INTRO

Seven months into the year, and seven months into writing this newsletter. How’s it going? How are you all doing? Are you enjoying this?

I hope you are. I’m enjoying writing it. This year has been exhaustingly hard, and I think it's going to get harder before it gets easier, but having a little monthly space to write about whatever I feel like is fun. It's like a little space to breathe, and to check in with myself. Plus, it's a reminder every month that I am doing a lot, even if I don't have much to show for it.

And with that, here's the news…

THE NEWS

Just a singular new this month, but it's a big one! Scream! Halloween Special 2026 has been announced, and I'm in it, along with several friends!

From the press release:

“October 2026 will see the return of the Eisner-Nominated horror anthology Scream! Featuring a gruesome cadre of twisted storytellers, The Scream! Halloween Special 2026 will show you the true meaning of fear across 48 ghastly and grotesque pages! With comics from a murderously good lineup of top creators including Alex Paknadel, Babs Tarr, Zoe Tunnell, Zac Thompson and Vic Malhotra, Rebellion proudly present five new horror stories to keep you screaming this Halloween!”

My story is in collaboration with the amazing Vic Malhotra, and the art he's doing for this one is a hell of a thing, even at the pencils stage.

The Bog Body is a story about obsession and burnout, as one PhD student's focus on his work becomes all-consuming… a little too literally! I described it in an interview as “damp and unsettling”, and I'm sticking to that.

You can preorder the special HERE.

WHAT AM I WRITING?

Project V is now with its second reader, waiting for feedback. Fingers crossed it goes down well, because I think it's nearly ready and I'd hate to be wrong about that!

I'm about to dive back into Project RS and see how much work it needs before the rest of the team get their hands on it, but, well, that's a big collaborative thing. I don't want to do too much before everyone else has a go on it (although I hope it's not too long before we can get it out on sub! But scheduling is… tricky.)

So, I want something where I can set the pace fully. Almost every other project is with other people, waiting for their input. This is why I always seem to be working on so many things at once: everything collaborative involves a lot of waiting.

So, I've gone back to Project Aquarist, and that one is in need of some pretty large scale reimagining to make it work. Reoutlining it is a slow and tedious process; it's a LONG way from being anything. I'm plugging away at it, but it isn’t the fun kind of problem solving.

So, naturally, I started a new notebook for what I've been flippantly referring to as “the Book I'm Not Writing”. Let's call it… PROJECT TYRANT. More on that in due course, but it's a sort of middle grade-ish horror-ish romp, albeit still in early ideation stages!

WHAT AM I READING?

I've read a moderate amount this month, but I want to particularly highlight Hildur Knútsdóttir's The Night Guest.

I read this because it was translated by Mary Robinette Kowal, an author whose voice I am very familiar with. I wanted to see how much a strong voice could be subsumed by the needs of translation, and this very much did not disappoint. I think I spotted maybe two moments where a very MRK turn of phrase stuck out to me, but that's all.

The Night Guest is a horrible little thing: a slim 200 pages, in which a woman with fatigue issues discovers that her exhaustion is because, when she sleeps, she gets out of bed and does… something. As she wakes up with more and more horrifying injuries, things get darker and darker.

It's a beautiful, elegant thing that refuses to explain things, leaving horrible questions and blank spaces everywhere. Some of those blank spaces are literal: empty pages and sparse text abound. I don't think I've ever seen another prose book so committed to using blank pages and page turns in the same ways that comics can do. It's lovely, unsettling stuff.

WHAT AM I LISTENING TO?

We went on a brief trip to Utrecht to see Orville Peck play live! He's been one of my favourites for a long time, and I think he's even more of a favourite now.

I don't think I need to say much more than: that was a beautiful, intimate night of vulnerability and queer joy, and one of the best gigs I've ever been to.

SO LET'S TALK ABOUT THE OPENING ACT.

The delightfully named Talullah Argue describes her music as “country sleaze”. She's got a charmingly scrappy stage presence, a hell of a voice, and a small number of songs, all of which are great. Stick this in your ears:

MY LINKS

Preorder Scream! Halloween Special 2026

Buy The Restaurant at the Edge of the World (UK)

Buy Off Menu (US)

My bookshop.org reading lists

FRIENDS MAKING THINGS

Next month, Brandt&Stein's new book, Worst Man, will be released. I've talked about this book a little bit before, but I've now read the entire thing, and it is comfortably my favourite comic of the year so far.

So, what is this book? Per the official summary:

“On a remote island, far from the distractions of the internet and modern life, we gather here today to celebrate the union of Domino McElligott and Battista Lovely... unless Radcliffe Raleigh can stop it!

A professional 'Worst Man', Rad is hired by the Mother of the Bride, the merciless tech mogul Valentina McElligott. With the price of failure being his life and less than 32 hours till "I do", Rad's ready to pull out every trick in his arsenal to stop the wedding and save his skin - until he meets Best Man and beef cake, Chris Kafka.

Determined to keep the Best Man close for.... uh... purely professional reasons, Rad quickly realizes he may be on the wrong side of the aisle and the only 'mistake' needing to be rectified is of his own making. But with sick guests, a ruined dress, and the smell of a conspiracy wafting from the vol-au-vents, is it too late for Radcliffe to get the ceremony back on track?”

I'm just going to repeat what I said on Bluesky: You know how a duck looks really calm on the surface, but under the water it's constantly paddling? This book is an upside down duck: on the surface it's all madcap idiot hijinks, but underneath is a precise, careful machine. There is so much work and care in engineering this plot, and it ticks along beautifully and precisely. And then on top of that plot is the stupidest idiot bullshit you have ever seen. It's constantly hilarious, and uses that for an outrageously smart sleight of hand.

This book is two creators having the time of their life indulging all their worst impulses, and that joy shines through on every page. Ted and Ro are two of my favourite people in comics, and I love that they put this much work into being so outrageously stupid.

Worst Man is a real treat. If you like romcoms or heists or simply the act of laughing while reading, this is the book for you. Go and preorder it now.

OUTRO

A lot of things are hard at the moment. But I'll get through it. We’ll all get through it, in the end. Unless the horrible bastard sky orb just melts us all into an indistinct mass of flesh.

• Ollie, Edinburgh, July 2026

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^*_{I would like to note that this is also the James Bond Number. In celebration of this, friend of the show Johnny Chiodini and I will absolutely not be recreating classic bond villain plots for our own profit. Definitely don't check back in next month to see if we've stolen a satellite.}