Welcome back.

Thought I’d clear my desk a little with a few additional things I consumed and created in 2025 before we crest into the second month of 2026. Mainly, what I’ve been reading in the KIOSK.

As I mentioned in my recent ‘media round-up’, I increasingly feel like there may not be much value to these lists. A lot of interactions these days seem to be people recommending endless things they have watched/read/played/listened to to each other, with neither party having any intention (or time), to act on those suggestions. Everyone retreats to their corners, and just attempts to nibble away at their own mountain of ‘must see’ media. But instead of abandoning it completely, I thought I’d make this book chat a little looser than the formal top 5 lists that I’ve done in previous years. Plus, very little I read actually comes out in the given year anyway, so it’s not the most zeitgeisty of lists.

Before we get into it proper, here’s a book I contributed to; I got to illustrate a wraparound cover for the paperback edition of Bootstrapping Computing by Alexander D. Obenauer. Really enjoyed this one, as I love a bit of negative space, and was nice to work with a reduced palette too. I also read the book, and I know a lot more about computers than I did before. But I must confess, that was zero.

Right, let’s get into it.

Nonfiction - Exploration.

I enjoy travel and exploration nonfiction, but after reading quite a lot, you have to work a little harder to find the ones that dodge the clichés or just fill up more space on the shelves. Adam Weymouth’s Kings of the Yukon was a great example of a book with a clear intention (follow the route of salmon along the Yukon river), but delights in the side tracks and stories of the people/nature that inhabit its banks. He’s just written a new one about wolves, which I’m very keen to check out, and it actually put me in the mind another great canoe trip book, Voyageur (Robert Twigger), which is no bad thing.

Staying in the slow adventure world, I also read The Wild Places which was my second Robert Macfarlane after enjoying Mountains of the Mind the year before. Again, it’s easy to see why he is revered in this field, with engaging, human writing, that’s poetic, but never becoming whimsical. Another good nudge to go and spend time in the outdoors too, and how to find a better connection with it.

Voyage For Madmen by Peter Nichols was an absolute thrill ride. It charts the story of the first round-the-world, single-handed sailing race, and is one of the most extreme stories of human endurance I have ever read. The race is often overshadowed by the Donald Crowhurst part, but the fact that’s just one of the things that happened, is testament to how insane the whole saga is. Perfect armchair adventuring.

Nonfiction - Interesting Contemporary Thoughts.

Outside of the outside, I got a lot out of In The Kitchen, a collection of essays about food and cooking which doesn’t stray into the areas of annoyance that the genre can easily do, which I talked about a while back. Instead, they are just relatable or insightful vignettes on different peoples’ relationships with cooking.

Electric Dreams by Hannah Parry was great. I became aware of her work for her occasional essays on film and writing, so was curious to give it a go. Starts off quietly amusing and curious, and becomes all-consuming and furious. Great stuff.

When Joe Dunthorne realised his grandfather may well have developed chemical weapons for the Nazis in World War II, he took is upon himself to uncover a fascinating and horrifying family history. I can’t really explain how that subject can be such a pleasure to read, but that’s Dunthorne’s skill, and why you should read Children of Radium too.

As a bonus, I also read Understanding a Photograph by John Berger. It’s great, obviously, as everything John Berger writes seems to be. And of course it’s about so much more than understanding a photograph. If you’ve not read any before, treat yourself.

I was thinking about John Berger the other day, because he also wrote the cover quote of one of the most important nonfiction books I have ever read, Sven Lindqvist’s 'Exterminate All The Brutes’. And it reads as follows;

A book which has come out of years of risk and thought.

I have thought about this quote so often. It one of the most powerful endorsements of any creative work I can imagine. I realise that it’s all I ever want to achieve in anything I make. Obviously, I fall short, but that is what I want to strive for. To create something that has come from years of risk and thought. Man alive…and that’s why John Berger is one of the greats, because even his cover quotes have seismic weight. Certainly better than, ‘I loved it! Couldn’t put it down!’

Graphic Novels.

As ever, I barely read any graphic novels last year, but Jon Mc Naught’s Hors Scene (Deep Magic) is superb. Learn French and read it, or campaign/wait for it to come out in English. Manuele Fior’s artwork is still stunning, which Hypericum confirms, and Aristotle’s Cuttlefish by Matthew Dooley continues his wonderful exploration of the gentle comedy found in England’s quieter corners.

Fiction.

Another difficult year for fiction, and as is becoming a trend, it was the punchy novella that triumphed for me. Not A River (Selva Almada) was an early success, a woozy, dark story of three friends on a fishing trip that doesn’t go great, and feels like getting a heatstroke on top of a hangover. In a similar vein, Victor Jestin’s Heatwave is an adolescent fever dream on a French family campsite. Brimming with hormones, it sits somewhere between Emmanuel Carrère’s, Class Trip and Camus’s, The Outsider.

In a very different area, I also enjoyed Hackenfeller’s Ape by Brigid Brophy, which I’d be surprised if it wasn’t the jumping off point for Russel Hoban’s Turtle Diary. Set in a similar era of London, populated by bedsits and odd characters, whilst also exploring human rights and indeed, what it means to be human. Also, any book that creates its own ape typology is alright by me.

Modern Classic That Everyone Seems To Like But I Thought Was Hard Work.

The Magus - John Fowles. I don’t like to be negative, but I found this a real slog. Maybe people have more capacity for the ‘everything is not as it seems’ kind of narrative, but there are so many rug-pulls that I very quickly lost any interest in getting up off the floor. The main character seems like he can’t get enough though, a self-entitled, self-serious youth, who annoyingly blunders forward with zero logic or growth for seven hundred pages. And then the book has the audacity to pull the old, ‘Well, what did YOU think it was all about?’ Come on, mate, we’ve all got places to be.

Additional Things I Liked.

Emergency Exits - Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum about three British colonies and their struggles for independence post World War II. Very much in my depressing wheelhouse, but a really contemporary and well put together exhibition on a much overlooked tyranny enacted by the UK, long past the point where we should’ve known better.

The New Yorker at 100 - Great documentary on Netflix about 100 years of The New Yorker magazine. An interesting wander through journalistic history and why it’s now more important than ever. Still can’t quite believe I’ve had my work in it.

Lee Miller - I’ve been a Lee Miller fan for quite a while now, but it was so nice to see this new collection of her work exhibited at Tate Britain. Got to see some the classics again, but also some of which I was less aware, like the whole series she took in Egypt. A fascinating and unique individual who put herself in the right place at the right time.

Bookends.

It’s almost like a know what I’m doing, isn’t it? As I’m sure you’re aware, I have two books out with Avery Hill Publishing, and those guys have a January deal on currently. Basically, spend £60 and you get 20% off, so if you pick up my two, you’re halfway there! Grab yourself a copy of Lizzy Stewart’s Walking Distance, and something else you fancy, and you’ll probably be over the line. A bundle that will see you though winter nicely!

Okay, that’s it for now. Go forth, do what you can, where you can. And I’ll see you all again soon.

Owen D. Pomery.

Welcome back, and Happy New Year!

Got any plans for 2026? That’s what people say, isn’t it? For me, I’m thinking I might acquire a classic K67 kiosk, lovingly restore it, install it in suitable gravelled park, and rent out boule to passers-by. I’d serve espressos, small bottles of Pelforth beer, and nuts for subsistence. In between customers, I’d read and listen to music. Sounds good, doesn’t it? My very own Pétanque Kiosk. It would be paradise.

Except it wouldn’t be, would it? And actually, let’s face it, I’m not going to do it. But it’s good to dream, isn’t it?

Yes, it’s that time of year again. No, not the festive period, but the time when you reckon with the fact another 365 days have passed, and you ask the question; ‘Do I want to do the same again?’ Apparently the 2nd of January, or whenever people return to work, is the date that job sites see their biggest spike in traffic. People the world over, return to their desks and think, ‘I don’t want to be back here’.

There’s every different version of this, realising where you work is just awful, understanding that there’s no particularly exciting future in what you do, or just being in the wrong place. There are the utterly grim and the ‘not quite right’, and some of it’s in our control, and some of it is not. Whatever the cause and however serious the intent, I think most people start to dream a little in these moments. Which is what that job search is about, a tentative glance at what’s out there, to see if you can picture yourself in a new location, doing a new thing, being surrounded by new people.

As an extension of this exercise, I think most people have some kind of ‘Plan B’. Or more accurately, I think they have several plans which they carry around, some are practical, some are talismanic, and some are warnings.

Whether they are acted on or not, I think these little thought experiments a useful for working out whether you’re currently in the right place. Firstly, the creative exercise of imagining yourself in a different situation is a useful thing in of itself, but it also allows you the mental space to roleplay at another life. In sport psychology, there’s a version of this called ‘visualisation’, picturing the thing happening before it does, and in doing so, bringing it into existence. Hitting a target, winning a race. Manifest destiny etc.

