Mindless Ones

Writer/artist, Suzanne (2022), I’m A Luddite (And So Can You!) (2023), Introduction to Charts (with Chrissy Williams, 2024). His Grave Offerings newsletter is gorgeously illustrated and sharply written; you might go so far as to say it’s ELITE.

What can you tell us about the similarities between comics and poetry?

There’s a quote in Alan Moore’s Writing For Comics where he discusses comics that try to mimic film techniques that has always stayed with me:

“In the final analysis you will be left with a film that has neither movement nor a soundtrack […] Rather than seizing upon the superficial similarities between comics and films or comics and books in the hope that some of the respectability of those media will rub off upon us, wouldn’t it be more constructive to focus our attention upon those ideas where comics are special and unique?”

Too many people, I think, see comics as storyboards for film projects or view the page as a series of shots rather than a collection of panels. It’s always struck me that we were looking to the wrong medium for inspiration. Comics, for me, have always been much closer to poetry. And thinking of them that way allows a creator to do so much more lateral and abstract thinking about how to approach a page’s layout and composition. You stop thinking in terms of shots and think more holistically about the page itself. That’s not to say I don’t look to film for inspiration – I’m always reading about what cinematographers have to say about depth of field, shot compositions, lighting and colour. But we should, as comics creators, be looking to every medium to help us understand what our own does so well.

Chrissy Williams and I co-edited a book about poetry comics and came up with a list of statements that could be true of poetry and comics:

• economy of line is paramount
• each panel and page must be carefully constructed
• consider how much will fit on the page
• put everything in its right place
• choose whether to prioritise ideas or form
• juxtaposition is an important tool
• composition is not linear, but a whole system of architecture
• the reading process is one of interpretation rather than perception
• the reader is inextricable from the art
• all the right notes, not necessarily in the right order
• what happens off the page is as important as what happens on it
• the impossible can be made possible

What can you tell us about the differences between comics and poetry? 

Ultimately, I think it comes back to that Moore quote about trying to focus on what makes comics special and unique. You can draw parallels to and inspiration from other mediums, but as a comics artist, I think it’s also worth coming back to asking yourself: “Why should I communicate this idea/story/feeling in the comics medium instead of all the others?” Sometimes the answer to that question can be as simple as: “Because I know how to make comics.” But it’s worth thinking about all the same. Comics can do things that other mediums can’t and can’t do things other mediums can – we have to find ways to play into their strengths.

Did you learn anything while working on INTRODUCTION TO CHARTS that was new to you?

Whenever I do any risograph printing, I always find I learn something new about that process. I’m getting so much better at preparing files for print and making sure they come out as close to how I expect as possible (within reason – part of my love of riso is the mistakes and unexpected results.)

But in terms of the comic itself, I think the most important thing has been for me to learn to be vulnerable. With my non-fiction comics and narrative non-fiction work like Suzanne, I can hide myself behind real stories and talk about other people. With Charts and the other poetry comics Chrissy and I do, we put a lot of ourselves in there. It’s abstracted and obtuse, but it’s still quite raw and scary to be so open. It helps that we’re both investing ourselves in it so there’s plausible deniability there. Where does Chrissy’s openness end and mine begin? It’s hard to unpick in that sense.

The other thing we tried to do in Charts was to experiment with whether we could successfully make a long-form narrative poetry comic. That was a real learning process in which we sent ideas and scripts back and forth until we had something that felt like it worked. When we won a Selkie award for Best Narrative that felt like a real vindication of all that work – to know that enough people felt this fairly odd, experimental comic actually made sense narratively.

Having – successfully! – brought off a longform poetry comic, can you see yourself trying another one, or working on a more sustained project?

I think so. Maybe? Honestly, Chrissy and I haven’t discussed it yet. We’re currently working on a new short-form poem comic that we plan to publish in a collection of our other short-form collaborations. The hope is to have that all ready for Thought Bubble. I’d definitely like to try something like Intro to Charts again. I’d assumed it would be a very niche comic that only me, Chrissy, and maybe a handful of other people might be interested in. But it’s been encouraging sending it off for its second printing and discovering there is actually an audience for long-form poetry comics. That doesn’t necessarily factor into the motivation to make a new comic, but it definitely helps make it more viable!

Do you approach colour differently in your poetry comics than you do in your narrative or editorial work?

I think so. Most of mine and Chrissy’s recent poetry comics have been riso-printed and so that unavoidably affects the way you approach colour. The colours of Charts don’t really look right to me when printed digitally. They were designed to be seen riso-printed. When I’m colouring, I’m really leaning into the anticipated textures and misalignments to create something unexpected in the final printing. Risograph gives you results that are deliciously tangible and tactile. All the mistakes are perfect for me whose linework is very controlled and precise. That’s also something I’m chasing more and more with the rise of AI art – imprecisions and tacility and errors. I want my work to feel like it’s made by human hands.

But I also find the nature of working with overlays and spot colours like this has had an impact on the way I colour more generally and the way I make colour palettes. For instance, Suzanne’s colours were made entirely from three colours: black, red and blue.

The one thing that is always important to me is that colour needs to be telling a story as much as the linework. In that sense, I treat colour the same in my poetry comic work as I do with other comics and editorial illustrations. I need to know the reason for the choices I’m making. Even if the intention itself isn’t immediately obvious to the reader – I think the intentionality still comes across and encourages the reader to think about colour.

