So, it’s 2026… What’s been going on?

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Unless you were following my Instagram account (@AKAhesir), 2024 and 2025, must have seemed pretty quiet for me looking on here in particular. I’ve certainly drifted away from posting on Twitter, something I thought might not happen as I mainly follow creatives and didn’t have much news or other drama on there. But it slowly all began to seep in… I tried other platforms like Mastodon and I have a Bluesky account that I update once in a while, but still I’ve been pretty quiet…

In truth, I stepped back a little from posting due to the lack of need for the usual cycle of gearing up and socmed promoting for shows like Thought Bubble and the local comic cons I usually attended. This was in part due to making a decision to not apply to attend any shows for a year (which just turned into two, almost without me noticing), that mostly due to an increased workload that saw me setting aside, or at least easing back on, my own projects.

I’ll discuss that workload briefly in a moment, but first, did this mean that I produced no personal work during this non-hiatus/hiatus, well, no… again, I’ll get to those…

So, what have I been working on?

Well, firstly I’ve been continuing to produce more of the Maritime Tales heritage outreach comics for Hull Maritime. The Lily and Jacob comics are now up to Issue 5, all done and all about in the world, and available digitally for those of you able to access borrowbox via your library card.

This has been a great project, and I’ve loved working on it. Getting to both write and draw the books felt a little like working on my own projects, and so I’ve been really appreciative of the Maritime Museum project choosing comics as the medium to reach out to the public during their downtime for their major refurbishment. 

The Ravenser Odd issue of the comic was a particular highlight for me, allowing me not only to work with exceptional people in academia and The National Archive, but also to have illustration work as well as the comic tied to a travelling exhibition that looked at the history and legacy of the now lost medieval island. The process of drawing the island was also fun in that I decided to make the model of the island that the kids in the comics made, built from basic household materials and a whole bunch of charity-shop bought monopoly houses. Which worked out better than I’d hoped.

So what’s next with the Maritime Tales comics? Well, Lily and Jacob, the two kids in the stories, have grown over the four year project and have gone from inquisitive and precocious kids to young people with goals for their future, and this year will see the last issue of the comic being produced to coincide with the reopening of the museum.

So that will be that, sort of… there has been some talk of collecting the books, and maybe expanding them. I guess you’ll have to watch this space. 

There’s also another legacy of those comics, in that they seem to have reached audiences further from Hull and the East Yorkshire than I would have imagined. Some of those people have since reached out and offered projects in a similar vein, i.e. comics as a medium to tell stories related to heritage, history and culture.

One of those was Dr Jon Hogg of Liverpool University’s history department, who presented his idea for a short comic looking at the results of a long research project that gathered the recollections of military veterans of the Christmas Island nuclear tests carried out in the 1950s.

These oral histories, interviews held with in many cases elderly veterans and their families, were not always comfortable reading/listening. It’s a powerfully emotive subject area, with inherently political and social ramifications, occasionally touching on very dark themes indeed. 

Don’t get me wrong, some of the stories were indeed uplifting and beautiful. Incredibly personal stories.

These personal stories were the primary inspiration for the comics we produced, and though we avoided quoting directly the actual oral testimony and likeness of those individuals interviewed, we tried to create a working amalgam of some of the stories told, and cover as much of the difficult legacy effecting the nuclear test survivors and their families.

The comic received a soft launch in a ashcan self published form at the London launch of the film that came out of the same University research.

Out of this work came a second “Atomic Tales” book, current being written and thumbnailed by myself for English Heritage. But more about that as it develops, and is completed hopefully sometime around the summer.

During this time I had also been approached by a musician of some standing, more famous perhaps for their work in the 80’s but still actively touring and writing music. This was with the notion of producing a comic version of a short episode from their youth, a project that had originally been written for another medium.

This book will be just shy of 100pgs, and is currently ob my drawing board, again, hopefully coming to fruition this year (maybe in time for a proper comics launch at one of those big end of the year events, who knows? I’ve applied again this year, I guess we’ll see what happens).

