Archive • Andi's Newsletter • Buttondown

A Year in Books

January 3, 2024

Making funny books takes a ridiculous amount of time. Consequently I have a tragic lack of hinterland. The nearest thing to a hobby I can claim is reading....

PSH-PSH-PSHHHHH

December 27, 2023

This was my final comic of last year and it feels just as relevant twelve months later. See you all in 2024. Punycorn published by HarperCollins Blackwells/...

Hair, Make Up, Tea Boy

December 20, 2023

You'll often hear cartoonists opine that authoring a graphic novel is like making a movie but you are writer, director, production designer, costume...

December 13, 2023

During the editing of a book the author has to occasionally steel themselves and kill a few darlings. Out goes a treasured joke for the sake of keeping the...

Metaphorical Rowing Machine

December 6, 2023

I am not the world's greatest multi-tasker. In fact, I might be the worst. I only need to spin more than one plate and I get stressed out. This form of...

November 29, 2023

Hacking and slashing. Ruthlessness could never be described as my defining trait. Of late, though, I have been ruthless. Ruthlessly putting my darlings to...

November 21, 2023

Way back in 2020 when I was putting together the pitch for Punycorn, I figured I needed a piece of eye candy to sweeten the pot. I thought I'd throw in an...

November 16, 2023

Here're the first two chapters of my years in the making middle grade funny fantasy which is out now from all the places good books are sold. Published by...

Bang in the Middle

Last time I shared my process for making The Book Tour graphic novel. That was a book for grown ups and was also a project initiated without a publisher...

How long does it take to create a graphic novel? Too long is generally the answer. It's a lot of work to create a world on paper and form a narrative through...

With Distressed Beeping now out I thought I'd draw back the curtain on the mystical process of making my one page strips. I will skip the messy, angsty bit...

I don't recall my exact age, somewhere around 12, that I was pursuing a personal obsession at my local public library. Nothing salacious, unless you count...

Increased Difficulty

I read an article recently that lifted my spirits. Kids read 25% more books last year compared to the previous year. 27 million books read during the...

Yam! Bam! mon chat Splash

Phil lifts the lid on the container and sniffs the contents. What is it? I ask. Soup, she replies. The container holds a pallid greenish liquid. What kind of...

In an effort to encourage my productivity, Phil has turned to AI. With the thinnest of prompts she had Chat GPT churn out a newsletter in the style of Andi...

There's a knock at the door. Not yet nine o'clock and we have a delivery. It's a large rectangular box, light for the size. I assume it must be clothing and...

"Ruthless ambition and ego"

Such was the eye catching headline of a book review I saw recently about literary marriages. The book in question is The Lives of Wives by Carmela Ciuraru....

February 8, 2023

Looking at my phone I see on Thursday I walked a grand total of 298 steps. When they say the creative life is about sitting your ass down and doing the work,...

Like Having an Elephant to Tea

January 25, 2023

It's our wedding anniversary but Phil and I have to work. We make time in the afternoon to go for a walk in the bright winter sunlight. Our route takes us...

Irregular Rapping

January 18, 2023

Saturday and there's an irregular rapping at the door. Having worked from home before it was a pandemic lifestyle choice thrust upon the rest of the...

Five-barred Gate

December 21, 2022

It's approaching the end of the year. A time to reflect and each consult our personal Ws and Ls columns. As a 'content creator' it's easy to mistake...

I suppose it must be Tuesday.

December 14, 2022

Comics is a strange occupation. Inventing lives for imaginary people drawn in little boxes with words floating over their heads that requires a wide variety...

December 7, 2022

Like grown ups, Phil and I sit down at the dinner table to eat Sunday lunch. We put aside our smart phones and do our best to make small talk. Phil, as a...

November 30, 2022

Sunburn is actually coming out TODAY (at time of typing). March down to your local comic emporium, slam your hard earned clams down on the counter and demand...

Schrödinger's Sunburn

November 23, 2022

I had a newsletter all lined up enthusiastically blathering about the imminent release of Sunburn, the latest collaborative opus from Simon Gane and myself....

Little Wrigglers

November 16, 2022

My daughter is home from university for the weekend. I would like to think it is because she cannot bear to be parted from Phil and I, but I suspect, and our...