There’s a great sense of intentionality to the storytelling in Suzanne. Were there any particular challenges you found in dealing with a real life biography (of Suzanne Lenglen)?

I think the biggest challenge, from a wide-angle perspective, was trying to avoid the traditional biopic clichés. I didn’t want Suzanne to come off as some sort of Tennis Walk Hard. But there are understandable reasons that certain beats get hit in these sort of Based on a True Stories. Most likely you’re drawn to someone’s life because of the high highs and low lows. The events in Suzanne’s life largely did map onto the beats of a biopic. I did all sorts of structural things to try and swerve away from that but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone read it and still thought of it as a traditional biopic. 

Beyond that, there were all sorts of mini challenges along the way. One particularly tricky thing was finding Lenglen’s voice. Since she died so young, we never got to really find out how she felt about her life. She never got to tell her own story. So I had to read between the lines a lot from interviews, and from what her closest confidants said about her in their own books. There’s a lot of projection in there though. 

Is there anything you’d approach differently if you took on a similar project again? 

I’m not sure I can see myself doing a similar project as both writer and artist in the future. I’d be slightly worried about becoming the Based on a True Story Guy! That being said, there is one person who I’ve become fascinated by and I think my instinct there would be to completely avoid the biopic trap by using the real events to interrogate another genre altogether. 

Do you know what’s next for your Grave Offerings newsletter when you’re done with the cyberthrillers? 

I think I first had the idea for this cyberthriller series in Sept/Oct last year so I’ve been reading around the topic and watching related movies for about nine months. I’m really proud of the four newsletters I wrote, but they were a lot of work. The more I learned about various subjects, and the more I had to say about them, the harder the pieces became to write. So I think the next few newsletters will probably be a little less ambitious in scope and not necessarily themed. I expect that might be a relief to readers too! Each newsletter seems to be getting longer and longer and what was once a three or four minute read is now a fourteen minute read.

The newsletter was started as a No Expectations exercise for me to get into a habit of writing and drawing even if I wasn’t working on a commission or longer project. Mostly, it was meant to be fun. So I think I’ll be quite instinctual about the next one. I usually know what it’ll be when I find myself absent-mindedly drawing it on my ipad while watching some bad TV.

All that being said… Because I was already watching lots of 90s thrillers, I’ve been working my way through a lot of 90s legal dramas lately. I think you can trace a line between 80s politicians dismantling and discrediting unions, guilds, and worker rights through to the explosion of interest in law in the 90s. Law became the last resort for people screwed over by employers and institutions. I think there’s a lot there to explore while enjoying the pleasures of a mid-budget Grisham adaptation.

But who knows? I just finished Life is Strange: Double Exposure and right now, I quite fancy writing about my love of that series of games.

What’s been the most fun thing to draw for the newsletter? 

Part of the fun of the newsletter is I get to commission myself to provide spot and feature illustrations. It’s been quite useful for me to get used to drawing on an iPad and figuring out what my workflow on that looks like. But whenever I get too comfortable, I force myself to use different brushes and techniques. It’s the sort of thing you can’t always get away with as a jobbing illustrator. An art director comes to you because of the work they’ve already seen and so, quite fairly, expect you to produce something similar for them. Here, I can allow myself to experiment more and remind myself to find the joy in drawing with a little less pressure. So in that sense, everything I make for the newsletter has been fun.

I really enjoyed trying to blend some mid-Century styles into my work with the Zodiac and Jaws pieces. Adding some looser, scratchier elements to my overly-precious linework has really been key for helping me like my own work again. But more recently, I loved just drawing the costumes of everyone in Hackers and had so much fun trying to make everything look a little 90s/Y2K.

You wrote about how ‘90s technothrillers act “like prequels to the dystopian futures that Cyberpunk envisions” in your piece on Hackers. Can you see yourself getting “jacked in” to a wee cyberpunk season in the future? 

Possibly! I just rewatched Ghost in the Shell and, while I put it and Johnny Mnemonic in the Technosceptic canon of 90s Cyberthrillers, they felt like different beasts to the films I was writing about in my mini-series. Actual cyberpunk as opposed to proto-cyberpunk. I think the thing that’s jumping out at me about cyberpunk that I’d want to write about is how bang on they were about Mega Corporations being the Governments and States of tomorrow. It makes me think about Karen Hao’s Empire of AI, Seasteading, Prospera, and the race between two Very Divorced Men to colonise Space first. I feel like you could use fictional cyberpunk/sci-fi companies to discuss all the ways in which pernicious Corporate fiefdoms are already here and thriving. 

Finally, what’s the most cyberpunk object you’ve ever owned? 

I feel the thing cyberpunk is both mocked for and provides it it’s charm is the bullish insistence on analogue physical media remaining relevant. So in that sense, my old minidisc player is probably the most cyberpunk thing I ever owned. You always need someone running around with incriminating evidence on a flash drive or floppy disc in cyberthrillers but minidiscs look the most cyberpunk to me.

Have you seen this video by YouTuber Kurtis Conner trying to replace his modern tech products with vintage tech? His weird, janky suit of old tech is very cyberpunk.