I first came across Kate Brown’s work via the now defunct DFC Library, for whom she produced a gorgeous comic called The Spider Moon, a fantasy adventure with distinct Studio Ghibli undertones. I still harbour the comic fan’s popular dream of seeing that story finished one day, but Brown has since moved on. In 2011, she produced her first graphic novel, Fish and Chocolate, a collection of allegorical stories exploring the themes of grief, motherhood and family, which was decidedly more adult in material and audience and marked her evolution as both a writer and artist. Evocative and literate, disturbing and beautiful, Fish and Chocolate signaled Brown as a rapidly rising talent.
More recently, she wrapped up the The Lost Boy, a stranded desert island tale, for brilliant weekly children’s comic, The Phoenix, and is currently still contributing to that publication. Brown’s art is what makes her work instantly recognisable: combining features of manga with a clear, fine line, along with her distinctive colouring choices- it’s striking in a unique way. While I really enjoy Brown’s child- friendly work, I hope she gets the opportunity to build upon the path she began to lay down in Fish and Chocolate: exploring more complex and interesting subject matter in an adept and progressive manner.
You can find Brown’s site here and buy her work here.
I’ve never met Hannah Berry, but the thing that has always struck me from her online presence (and a somewhat reluctant one!), is that she comes across as such a lovely person: level-headed, and funny and -this is important- having a life beyond comics. But that doesn’t really tell you much about her work, apart from the fact that it’s nice to have creators you admire as people too. So here we go: Berry has had two books published to date, Britten and Brulightly, and Adamtine- both from stalwart British publishers, Jonathan Cape and both are vastly different.
Being a crime/mystery fan, I remember picking up Britten and Brulightly and being totally immersed in the completeness of the gloomy noir, water-colour world Berry had created. I know, you’re thinking ‘noir’ -how overused is that word? But this is no ordinary noir, as the silky tones of M&S would remind us, this is a detective with a talking teabag for a partner. And the ending…. that ending, one of the most unexpected I’ve ever read. You should definitely get ahold of a copy, I promise it will be unlike anything you’ve come across in comics.
Last year, Berry released Adamtine, in which she changed genre completely (a choice I admire greatly). Adamtine is a horror. but not the slash or creep kind: it’s all suggestion and what you don’t see (the first 20 pages or so of that book are available for free to download on her site if you’re interested). Berry has a way of drawing her characters with large square, sombre faces, big noses and hooded eyes that gives them an air of melancholy and unknowability: you never get the idea something good is about to happen in a Hannah Berry comic. I don’t know if she’s working on another long-form work at the moment, but I hope so, and I hope she continues to surprise and excel as always.
You can find Berry’s site here and you can buy her books here.
Tweet17×23 Showcase Contributors: Isaac Lenkiewicz, Kyle Platts, Henry McCausland, Nick Sheehy, Joe Kessler Nobrow Press Following on from the success of the excellent Nobrow anthology- a bi-annual publication of two halves: one comics and one illustration, and their Showcase series, a smaller format paperback comic which launched Luke Pearson’s much-lauded Hilda adventures, Nobrow produced this last July : [...]
Kate Brown is the best!