A date for your diaries! Comic creators David Hine, Mark Stafford and Wayne Snooze are showing off their “arty stuff” at The All Good Bookshop in North London soon (8th September – 3rd October), with a celebratory party an element of the exhibition on Saturday 20th September.
Head to the community-run cooperative bookshop and events space on evening on Saturday 20th September (7.00 – 9.00pm) for an event to celebrate UNEASY, a free exhibition of graphic works.
While you’re there, you can check out an exhibition of discomforting original graphic works itself, primarily by the artist and writer team responsible for books The Bad Bad Place, Lip Hook, and The Man Who Laughs.
UNEASY is a celebration of the labour intensive business of ink on paper and graphite on board. A reminder of the messy process of summoning these things into the world.
“It’s all about the difficult and deranged and darky amusing. The uneconomic process of the overly rendered,” we’re told. ‘The torture of innocent art materials. Why on earth are we doing this to ourselves? It’s not easy.”
Running from Monday 8th September, Mark Stafford will be exhibiting a selection of art seen and unseen from works in progress and work in print. David Hine will be showing, for the first time, his tortuously rendered reactions to the incoming storm of the artificially intelligent created in blood, sweat, caffeine and carbon.
“Most of the show will be Mark’s work,” says David, “but I have been doing a bit of drawing recently, and Mark invited me to hang a few of them (possibly to be followed by drawing and quartering…). We would love to see you there.”
David Hine has written many mainstream comics, including Spider-Man Noir, Civil War X-Men, Silent War, District X and Daredevil: Redemption for Marvel and Batman, Detective Comics, Azrael, The Brave and the Bold and Will Eisner’s The Spirit for DC. He has also scripted long runs on Spawn and The Darkness. Creator-owned books include Poison Candy for Tokyopop; Second Sight for Aftershock; Strange Embrace, which he wrote and drew; The Bulletproof Coffin, with Shaky Kane and Storm Dogs with Doug Braithwaite, both from Image; The Man Who Laughs and Lip Hook with Mark Stafford for SelfMadeHero. He is currently writing partner with Brian Haberlin on several comics and movie projects for Anomaly Productions in the USA.
Mark Stafford is an illustrator and cartoonist who has been writing and drawing comics of all kinds for, ooooh, yonks now. He co-created the Dark Horse graphic novel Cherubs!, with Bryan Talbot, and with the writer David Hine he has collaborated on the horror serial The Bad Bad Place for Meanwhile from Soaring Penguin, as well as two books for Self Made Hero, an adaptation of Victor Hugo’s romantic tragedy The Man Who Laughs, and Lip Hook, a ‘tale of rural unease’
Alongside these he has contributed creepy nonsense and bitter satire to numerous anthologies, has been on a fair few gallery walls, designed and drawn beer labels, theatre posters and at least one mural, was twice selected by the British Council to work on projects in Korea, and has been the long term ‘cartoonist in residence’ at the Cartoon Museum in London since 2008.
Wayne Snooze is local and interesting “and decidedly less twisted than Mark or Dave,” we’re informed on the shop’s events page, “but you can’t have everything.”
“It is my intention is to create work that is relatable and inclusive,” Wayne says. “Taking inspiration from my immediate world I like to explore and shine a light, exposing the extraordinary in the ordinary, creating thought-provoking, evocative work using illustration to create artwork that exposes the glamour hidden in our everyday experiencel’
The All Good Bookshop is an independent bookshop in Turnpike Lane / Wood Green, Haringey. Open seven days a week, they sell lots of lovely books.
• UNEASY: An Exhibition of Graphic Works Party 7.00 – 9.00pm Saturday 20th September 2025 The All Good Bookshop, 35 Turnpike Lane, Wood Green, London, N8 0EP | Exhibition opens Monday 8th September runs until 3rd October 2025 | Web: allgoodbookshop.co.uk | Follow on BlueSky @allgoodbookshop.co.uk
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: Art and Illustration, Comic Art, Comics, Creating Comics, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News, Events, Exhibitions, Other Worlds
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