Picturing an experience outside of your own is also how empathy works, which I appreciate is a weirdly obvious thing to say, but I’m constantly surprised these days. However, while we’re on the subject, I do have a lot of sympathy for people who are stuck in a job they’re not happy about. It doesn’t need to be extreme or truly awful, but because I’m a ‘live to work’ person, it just feels like such a waste of time. And also, because I was in that situation once. I worked at a lovely architectural practice for the first few years of my working life, but I knew it wasn’t quite the right career for me, and the real problem was, I didn’t know what I should be doing instead.

I dreamed a lot in those days, mentally (and sometimes, actually) trying on different hats to see if there was something else I could picture myself doing. I think most people do this naturally, and they take different forms, as we construct the new projected narrative our lives. For me, I think they take three vague forms.

The Fantasy.

Firstly, there are the pure fantasies, like, imagining I’m a rock star or something. But this is not real. Not becasue it’s impossible to be rock star (although I imagine it’s fairly hard) but because to date I have taken zero steps to get anywhere near the road that even leads to that outcome. I’ve already, on some level, decided I’m not going to do that. So, there’s clearly another part of my brain that knows it’s not for me actually, even though I still imagine taking to the stage whenever I’m enjoying a particularly good record. But not once during my doubtful time as an architect did I think, ‘I’d better get a guitar’. No, I started looking around at things closer to home. Not out of laziness or lack of ability to dream big, but because I hadn’t become an architect accidentally, there were so many elements of design, drawing, creation that clearly interested me and taken me there, so it made sense the nest step might be nearby.

The Last Resort.

The next main type is The Last Resort, and it’s kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum to The Fantasy. In the slightly precarious life of a creative, most people have half an eye on what they would be doing if it all went away tomorrow, and probably now more than ever. It might be to fall back on more commercial work, or supporting what they do with an adjacent part time job, but I’m sure we’ve all been guilty of imagining a different life entirely on those days when you think, ‘What’s the point in doing any of this shit if it’s going to be such a struggle?!’

In moments of despair, I petulantly pluck the least creative, least skilled, low paying, but evergreen ‘work de jour’ I can think of, and announce that I might as well go and do that then. But even in the act of performing that outrage, it serves as the warning that I would not thrive in that existence, nor would I be an asset to that working world, and reminds me to make some version of what I do, somehow, work. Because I’ve just pictured my life if I don’t, and it quickened the blood.

The Easy Life.

I think the third main daydream is the ‘charmed life’ or ‘retirement plan’. This is the one that turns up when I’m burnt out, and done with the hustle. It has it’s clichés, and normally takes the form of something like, ‘Maybe I’ll just move to the seaside and open a little bookshop/gallery/coffeeshop’, with all the naivety and assumption that running a little bookshop/gallery/coffeeshop would be easy and stress free. This is my Petanque Kiosk, and in reality it requires a whole other amount or hard work and talent I don’t currently have. Similar to the rock star dream (but with the illusion of possibility), I have also made no movement to try and fill these shortfalls.

Inevitably, when I’ve calmed down, and resolved the issue at hand, I return to my drawing board, and remember it’s where I am supposed to be. But I’m a big believer in these dreams. The practical, the naïve, the mad, the awful…they all operate to triangulate who I am and nudge me this way or that, to make sure I’m still sat at that drawing board for the right reasons.

THE Dream.

I think there is technically a fourth dream for me, but it’s basically an extension of the life I am trying to live. The most perfect version of it. The original, The Dream. Of course, this too is an illusion, and a shifting target. But it’s a necessary one, and propulsive. It still keeps me up at night, and it still gets me out of bed in the morning. And as long as this version of my life stands out ahead of the others I’ve outlined, then that’s where I’m heading. Where I’m supposed to be.

So dream big, kid. And dream small. Dream to the side, and everything in between. Anyway, this is why I’m not opening a Pétanque Kiosk right now. But maybe…maybe one day…

A Note On Daydreams.

As I write this, I realise how mad it is that daydreaming was so vilified in my school days. I can recall it being brought up as a negative on my report card; the zoning out on a smart phone of its day. Today, I’m sure that most classroom teachers would kill for their children spend even few minutes on focused, quiet, unsupervised and reflective thought. On any subject.

I also realise my whole career is built on daydreaming. And I love it. I know that it’s increasingly going out of fashion, but thinking, imagining and creating in your mind is one of the few realms of absolute freedom. It’s free, and it’s limitless. It’s pointless and it’s vital. I whole heartedly recommend it.

Reading about peoples’ experiences of living under regimes, this concept comes up time and time again. They can take away everything else, but they can never stop us thinking and feeling things. I feel like the tech companies know this, which is why it increasingly feels like they’re coming for our minds first this time, as the numbing wave of AI surges over everything like a vast, heavy, urine hued, blanket.

Sorry about that, I almost manned the barricades again, but it’s hard not to be on a hair-trigger these days. Anyway, let’s be positive, it’s 2026. And who’d have thought we would have made it? A decade on from that fateful 2016, and yet here we still stand. Haggard but heroic, leaning into that bitter wind with gritted teeth. A grimace or a grin. From a distance.

Okay, I think that will do us for today. Thank you all so much for reading in 2025, I genuinely could not, and would not, do it without you. For anyone who’s enjoyed the KIOSK, messaged and shared it with others, it really is appreciated.

I’ll see you at the hatch for a coffee and croissant soon.

Owen D. Pomery.

It’s nice to see you on such a grey day, and as promised, I’ve got a bit of a lighter chat for you this time. Here are the films, TV shows, podcasts and records I’ve been watching and listening to in 2025. Books are always separate for some reason.

It’s not really an end of year list (as you’ll see), but just some stuff you might enjoy in the winter, or during some upcoming seasonal downtime. So, in no particular order, let’s see what’s in there…

5 Films.

As always, it’s films new to me, not necessarily new in 2025.

Probably more a reflection on the times, but my taste has been for just solidly made and entertaining stories this year. Maybe it always is? But my lack of patience for ‘it’s good, but hard work’ and ‘it’s absolute vapid froth’ has led to me recommending these five films.

The Long Good Friday - Bob Hoskins’s mob boss with yuppie aspirations is on the verge of making it big, but he’s having an absolute shocker. Great tour through 70s/80s London, cracking soundtrack, and a perfect final shot.

A Real Pain - Who doesn’t like a road movie? Especially one that’s got actual characters, thoughts and feelings too. See, it’s not that hard, is it?

Escape From New York - I thought I had seen this, but actually think I’d only seen Escape From L.A., and as a result, was always slightly baffled as to why people were so enthusiastic about Kurt Russel’s classic anti-hero. This film is why. A joyous action romp, and sneeringly anti-authoritarian. ‘President of what?’

The Ballad of Wallis Island - Felt like watching a film in the 90s, in that it has its own unique oddities, while still being a rounded and satisfying narrative. Really shouldn’t be that rare, but it was a particular pleasure to watch with other people in the cinema.

One Battle After Another - Another great cinema experience, and a genuine thrill ride too. Also another nod to the collapse of the American Empire, that comes up a lot in this list…

5 TV Shows.

Andor - Despite Stars Wars being genuinely part of my DNA, we parted ways a while back, and it’s been dead to me since. But a slight flicker of curiosity made me give this a chance, and I found a show that not only reminded me why I loved the originals, but also grappled with the politics and passions that interest me as an adult.

There’s so much to enjoy here, and if it’s not your flavour, I do get it, but you will be missing out. Above all, I kind of respect its audacity. Putting this show out now, under Disney, feels like Cbeebies not realising The Anarchist’s Cookbook was being read out as their bedtime story. If Cbeebies were fascists.

American Primeval - Like so many miniseries these days, this came and went, and if you weren’t paying attention that week, you’d be forgiven for knowing nothing about it. This is perfect TV for me, complex and great looking, yet still remembering it’s a piece of entertainment. It won’t be for everyone, but if you believe the American Dream was a blood-soaked lie from from day one, then do get involved!

Common Side Effects - Animated series about repercussions of a miracle cure, not just within the pharmaceutical industry or society, but more specifically, American capitalism. A chaotic caper with a fun set of characters, that definitely shares a stable with One Battle After Another.

Mr Inbetween - Following the life of hitman Ray Shoesmith, both the domestic and the banal, the violent and the sad. The show keeps gently prodding the audience on the idea of ‘violence doesn’t solve anything’ that by the end, you almost feel complicit in the whole thing. The dry, dark humour that runs through it kept me watching.

The American Civil War - Very late to the party here (35 years late…and it’s not a party), but finally watched this incredible Ken Burns documentary series. Like all good non-fiction, I was genuinely surprised at how much I didn’t know. It was an awful, awful time. Fascinating, crucial, and again, depressingly prescient work.

5 Podcasts.

It’s 2025, you must have some hot pod-recs, yeah? Why yes, yes I do. But you’re not going to like ‘em…

Revolutions - Man, have I racked up some hours here this year. Was put onto it by Tony Gilroy when he was talking about the influences on Andor, and it’s essentially the host, Mike Duncan, tracking key revolutions from the English Civil War up to the Russian Revolution. It’s a lot (over 1.5 million words), but it’s delivered with such articulation and clarity that it’s been absolutely fascinating. You also get a huge amount of general modern world history along the way. An incredible and vital undertaking. And again, ever prescient.

