Hello! As you may know usually this newsletter is a quarterly seasonal round-up with a focus on what I’m working on / listening to and distracted by. 2025 however was a year of upheaval, both globally and personally & I fell somewhat behind. To get back up to speed for the new year this is a two-part round up of the many happenings of last year. If you’ve not read Part 1 it might be worth catching up. Otherwise let’s dive in to Part 2…

As Summer closed and September grabbed its cardigan I headed back to into town to catch the final days of the Jenny Saville retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery. I first fell in awe of Saville’s textural, commanding paintings as an art student when I spent a day in a room full of her paintings at Tate Modern, drawing the art and visitors alike. These were huge paintings of women, lying naked on perspex to make them appear to have been squished onto the world’s biggest photocopy machine. They screamed in your face for attention and I absolutely adored them. I could espouse for weeks on the mastery of colour or the thrill of seeing the underdrawings and quality of line that Saville commands. Better yet seek out her works and admire them for yourself.

This excellent exhibition was followed by noodles and nattering then back to Gosh to celebrate the launch of ACID BOX published by Avery Hill, a high-octane, time-bending, era-defining, love-letter to the Dance and Rave scenes and a whole lot of fun. Sara Kenney AKA Wowbagger Productions, writer and curator of the project that became a graphic novel, is one of my favourite people in comics along with Sofie Dodgson so it was a double pleasure to celebrate along with AB team members Ria Grix, Joe Stone, Alison Sampson and Sarah Zad. So many excellent creators came together to bring this project to life and the book is beautifully printed by the team at AHP. You can pick up a copy from them or your local comic and music shops alike. Read the excellent BROKEN FRONTIER review too.

It felt very apt to christen my new drawing cave with another collaboration. This time with the utterly brilliant Chrissy Williams. I adore Chrissy’s writing like a religion. From her poetry comics with Will Humberstone to the glorious GOLDEN RAGE with Lauren Knight, Sofie Dodgson and Becca Carey (Image). So when Chrissy asked if I fancied drawing a witchy tale for her I nearly bit her arm off. Together we concocted a brew of Bavarian folklore, maternal longing and a cautious warning. I drew many, many trees and am really chuffed with how it came together. The story, PLEASE, is one of many odes to all things hag in WITCHING SEASON from Lifeline Comics. The anthology recently funded on Kickstarter but there’s still time to late pledge and you do not want to miss out.

My final September event was in the rolling hills and sprawling waters of Bowness-on-Windermere for Lakes International Comic Art Festival. It was yet another first of me as a LICAF Patron and such an honour to be part of a fascinating, heart warming and truly international weekend. Guests this year included Craig Thompson, Simone Lia, Mohammed Sabaaneh, Philip and Shelly Bond and Lorenzo Mattotti amongst many more. It was wonderful to see a packed marquee for Shelly’s talks along with Philip and Will Potter interviewed by the editor-herself on GEEZER.

I had the pleasure of drawing alongside Donya Todd (THE WITCH’S EGG) for an Avery Hill double bill as we chatted to Paul Gravett. Then jumped in the host’s chair myself to interview Alison Sampson about her jam-packed career so far and hear about her tips, tricks and secret upcoming gigs.

Over at the theatre there was a powerful presentation From Palestine with Mohammed being joined by Sliman Mukarker to discuss Qusasat - a collaborative project with LICAF, lead by (Mollie) Ray with the Power Collective in Bethlehem. This was a Summer camp based in the West Bank took place in July and the resulted in an anthology created by attendees. After the passionate discussion followed an interview with Khaled Jarada about his upcoming graphic novel and the gorgeous consortia book available at the festival. Khaled is a refugee from Gaza, now based in Paris and an astonishing artist that I’ve had the honour or working with to bring his story to print. He has a way of combining the absurd mundanity with the deeply human experience of being a refugee into his comic that will hopefully sway minds and break stigmas around immigration.

It was incredible to hear Mattotti talk about his many extraordinary works of which I am a huge fan, spanning a career from the 1970s. I have to admit to a fan-girl fugue state in meeting the maestro and watching him sketch in my copy of STIGMATA. It was awe inspiring and I completely lost my ability to talk.

Luckily I recovered it in time to celebrate my PICOF-partner-in-travels (Mollie) Ray being crowned Comics Youth’s first Young Comics Laureate. Ray is an absolute gem of a human and incredible talent. I know they will create many great projects and bring tons of enthusiasm and compassion to the role.

