Roving writer/reporter David Baillie chats to comic creators Russell Mark Olson, Karrie Fransman (recently announced winner as this year’s recipient of The Stephen Herbert Award) and Ant Williams: three of the guests at this coming weekend’s inaugural Hastings Comic Con, asking questions about about comics, creativity and Comic Cons…
You’re due to be a guest next weekend at the very first Hastings Comic Con, which I think is going to be brilliant! For anyone not familiar with your incredible work can you give us a quick intro?
Russell Mark Olson: I’m mostly known for pulpy, crime storytelling. I’ve been writing and drawing my creator-owned pulp-sci-fi series, Gateway City, since 2016. I’m currently working on two series with Mad Cave: the baseball-horror Past Time (with Joe Harris) and the new The Phantom series (with Ray Fawkes).
Karrie Fransman: My name is Karrie Fransman and I am a comic creator. I write and draw, but most of all I am a storyteller. I love exploring different media and fitting stories in all sorts of strange places: jewellery boxes, dolls house and in VR. I’m co-founder of The Comics Cultural Impact Collective (CCIC) – we raise awareness of the value of comics in the UK. I’m also creative director at PositiveNegatives, where we amplify research through comics and animation. And I’m currently Illustrator in Residence at the Royal Society of Literature.
Ant Williams: The very short version of a long story I often like over telling, is I started professionally with Marvel UK in the late 1980s. I progressed to 2000AD in the early 1990s, then onto Marvel and DC throughout the 90s, where I worked on pretty much every major title at one point or another, then I ran a studio in 2000’s along with a bit more 2000AD, to keep me sane, before heading off to the US to run a studio over there until 2020, when I returned to the UK. Since when, I’ve been working on occasional comic projects here and there, including more 2000AD. I’ve returned to my first love and this time I’m staying!
What are you most excited to share with fans next weekend? What will you be bringing?
Russell Mark Olson: The thing I’m most excited about bringing are a selection of pages from recent and current projects. I always love talking to folks about process and sharing “how the sausage is made.” I’ll also have copies of the recent graphic novel A Phone Call Away (with Rich Douek), a modern crime drama with L.A.-noir tones, and some Flash Gordon Quarterlies. Getting to work on Flash was a real bucket list moment for me.
I’ll also have the fifth volume of Gateway City in tow.
Karrie Fransman: Well, I’ve been on a fact finding mission with The Comics Cultural Impact Collective and have some jaw dropping data about why comics are so important (and worthy of funding, dammit!).
Ant Williams: I’ll be bringing, original art, signed comics and prints and will happily do sketches both days.
What’s your favourite part of meeting readers and fellow creators at conventions?
Russell Mark Olson: As the great Roger Langridge once said, comics people are the best people. I love chatting with people about what they’re currently reading. I always get the best reading recommendations from convention visitors.
Getting to chat with fellow creators is always a highlight. I always leave a convention weekend brimming with excitement after seeing and hearing about great projects.
Karrie Fransman: Everyone knows comics peeps are the best kinda peeps. I always say that everyone is in it for the love of the medium (…well- no one is here for the money or fame!).
Ant Williams: What I’m always most excited about is spending a weekend in a packed room full of people who like the things I like and think the way I think.
Can you tell us a bit about your latest project and what inspired it? And are there any upcoming projects or collaborations you can tease?
Russell Mark Olson: As mentioned above, I’m working on two series, both with Mad Cave. Past Time is a period horror comic merging the worlds of vampires and baseball. It’s a book written by the great Joe Harris of The X-Files comics, who knows a thing or two about the supernatural.
I’m also working on the new comic series of the classic pulp character, The Phantom. Ray Fawkes (Gotham by Midnight, Black Hammer ‘45) is writing fantastically pulpy scripts and I’m trying to pay homage to the classic comics while giving the whole “mythos” a bit of a modern update.
Next year is also the 10th anniversary of the first issue of Gateway City and I’m currently putting together an omnibus edition, to coincide with the milestone.
Karrie Fransman: I’m currently working on a rather exciting immersive peep show 3D comic I call ‘The Story Spinner’. It is part of a Develop Your Creative Practice Arts Council England grant to research and develop visual stories inspired by both pre-cinema peep shows and raree shows from the 18th/19th century, as well as immersive digital, VR, and AR visual narratives. I’m creating an immersive, interactive comic that could only engage an audience live, away from screens, and is thus un-AIable.
Above: Karrie Fransman was awarded a Develop Your Creative Practice (DYCP) grant from Arts Council England to create 3D comics/sequential art that can only be experienced in real life, away from screens earlier this year. “I intend to make something un-AI-able and to connect directly with other humans through my experimental comics/visual stories,” she explained. “It’s the first time I’ve had the chance to purely learn and experiment without a ‘client’ in over a decade so very much appreciated. I’ve begun researching automata/peep shows and pre-cinema visual stories from the 1800 and 1900s and also innovative modern and digital visual stories (using AR, VR, emerging technologies etc). Follow me for more on this adventure and please share any old or contemporary examples you know of innovative live visual storytelling. Also – hope you will apply to ACE for your own grants!”