In work for hire land, during my time away from the festivals and cons, I also got to work on more stuff for Time Bomb Comics, not only producing some full colour, digitally painted interior art for Westernoir, and appearing in Time Bomb’s anthology, Quantum. These books made there way into pretty much every WHSmiths across the country, and their analogue airport and rail station newsagent stores in the Low Countries up through Germany and into Scandinavia.

As a bonus I also was asked to produce cover art for the collected edition that will be hitting Kickstarter, I believe sometime early this year.

You can find an interview with the author of the Westernoir Tales issues here:

On top of those, I’ve also recently finished a project in which I was asked to produce a series b/w “comic style” panel illustrations for a combined environment agency project looking at a Managed Flooding/Reintroduced Wetlands project, commissioned in part by another member of the UK comics community who until now have not had a chance to work with. This project is currently approaching completion and was another interesting heritage/culture project.

Outside of comics, I’ve produced a whole bunch of TTRPG illustration over the last couple of years, working on SF, Fantasy and Lovecraftian Mythos related Espionage books, a selection of which you can find below.

And I also got to produce more work for We Evolve’s Aegean books, set during the heroic age of Ancient Greece, I particularly enjoyed working on a slightly different version of the figure of Medusa…

Medusa has been on my drawing board in one form or another for the last few years…

…as I’m still plodding along slowly bringing my comic book version of her story together.

So, it’s been busy. And the world outside has in many cases been terrible. But maybe this year is the year to try and get back to a table and chat to some lovely folk who like to buy comics.

Oh, and although I said I’d not really been working on my own stuff, I did have time to plot out/write and in some cases thumbnail a couple of short folktale-esque comics… one based on a carving at one of the world’s oldest sites of human gathering, the other a strange rehash of Jack and The Beanstalk… maybe I can get one of those done for the end of the year too.

For those of you that liked the model building stuff I did for Ravenser Odd, you might well like my second YouTube channel, particularly if TTRPGs are your thing… – maybe go check out – https://m.youtube.com/@garethsleightholme-hesir

“…starting something new before finishing the last thing(s)”

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So here we are, it’s the week leading up to Thought Bubble 2023 / TBF23. Just days away really.

I’ll be there (with Sarah too, which is great, as it’s always more of a fun weekend when we are there together), and I’ll have the usual array of comics and prints (and maybe even two new banners, see the side panels in the art above).

I’m looking forward to seeing some regular faces, meeting new people, as always happens there, and to catching up with old friends too (as we have often used the event as a focus point for our Norwich Art School friends meet-up).

But, regarding the comics and prints, particularly the comics, I’m hoping this is the last year I have to turn around to people who arrive at the table in eager anticipation of something new (and I love these people for that enthusiasm I really do, please don’t stop asking!)  only to have to say, “No, sorry, I’ve no new Cthulhiad comics again this year… I’ve just been too busy with other stuff.”

Unfortunately this year, I will still be saying that.

And it makes me crazy in the brain.

I’d really hoped to have something new on the table, but it just didn’t happen. I talked about it with Sarah on a number of occasions, but the year just seemed to slip through my fingers, again.

It’s not like I can’t show people that I’m working on those other things (at least the comics ones), you can see that happening in the posts from earlier this year. 

I’ve new work on Book 3 of “The Lance” (ie the final part of my two books The White Ship, and Drakon), and I started a whole new thing, well two actually, one a book looking at a retelling of the events around the life of the Gorgon, Medusa. Which I’m really enjoying working on (see some sketches below). 

The other being a set of short fantasy adventures, which would be cool to have more time to work on, but might have to take a back burner seat while I finish these other projects. There are others too, some even scripted already, but they’ll be even further back, on the back-back burner if you will.

Earlier this week on a forum for creatives (admittedly in a different medium, i.e. not comics), I wrote the words, “…in the rich tradition of starting something new before finishing the last thing(s), I’ve started toying with a new thing”…

I think this is part of the issue… so many ideas, and never enough time… or never enough well used time.

The other reason is, I’m just working… ie, not on my own personal work, per se, but on collaborations and work for hire, for or with others. This being where the money to live and pay for things like printing and being able to even think about turning up to events like TB comes from.