The Smell of Neediness

November 9, 2022

Shameless capitalism Paris, the fairy tale romance beautifully drawn by Simon Gane and written by me is out now from Image comics The handsome hardcover...

Reader & Advisor

November 2, 2022

I arrived at the Lakes comic art festival on Friday and had nothing scribbled in my not so hectic schedule. On a whim I took the ferry to Ambleside and was...

The Comedy of Anxiety

October 19, 2022

I arrived at the Lakes comic art festival on Friday and had nothing scribbled in my not so hectic schedule. On a whim I took the ferry to Ambleside and was...

Mellow Fruitfulness

October 12, 2022

(spot the spider) Lord Hindlip boasts of being from the top drawer. He was raised locally on an estate very close to our house. He is handsome with a healthy...

October 5, 2022

I should have written a column last week, but I didn't. Probably you never noticed and I shouldn't have mentioned it. No one would have been any the wiser. I...

BIFF! BAM! POW!

September 14, 2022

I find myself in the secluded garden of the Palazzo Castiglioni just off the Piazza Sordello in Mantua, Italy. I am a guest of the literary festival and am...

August 31, 2022

Is there anybody here? No? Just a pile of bills under the door, flyers for dodgy pizza parlours and assorted spam urging me to claim my free Phillips Air...

The phone rings mid-afternoon and I wearily pick it up expecting another call from the familiar voice of the tele-marketer who phones me every couple of...

February 16, 2022

We are in Wales driving up a steep hill in low gear at the mercy of Google maps. The two previous right turns were not the ones we wanted. One of them was to...

January 26, 2022

Phil and I meet in the hallway of our home. We nod a silent acknowledgement and don our coats, hats and scarves as our daughter sits in the living room on...

January 5, 2022

One of those Kurt Vonnegut quotes popped up on Twitter the other day that caught my eye. I have always been a bit suspicious of the way social media has used...

The Year in Numbers

December 29, 2021

It's traditional at this time of year to glance back at the previous twelve months, take stock and try and make some sort of sense of it. I did one last year...

December 22, 2021

Time is a circle. Or a flat lozenge. Or is that the earth? Hard to keep up with the onslaught of daily irrationality. Billy Pilgrim was unstuck in time. Plus...

My wife and her Vices

December 1, 2021

That was going to be the subject of this column (and a dozen more) before I pitched the idea to her. Unfortunately she shot it down in no uncertain terms. I...

Happy Birthday!

November 17, 2021

Autumn, the season of mists, mellow fruitfulness and birthdays. For whatever reason we have a bunch of family birthdays squeezed into a roughly four week...

The Goldfish Bowl

November 3, 2021

Way back when I was at junior school we had a weekly school assembly. We were led in by our teachers, class by class, and sat cross-legged in rows on the...

October 20, 2021

There was a disturbance in the discourse on Twitter recently and I found myself drawn to it like a moth to flame. Generally I avoid such temptations as I am...

Crimson Hieroglyphs

October 6, 2021

I don't think anyone has said this before but writing is hard. I know, I'm breaking new ground here. Alas, it is true. You may not believe me if you have...

Multiple Occupancy

September 22, 2021

Saturday and Phil begins packing food for our daughter's return to university. From where I am sitting all I can see is a huge jar of Nutella and several...

Close Protection

September 8, 2021

I was absentmindedly gazing out of our holiday let window in Devon when my eye was caught by a family promenading along the seafront opposite. That man looks...

The Hawke is Howling

August 25, 2021

Have you ever met someone for the first time and disliked them for no reason whatsoever? They can be lovely people, kind to goldfish, promptly pay their...

Kidnapped by Mermaids

August 18, 2021

My daughter is freshly, or not so freshly, returned from a music festival (where a negative Covid test was necessary). I can second hand report that the...

August 11, 2021

For three days in a row the auction house has called me up demanding to know when I will be paying for and collecting my watercolours. This comes as a...

Olympic Hopeful

Unlike my ultra-masculine alter-ego Wolf Watson I don’t hunt. No shooting or fishing for me. Killing things is not really my bag. Eating them is another...