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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...
Toilet humour
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...
Fix this
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...
The Big Battle
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...
Punycorn
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
June 21, 2023
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?
May 31, 2023
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...
Andi Syrup 1
May 17, 2023
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...
Punycorn
May 10, 2023
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
May 3, 2023
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
April 12, 2023
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...
Non-starter
March 29, 2023
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...
YKK
March 22, 2023
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"
March 8, 2023
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....
Mint Condition
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...
No Wings
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...
Sunburned?
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...
Mea culpa
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...
Hello?
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...
Mother's Day
March 30, 2022
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...
Big Dam
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...
The Wrong Bag
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...
Winning
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...
Snug and Smug
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...
Status anxiety
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...
Two Landscapes
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
August 4, 2021
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...
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