whale oil

Wait for it

Comic panel preview of an Orca's seletal system and it's body hanging mid-motion in a warehouse
| rozihath
Comic panel preview of an Orca's seletal system and it's body hanging mid-motion in a warehouse

So, it’s somehow mid-August already. Yet again, time flies.

I keep coming back in my mind to that quote in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Moving forward I need to find a better split. Work smarter, not harder.

But while I figure that out, I still have plenty to update you on!

Legacy

Remember that comic I wrote and was inking about the Natural History Museum London and whale oil earlier this year? It’s done! Titled Legacy, it’s been finished since March and is now sitting quietly waiting for publication. I’m hoping to bring it out in late 2024/early 2025 as part of a collection.

But while I’m working away on the next story for the collection, here are some sneak peeks!

Having finished this one up a few months ago it’s so exciting to share some previews with you. I can’t wait to bring Legacy out into the world. As well as being about the Cetacea Research Collection in London, it’s also about grief. It includes a bonus mini-comic Appendix I about how this collection links to my experiences. AND some incredibly nerdy and interesting content about how an institution like the NHM prepares whale, dolphin or porpoise specimens for research and display

Again, I can’t wait for you all to see it.

The effect of a very busy existence

So along with regular NHM research visits, writing, drawing and having a day job – alongside trying to spend time with my love, my family, friends, a baseball team and having a home to try and keep tidy – comes the slightly annoying after-effect of feeling run-down. And what happened in April? I got ill. Sofa-bound, violent coughing kind of ill. Something was going round at that time, but my shitty asthmatic lungs didn’t do me any favours and I was signed-off work and x-rayed to assess how bad it all was (spoiler: it wasn’t great).

So my imaginary deadline of launching a Kickstarter by the end of summer had to get canned.

On the plus side, having longer to think about comic #3 has been an unexpected joy. It’s given me time to really look at what I want to talk about.

The initial topic is broad: sound and communication. If you know anything about whale/dolphin/porpoise vocalisations you’ll know they can produce a range of sounds. But let me tell you – there’s SO much more to it than that. Varying Hertz levels, underwater sound channels, the changing shape of a beluga’s melon (supposedly named after the French hat rather than the fruit) when making certain sounds. It’s wild.

Side note: Check out Tom Mustill’s How to Be a Whale poetic sound journey if you’re interested in hearing the variety of sounds certain species produce.

So far my research and notes total 30 A4 pages. But I’m getting there, and with new technology and theories in abundance, it’s an exciting time to be working on this topic. So, watch this space!

It’s finally happened

That’s right my friends. I’ve finally seen a whale in the wild 🐋

I was lucky enough to be in Boston, Massachusetts with family last month, and of course I took the opportunity to go on a 4-hour whale watching adventure. And when we saw nothing the first time, you bet I went back out again two days later.

And there they were, beautiful female humpback whales near Stellwagen Bank on the humpback whale migration path. I just about managed to fumble this recording through stunned silence and sheer awe.

I also saw a fin whale in the distance, and around 50 Atlantic white-sided dolphins including calves.

It’s something I’ll never forget.

And that’s it for now!

…excuse me while I nose-dive back into my not-at-all overwhelming pages of notes about whale vocalisations. Writing is always the most stressful part. Drawing is the fun bit. Wish me luck!

Until next time.

Rozi x

Hello 2024

| rozihath

I love a New Year. It’s the list-maker in me; looking through what I’ve done in the last year, having a little dance, and looking forward to the new year and what’s to come. Some years are more difficult than others, for sure, but I genuinely find a new year so refreshing and exciting it’s hard to focus on anything else.

2023 was an incredibly busy year. So much so it makes my head spin – there was a LOT of behind-the-scenes progress on my overall whale project, including webinars, meetings and in-person visits to the Natural History Museum’s cetacea research collection. I also wrote and drew Sermersuaq, my insanely long-but-short comic about the Greenland Ice Sheet. Sam, Paddy and I built a whole new Good Comics website. I attended two weddings, one of which was my own. I had one honeymoon and one familymoon. One complete season as a New Forest baseball player. 33 books read. I shed tears, I laughed a lot, and I have a lot to be thankful for.

Sketchbook page showing a variety of specimens from the NHM Cetacea collection
Photo of a mind-map on the wall with post-it notes and lines plotting out a comic

There were a few bits I didn’t get around to sharing on here in the last few months of last year, one of which was my linoprint whale oil mini zine!

