I was sitting down in December to write my Thumbnails! review of the year 2024, decided in that moment I’d rather do something else, and then JUMP CUT to August 2025. Hello!

The last [multiple months] seem to have flown by, busy with promotional adventures for Graphic Novel Builder, some science comics work, pitching, and a lot of comic making!

On the promotion front, I had a lovely time launching the book in London, with drawing events at Gosh Comics and The Cartoon Museum.

And since then, it’s been a blast going to schools, libraries and book festivals to talk about Graphic Novel Builder with young people. The response has been really heartening! It seems like the book is resonating with creative people of all ages and experience levels, and helping people through their creative process to get them making the comics they want to make.

Later this year I’ll be at Lakes International Comic Art Festival and OH! Con on the Isle of Lewis. Come say hi if you’re in the area!

Pitching!

One of my big jobs this year has been trying to get pitches out there to get my next book off the ground.

For those not in the know, getting a graphic novel published isn’t quite like getting a prose book published, where a publisher would expect a finished manuscript to read. Thankfully in my experience, publishers tend to want to see an outline of your graphic novel idea in the form of a pitch document, and with some sample pages to show how it will look in practice. It’s still a lot of work!

It’s been exciting coming up with ideas, but a bit dispiriting to put a lot of work into pitches that only get seen by a few people. Recently, I decided that rather than be too cagey about it, I’d share some work from a rejected pitch over on Instagram. It might still have a chance of publication in the future, by why not share the work now for others to see…

I’d absolutely love to do a comic about dinosaurs and paleontology one day! It’s such a fascinating science, and there’s definitely scope to explore all the discoveries that have allowed us to build our picture of extinct animals and how they lived.

Interstellar Taco Truck

While I’ve been pitching non-fiction work, I’ve also been developing a sci-fi idea that I’m really excited about. So excited, in fact, that when it came time to make sample pages for a pitch, I went ahead and just made a first 24 page issue of it to self-publish at the same time.

Interstellar Taco Truck explores a world where aliens made contact with humans, not for our technology or resources or knowledge or culture, but because of all our great snacks! Ari and Kit are two kids who end up stranded across the universe, and their only way to get home is to build a space-faring Taco Truck to work their way across galaxies and back home to their families.

I’m super excited by it, and so far it’s had a lovely reception from readers. And it was super fun to draw - from getting to invent a bunch of alien species, through to trying to draw food so good you could eat it!

The response at a recent comic convention was really great! People seemed to really love the idea - the food theme resonated with kids, and the adventure angle pulled them in, leaving them wanting to read more. It was a really fantastic way for me to see if the idea worked, and left me confident wanting to make more.

The comic is available now in print or as a digital download. I only printed 100 copies, and probably won’t reprint it once those are sold out, so grab one while you can!

(Thumbnails!)

I’d be remiss in a newsletter called Thumbnails! not to share some of the work in progress on this comic. It was a really fun one to thumbnail actually. I’ve been working hard to try and recapture a little of that anarchic teenage comics drawing spirit, something I felt I’d lost over the years working on Filmish and Gamish (both now back in stock in my shop!). Those books, with their focus on realism and recreating iconic characters and scenes, ended up feeling a little stiff. My desire then, working on Graphic Novel Builder, was to try and maintain a looser style. And with Interstellar Taco Truck I hoped to take this further - moving away from rigid panel borders, and embracing a little more fun in the illustration.

The goal for a while has been to eliminate the pencilling phase - creating reliable, well laid-out thumbnails that allow me to jump straight to digital inks. Those ‘inks’ still involve a bit of trial and error, but I think all-told this process achieves something looser than I was creating before.

I go into this process more in a recent interview with Amaris Ketcham, which I recommend checking out if you’re interested!

Recommendations

This is probably my favourite part, though it’s been so long that I won’t be able to cover everything great I’ve been enjoying…

Movies

At the start of the year I set myself the somewhat questionable task of watching 250 movies in 2025. Though things have slowed over the summer, I’m currently on track, with 182 logged on my Letterboxd account at the time of writing. It’s a huge mix of old rewatches, new and new to me movies. If there’s a theme emerging, it’s me trying to watch mid-tier ‘90s thrillers I saw the VHS/DVD cover for but never got round to watching (often for good reason, Hollywood Homicide).

Best New Movie: 28 Years Later

Absoultely adored this stunning, ambitious, unexpected film. If 28 Days Later was a violent shock to the system, exposing the rage hiding in all of us onto cheap DV tape, 28 Years Later is a work about the capacity for love and compassion hiding in us too. A film that feels informed by everything writer and director have learned in the last quarter century. Everything that has happened to them, and us in that time, and shot straight to the flash memory of iPhones that show how far technology has come, while still retaining a delicious degree of digital imperfection.

See also: Grand Theft Hamlet, Superman, KPop Demon Hunters.

Best New to me: Aftersun

What a gorgeous, heartbreaking movie. A young woman recollects a childhood summer holiday spent with her father in Turkey. It’s an examination of memory and mental health, seen through the eyes (and miniDV tape) of an 11 year old child. An absolute must-see. Paul Mescal and first time actor Frankie Corio are both flawless.

See also: The Substance, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Little Women (2019)

Best Rewatch: Ravenous (1999)

“If you die first I’m definitely gonnae eat ya”

A lot of my rewatches this year have been attempts to give movies I'd seen years ago, and not necessarily resonated with, another shot.

Ravenous is an ice-cold fronteir western turned cannibal horror with Guy Pearce and Robert Carlisle. Everything I bounced off of when I first saw it at 15 I loved this time round: the heightened performances, the enigmatic score, the unpredictable plotting. In a world of creaky, ratchety, synthy horror scores be a weird little guy, gremlin-dancing while playing the banjo. I think this movie speaks to my growing appreciation of stuff that takes big swings (and sometimes-misses) over the homogenised and safe.

See also: Adaptation, No Country For Old Men, Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead. Also The Wrong Guy, but I already knew this hidden gem was great!

Let me know which movies you gave a second chance to in the comments!

TV

The Studio

Seth Rogen plays an idealistic movie-nerd thrust into running a studio after his boss is fired. It’s a wonderfully funny, energetic comedy about the clash of idealism and commerce, full of loving satire and frantic ‘oners’. Clearly and absolutely a show made by movie fans, for movie fans.

Gaming

Outer Wilds

Set in a dainty universe not more than 40km across, this first-person puzzle adventure game puts you in the shoes of an explorer who needs to discover why the universe ends every 22 minutes. To do so, you climb into your home-made space-ship and travel across the solar system, visiting a series of unique planets (one slowly crumbling into its own black-hole core; a pair that act as a sand timer, with sand draining between the two) to unravel what’s going on. It’s a puzzle-box of a game, challenging but always fun to explore, and stuffed with gratifying ‘aha!’ moments when you figure out another piece of the puzzle.

Rebirth

When I saw a review of this game on Shut Up and Sit Down, I couldn’t resist. A game about rebuilding civlisation in Scotland after an apocalypse? Where you can restore communities from Edinburgh to Inverness? By game legend Reiner Knizia? I’m glad I got it - simple game mechanics (admittedly only vaguely connected to the theme) and gorgeous eco-conscious production make for a really satisfying play experience for someone looking for an easy-to-pick-up Eurogame.

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Till next time, folks!