Articles of Interest - Avery Trufelman’s exploration of the world via clothes, fashion and design has been a constant source of enjoyment to me. The latest series, focusing on military and outdoor wear, has been no exception. Like any good garment, it’s much more than the sum of its parts.

Made In England - Jack McInroy chats with various creators about an English film of their choosing. Jack’s a good friend of mine, and I was on an early episode (The Guns of Naverone, if you were wondering), but bias aside, it’s a great look at some cinematic hits, misses, and the anomalies in between.

Time to Eat the Dogs - Not really putting out new episodes anymore, but an impressive archive. Just great, straightforward interviews with a expert in their field, examining and revising all we think about ‘exploration’. The diversity of guests and subjects within that purview is superb, and you can’t really go wrong if you get in there and pick one that sounds interesting to you. Refreshingly few bells and whistles. What a great title too.

Strangers On A Bench - Tom Rosenthal approaches a member of the public on a bench and finds out about their life. A genuine breath of fresh air in the celeb carousel podcast landscape. It’s nice to be genuinely surprised, and audio is the perfect medium, allowing the listener to drop any preconceptions and be delightfully wrongfooted. A profoundly human undertaking.

5 Records.

It’s boring to say that as we get older it’s harder to stay on top of new music, but it’s probably true. Anyway, this is what’s be playing in the KIOSK a lot this year that came out in 2025. More or less.

Joshua Burnside - The Teeth of Time. Been listening to this guy’s records for a while now and his latest absolutely holds up the high quality form. If you like a bit of cinematic folk that blends the domestic with the existential, definitely give it a go. Try ‘Marching Round The Ladies’.

Grandma’s House - Anything For You (EP). All female Bristol based punk band with a delightfully grungy, gothic streak running through the middle of it. Try ‘Slaughterhouse’.

Mould - Almost Feels Like Purpose (EP). Another Bristol based punk band, except it’s all lads this time. An absolute riot with some cracking vocal layering. Try ‘Frances’. (possibly track of the year, takes the roof off in 2 minutes flat)

Porridge Radio - The Machine Starts To Sing (EP). This is really an endorsement for the album that came out at the end of 2024, but they released this EP as they also announced their split at the start of this year. Emotionally wrought, but propulsively delivered. Try ‘God Of Everything Else’.

Backxwash - Only Dust Remains. Only became aware of her this year, so this is probably here to point you towards the first record, ‘God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It’, but this one is great too. If you like your hip-hop industrial and absolutely furious (I do), then this is first class. Try ‘Wake Up’.

That was fun wasn’t it?

I’m not sure exactly why I did this now I think of it, becasue as we all know, in our media saturated landscape, we simply nod along to recommendations, say, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve heard that’s good, it’s on my list’, and go back to whatever else we were doing before. But never mind, I’ve enjoyed our chat. I always do.

Just a reminder for the upcoming season, I still have prints for sale, and it’s still the best way of supporting me and the KIOSK.

All the designs available are HERE. Thank you! You’re good eggs.

A pleasure as always. Stay calm, enjoy the coffee, and I’ll see you next time.

Owen D. Pomery.

It was a very nice trip, and I won’t bore you with the details, but I enjoyed it particularly because of the mindset I was in while I was there. What am I talking about? Well, my partner, Lizzy, was teaching a week-long course, and I was merely joining for a spell, with none of the responsibilities of educating anyone except myself. The casualness of that premise meant that I felt unburdened by the need to see Rome in the same way as if the trip had been specifically to see Rome. Which, ironically, kind of freed me up to actually, y’know, see Rome. And yes, I do appreciate that I sound insane.

I’d never been to Rome before and of course I saw a few of the classics. The Colosseum is not getting old, and the Pantheon is one of the singularly most stunning spaces I have ever set foot in. An experience that my architectural studies and photos couldn’t come close to to conveying. But for the most part, I wandered around, I drank espressos from perfect little cups, I peered at ancient crumbling walls and baroque statues, took analogue photographs when the light was right, ducked into small bars, sat in squares warmed by the Autumn sun…and well, you get the the idea.

I’m not a man to thrash out a strict schedule for a trip, but I somehow I felt doubly freed by the circumstance from the notion of ‘getting the most out of it’, or being efficient.

The more I think about it, there are strong arguments for being less efficient these days. It feels like every advert at the moment is generally geared around the idea of saving you time. Which I understand conceptually, as no one feels like they have enough, but I disagree that the solution is a grammar app, a delivery app, a time management dashboard, or AI in general. The elephant so often in the room is, what you’re going to be doing with all this newly free time beyond the vague notion of having ‘fun’? Which is generally depicted by a preposterously attractive family all smiling and laughing at each other. And on a personal level, for all these incredible advances in time saving, why is it harder and harder to get someone to have a drink with me? (Don’t answer that, it will probably be abundantly clear by the end of this newsletter.)

A few TV adverts take a stab at it, but only mange to highlight how weird this concept is. A current Tesco’s delivery service advert showcases various oddballs indulging in niche pursuits in their own homes, with barely concealed contempt. Charitably, I think it’s supposed to be ‘you do you’, but the overall message it gives, is that ‘these freaks have to do this thing behind closed doors, and therefore need their essentials shipped in’. The final shot of the perplexed delivery person might as well come with the caption, ‘Here’s your food, you fucking nutbag!’ And that’s how they are depicting their customers. That’s you, that is.

Another advert for pet food delivery sails closer to the wind, actually engaging with the paradox that I’m talking about, although it tries to make light of it. A woman is freed from the burden of worrying about ordering pet food, allowing her the brain-space to ‘…worry about something else…!’ Ha. Ha. Ha?

I talked about something similar in my newsletter in about real life side quests, as we clearly need distractions and activities to quiet our raging minds, probably now more than ever, and ‘chores’, although perpetually branded as negative, are actually very good for this. The point I made in that newsletter was that there’s a rise in chore based video games, that people are playing in their free time, and it’s a curious development. It speaks to this.

The other day we ran out of washing up liquid so I had to cycle to the local market to get it refilled. Did I want to go? Absolutely not. But was glad I went? Of course. Because what else would I have done with that half an hour? Scrolled the fuck out of Instagram?

I’m also fascinated by what is classified as a chore these days too, whereas in the past is was just called, ‘life’. There’s another advert at the moment for some AI assistant thing with a woman choosing flowers, and she gets the thing to choose the bouquet for her. What the hell is going on in her life where this act, a task so wholesome that it’s probably too twee for a children’s book, has been re-classified as ‘an absolute ballache’?! And as such, should be left to the robots, while she does…what? Stares vacantly into space? Or perhaps she’s desperate to get back to some of that laughing and smiling at her attractive family we’re supposed to crave? Oh, and here’s some flowers that I didn’t choose. Which is the whole fucking point of flowers.

Most current studies suggest that despite the billions invested in AI, it hasn’t really seen any measurable increase in productivity or efficiency in the workplace. It’s early days though, and the AI defenders (those twats, the one who invested the billions) say it’s only a matter of teaching the workers to use it properly and it will really come into it’s own. So, come on comrades, lets all dig our own mass, unmarked grave, together!

Regardless of what actually happens, it wouldn’t surprise me if it didn’t work, because we’ve been here before, haven’t we? Certainly in my line of work, we all know that ability to send an instant message or email has not streamlined the process of illustration and publishing at all. Instead it has merely opened up the opportunity for much more client back-and-forthing, worse and worse briefs, and fickle, mind-changing. So, perhaps, as a society, we’re about as efficient as we can get?

Much like capitalism's central myth, you can’t have infinite growth forever. And what is efficiency anyway? The most efficient process is nothing happening at all. Created in a second, forgotten in an instant.

AI has already crept into our domestic lives in many sigh-inducing ways, and in one recent banal example, a flyer for a petanque competition was dropped into a Whatsapp group I’m in (yes, I’m pretty cool) that was clearly AI generated. A designer friend of mine shared it privately with an angry eye-roll, and yet, back in the group chat, people responded with ‘great poster!’, as of course, they couldn’t tell the difference. So the general populous is not going to save us on this one. The government clearly couldn’t give less of a shit either, and my own industry seems to be pinning its hopes naively on the fact it can’t draw hands properly yet.

How does one respond to this? I genuinely have no idea, but personally, I think I might just slow down. Because I can’t out run it, I can’t even keep up with it. All I can do is watch it thunder off into the distance and hope for some kind of hare and tortoise outcome. I can’t keep up with a person who is trying to shave seconds of their daily schedule by using Monday.com, or Grammarly, or using AI to choose their flowers. It’s a race I seen no value in taking part in. Going slow is the one thing it can’t do. It can’t think for any longer than it takes to receive the input and then prematurely ejaculate the unconsidered results.

