The SEQUENT’ULL Interviews: Dan White

By John Freeman on July 26, 2024

Ahead of the free SEQUENT’ULL Comic Art Festival taking place in Hull on Saturday 31st August 2024, organiser and fellow creative Sean Azzopardi chats with guests at the event, continuing with Dan White, creator of Cindy & Biscuit, published by Oni Press…

Could you talk a little about yourself and your work.

I’ve been making and publishing comics for over 20 years. My best-known creations are the all-ages kitchen sink monster-hunting duo Cindy & Biscuit, who were published by Oni Press last year. Other comics of mine include the bizarro single panel Terminus cartoons, the horror anthology Sticky Ribs, and a bunch of self-published one-offs that I might collect together one day.

I also do a few podcasts like any self-respecting 21st Century human, including SILENCE!, The Savage Beast, and Dan & Fraser’s Starlight Adventures [the latter with artist Fraser Geesin].

What are you currently working on?

I’m currently pulling together material for a second Cindy & Biscuit book, and working on a YA pitch. Also sizing up a potential horror comic called Not Drowning.

Why comics, what are the core reasons for working with this medium?

Love the form, love it as a way to tell stories. Comics have all these ways to give yourself restrictions or limitations on storytelling that force you into creative spaces. It’s a wonderful elastic DIY form that I fell in love with as a kid and never emerged from.

So much creative time is absorbed by engaging with social media, conventions and other publicity tasks. While necessary to a degree, is it worth it?

It’s mentally exhausting if you spend too much time there. I suspect it doesn’t help much, but at the same time avenues for self-promotion are pretty scant. I miss blogs. Blogs were brilliant and encouraged good writing and lively discussion.

Do you feel connected to a comics scene in anyway?

Yes and no. I love the creators I consider to be my friends, and have been knocking around the small press scene for so long that I feel very comfortable there. But at the same time I live my life and have plenty of other stuff to occupy my brain and time so I am pretty unaware of what’s going on in ‘the scene’. Comics people are mostly pretty nice, at least in the small press world. Getting published by Oni has certainly raised my profile, but I haven’t as yet, been invited to join the comics illuminati yet.

Could you recommend some current creators that are making good stuff?

I think Paul John Milne is a rabid comics savant who will be revered by many eventually and will hate it. I read anything Josh Bayer does. He’s a proper artist and student of Raymond Pettibon. I’ll check out anything Dark & Golden publish, as they excavate the salt mines of British comics history. I really like Lucy Sullivan‘s work. Probably lots of people I’m forgetting. I am mostly hopelessly timelocked in my personal golden era of 1988 comics though.

Have you visited Hull before?

No, although I did get accepted to go to university there. I didn’t end up going so I owe it a visit.

• Dan White is online at www.milkthecat.wordpress.com

• Cindy & Biscuit – We Love Trouble, released last year, is available from all good bookshops (Bookshop.org Affiliate Link)

• SEQUENT’ULL Comic Art Festival 2024
11.00am – 6.00pm Saturday 31st August 2024 | Free Entry
Jubilee Central, 62 King Edward Street, Hull HU1 3SQ
• Facebook Event Page

Independent comic artists and publishers, selling comics graphic novels and prints.

Exhibitors Include: Breakdown Press, Colossive Press, Footprints Workers CoOp, Michelle Freeman, Sarah Gordon, Gareth Hopkins, Jake Machen, Shane Melisse, Douglas Noble, Alex Potts, Scarborough Zine Library, Mark Stafford, Lucy Sullivan, James Webster Sharp, Dan White and Lilly Williams

About the Author
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John Freeman

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.