And once you start doing that, it becomes incredibly hard to step away from it and find the time to work on your own things. Any free time you do get, you think, “Will I have the time to make some significant ground on that big project? To do it justice? And if not, why not do something smaller instead?” Which, when you do that, all you have done is started another thing you haven’t finished, and once again you’ve got yourself caught up in a self-perpetuating cycle.

It’s not like I haven’t been here before, here’s my old DevArt profile pic from 2003, twenty years ago…

Half of something, indeed…

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve really been thoroughly enjoying the professional work I have been doing. 

I’ve produced some of my strongest painted work of my career over the last year or so*, I’ve made some of my favourite comics art in that time too, done my first solo painted cover (I’d definitely like to try more of that). Even produced things that have inspired me and given me a way forward for some of those personal projects that are sitting in the wings. And gone back to my roots, laughs, by taking on duties on a western** comic… I’m sure you’ll here about that in the near future.

*much of which again, isn’t going to be seen, even in my portfolio for a while as I’m under NDAs until the work is out in the world. All of this makes it look like you aren’t working and producing new stuff, but that’s the business.

** my first fully finished self-published comic was a western, called The Indian Fighter – currently out of print.

Add to all that, this recurring (post Covid?) brain fog into the mix, and, well… you get the picture.

…

So, what to do?

Well, I guess this post is really me just saying, that I need to have a serious think about how I organise my time.

I need to fit in time for those projects of my own that are sitting there almost ready to go, but are just not being done or finished. 

I’m hoping that this coming year is the year I get the balance right.

In the meantime, I’ll see you this coming weekend. And though for those of you who have bought my stuff in the past there might not be much in the way of new or unseen, it will still be great to say hello if you pass the table.

Look, new banners!

Regardless, let’s just have a great festival, and as always chat and rave and rant about our love of comics. It should be fun, come and say “Hi.”

We’ll be at table B34 in the DSTLRY Hall.

See you there.

g,

Some bonus coloured Cthulhiad Art…

#JustPaperAndInk – a pop up indie comics show

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So, this happened earlier in the year… #JustPaperAndInk (article by Broken Frontier)

June through July (2023) to be precise.

Basically a small independent comics creator pop up exhibition curated by Sean Azzopardi of PhatComics and myself. And, I guess, sort of an extension of the discreet exhibition he had held at his former shared studio space, called, “Framed”. with some of the artists who had showcased their work there, also having work in this show.

The show ran for just over a month, we were based in a shop unit ran as “The Space”, a arts project ran by a local access to arts organisation and pop-up gallery team called Creat-Hive, and we were just a couple of doors along from Hull’s Forbidden Planet store in The Prospect Centre.

I got to spend my days during the show away from my usual working form home environment, and at my temporary drawing board in the gallery space itself which as always was both fun and eye opening. The show itself bookended around the Hull Comic Con weekend event too, which was great as we were able to promote that as part of our show (one of the original thoughts that had instigated our event to be fair).

I chatted to a lot of people over those few weeks, as we had over 700 people come in and engage with the work/exhibition (ie not including the people who came in looking for other things (shops, another gallery, etc) or who left once they realised it was about comics). Which is a fair amount of people. We got to chat to about #MakingComics, comics as a fairly democratised artform, and storytelling medium, and even got to discuss the possibility of further projects with other organisations in the city, and outside of it.

I cant thank enough those people who took time out of their schedules to come and chat, it was very much appreciated, so cheers… you know who you are.

We even did a radio spot with our local BBC Humberside comics fan Kofi.

The show itself was divided up into four main sections, “the big noisy art“ at the front to draw people in (which seemed to work, cheers to Sean for providing those big fun colour pieces). Then we had a section showcasing the work of several “UK indie creators“, with which we added some hard copy examples of the books hung on the wall to show the work “in its natural environment” rather than a gallery wall (to paraphrase Crumb). And we made sure to show the creators SocMed links too, in the hope that even a couple of additional follower always helps, who knows?

Followed by two linked sections looking at “Comics Made In Hull“… which was a surprisingly big section, not only for the visitors, but for us as well. We even had someone come in on the first day and tell us that they made comics in Hull too. Which was great… Comics, the unseen communities, laughs.

