Thumbnails #8

It’s been a busy summer of traveling around the UK with my family, and snatching chances to write between all that. Things have felt a little slow, all told, but I’ve been enjoying digging into being creative just for me (for now), including more screenwriting and some work on book pitches.

Cracking the Parasite Code

Just before the summer I finished work on my latest collaboration with University of Glasgow’s Wellcome Centre for Integrative Parasitology (WCIP). I’ve been working with them for more than 10 years now on a series of comics about their parasitology research - covering diseases like malaria, sleeping sickness, and now leishmaniasis.

This one was of special interest to me since our Spanish recue dog Grace had to be screened for leishmaniasis, as the disease is found in dogs across Southern Europe.

With this one we decided to tell the story of scientist Andreia Albuquerque-Wendt, whose own dog contracted leishmaniasis when she was a child, and which in the end led her on the path to studying the disease.

It was a rewarding project to work on, and I’m really proud of the work we’ve put in over the last decade telling the story of the WCIP and the diseases that they research. It’s a more personal and heartfelt story than we’ve done before, and I really feel I knocked the art out of the park on this one (if I’m allowed to say that).

You can have a read of Leishmaniasis: Cracking The Parasite Code, and all of my other WCIP comics here.

Grave Offerings

Hallowe’en is coming earlier and earlier each year for me as I delve deeper into the horror genre with each passing spooky season. This year I’ve kicked things off with The Black Phone, M3gan and Mom and Dad, a triumvate of pretty decent, sleepover-appropriate horrors that I would have enjoyed and not lost too much sleep over when I was 12. I’ve already got some watching plans this year - rewatching Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Us and Nope; catching up of old classics like The Haunting and Les Diaboliques; and introducing my partner to the horror-adjacent work of film-making duo Benson and Moorhead with The Endless and Something in the Dirt.

But for me, Hallowe’en won’t truly begin until I get my first email from Tom Humberstone from his thrilling new (time-limited) Substack Grave Offerings. Anyone who follows Tom on social media will know he’s an avid horror fan, and every year graces our feeds with beautiful-grotesque horror illustrations slash movie recommendations. This year it’s all going on a carefully curated Substack, and I for one can’t wait for it.

You can sign up for it here and check out Tom’s work, including his excellent graphic novel Suzanne, here.

Jet Lag: The Game

I’m getting more and more into the idea of real-world gaming - something I wish I’d covered in Gamish: A Graphic History of Gaming (in all good bookshops). It all started with Geowizard/Tom Davies’s compelling straight line and no-roads missions, where he tries these outlandish geographical challenges to, for example, cross the UK’s Black Country without walking on any roads/pavements for more than 25 meters (cue a bunch of cheeky tresspassing, Dérive and urban exploring). It then ramped up with the delightfully silly Run For The Money, in which Japanese celebrities try and run from Agent Smith style suited ‘Robots’, all while helping each other out/shopping each other in, to see who can survive and win a probably piddling pot of prize money.

But I think I’ve found my new gold-standard and obsession in Jet-Lag: The Game, a YouTube and Nebula series in which three American pals compete in wild travel adventures across continents. The first series of theirs I watched was a giant game of Tig (ok, ok - ‘Tag’) across Europe. What elevates it all though is a firm appreciation for good game design, with each series featuring well conceived rules and a nice dose of game theory to make things delightfully spicy. The Tag Across Europe series for example includes a bunch of risky ‘challenge’ cards that can delay runners, but if successful give them extra cash to buy better forms of travel. What emerges is not only a game of cat and mouse, but a psychological game of wits and tactics. Really delightful, funny, tense stuff.

Final Recommendations!

A few things I enjoyed recently:

🪗 Blue Marbled Elm Trees by King Creosote is life-affirming folk to keep you afloat as the nights draw in // 🎬 Limbo by Ben Sharrock is a glorious, funny, tragic story of refugees trapped on a Scottish island. Watch it. // 📖 The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter - an epic parallel universe series with a nice mix of hard sci-fi and Pratchett’s absurdism and humour.