Any true comic creator will know this scenario well: if you have a show coming up it’s almost essential to have a great idea to make something last-minute. In October I attended Winchester Comics and Zine Fair with Sam on behalf of Good Comics. It wasn’t too much of a rush in the end, and I have no regrets about making this mini-comic about my current whale oil research.

There are three left in my store if you’re interested in getting your hands on one. Every little bit helps support my research!

And that brings me to 2024. What’s next?

Well, I’ve been working on inking up a comic, and it’s nearly through its various rounds of editing for scientific accuracy and readability. This comic is directly related to the Natural History Museum and whale oil, and I may be biased, but I think it’s going to be incredibly cool.

Here are some sneak peeks at the inks so far:

Crop of comic panel showing buried whale bones

So finishing this comic is my first goal.

Then, I’m working on the idea of self-publishing it together with the now out-of-print Karasu and one other story as a kind of whale collection. Which is a hella cool idea, so hopefully I can pull it off!

Between this, work and life, I’m still reading a lot and working on having some more mini-adventures near where I live. I took a day off last week, making an early visit to Old Harry Rocks, along Dorset’s Jurrasic Coast. Then I headed over to Peveril Point in Swanage for some land-based whale watching. I didn’t spot any dolphins, seals or harbour porpoises sadly, but my dog and I had a great time*.

*me definitely, the dog might have been a bit tired.

That’s it for now. More coming soon!

Rozi x

Cetacean stations

Image of a cropped spreadsheet
| rozihath
Image of a cropped spreadsheet

Hello! 

It’s been six months to the day since I last updated you all on what I’ve been up to. And it’s been a busy six months, for sure. 

Between tying the knot with my best friend, playing in a handful of baseball games (and consequently being injured a handful of times), reading 20 books (3 of them about whales), continuing my research on whales, rebuilding the Good Comics website, tackling some family mental health crises AND going away a couple of times, it’s been… intense.

Intensity aside, it was a pretty incredible 6 months, and I’m grateful for it all.

(apart from the baseball injuries. Honestly, those things fly at you so fast…)

So, last time I posted an update I’d just finished working on Sermersuaq, and was getting ready to put everything aside to throw a big party thing called a wedding. After honeymooning in Lisbon (yes it was beautiful, and yes I wanted to try and get out to see some dolphins – but sadly it was too windy), it was time to get back on top of everything. 

And first up was arranging a visit to the Natural History Museum’s off-site collection of whale skeletons.

Yep, you read that right.

Earlier this year I got in touch with Richard Sabin, principal curator of mammals at the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London to show him my Sato’s beaked whale comic. Luckily for me, he loved it, and invited me along to take a look at the off-site collection. There were already a few artists and illustrators working there, and after an incredible day of conversations and studying the immense amount of bones, I came home excited and exhausted.

And so the visits have continued, travelling up early from the south coast to spend a day looking through the collection, standing face-to-face with Britain’s stranded cetaceans and casualties of our whaling past.

Initially, my focus was to continue looking into my research on the Bryde’s whale complex, which I’d started looking at much earlier in the year. Which I have been doing, but if you know anything about Bryde’s whales, it’s a very complicated story to tell and will take me a while longer to process it all into a story.

Visiting the collection and talking with Richard gave me loads of ideas for other areas I could research, including what I’ve been focussing on for the last couple of months: whale oil still pooling on the bones of skeletons prepared decades ago.

It’s taken me a while to get my head around exactly what I want to say in this comic. After a lot of planning and drafts, working closely with my spouse, (fellow Good Comics editor extraordinaire Sam), I have a script. There are a few gaps, but I’m mostly on the way to roughing it out and turning it into a ~40-page comic. Woohoo!

Close up image of a notebook with writing about whale oil
Photo of a mind-map on the wall with post-it notes and lines plotting out a comic

Still, it’s the early days of thumbnail sketches and working out spreads, so I’ll have more to update you on soon.

If you haven’t heard of the NHM’s secret cetacea collection, there’s a really good article about it here. Honestly, it’s one of the most incredible experiences of my life, and I’m so lucky to have had the chance to go.

That’s about it on where my head is right now. That and finally revelling in having very few plans and I can finally sit and write, draw, stare lovingly at the dog and enjoy the quiet(ish) life.

Until next time!

Rozi x