It already feels like a million years ago, but that Joanna Maciejewska post is still right on the money;

‘I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes’

But without being too facetious, I think I actually want to do the chores too, especially if that ‘chore’ is flower choosing. I don’t want to hand over any of my precious time, because we’re in control of how precious that time really is. I don’t want to listen to podcasts at double speed, I don’t want to binge watch the next must-see TV show only to have it completely forgotten about the next month.

But don’t worry about me guys, I’m fine in the slow lane. Send me a postcard when you get there, because where is that? You’re not seriously going to send me that picture of the inane smiling family are you? We can’t keep falling for this. Elon Musk has EVERYTHING and that entire, non-smiling family, hate him.

I want to make drawings, write stories and think about both. It doesn’t really matter how fast I make them, because AI is allowed to steal them as soon as I’m done, so I might was well enjoy the process, becasue that’s the bit where I still own it. I want to play petanque (perhaps one of the slowest sports known to man), cycle about London on errands, make my own pasta (been enjoying that recently), take photos and wait for my films to be processed, grind coffee beans (found an old wooden hand grinder on a market stall the other day and restored it), or just read a book.

More and more I feel like slowing down and doing something with presence and intent is the most revolutionary act I can undertake. It’s the one thing it can never beat me at. And, paradoxically, I seem to be getting more done too.

I think one of the fascinations with Ancient Rome comes from the fact that despite it being two thousand years ago, society today kind of still looks exactly the same. From the political to the philosophical to the domestic, it’s all there. The majesty of achievement, the grub, the horror, the cruelty, and the banality.

If Rome was built in a day, it would’ve been forgotten the day after. But as the popular meme informs us, many of us are still thinking about it with remarkable frequency. Because of it’s layers, its chaos, unending lives upon lives. And for me, I want to be involved in that messy process, not sell off portions of my life so that I can do…‘something else’.

This is how it always ends. With death. But first there was life. Hidden beneath the blah, blah, blah. It’s all settled beneath the chitter chatter and the noise. Silence and sentiment. Emotion and fear. The haggard, inconstant flashes of beauty. And then the wretched squalor and miserable humanity. All buried under the cover of the embarrassment of being in the world, blah, blah, blah... Beyond there is what lies beyond. I don’t deal with what lies beyond. Therefore... let this novel begin. After all... it’s just a trick.

Yes, it’s just a trick.

Jep Gambardella. ‘The Great Beauty’.

Sorry about that, everyone. I was just going to tell you about my trip to Rome, but I got a bit distracted. I promise I’ll keep the next one short and light. As a treat for making it this far, here’s a Ancient Roman food kiosk found in Pompeii. Rather lovely isn’t it? It even has the right colour scheme.

Have a good day, and do swing by again soon, it won’t be fermented fish every time.

Vale!

Owen D. Pomery

Shall we address the fact that it’s been a while? No, let’s not. I’ve just been busy, and there’s not much more to say than that. I hope you haven’t missed me too much, as that probably means you’ve been having too much fun of your own to notice.

One of the fun things I’ve been up to is that I took a break and went to Mexico City recently. I’ve never been to Mexico before, but some friends were getting married, so with that excuse in my back pocket, we decided to add on a week or so and have a look around.

I’ve talked previously about feeling that I work in a pattern of absorption and expulsion. I experience things, think about them, and then, possibly create something. This process takes an unknown period of percolation, procrastination and proactivity. But what about the absorption? How does that work?

There’s a feeling of overwhelming-ness that comes from being exposed to so much input. For me, it’s a feeling of… How will I remember it all? Will I be able to consume enough useful details in the brief time I have? It’s a feeling of excitement with a dash of panic thrown in, but in my experience, there’s nothing to worry about, and nothing much to do about it either. There is no way of knowing what will lodge in my mind and what won’t. I can think of trips I’ve been on that have revealed themselves in countless ways down the line, and others where I’ve gone with a clear idea which has failed to get even a millimetre off the ground.

Of course, I do due diligence. I take photos, make notes, and even do the odd abortive sketch, but the rest, well, it should just be going in. It’s hard to absorb and process simultaneously, it requires a self-assurance in the initial thought that I don’t think I possess. I at least need time to interrogate why I’ve come to that first conclusion, even if I don’t deviate from the original assessment. All this is to say, I don’t have a response to Mexico quite yet, maybe just an observation or two.

It’ll come as no surprise to those who visit the KIOSK that I like looking at architecture. However, I was not expecting to be presented with such a stunning array of Twentieth Century modernism in Mexico City, and no one had thought to warn me. But what I saw in the neighbourhoods we frequented (mainly Roma/La Condea) was so keenly in my wheelhouse in terms on style and variety, that I would technically describe it as, ‘a bit much’. I don’t tend to take that many photos on trips (as I’m an annoying ‘enjoy the moment’ kind of guy), but in this environment, I felt compelled to create something of a small personal archive to which I can dip back into at some future date for reference.

I don’t know why Mexico City has such a vast collection of preserved examples from this time and movement, and even many of the more recent designs seem to be influenced by it’s legacy in a way that is far more tastefully done than in the UK. Perhaps culturally and stylistically, the leap from more traditional indigenous Mexican architecture to European modernism is not such a big one?

They’re also not really ‘preserved’ at all, they are simply lived in and used. This could have something to do with the climate being a bit kinder on buildings, as the chilly UK winters have seen many a piece of London modernism sell out it’s beautiful Crittall style windows for UPVC ones. With the complete wrong proportions, of course, and only to have them swapped out again few years later when they failed…and everyone has forgotten what the original windows were like anyway.

I’m often ranting about windows, but these little details are the difference to a piece of architecture retaining it’s intent, its balance, and beauty. One of the strengths of modernism is its reduced palette of materials, each working in a perfect harmony, but it means if one of these elements is removed it's a far bigger percentage element of the building that is suddenly ‘off'. UPVC windows pretty much always look bad, but paradoxically, they seem to fair better visually in something like a Victorian property, where they are one of many elements, but there are fewer places to hide in modernism.

The beauty of these Mexico City streets for me was in the fact that they had been left to age gracefully. Dishevelled, but still stylish. Which, speaking personally, is all I really hope for in life.

It probably says more about me and my tastes than it does about anything else, as this human element, in slight opposition to the clean intent of the modernist endeavour, is very much at the heart of all aesthetics I enjoy. Nothing is perfect, but that’s okay, and perhaps it should even be planned in, like the studied carelessness of ‘sprezzatura'. For me, it feels like a simple tip of the cap towards the chaos of life, while attempting to maintain some kind of personal order.

I was listening to Bill Nighy's new podcast recently (I know, there are too many podcasts) and he talked about the false positive of being a ‘perfectionist'. As we all know that perfection is impossible, why do we continue to present it as an image of reality, or strive to achieve it? To do so, in full knowledge of its impossible outcome, should probably be viewed as some kind of mental illness rather than a strength. That said, the response is not to give up (Nighy has clearly not given up), but simply to do what you can, and hold this paradox as you create a drawing, piece of architecture, outfit...whatever.

And the little wobbles? The wear? Well, that's all just character and style.

Le Corbusier is known as one the founding fathers of modernism, and famously said that buildings are ‘machines for living'. I feel like people get hung up on the ‘machines’ part of that quote and it eclipses the ‘living’. They are machines in service of life. An attempt to find the best possible solution to the impossible task of allowing people to live messily.

To remove further doubt, Corbusier later said, ‘Life is right, the architect is wrong'. Not that I'm standing up for everything Corbusier said (look it up, he was a bit of a prick, to put it mildly), but I do think it’s illustrative of an intent that often gets misconstrued. And thus we are left with the stark, inhuman, Bond-villain-esque aesthetic that’s still doing the rounds today, as the weird legacy of modernism that seems to wilfully miss the the point of the ideals, as much as it misses the point about ‘living’.

Anyway, I'm glad there are some nice streets in Mexico City, uncelebrated, or exemplified, just quietly existing, and looking majestic with it. Maybe I'll have some more thoughts about my brief time in Mexico, but that's all for now.

A Couple of Extra Things.

Lizzy’s new book has been announced! I’ve had the privilege of a front row seat during its inception and creation, but next year, you too will be able to experience The Wreck. I’m horribly biased, but trust me, it’s brilliant.

Claudia Cardinale died. Treat yourself to a rewatch of Once Upon A Time in the West in tribute. She is the absolute heart of that film, and the reason I named the cafe in Victory Point after her.

I don’t watch as much TV as the world thinks I should, but I enjoyed Common Side Effects recently, which is made by the some of the people who did Scavenger’s Reign, that I recommended a while back. Very different show to that, but I had a good time.

Right, we’re done. I should be around a bit more now, so do drop by the KIOSK again soon. Apologies for the small hiatus too, and if you're new here, I hope you've managed to keep yourself entertained with some of the previous outings.

Collars up, it's got a bit wintery here, and I'll see you next time.

Owen D. Pomery.

Sorry I've not been manning the hatch as diligently as normal, but it's summer, and there's a lot going on. Case in point, I was recently down in the Southwest of the UK visiting the city where I spent my university years, Plymouth.