There were so many chats, exhibitors, comics and creators packed into the weekend that I’m no doubt failing to mention. LICAF is a weekend unlike any other and best enjoyed when you can take in the many events on offer. It returns to Kendal this year and tickets are on sale now. You can also apply to exhibit and guest announcements will be soon. It’s going to be another incredible weekend.

October arrived quickly this year as I set to work on creating a zine for THE THING WITH FEATHERS alongside design studio UNCOMMON and distributors at Vue Lumiére. The plan was to give these out at events and highlight the artwork from the film, which is very lovely of them to do. It was fascinating to see the difference between my DIY concept of zines (Quickly made, photocopied & had stapled) to their commercial idea of them as promotional mini magazines. I think we found a balance somewhere between and created a very tasty wee give-away.

I was then packing my bags yet again for an exciting trip. I was very lucky to be part of the British Comics Now team heading to Brussels with LICAF alongside Peony Gent, Shane Melisse, Jenny Robins and Neill Cameron. Ahead of us was a weekend of workshops, meet and greets with local creators and publishers then live drawing with our counterparts accompanied by an orchestra and finally live portraits of the many visitors to the museum.

We started with a tour of the comic murals around Brussels and quickly understood how immersed the city is in comics then onto our home for the weekend the Comic Art Museum. This gorgeous museum is purely for comics and such a delight to visit. Amongst the homages to renowned titles such as TinTin and Corto Maltese were exhibitions on modern authors like Judith Vanistendael and Anne Herbauts as well a new voices graduating from the local comic school Luca.

It’s encouraging to see comics treated with as much reverence as fine art and must admit my eyes grew greener when we met our local counterparts. In Belgium you can get an artist’s living wage to create after your studies. Effectively this works like a DYCP grant in that you can work on anything you like but for a limited time period. This is decided by how many years working you complete before the grant. Along with Ireland’s new Artist Living Wage there is much hope for a genuinely sustainable creative career in this. I’m keen to look into these schemes further and see what can be pushed here in the UK to bring that about one day.

Back to Brussels and our weekend was a fun-filled whirlwind. Highlights were drawing with local creators and my partner-in-doodle Antoine Schiffers. Katya Antoine’s debut was published by Casterman this year and is so beautifully drawn that it compares to Gipi for me. Such a pleasure to draw alongside him and support the other team’s efforts whilst the orchestra encouraged us along. Running a workshop with Shane on Action & Composition was great too but our team-up for a rendition of Pulp’s Common People at karaoke remains my fav. I loved making collage comics at Jenny & Peony’s workshop as well as seeing the joy on kids faces attending Neill’s Awesome Comics event. We are lucky to have such cool creators in the UK and to show that off in Brussels was a thrill. I’m sure there will be more collaborations with LICAF in the future so do keep your eyes peeled and apply to be a part.

October ended with a comic con bang as I returned to MCM. This time to help out on THE THING WITH FEATHERS stand with Dylan Southern (Writer & Director) alongside the team from distributors Vue Lumiére. We chatted to visitors and handed out many free zines for the film. In between I got to panel alongside my WITCHING SEASON co-conspirator Chrissy Williams to chat to host Sarah Miles about all things old lady. We had a brilliant chat about female representation and hags in comics. So much so I found myself shouting ‘Old Lady Boobs!’ into the mic in honour of a particularly joyous scene in Chrissy’s comic GOLDEN RAGE. That one got the audience’s attention. Then on Sunday after some visits to our stand from the head of BFI and CROW physical actor Eric Lampaert and even more zines handed out Dylan & I joined Sarah for a chat in Writers Block on adapting Max Poster’s novel and collaborating on the art for the film. Sarah had seen an early viewing of the film and her superb questions made for a great chat with Dylan & myself.

The film’s previews continued in November with a special LETTERS LIVE event at West End Vue cinema. Cumberbatch was joined on stage by the novel’s author Max Porter, journalist Caitlin Moran and actors Meera Syal and Louise Brealey who each read out genuine letters that were hilarious, heartfelt and often quite surprising. I loved Caitlin Moran’s letter to her daughter after she thought she would die from smoking too much at Glastonbury and cry laughed as Cumberbatch read a tale of a business trip gone feral with a spicy-salami-meets-seagull catastrophe. The rollercoaster of themes lead well to the emotional trip the film then took the audience on. Alongside me was my partner Stephen who saw the film for the first time and my art on a cinema screen, not to mention daubed all over a Photo Booth in the foyer. it was a wild experience and so brilliant to be able to gift to him after dealing with my own varied emotions in making that art.

