Barrow BID and the Lakes International Comic Art Festival has unveiled the full programme and guest list for Barrow Does Comics, the brand-new comics event is coming to Barrow town centre on Saturday 18th April 2026, aimed at young people aged 16-25 year olds.
The festival will be celebrating creativity in comics in all its forms, whether you enjoy art as a hobby or are thinking about pursuing it as a career.
Charlie Adlard, Michael Lark, Sean Phillips and Young Comics Laureate Mollie Ray (Ray) and Lyndon White are just some of the guests on the day, and just like LICAF, returning to Kendal later this year, the event includes a Comics Marketplace offering a carefully chosen range of local and national exhibitors, who will have comics, posters, badges and other merchandise for sale.
Amongst many others, you’ll find Comics Youth CIC, Koguchi Press, Jigsaw anthology editor, publisher and artist Mal Earl, Lancaster-based Zine Freak, Mollie Ray, Lyndon White and writer and artist Ben Edwards. They are all super-friendly and happy to chat with you about all things comics, and other stuff too.
Barrow Does Comics will also have its own range of posters, stickers and merchandise available on the day.
The new event kicks off on the evening of Friday 17th April with a free Drawn to the Screen live draw event at the University of Barrow Campus with Charlie Adlard, Sean Phillips and Michael Lark, hosted by Keli Lark. Download the Barrow Does Comics programme for details or simply view it online
Plus – are you a comics creator? Bring your portfolio of artwork to be reviewed by some of the world’s most well-known comic artists. Michael Lark, Sean Phillips and Charlie Adlard will look through your work and give you help and advice. Pre-Booking is Essential, as only 12 x 15 minute slots are available – download the Barrow Does Comics programme for details or simply view it online.
As previously reported, the official festival poster and artwork have been created by Lyndon White.
“Barrow officially has its own book dragons!” Lyndon enthuses of his incredible art. “I had so much fun working on this for Barrow BID and can’t wait to share more leading up to the event in April.”
Barrow BID, working in partnership with LICAF, will be bringing comics artists from all over the world to venues in the town centre for workshops, discussions, signings and more. A comics marketplace at the heart of the festival will celebrate a wealth of local creativity and young talent, connecting visitors directly with creators.
The event is shaped by a youth production teams, brought together especially for this festival, to encourage the involvement and development of the local youth community.
The Festival of Colours, led by BarrowFull, will be taking place on the same day. Together with Barrow Does Comics, the town centre will be exploding with colour, creativity and inspiration.
• Barrow Does Comics Saturday 18th April 2026, Barrow (Various Venues), Barrow, Cumbria | Download the Barrow Does Comics programme for details or simply view it online | Barrow Does Comics Page on the LICAF website
Barrow Does Comics: Meet The Guests
Charlie Adlard has been a “veteran” of the comic industry for over 25 years. He’s spent the majority of his time since 2003 working on The Walking Dead, which finished in 2019, and has received many industry awards for his work on the series culminating in winning the Sergio Aragonés International Award for Excellence in Comic Art in 2019. In his time as a comic creator, he has worked on many other projects as far reaching as Mars Attacks, The X-Files, Judge Dredd, Savage, Batman, X-Men, Superman and more, and creator-owned projects closer to his heart like Astronauts In Trouble, Breath Of The Wendigo, Codeflesh, Rock Bottom, Vampire State Building and White Death.
Sarah Jane Docker is a children’s book illustrator and writer from Barrow. Much of her work is inspired by human connection, nature, the idea of seeing life through new eyes each day and memories from childhood. She loves telling stories that explore connection, both to others and to the world around us. Her work has been described as “eccentric, excitable and whimsical” with “a lot of heart and a gift for expressing feeling”.
When not illustrating, she can be found wild swimming, hiking, climbing, and getting stuck into the strangest of side-projects.
Jordana Globerman’s comics have been published internationally, applauded by Dazed magazine and Haunted Phonograph in the UK, and profiled on the True North Country Comics podcast.
She holds a master’s degree in visual arts from Camberwell College, part of the University of the Arts London in London, England, where she majored in drawing anthropomorphic bears and drinking tea the proper way.
She is currently based in Ottawa, Canada. Soul Machine, released last year, is her debut graphic novel, described as Wrinkle in Time meets Brave New World, about one girl’s quest to save her family’s livelihood – and maybe existence itself.
Keli Lark wears many crowns: organiser, speaker, fundraiser, filmmaker, and writer, just to name a few. She helped facilitate a program where Girl Scouts were taught by women comics professionals how to create their own comics, founded a women-only comics reading club, and organised many events and charitable fundraisers aimed at helping young people and those from marginalised communities. She has spoken to the Texas Library Association and at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. She has also written and directed a short film and written a children’s book.
Michael Lark is the artist and co-creator of Lazarus and Lazarus: Risen from Image Comics. In his nearly thirty years in the comics industry, he has drawn many of the most iconic characters in the medium, including Spider-Man, Captain America, Daredevil, Batman, Superman, and many others.
Drawing comics professionally since the age of fifteen, multiple Eisner Award-winning Sean Phillips has worked for all the major publishers. Since drawing Sleeper, Hellblazer, Batman, X-Men, Marvel Zombies, and Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, he has concentrated on creator-owned books with Ed Brubaker, including Criminal (soon to be a television series on Amazon Prime), Kill Or Be Killed, Incognito, Fatale, The Fade Out, Pulp, Night Fever, Where The Body Was, and the Reckless series.
He lives in the Lake District in the UK, where he is currently drawing the next Brubaker/Phillips book.
Mollie Ray is a comic artist, illustrator and author from Lancashire. Her debut graphic novel Giant was published in 2024 by Faber & Faber, with the paperback released in August 2025. Ray’s work has been featured
by Creative Boom, The AOI, Bookmunch, Foyles and more. Ray was also the winner of the Break Out Talent category of the Broken Frontier Awards 2026 and appointed the first Young Comics Laureate for 2025/26 by Comics Youth and The Lakes International Comic Arts Festival last September.
Ray recently launched the “Scribble Campaign”, a campaign with a wellbeing focus many comic creators will surely identify with. More details here on downthetubes.
Since the start of the decade, artist and animator Owen Stewart, who’s taking part in a special panel titled “Beyond Heartstopper” alongside Mollie Ray, Lyndon White and Barrow Library’s Shannon Smyth, hosted by Keli White, has self-produced multiple creative projects, including work that has been published at GOSH! Comics in Soho, London. He practices in a range of mediums, striving to demonstrate that the world of Visual Storytelling can include neurodivergent creatives.
Lyndon White is an international selling artist, writer, letterer and designer based in the UK. Combining monsters and magic, his work is highly acclaimed and described as “beautifully haunting”, especially his best-sellers Antarctica, Candles, Sparks and the Fallen Star, and the Reanimator series. His work is published by Image Comics, Top Cow Productions, Titan Comics and Blue Fox Comics.
Lyndon has also run over 60 successful Kickstarter campaigns. In addition to his published comics and graphic novels, Lyndon shares his experiences through teaching Sequential Arts at Salford University.
• Barrow Does Comics Saturday 18th April 2026, Barrow (Various Venues), Barrow, Cumbria| Download the Barrow Does Comics programme for details or simply view it online
- About the Author
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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.
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