Brains are weird

Making comics about the personal

I don’t love deadlines, but I need deadlines — even when it’s something I know I enjoy, like drawing comics.

Later this month there’s this zine fair in London — Goblin Market — that will have a communal table people can join on the day. I’ve marked it in my calendar to motivate me to start and finish multiple zines.

There’s a new word in my zine vocabulary: perzine, aka a zine on a personal topic. I’ve already made lots of personal comics, now I want to come up with complete zines based on real life.

The one I’m sharing today is a mini zine that I designed to print on an A4 page, but I’ve moved the panels around so you can read it here. I’ve never made a comic about physical health before, but I’m someone who gets migraine auras. They’re a very weird thing, so it was my goal to explain the hard-to-explain:

Here’s that NHS link for you — my first migraine aura caused me to panic a bit (as you would!) but the GP told me what it was. When I first visited that NHS page and read the description of symptoms, I could hardly believe all of the weird things I experienced were listed in full. Brains are weird!!!

While I like making snapshots of real life, I’m unlikely to ever make my own memoir(!). However I am inspired by the graphic autobiographies that comic creators use to share the personal. There’s Maus and Persepolis, but also more recent books like Ducks (Kate Beaton), Americana (Luke Healy), and Dancing at the Pity Party (Tyler Feder).

Oh! And I’m halfway through the new Craig Thompson book, Ginseng Roots. He was doing a signing at Gosh in London and he was so lovely to talk to.

I'm obsessed with how cute the Root is

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Finally…

I’m also working on food zines because I love cooking, and thinking about cooking, and telling people what I’ve cooked. Since I’m becoming a pamphleteer it was only a matter of time before I started campaigning for pancake recipes.

Pancake recipe zine! Also in the works: a hummus recipe zine

They’re not my original recipes, but they’re old favourites that I have copied into my Recipe Book. I still use The Internet to find new dishes, but if I’ve made something several times and I know it’s a keeper, I record it here.

I think it’s related to my love of zines. We’ve grown up in a digital world, but it feels true that we understand information better when it’s on paper, and when we write things by hand. I love my iPad and the magic and speed of technology (forgetting AI for a moment) but I’m never going to abandon my sketchbook, sticky notes, and loose piles of paper. Paper is cool!¹

I could send you the link to the banana pancake recipe, and maybe you save it somewhere on your phone, but what if I handed you the zine? With original illustrations? You’re way more likely to make those pancakes!

Guys, I just want to make zines and propagate recipes.

Next Time…

What’s that you say — it’s almost Halloween? And it’s almost my Substack anniversary? And the author is in possession of an iPad? That means it’s a Special Spooky Comics Edition!

1. Of course if I somehow went back in time and lost all digital technology and had to write with a quill or whatever my parents used in the ‘70s, I’d quickly change my tune