…and finally “Hull In Comics“, a section that showed the city itself appearing as a character in some of that local work.

As part of the interpretation in the show, we added a number of text panels looking at other aspects around the world of making comics, so that it might be perhaps more accessible for those who had left comics behind some time ago, or just for those who had never ever really engaged with the medium.

In these sections we discussed the early history of the art form, how comics are seen in Europe by comparison to the UK & US, the balance of traditional and digital comics work currently being produced (and the threats posed by so called AI/Plagiarism Software), the use of comics in education, new voices, representation and the ever present dilemma of “But, Is it Art?”.

Amongst these we scattered a number of quotes by creators, critics and celebrated comics readers from within and outside the medium, who weren’t in the show, but who had discussed important aspects of comics and their value.

We also had a few books from our own collections to chat about and use as examples in discussion.

All in all it seemed pretty well received, and we have discussed holding onto the name of the show #JustPaperAndInk for further shows and exhibitions, workshops etc.

So I guess watch this space!

NB – I’ll consider this post a raw draft… I’m sure I have some better photos than this, I’ll replace them ASAP and delete this note.

The Margin – a fantasy comic / work in progress

On By hesirIn Comics Art, Sketchbook1 Comment

Well, I’m still trying to figure out what this might look like on the site as it progresses. But I thought rather than leaving everything in script limbo, I might as well throw some art down, even if these things/pages are little more than scrappy or rough thumbnails. It will at least make the task quicker and more fluid as I pull any final version together. But here we’ll be able to watch the early version unfold (even if things change as it turns to print), and that might be fun.

So firstly, what is The Margin? Well if you read the rambling post that was “Making use of this thing”, in the latter portion I talked about wanting to do a fantasy comic, something a little more high fantasy, probably allied to my rekindled love of playing, writing and running fantasy TTRPGs, but also part of something older that I started writing way back (on the BBC Writing site and DeviantArt under the name Hesirion). Regardless, this new effort is definitely allied to the ttrpg art I’ve been making of late.
–

So this, *gestures broadly with arms*, will be that. Likely as not it will be a little clunky, as it’s an experiment, a little more freeform and meandering than even my usual standard, but it will be a way of working the kinks out of the visual storytelling whilst still, making/finishing something… even if that something I’d less polished and, well… finished. Or that’s what I’m going to tell myself. So, I guess I’ll sett up a page in the side bar dedicated to this one particular storyline, and we’ll see where we go from there. It will be something I’ll be doing between other more pressing (ie paying) projects, but it will hopefully trundle along at its own pace. Oh, and it will be in rough colour too… here the first few pages.

So “Welcome to Azhereon”…and The Margin.

Old tales, new takes…

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a thumbnail sketch for a cover of the as yet untitled project…

Some clips from the script in progress, both in my Google docs and where I often start, in Colour Note on my phone.

While working on the thumbnails and script for Theogony (the 3rd book of The Lance) I veered off track and started to develop another script, this one looking at the tale of Medusa. I’d mentioned Perseus in the prologue to Theogony, again relating to the monster-society of the wider Cthulhiad books. The notion was that this new outing would not focus so much on the “heroics” of Perseus, but instead the intrigue around the tale, on Medusa’s origins, and perhaps her (and her sister’s) purpose. Looking at how both Medusa and Perseus might well have been just tools, unwitting pieces in an unseen game. Finally taking a look at the character and motivations of the actual (potential) villains of the tale.

It’s all still in text form for the most part. And not all of that is complete, but it’s getting there. Some thumbnails are starting to happen. It’s fun… and I’m enjoying reading around my subject.

I’m currently not focussing on the length of the project, just on getting all the seemingly relevant story pieces into place. And giving the whole thing it’s own internal logic, plus looking at my overt writing, the tone, dialogue, trying to walk that difficult line between overly archaic language, and contemporary readability. It all still a little purple at the moment. So very much in the former of those two schools, but hopefully I can edit some of that down… in the meantime, back to more imminent deadlines.