds of Storytellers” – Zain Dada and Kumail Rizvi Talk About Khidr Comix Lab, a New Micropublisher Providing a Platform for Black, Brown and Muslim CreatorsDecember 14, 2020
“It’s Ultimately About Courage and Hope and Love and Friendship” – Jenny Robins Talks About the Characters and Themes of Her Myriad First Graphic Novel Competition-Winning ‘Biscuits (assorted)’, Published TodayNovember 12, 2020
Retroflect: The Living Mummy – Supernatural Thrillers with an Oft Overlooked Star of Marvel’s 1970s Horror BoomOctober 30, 2020