It's a strange experience revisiting a place that feels so personal to me, but that I'm now quite divorced from. I had a glorious three years in that city, and to plunge headlong into the cliché, it kind of made me the man I am today. I did a lot of growing up, made a lot of friends, and it was a perfect scale-up from the small town life I had grown up with. But to revisit it twenty-odd years later, I understand a little why it's derided by some. The best way to describe this would be that considering a huge amount of my time there was spent drinking (it was the early 2000s), I now couldn't tell you (as a non-student), where to get a nice drink. And I don't mean that I'm unfamiliar, I just don't know which pub I could genuinely recommend.

Now, I had a lovely few days there, I hiked the coast, had a swim, saw a slow worm, and generally just enjoyed a bit of quality downtime. So I'm not being down on the place at all, but I was aware that my life there is a completed chapter.

I'm a big fan of chapters. Last summer I was lamenting the fact that life rattles past and you can‘t fit in all the things you want to, because days are finite, so you just have to choose what is taking priority at any given moment. But the bigger picture, or getting a handle on what I’ve I done with my life, or indeed the last five years, benefits from defining some parameters.

Some of these chapters are clearly delineated, like my stint at Plymouth, which had a beginning and an end, and I know the dates and can refer back to them. I can define things as pre and and post Plymouth, and this helps put bookends and brackets into the endless stream of life. Some of these things are globally shared moments that we all use as markers, like the millennium (if you were alive) and 9/11, which even at the time I remember thinking got the branding wrong, as the year is kind of the most important thing to remember in history, rather than the specific day and month. More recently, we all remember what we were doing in 2020, and it acts as a shared firebreak and base of assessment.

Of course, we all have personal chapters too, replacements for the structure of schooling we had in our youth. Relationships, the time you lived in a particular place, the duration of a job, all help to create some structure to a structureless existence. Speaking to friends who have children, it's clear that many of them are using their offspring to chart time in the way it had once done themselves, but has long since become continuous and undefined. ‘Our daughter is off to secondary school this September - time has passed and something has happened!’. And this makes a lot of sense to me.

As someone who is wary of time getting away from me, I like thinking of things in these blocks. Even if they’re often applied retrospectively, I understand the need to try and narrativise life on a societal level and also a personal one. Was the Summer of Love called that at the time? I don't know, but it's handy to brand it thusly in retrospect, as it adds to the ‘story of life’. Of course, this is not always positive, and things can be revised in problematic ways, but this is as true for the world as it is for the romantic individual.

Still, I stand by the fact that I had a great three years at Plymouth. I said it at the time, and I still feel fondly about it now. But I'm aware that it is only great within the context of my own personal trajectory and story. I now live in London, and like I say, I went from the countryside, to a small city, to a big city - and that felt narratively satisfying. But what if you came from a bigger, cooler city like London? Plymouth might have felt like a let-down, or maybe it was an interesting novelty? And what happens after? Back to London?

The point I'm trying to make is that as much as we are the main character of our life, everything else is made up, and in a lot of cases, out of our control. I must have made conscious choices in my life, and some have definitely felt more decisive than others, but for the most part, it's just felt a natural evolution predicated on the all the things that had coalesced in that moment. I think this is what makes me want to overlay some kind of post-structure to an otherwise unstructured life, so it at least creates the illusion of a plan.

As someone who has no children, no house, and no fixed employment, existence can feel a little undefined. In my younger days I would take multi-month travels to define eras, and although I should still do that more, my life is a bit different these days. Probably my biggest markers of time currently are the books I make. They each take a while, have a definite release day, and then the process starts again. Am I going to say they are like my children? No. No, I am not.

I was reading a slightly tongue in cheek article the other day about getting the most out of your summer, and one the tips was to give your summer a name. It reminded me that last year I declared it ‘The Summer of Boule', sort of as a joke, but it did make me remember it and focused me to prioritise spending time on this thing that I love.

Now, this is obviously all rather ridiculous, but so is life, and it only really matters how you sell it to yourself. The ‘to yourself’ bit is important though, as the internet's obsession with naming things is devoid of anything resembling imagination. Just because Charli XCX is having a brat girl summer, that doesn't mean you have to, as it ends up feeling like you've asked AI to assign you a personality.

Anyway, I'm very aware I'm keeping you from your ‘[ INSERT WORD HERE ] Summer' and I should leave you to it, but before I go, here's a couple of things I’ve been up to.

The New York Times.

I did this illustration for The New York Times. I hadn't worked with them before, and it still baffles me that these publishing institutions want to work with me, but I'm very flattered too. This one was about the collapse of Medicaid.

The Economist.

I also did this piece for The Economist about the alarming rise of private jets in India. The news is not a cheery place, is it?

Prints.

I've had some new prints made, and I've also resurrected a couple of classics. As always, getting a couple of prints really helps if you want to support what I do, and keeps the lights on in the KIOSK. And if you pick the right prints (Lighthouse + Roaming), you get to help with aid for homelessness and Gaza too.

Do take a look HERE.

Avery Hill Exhibition.

Finally, if you need a date for your diary (to give life some structure), my publisher Avery Hill are having a big retrospective exhibition up in Harrogate this autumn. It will feature original artwork from myself and many of my stablemates from over the ten plus years they’ve now been going.

It looks set to be pretty exciting, and I'll probably have some more updates down the line, but for now, here’s the official poster, drawn by Kristyna Baczynski.

Did you spot Ada, Haika and Mallic from The Hard Switch?

It's strange seeing your characters draw by someone else’s hand. I really like it. It feels like they are real and independent enough that someone can have their own take. Makes them feel alive and in the world, which for me is a nice feeling.

Good to catch up. It's been a pleasure. See you all soon!

Owen D. Pomery.

How are you holding up? It’s been a bit heatwave-y here at the KIOSK, so thought I’d try and lean into that theme, and take it easy.

Often in illustration, you’ll finish a project, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will see the light of day straight away, or indeed, at all. I feel like I’ve worked on a fair few things this year that I can’t reveal, or for which, there simply isn’t anything to reveal. I can understand from an observer’s (your) point of view, it makes me look quite unproductive, and while that is sometimes true, I can assure you I have been working a few bits and pieces.

Anyway, my frustrations aside, there’ll be some exciting new stuff to show you soon, and for starters, here’s a series I did recently for The Believer magazine, illustrating an essay by Rafia Zakaria, about water and power in Karachi.

I enjoyed working in a slightly hotter colour palette for these, and the job comprised a full-page header image and three spots. You can see the full piece online, HERE.

Everyone seems to like a bit of process, so below are the very rough options I put together for the art director to choose from. For speed, I tend to favour doing my roughs digitally these days, then I get out the paper and drawing board to create the finals.

Cooked.

I recently wrote a newsletter on why I enjoy cooking, and a few of you asked why I didn’t include a recipe. This is probably out of my remit as an illustrator, but maybe as a kiosk proprietor I can just about shoehorn it in. So, here’s what I’m whipping up for lunch today; ‘aubergine pasta’.

Recently I’ve been very much enjoying making simple dishes, but trying to do them WELL. Or at least, to the best of my ability. So, here’s a nice super simple meal that I’ve been making this summer, and if you give it a little care an attention, I think you’ll like it too. I promise it’ll be fun to make and eat.

Right, let’s go!

1. Aubergine.

Slice up a couple of aubergines lengthways, lay in an oven tray and drizzle with olive oil. Season with salt and pepper, and put in the oven at about 200 degrees Celsius. About 30mins should do, but just check in on it.

2. Pasta.

Put some pasta on to boil with a good pinch of salt. Any will work, but I reckon rigatoni is best for this one.

3. Onion.

Finely dice up one decent sized onion and couple of cloves of garlic. Add to a large, high-sided frying pan with olive oil and soften slowly.

4. Sauce.

When the onion is nice and translucent, add a good tablespoon of tomato puree, 2-3 teaspoons of paprika, salt, pepper, and a couple of spoons of pasta water to get it all going. Take the cooked aubergine out the oven, chop it up and stir it in. You want it a little blackened, so you get that smoky flavour.

5. Cheese.

When the pasta is nearly cooked, add it to the frying pan, along with a glug or two of the pasta water. As it simmers, grate in a decent amount of parmesan, so it all comes together nicely.

6. Serve.

Take it off the heat and let it sit for a minute or two while you get some fresh basil leaves prepped, and then plate a portion. Grate a little extra parmesan over the top, scatter with the fresh basil, drizzle with olive oil, and pepper as you like it.

And that’s it! I had mine sat on my studio sofa whilst flicking through some maps, but it’s dealer’s choice on that.

Stay cool, and see you all soon.

Owen D. Pomery

ps. I wrote a newsletter about conveying ‘heat’ in comics recently, which seems quite appropriate right now, and you can see it HERE.

Sorry for the slight absence, but it's summer in my part of the world, and I've been tempted outdoor by various adventures. Perhaps that will be the subject of my next newsletter? But I'm here now, and I'm sure you haven't missed me too much, as I suspect you've all been busy too.

This newsletter has a bit of a ‘bonus holiday feel’, and dare I say a small moment of celebration? Basically, I'm very pleased to announce that The Hard Switch is now out IN FRENCH!