Ant Williams: I’m currently working on the art for a new Joyride board game expansion for Rebellion while gearing up for a graphic album for a French publisher. It’s a western, which is a first for me, and I’m really looking forward to getting stuck in.
Is there one comic (by another creator) you’ve read recently that really inspired you? (Doesn’t need to be new!)
Russell Mark Olson: I’ve just finished the Batman/Dylan Dog crossover written by Roberto Recchioni and art by Gigi Cavenago. I just adore Cavenago’s artwork. His work just sings with life and expression. I can’t get enough of it. I also always love seeing what’s going on over on the continent.
Karrie Fransman: I’ve just finished reading advanced copies of both Kate Evan’s new book Patchworks – a stunning, part-embroidered biography of Jane Austen and Donya Todd’s The Witch’s Egg – a magical and macabre odyssey though motherhood. Keep your eyes out for these brilliant books.
Ant Williams: Honestly the breadth of talent in comics means that the answer to that question could change hourly. I’m in awe of my fellow creators and still read mountains of comics old and new.
What advice would you give to aspiring creators?
Russell Mark Olson: Don’t get sucked into your own narrative world… meaning, I see a lot of young creators who draw their main characters over and over and write skeet after skeet about what these characters like or don’t without ever actually writing a page of script or plotting out layouts. You have to make comics to be a comic maker. Get that story down, make those pages. Don’t fall in love with any one aspect of the process to the detriment of all of the others.
Karrie Fransman: Join us at thecomicsculturalimpactcollective.org for advice on funding and publishing. Go get inspired at LDComic’s monthly meetings. Check out Comics Youth’s awesome work. Go visit one of the amazing 115 comic cons around the country. Get involved in the community and you won’t want to leave.
Ant Williams: Keep doing what you’re doing. It’s only by writing or drawing pretty much every day that you’ll get better. And don’t judge yourself harshly. We all want to do better thats why I’m still plugging away almost 40 years into my drawing career. Wanting to do better is the motivation. Don’t let it be the thing that stops you.
Do you have any rituals or routines that help you stay creative and productive?
Russell Mark Olson: I love what I do, so getting down to work is never a problem. My hang-up is putting the pencil down and taking a break. I think we forget that part of being creative is setting aside time to not be creative. I’ve found a timer is a good way to break up your day. It keeps you focused when you need to be and reminds you to take a break.
Karrie Fransman: Rather unsurprisingly, I find turning my phone off or chucking it half way across the room helps! I sometimes think of all the hours and days and months of time I spent scrolling that could have been spent creating and weep. What a thing to have been robbed of!
Ant Williams: I try and start my day by looking through comics and books and thinking about what I want to achieve. I also know that the mornings are far more creative than the afternoon so if I’ve got non creative tasks they come later in the day.
Why do you think conventions are important for the comics community and fandom?
Russell Mark Olson: It’s no shocker to say that social media is in a bit of a state at the moment and not as useful as it once was for building an audience. Conventions are the most useful tool in the toolbox for finding new readers, meeting other creators, and taking the pulse of the industry. After making a comic, taking it to a convention is the second most important thing you can do if you are serious about breaking into the industry.
Karrie Fransman: I think comics folk are largely introverts that love creating and emerging themselves in fictional worlds in their bedrooms. Comic cons bring us all out, blinking into the lights. We meet friends we’ve made online in the flesh and we get to draw and buy actual hand-made paper things. I’m never not inspired by cons.
Ant Williams: I think my third answer pretty much sums it up. Conventions are a safe space for us all to come together and celebrate the medium and culture we love.
And finally – have you been to Hastings before? Is there anything you’re looking forward to checking out or would recommend?
(I can thoroughly recommend a pier, a beach and a biker bar!)
Local Resident Russell Mark Olson: I love [nearby town] Battle. As an American, visiting the site of that fateful, world-changing, event never cease to inspire a healthy dose of awe in me.
Karrie Fransman: No! I have never been but super excited to visit the con, see my old uni friend there and to try check out the Cabaret Mechanical venue there. I love automata. I hear Hastings is a little, creative utopia these days.
Ant Williams: I’m heading to the amusements to blow my weekend’s earnings on the Tuppeny Falls (bonus points for people old enough to know what I’m talking about).
• Hastings Comic Con 2025 runs from Saturday 14th – Sunday 15th June, White Rock Theatre, Hastings TN34 1JX | For tickets and more information, visit hastingscomiccon.com
Guests include Mike Collins, Colleen Douglas, Andy Fanton, Karrie Fransman, Paul Fry, Dennis Menheere and Ant Williams
• Russell Mark Olson is online at russellmarkolson.co.uk
• Ant Williams is online at antwilliamsartist.com
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