whale oil

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