It's in a slightly bigger, hardback format and under the new title of, ‘Le Jour Du Dépassment’. For those who don't speak French (myself included), it roughly translates as ‘the day of overtaking’, which may not make a huge amount of sense, but I’m reliably informed is a turn of phrase used by NGOs and such to mark a point when resources are depleted to a point of no return, which is very appropriate.

It is published by the great, Sabacane.

If I could trouble you with a little sincerity for a moment, this means a huge amount to me. I grew up on Tintin and have been greatly influenced by the Franco-Belgian, ligne claire, bande dessinée style, so to be accepted into that world is kind of incredible to me. I hope the French speakers among you enjoy it and it should be available wherever you get your books from!

Ada, Haika and Mallic thank you for your interest in their strange and precarious lives. Here they are, hanging out in the sunshine.

But you're not here for me being earnest, are you? And what about my English speaking subscribers, or those who have already got it? Well, as a treat, here's a little look behind the scenes.

When the book first came out, there was a very limited edition booklet that had sketches and concept developments in it. I was really happy how it came out, so I thought I would share a few pages, as I know how much you all like to see how the (vegetarian) sausage gets made.

Enjoy!

I hope you found that interesting. It's actually quite useful for me to be reminded how things came about too. Like any design, it's the meeting of a pure/mad idea, and then the practicality of what it needs to achieve. Both narratively, and aesthetically.

The English softcover edition is still very much available too, which, confusingly, has ‘French flaps’. You can get it HERE.

Alright, go back to enjoying the sunshine and coffee (if that’s possibility for you), and I'll get back to you soon with some exciting adventures.

Owen D. Pomery

One thing I'm very aware of when embarking on a project are the limitations, and if I don't have them, I tend to create them for myself. However, it's something that often get misinterpreted or romanticised, so it's probably worth having a quick chat about it.

Now, I do like a bit of romance, who doesn’t? And it's probably quite hard to be an artist without some kind of romantic streak. However, the prevalent image of the struggling artist, suffering for their art in poverty, is an architype that’s not very helpful. It's a hard one to shift. It's fetishised and promoted, while the actual situation has got so bad that people with limited resources can't even get on the first step to following a creative life.

It increasingly feels like being able to ‘suffer for your art', is quite a luxury.

But what's going on here? Because it also feels like the only artists people really what to hear about are the successful ones. Narratively, people want to witness the biggest suffering, followed by the biggest success, and they are fascinated by the nature of both, but not so much in the effects on the actual human. Basically, they want the Van Gogh story - insane and destitute, but now worth millions.

I think many people need to see the suffering as a requisite cost to getting to have what is perceived as a ‘charmed life’. It can't be as simple as doing a squiggle on a bit of paper and getting loads of money (it's not) so there has to be a bit of visible hardship. I think society almost subconsciously believes that Van Gogh hacking his own ear off was the price of his genius, rather than a sad consequence of mental illness, no doubt exasperated by poverty*. And the tragic fact that he didn't live to see any of the success is just a bonus bit of trivia, but that doesn't matter, we got to see it!

Anyway, I've drifted off topic a bit. Limitations. There's an interview I like with the Beastie Boys (of course there is), where the interviewer tries to guide them down a ‘you can't do that these days’/cancel culture, route. And Adam Horowitz, clearly slightly annoyed by the question, says;

And he's right. The debate is not about who's allowed to get away with what, that’s being decided by society all the time, but the question is; who’s allowed to even try to get away with anything in the first place?! All stats confirm it's harder than ever economically to embark into the creative sector, so increasingly only the privileged get to make things, which widens the gap, narrows the output, etc. etc. These are all undeniably real, and depressing realities.

So, limitations are bad.

But. We all know that when there are no limitations, when the resources are seemingly infinite, the results are almost always universally awful. This is not to compare the two situations, the poverty of someone just trying to get by is far more of an issue that millions squandered on a big Marvel movie that tanks, because everyone got paid on the movie. But creatively, it just feels like such a waste.

I remember from my architecture days being fascinated by projects that had to work within tight sites and limited budgets, and yet somehow found beautiful and creative solutions. I would compare this to work in places like Dubai, with seemingly limitless money and endless space (a literal sandbox!) and yet creatively, almost completely bankrupt.

The first Star Wars film cost $11 million and changed cinema forever. The most recent one cost $416 million, and was an absolute dumpster fire**. And we can all think of countless other examples. So how does one manage to do more with less, and what can we make of this?

To bring it back the personal, it's no fun being struggling artist. But if I’m being honest, I've probably done some of my best work whilst pushing against some limitation. And if I’m being completely honest, my best results come from a magnitude of pressure that I wouldn’t choose to apply to myself if I was given free reign. Although, while we're being so honest, I've probably done some of my worst, too.

There is a slight addiction to pressure, because it removes a lot of choice, so you just keep moving forward. But although this can achieve results, it's probably not that healthy, and more importantly, it’s not a sustainable space to be in. But opening a window and taking a breath, also lets in infinite possibilities and choices that can feel asphyxiating.

When I talk about this ‘pressure’, I’m not just referring to the external restrictions, I also mean the design decisions informed by limitations, which in turn, inform other decisions and are folded back into the actual creation.

This gets talked about in the recent spate of video game remakes. The inclination to take a classic game and give it a graphical or mechanical polish that was unachievable in the era of its release, is a tempting one. But frequently it reveals that those technological limitations of the time, meant decisions were made during the development that directly dictated the game's look, feel, or play. The things that made it a success in the first place.

Playing the cleaned up version today, things start to make less sense, despite their apparent clarity. It feels like taking one element of a well considered outfit and arbitrarily making it red, but that obviously has a knock-on effect, because the rest of the ensemble was based on it NOT being red.

The end product should always the sum of all that was available and unavailable at that specific moment in time.

I guess it comes down to (sing it with me, now!) ‘Intent and context’.

The invention and creativity shown by Industrial Light and Magic when making the first Star Wars film (enjoyably documented in the series on Disney Plus currently) was born out of a group of very talented people, comfortable enough with the situation to not feel exploited, but working within tight creative restrictions. It has been referred to as the biggest indie film ever made. Seemingly these ingredients made them want to go above and beyond what anyone thought was possible, and in that perfect cocktail, their work has become immortal.

Finding that perfect cocktail is hard. Some things will be in your control, some will not. And without being too facetious, limitations are a powerful asset…as long as they are not too limiting. But at the very least, I guess all we can do is get a little better at spotting the difference between when something is pushing you, or crushing you.

I'll leave you now. And you can have any type of coffee or pasty you would like. Unless you'd prefer me tell you what you're having?

I have a couple of new prints up in my shop! Go take a look HERE.

It's a great way to support what I do, as well as you getting a nice print for your wall.

That's it for now. Have a lovely day, and I'll see you next time.

Owen D. Pomery.

* There's a great John Kearns bit, where he talks about the piece Starry Night and how it's based on the view from Van Gogh's asylum cell window. And now you can buy it as a Lego set. I love John Kearns.

** In my opinion. Let’s not get into it, please.

In 2020 I had two books released. This is not a brag, as it was very much not the plan, but they came out with different publishers, so it was less of a coordinated strategy and much closer to a clash.

The two books were Victory Point, and the much less known, British Ice.

British Ice was my first big ‘swing for the fences’ graphic novel. I had been planning it for years in the background as I made my first steps into comics. And although Between the Billboards is technically my first book, that was a collection of my six-part small press series that I had self-published and put out as individual zines.

British Ice was written as a script, designed, and then worked into a pitch, which I sent out to a handful of (optimistic) possible publishers. To my surprise, Top Shelf agreed to do the book, but apparently, according to my unknown status, there would be no advance. I said I wouldn't be able to make the book without taking on work to survive, and as a result, I couldn’t have it done by a specific date. They said that was fine, but if I couldn't give them a date, then they couldn’t schedule it until I completed it.

I agreed to this, as my expectations of what being published actually looked like had been appropriately lowered as I saw friends and colleagues reach that milestone, and increasingly they reported back that behind the velvet curtain, there was in fact, very little. So, initially I was quite happy with my deal. I could go on working and fit in my graphic novel as-and-when, with no stress.

But although the immediate pressure was less, it was constant. As the months went by, whatever I was doing, work or leisure, part of my brain would be reminding me that I should be working on my book...

The thing that had felt like a luxury, began to feel like a burden, and the ‘relaxed’ timescale I was now working to had other unexpected consequences as well. I was still very much in my infancy as an artist and writer, and I was developing and becoming interested in different things at a much faster rate than I realised would be the case. I felt like I had started to outgrow the project before I had even completed it, but I was locked into its story and style.

Working on the British Ice also coincided with the my disillusionment with the architectural illustration game and my subsequent transition into working in an illustration style that I not only loved, but was starting to yield my exciting results and interest.

All this contributed to British Ice starting to feel like a slog. To the point where I counterintuitively started to distract myself with self-published side projects that felt far more self-propelling and actually had end points!

