Nina Simone

Good afternoon folks!

So, it’s almost Christmas! With being ill on and off for what feels like weeks, it’s been a little longer between updates than I’d have liked! But with this lingering lurgy and working my new job, this extra week has given me some time to catch up before delighting you all with what I’ve been working on. So, low and behold, I’m back for my yearly pre-Christmas update! Last year I was in the depths of third year university stresses, so I’m definitely feeling more zen this year.. Still, as always I’m longing for my mum’s Christmas dinner skills and eating my body-weight in meat and potato which will be greatly appreciated in three days time.

Still, although my day-job Christmas holiday has started I’m still working away on my comics for the upcoming 2017 collection of short stories I’m releasing with British micro-publisher Good Comics! It’s been challenging to juggle a new full-time work schedule and commute with working on comics, but it’s all an adjustment period that I’m slowly refining. Hopefully, with another week and a half of time off I’ll make a nice dent in the rest of my writing and plotting for my remaining stories so that I have a couple of months to get everything drawn ready for it’s plotted release of mid-late March. The comic I’ve been hinting at for the past few updates has been painted up and is very, very near completion! Have a gander at some snippets:

I may or may not have said this before in the last few updates, but I’ve spent a lot, lot longer refining this 4-pager than any comic I’ve worked on before, hopefully making it the best thing I’ve done yet. Now just to keep up the pace with the rest of the short stories!

Speaking of Good Comics, did you know I’m tabling with those charming gents at Cheltenham’s True Believer’s Festival on Saturday 4th February? It’s sometimes hard to forget that the beginning of February is not that long away when it’s not yet Christmas.. But don’t forget that long, dark and cold January does eventually pass and True Believer’s will be here before we know it! You can find out all about the event from the website , or from the Facebook event page and tickets are on sale now! Good Comics did a short interview with True Believers too, and you can read that here.

The third volume of Good Comics Dead Singer’s Society will also be released at True Believers, and there’s still time to submit! What better things could there be to do than to draw your favourite singer of the past over Christmas whilst the family are in a food induced coma on the sofa in front of Shrek? I’ll be mulling over who my next piece will be about after my successful entries of Muddy Waters and Nina Simone in the previous anthologies.

CHECK OUT THE VOL. 3 CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS HERE!

In other news, in case you missed it, a piece of mine has been published on the back of the latest Barnstromer Comics Star Jaws Issue #12! Robin kindly asked me if I’d like to get involved earlier this year, to which I jumped at the chance and my Boba Fett piece sits firmly on the back of the newest issue. Star Jaws Issue #12 is available to read for free online. Star Jaws, as you may guess from the title, is based loosely around the Star Wars universe but with some new faces and different stories. It’s an entertaining read, and you can read all of them for free from the very beginning here. A Christmas Carol on again? There you go – new reading material.

Finally, voting has now ended for the Broken Frontier Awards 2016. Thank you to everyone who voted for me for the Breakout Talent Award, and thank you to those who had every intention to but accidentally forgot, because lets face it – it’s a busy time of the year.. Results are announced on 5th January so I will be nervously awaiting to see what happens..

Anyway, I hope you all have a wonderful festive time whatever you’re celebrating, eat large quantities and be merry! I shall be back next week with the yearly round-up of what I’ve accomplished, and look back at the highs and lows of the year. It won’t be quite as moving as Google’s effort, but hey.. I’ll do my best. Until then, season’s greetings to you all!

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen!

So, another week has passed and I’m bordering on just about being over my post-Thought Bubble blues. In fairness, it was one of the best weekends of my comic creating existence so I think I’m allowed to mope around for a little longer. But I should probably look at cheering up sometime soon, y’know, for sanity’s sake. I have, however, been a busy little worker bee up here and have plenty of things to catch you all up on, so put your feet up and carry on reading..

In some cheerful news, Ø has been reviewed! Big thanks to Andy Oliver at Broken Frontier for saying some really nice things about my work – as always – with the highlight of the review being the opening statement: “You would think – given that she was one of our inaugural Broken Frontier ‘Six Small Press Creators to Watch’ – that Rozi Hathaway would have made life easier for me with the name of her new comic. The work in question is called, simply, Ø. A title which made it less than easy to give a shout-out to when I was asked to point out a Thought Bubble debut comic by one of our ‘Six to Watch’ artists on the ‘Gosh! Comics Best Thing I Read this Year’ panel in Leeds last weekend.”

Whoops. Sorry Andy! Read the full review here or click the picture below!

Ø has been getting some great feedback so far, and I’m so thankful to everyone picking up a copy online! Don’t forget it’s still available over on Etsy, and as we’re getting to that time of year.. *whispers* this and Sneaky Business Vol. 2 would make excellent stocking fillers!

In some other equally cheerful and very awesome news.. I am very excited to announce that the charming gentlemen trio of Good Comics will be publishing my next book! I’m not going to let on too much (you all know by now that I enjoy my shroud of secrecy and sneaky peeks all too much), but it will be a collection of short stories and it’ll be coming out around Springtime.. Ish. I don’t like to leave you all completely hanging in suspense, so here’s a couple of things I’ve been working on towards the final collection, with more to come in the next month or so. It’s definitely going to be a challenge, but I’m really excited on what I have so far, and I can’t wait to work with the guys, push my work to the next level and make something marvellous. Here’s a peek!

Good Comics already have a really impressive repertoire of work by the founders themselves Samuel C. Williams (At War with Yourself published by Singing Dragon), Paddy Johnston (Long Divisions, Ballgame) and Pete Hindle (Really Pricey Jumpers) as well as a handful of other titles, given they’ve only really been established for the past year. Recent releases have included the highly regarded diary comics collection Every Life I Ever Lived: Volume One by Robin William Scott, Tales From the Nonniverse #1 by Faye Spencer and Chickenboy by James Howard, as well as their regular zine Dead Singer’s Society (featuring both my Muddy Waters illustration and Nina Simone comic). So yes, they’re rather cool aren’t they?

Thankfully they took pity on me and decided to publish my next comic, so it’s all thoughts to paper right now whilst I build up a collection of short, heartfelt and moving stories that sit together both as a continual narrative and their own standalone tales. So, watch this space!

Finally, in a far less thought-provoking and intense venture, for the past few weeks I’ve started taking on the weekly set Twitter challenge of the Colour Collective! Rebecca Bagley first brought this to my attention when I was swooning at her work on Twitter and Instagram, and after talking to her about it at Bristol Comic & Zine Fair I decided it was in my best interests to give it a whirl myself! Just to draw something, anything as long as it’s with a specific colour has definitely been a challenge (with some of them being far better than other week’s attempts..), but it’s good to get the ol’ brain working on something that isn’t a comic. Here they are, the good and the bad! Keep up with the #colour_collective hashtag on Twitter to see everyone’s amazing work, and see mine posted both there and on my Facebook page every Friday evening.

Anyway, that’s about it for now. I shall be back as ever next week with more gossip, so keep your eyes out for that. Until then, have a good week everyone and send me warming and healthy thoughts if you have a moment; the autumn/winter cold has finally arrived.. Peace out.

Rozi Hathaway

Comics & Illustration

Festivities

Short Days, Short Stories