THOUGHT BUBBLE 2023! Tom Philipson describes his Thought Bubble-debuting collection Complicated Young Man (from CoCo Comics) as “my experimental comics anthology”. At 20-plus pages compiling strips from the last six months…
THOUGHT BUBBLE 2023! New Thought Bubble comics from certain creators feel like a festival tradition; that some intangible spirit of TB would be violated if they didn’t have a debut…
(Content warning: references to suicide follow). When you are entrenched in both the world of comics commentary, and the larger community of practice that surrounds it, you are constantly aware…
SLCZF 2023! In a week when there was a sudden resurgence of interest in comics about “being sad” it seems rather appropriate to be covering Chloe Green’s first self-published short…
Focussed on mental health awareness, the new UK small press comics anthology Over-Inkers debuted recently with a first issue theme of “strength”. Full disclosure first. Over-Inkers is edited by Broken…
Penge-based micropublisher Colossive Press have been providing us with a positive feast of eclectic zine and book publishing for a few years now. A Wolfgang Crowe’s Fractures is their first…
Columns · Eyecatcher · Reviews · Small Pressganged
In this post-2020 era time can sometimes take on a deceptive quality. That seems to be very much the case sometimes when I check on our coverage of some of…
Columns · Reviews · Small Pressganged
Autobiographical work in comics can come from a number of places. On one hand it can be about informing and educating on situations, conditions or experiences. On the other the…
Like all popular forms, comic books have long been used for propaganda purposes. From Commando War Stories in Pictures to Marvel’s moronic Northrop Grumman collab, they inevitably reflect militaristic orthodoxy. The West…
THOUGHT BUBBLE 2022! To say I am far more interested in Zoe Thorogood’s work when it’s her own pure and unfiltered artistic vision rather than when she’s illustrating someone else’s…
Mental health awareness issues and veterans are rarely touched on in UK comics (Samuel C. Williams’s At War with Yourself being a notable exception). Welsh Arts in Health charity Re-Live…
SLCZF WEEK! Lucy Sullivan’s debut graphic novel Barking was met with widespread plaudits on its debut a couple of years back. Informed by her own experiences it took a notably…
Columns · Eyecatcher · Small Pressganged
Whenever I review the Colossive Press Colossive Cartographies series there’s an obvious piece of necessary introductory housekeeping that needs to be addressed first for those unfamiliar with these tactile zines…
The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association published a worrying report on the health of millennials in 2019, revealing a 12% increase in major depression amongst that demographic. The data showed…
It’s been several years now since we first covered the often dreamy, always lyrical work of John Cei Douglas at Broken Frontier in the early Great Beast collection of his…
Back in 2020 I took a look at Tony Pickering’s Diabetes: Year One, a very distinctive piece of graphic medicine that could best be described as a collection of graphic…
Given that many creators working in autobio talk of the often cathartic experience of processing events in their lives on the comics page it’s hardly surprising that over the last…
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…
“I Wanted to Change the Narrative as I Believe Comic Art Deserves the Same Respect!” – Dominica Claribelle on Experimentation, Representing Southeast Asian Culture in Her Work, and Her Debut Graphic Novel ‘Finding Home’December 3, 2025
“You Laugh to Keep from Crying” — A Conversation with Pascal Girard and Cathon on Their New Comic Strip Collections ‘Pastimes’ and ‘Fruit Salad’November 19, 2025
“I Think it’s Really Important to Follow Your Dreams!” – Sarah Graley Talks Working on ‘Pizza Witch’ with Stef Purenins and the Pleasures of Rewarding Audience InteractionsNovember 13, 2025
“I Hugely Admire Comics with Dynamic Page Structure!” – Beatrijs Brouwer/Beastly Worlds on the Lure of Fantasy Storytelling and Her Creative ProcessNovember 13, 2025
“People Are Having Good Ideas All the Time and Putting Them into Practice” – Alison Sampson, Charlie Adlard, Lucy Sullivan and More on the Importance of the Thought Bubble Portfolio Reviews and Comics CommunityNovember 13, 2025