Both The Victory Motel collection and KIOSK came out around this time and rejuvenated my creatively, reminding me what I loved about narrative illustration again. But my book wasn’t getting done any quicker.

When I finally finished British Ice, it was accepted by the publisher, put into the system, and scheduled for release the best part of two years later. I shelved it mentally, changed gear and headed off in new direction.

I was excited to start bringing together the new way I was drawing with the stories I was writing, or had already written. I wanted my next book to almost be the opposite of British Ice in every way. Full colour, lighter, more human, a simple linear story. Fresh.

And so, I returned to Avery Hill Publishing, to work with friends, based in the same country as me, and made Victory Point.

2020.

As the planets moved into place, both books were scheduled to come out in the same year; 2020. But, as some of you may recall, something else happened that year too. The publishing world, and the actual world, came to a standstill.

British Ice launched in the UK just before it all kicked off. Many of my London comic friends still remember my launch as the last significant social event before it all went mad. In retrospect, it was probably a super-spreader event.

I also didn’t have a beard at the time.

The copies of British Ice that the wonderful Gosh! Comics got in for the launch are probably the only copies that made it onto UK shelves. The reason for choosing a bigger US publisher at the time was to tap into their large and established distribution network. Top Shelf would have the ability to get it into all the bookshops my heart desired, however, these bookshops were now closed. And by the time they had opened again with any consistency, the publishing schedule had carried on turning, and bookshops, understandably, were not going back to stock-up on unknown graphic novels that had come out in the meantime. I mean, they were trying to get back on their feet for god's sake!

The publishing world had moved on, and in many ways, so had I. I had created Victory Point with such energy, despite writing the first script at the same time as British Ice, and it benefitted from the old Abraham Lincoln quote of, ‘If you give me eight hour to cut down a tree, I'll spend the first six sharpening the axe’. I had thought about it more, got better, and executed it more cleanly.

I'll be the first to admit that if Victory Point had not come out soon after, I would’ve been somewhat deflated by how British Ice was received. Years of work greeted with a fairly polite shrug. Much as many writers do when their first book drops off the production line into the sea of others, I witnessed it's uniqueness instantly dwarfed by the towering waves of EVERYTHING ELSE, before it was carried off to the horizon.

But Victory Point was my upper for this come down. For a combination of reasons, some of which I've just covered, people responded more to Victory Point. That is not to say there was anything bad said about British Ice, but I felt the warmth of reception to my more recent effort far more keenly, although much of this was out of my control.

For example, I totally get that a book set in a sunny seaside town about gentle reflection on life's direction, is going to land better in a global pandemic, than the story of someone going insane in a lonely arctic house while reckoning with the legacy of colonialism.

On Reflection.

Recently, as occasionally happens, someone reached out to tell me they had just read and enjoyed British Ice. They were reading it for what it was, five years later, with none of my personal thoughts and feelings, no pandemic, just enjoying it for what it is.

I took a copy off my shelf and flicked through with an uncomplicated kindness I had a not afforded it in a long while.

I learned a huge amount making British Ice, and I'm proud of it. I would not be able to make the work I do now if I hadn't made it. I also wouldn’t make it the same way again, and in some ways that would be better, and in others, far worse. But that is irrelevant, it is its own thing. The sum of everything I knew and was capable of at the time.

But I did it. The first example of the thing I always wanted to do, but thought impossible. And now, a complete stranger has come across it in the world, read it, and liked it.

I’m very grateful for that. And what more could I possibly want?

So, (without any of the self-deprecating caveats I desperately want to include), if you fancy an icy tale of horror and colonialism, inspired by the 80s/90s B-movies I would watch as a kid, then you should treat yourself to a copy.

It's very much available wherever you buy your books online, but all the better to go to your local bookstore and get them to order it in.

For what it’s worth, Publishers Weekly described it as;

Thanks for dropping by. Enjoy your day, and I look forward to seeing you again soon.

Owen D. Pomery.

First things first, I’d like to apologise for the title. I couldn’t resist.

I know what you’re thinking, how do I decide what jobs to do? Well, probably not, but like the answer to most questions, it does of course, depend.

When I started out, the answer was, ‘everything!' and at times when work is pretty quiet, that is unfortunately still the answer. But when things are ticking along, and an unknown job inquiry comes in, how do I decide if it's worth doing?

Firstly, for the sake of this chat, I'm discounting the ethical choices that turn up. This is probably a subject for a separate newsletter, but in this instance, let’s assume it’s a job I can take on with a relatively clear conscious. It's just worth mentioning that morality does come into the decision making too.

Fundamentally it comes down to how one defines ‘worth'. In my setup, I basically break it down into three categories, which in my head I refer to as, ‘The Triangle'. Those categories are; money, fun and interest. I know that some version of this already exists, but I think the specific values and the categories themselves are massively different for different people, so I'll try to explain why it is the way it is the way it is for me.

Money.

This is the simplest one to explain. Does the job pay enough? Of course the definition of ‘enough' is again particular to everyone. I am not financially supported by my partner, family etc. and I live in London, so unfortunately, yes, I do have to make some money to survive.

Again, as we're talking about art and money, some people believe that the two can't mix, so they have another job to pay them and then create their art separately. This is fine, but it’s not the way for me, I have chosen to make art in different shades, for various amounts of money, as I'd always rather be creating something.

That's it really. As simple as, ‘how much are they paying?’ and we shall see how that comes into conflict/union with the other two elements of the triangle. The next of which is…

Fun.

This is pretty simple as well, to be honest. Would the job be a nice time? This might be because the drawing work is fun, like something that’s easy or nice for me to draw, but it could equally be that the people involved in the project are nice people to work with.

I have to say that as I get older, this goes an incredibly long way. Sure, the work might not be great shakes, but working with kind and friendly clients really effects how enjoyable my working day is. Obviously with new clients, this is hard to know, but you get better at the early tells…

Interest.

This is slightly more nebulous, and it probably isn't the right name for it, but it basically refers to an unknown interesting element. Does the project involve something I've never done before? Or a type of drawing I haven't even considered? Would I learn something? Perhaps the work is in an entirely unknown sector that I'm curious about. Maybe if I took it on it would lead to other similarly exciting work, or equip me with a new skill to use elsewhere. It's hard to define exactly, and sometimes it's hard to spot, but it's kind of (as the name suggests) the most interesting of the three. It's the one that makes me grow or change direction.

To return to my early days as an illustrator, all jobs seemed fun because of the novelty, most were new/interesting, and I always needed money, so, like I say, the decision making was a lot easier. Now that it’s become my somewhat established career, I kind of have to reflect on what I want from it, and indeed, from life, and this is all very personal. As I mentioned, I am not independently wealthy, so I can't completely relax, but, for example, I’ve also chosen a life that doesn’t have children in it, and my partner is self-sufficient too, so I have the ability to be more flexible on that point than some others.

But that’s kind of irrelevant, as everyone’s situation is a unique combination of pros and cons. We all have different bills to pay.

The older I get, the more I value the ‘new’, as without getting too morbid, who knows how long we have left? And it would be nice to get the opportunity to try as many different things as possible. And again, I value having a nice time on a job much more than I used to. I don't want it to be a slog anymore, it's not a badge of honour it might have been for a younger me.

The Triangle.

When a job comes in, I often know straightaway whether I want to do it. The old ‘gut feeling', or perhaps because the positives in one category or another are so self evident. But the ones I'm unsure of, or I can't work out why I'm being hesitant about, are always worth applying to The Triangle to see how they score.

It's not an exact science, but basically if a job gets a tick in two of the categories (yellow areas), then it's probably worth doing.

Reasonable money and a fun time, but nothing new? - Sure, I’ll happily do that.

Fun time, exciting new frontier, but low budget? - Yeah, that's worth the hit.

Decent budget, new sector I'm interested in, but might be a bit full on? - Again, I'd probably dice roll that too.

And there are many more shades and permutations in between.

Sometimes a job will only land a tick in one of the categories (white areas), and these are generally to be avoided, but there are plenty of exceptions to that too. The job might only have ‘fun' going for it, but if it's really fun, then it still might be worth doing, especially if you’ve just come off the back of a job that only got a tick in the ‘money’ category and you can afford to take a break.

Once every now an then, you get the dream ticket. The job that hits all three categories. Well paid, exciting/new, and a lot of fun. The example of this I always think about for this is the work I did on the game Flat Eye (I actually did a newsletter about it a while back), because I remember realising I’d hit all three points of the triangle (orange) while I was actually doing it. The fee was decent, I got to work in concept design (that I'd never really done before), and I had so much creative freedom from the lovely dev team, which made the work such fun.

It shouldn’t be a revelation at all really, but if you pay people well, they’re having fun, and they’re engaged, they tend to do their best work. And I remember loving every second of this job and always happy to go the extra mile to make it even better.

The triangle is a rule of thumb. It’s never lab conditions when choosing a job, but if I'm ever stuck, or can't make up my mind, it generally helps me make the right call. More of a cross reference of myself, a metric of ‘why?’.