Soon after this I was back to lugging comics on trains for this year’s Thought Bubble weekend. The fun kicked off with a Private View at Mercer Art Gallery for VISION AND LABOUR from Avery Hill. The exhibition collects a number of creator’s original art from their AHP books along with interviews and displays of Avery Hill’s early comics. The Mercer crew have done a superb job of hanging the show along with Kat Chapman and Kristyna Baczynski, who designed the brilliant poster. I loved seeing other artists work up close and reading about their processes. BARKING was on display too with some of my messy sketch pages and carbon drawings. It’s such a great thing for comics to get an entire gallery to show off in and highly recommend you see the show if you are in and around Harrogate. It runs 26th April so there’s plenty of time to take it in and grab some of the top notch merch. If you can’t make it you can follow Mercer on Instagram and catch the AHP Team discussing the exhibition on Signals From The Hill

The festival itself was a wonderful blur of tabling, panels, catching up with pals and chatting to visitors. I got to recommend comics on poetry, female rage & Palestine (separate books!) on the BEST THING I READ panel and offer advice to creators for the free Portfolio Reviews organised by Alison Sampson. It’s always such an uplifting weekend and wonderful way to close my festival year. Applications are open now for TBF ’26 so get yours in ASAP.

I had one final event for ’25 as I headed back to Vue West End for a FEATHERS screening and podcast recording of Girls on Film alongside producer Leah Clarke (Sunnymarch), Scupltor & Artist Nicola Hicks and Creature Effects Designer Tahra Zafar. I love this podcast with it’s focus on women in film & TV so jumped at the chance to be involved. Being a part of a panel alongside such extraordinary and talented women was a genuine honour and the discussion was top notch. You can listen on podcast platforms to find out more about the varied roles we played in creating the film as well as discussions on our relative industries.

All that brings us to December and my last commission for the film was a recorded drawing / summoning of CROW for Daler Rowney & Vue Lumiére. I thoroughly enjoyed splashing and scratching him back into life again. You can catch the full video (replete with dip pen ASMR) on Vue Lumière’s YouTube channel

My final comic commission for the year was another welcome return. This time to collaborate once more with my good pal Fraser Campbell. We’ve teamed up to create a brand new One Pager for the launch of A1Deadline. Back in the day I was a huge Deadline fan as was Fraser with A1 so it’s very lovely to work together again and be in this new iteration of the magazines. We’ve cooked up another post-apocalyptic tale and look forward being alongside original and new creators in the printed mag, available in the new year. If you missed the Kickstarter you can sign up for pre-orders on their website.

It really has been quite a year. In and around all the happenings we moved to Brighton, packing up 13 years of books, comics and collectibles and waved goodbye to the city I was born in with a joyous hello (and audible sigh of relief) to our new home by the sea. Got to admit I am exhausted.

Although I’ve never been one for New Year resolutions I am planning to take a very different approach to my work schedule and habits for ’26. I have a lot to create for Mothers Ruin (Avery Hill - Fall ’27) and a lot of comics to read from the years of events and supporting fellow creator’s work. My plan is to limit festivals and events next year. Currently I’m booked for Portsmouth Comic Con in May and will heading back to Kendal for LICAF in October. I will definitely apply for Thought Bubble with another unannounced event but that might be all I do next year. I’m going to hunker down in my art cave and get creating. I’m designating time every week to read comics and books and another slot exclusively to paint and draw but not for the book. The rest will be bringing my next SHELTER to life so expect lots of news on that coming up.

I feel like, although this year has been full of amazing opportunities, I’ve been chasing my own tail to keep up and it’s frankly unsustainable. So I’ll be closing commissions to get my book as good as it can be and blinking into the light for a few comics gatherings during the year. I’ll be updating on my socials but trying to keep a healthier habit there too. This newsletter will go back to a quarterly, seasonal update but I might play with the format. We shall see…

Thanks so much for reading and sticking with me through the bonfire that was 2025. I hope you managed to get through it as unscathed as possible and wish you calmer days ahead. Don’t forget to thank your local hag and stick to the path lads! Lucy