As a final point, I’ve taken on a few jobs in my life that I wish I hadn’t for one reason or another, but I genuinely can’t think of a job I regret turning down. And I very much hope that continues to be the case.

Favourite Diagram.

Who’d have thought we’d get to diagrams at the KIOSK? But while we’re here, what’s your favourite diagram? Alright, I’ll go first, I’m a big fan of Cedric Price’s explanation of historic urbanisation. Using eggs.

I was going to explain it, but the beauty of a good diagram is that it doesn’t really need an explanation. Although, your mileage will depend on how much you like urbanism, history, and eggs. But like I say, it’s my favourite diagram.

Right, that’ll do for now. I’m off to wander the city and maybe have some eggs.

See you next time!

Owen D. Pomery

I probably don’t talk about drawing enough, do I? So, today I thought I would talk a very specific type of drawing that I occasionally do, and in doing so, hopeful shine a light on how I draw/think in general.

Over the last few years I have created a series of prints for Dark City Gallery. The series features some of my favourite modernist buildings from around the world, drawn in an isometric viewpoint. The latest two are the iconic Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright and personal favourite of mine, Upper Lawn Pavilion, designed by Allison and Peter Smithson.

The difference between these drawings and pretty much all the others I create is that they are real places. As I have talked about before, a lot of the fun in drawing for me comes from creating the place and the image simultaneously. A lot of the elements might come from reality, and realism is part of what I want to achieve, (as detailed in my newsletter about creating ‘Believable Space’), but this print series requires drawing actual reality.

However, what is ‘reality’?

Let’s not get too existential though, in this instance, I'm talking about a constructed reality. These buildings have existed in the world for many years, so they are not in stasis. They have evolved and been modified, even if it's only in minor ways, and the landscape has changed around them too. The research that these drawings require is the interesting part for me. I pore over plans and photographs taken over the years, spotting when little elements have changed here and there, and choosing which to include.

At architecture school we were encouraged to sketch, not just as a means of being better at drawing, but as a way of understanding how things fit together. Taking a photo of a building doesn’t reveal the the same level of construction understanding that drawing it does. Even though you kid yourself that you can go back to the photo and study it at any point, you frequently don't, and it mentally becomes reduced to a flat image.

Working on these drawings, I get the the same feeling of actually building them in my mind. Examining details and cross referencing with plans to understand how it all goes together and takes the form we recognise.

Unlike the imagined scenes I normally create, I am kept in check by reality. I have frequently discounted certain buildings as choices for the project because, as beautiful as they are, they don't make good ‘images'. This could be because the strange isometric angle does not suit the design, or the landscape it sits within does not make for a pleasing balance of elements. Balance is the key word though, as the whole endeavour feels like an act of making sure each part doesn't comprise the other. It's not a drawing, or a building, it's both.

I do feel a responsibility to get it ‘right', but I'm very aware that it is still my interpretation. I do not seek out 3D models to work off, I am instead scouring the internet for archival photos and drawing, piecing it together, bit by bit. As I say, research is one of the funnest parts of my job, I love the rabbit holes it takes me down and the stories they inspire. A black and white photo of the the family in the garden with the house new and gleaming in the background. A photo during construction. How the architects dress as they wander about the site. It's all perfect. But perhaps that’s a newsletter in itself for another time.

An interesting observation when I release these images into the world, is that they suffer the same scrutiny and critique (and inexplicable ire) as the buildings I make up. This is somewhat reassuring for me and my made-up worlds, as it's quite funny to see the work of world renowned architects being trolled by the same anonymous internet users (‘I bet those doors leak’). I know this already, but it's always nice to have a reminder that they’re just petulant dicks. And, it seems, always will be.

But I digress. In short, I find it is a very different set of challenges creating these images to my normal work. It involves me tapping back into to something very familiar from my time as an architectural illustrator. The trick is not letting that quite dry and practical approach take over the image, but rather to serve it for the better.

Some restrictions push me to find different ways to make it better, others compromise it, but in any case, the process is the interesting part for me. It strangely makes we want to create drawings that are more interesting for the feat, rather than the final outcome. The internet trades a lot in ‘finished images' and the ones that were useful to the maker are less well received or completely unknown. I think this is another way the online can skew output.

My ‘best work’, and the ‘most important work in my development’, are two very separate lists. I recently updated my website (go check it out while it's lovely and tidy!), a big part of which was removing work that although I might have been proud of at the time, is no longer representative of the work you do currently, or want to do in the future. It can be a bit of wrench, when you reflect on how long it took or how it was the peak of your ability at the time. But it is also very cathartic and liberating to let it go.

I recently expunged from my website the last remnants of the black and white, architectural line style that had been my identity and trademark look for all the time I was an architectural illustrator. You can still see what it used to look like in this old Tumblr archive, which I'm happy to exist, but I'm glad to be able to let it go from my current website. The important thing is that the knowledge acquired during that time is the reason I am able to make drawings like the ones produced here. The important elements endure, within you, they are folded forward into the next thing you create.

Perhaps I am getting off topic again, and you only wanted an espresso and a Danish, right? So I'll let you go about your day.

All the images in the modernist architecture series are available (if they've not sold out!) from the lovely folk at Dark City Gallery.

It's also a good time to mention that all my own prints are available HERE. If you enjoy swinging by the KIOSK but can’t commit to a paid subscription, a great way to support me is to pick up a print or two. AND you get a nice print! It's literally win-win!

Have a lovely day of research, and I'll see you all again soon.

Owen D. Pomery.

Here’s a question that will probably elicit a weary sign, but how are you all getting on with the old social media at the moment? The facetious and short version of the conversation I seem to be having a lot of fellow creators is;

Fun chat. But although it does feel like we're definitely getting closer the thicker end of the wedge these days, I’m too exhausted to wade into the swamp any deeper than my ankles at the moment. And I’m genuinely not fully sure what I think and what I will do going forward anyway, so, I thought I'd look at the few aspects of online life that I actually do enjoy.

KIOSK.

Firstly, look where we are?!

You may be able to tell, but I’ve really enjoyed writing the KIOSK newsletter. The fact you keep coming back, and the lovely responses I've had, have been incredibly buoying. There are also quite a few of you now, which is kind of incredible to me. I like that it makes me write more, it makes me draw more, and it makes me think more. All of which are good things.

The interactions and conversations I've had with people as a result of writing the KIOSK, both online and in the real world, have felt far more engaging and thoughtful than what I've experienced elsewhere on social media for a while now. And those chats often make me think of other things, which in turn informs what I might write next.

The narrative conceit of it being an actual kiosk is not wholly an accident, even though it impulsively felt like the right thing to do when I set it up. It is essentially a physical (yet mental) manifestation of how I see the digital space. It's my own little self-contained world from which I get to be the purveyor of whatever I fancy, and it's very pleasant to be joined by people who find it interesting too.

Like many, I miss those sweet and innocent times back in 2010 or whenever it was that I signed up to Twitter, and without being too rose-tinted about it all, it was pretty great back then. It’s where I found all the other people doing the same stuff as me. Having come from a different world (architecture) I had to build up my illustration and comics network from scratch, and Twitter was the perfect forum to ask my stupid questions and figure it all out. Many of the friends I have today are from this time too, so I guess I’m nostalgic for that opportunity to genuinely connect.

I’m wary of the future, as like every platform that’s privately owned, it’s at the whim of whoever runs it. And if a thing becomes popular, you just know someone awful will want to buy it, and very few are in a position to resist having their mouth stuffed with the amount of gold these buyers have. I already hear things about Substack’s alliances that I’m not wild about, but I guess (like everything) we have to keep an eye on it and see where we end up.

What Now?

So, what do we make of all this? Well, basically we’ve come to the old art and commerce question again, haven’t we? As all these different companies are commercial entities, and if you’re professional artist, you are one too. So, where you draw your line or how you engage with it is completely up to the individual.

Personally, I find myself envious of the generation before, who made their names before all this came into being. The world still looks up from what it’s doing when these heritage artists put out a new book, record, film etc. And they get to scoff at social media and say how it’s ‘not something they’re interested in’ an that it’s ‘clearly an unhealthy thing to be part of’, while their marketing team goes into overdrive promoting them on as many of these platforms as possible.

‘Good for you’ I think, through gritted teeth, but that way of thinking is not helpful either. It is what it is, and everyone needs to figure out what's best for them. We all know creators who manage their social media accounts with all the enthusiasm of a petulant teenager who’s been told to do their homework. And we all know the ones who have engaged with it so much that they’re lost sight of the fact they are creating work and are now just churning out more creation content.

I’m not here to be judgmental, but neither extreme seems particularly honest, if creating art is what they’re actually here for. But maybe complete honesty is impossible anyway?

I like to believe I get the balance just about right for me, but I’m probably being as delusional as everybody else. My guiding personal principle has always been to find a way to enjoy the process and not let it become a chore, as nothing is a waste of time if you’re genuinely having fun or learning something.

Website.

In much the same way as the lesson leaned by writing the KIOSK, the main response it gets from me, is to focus on the elements of an online existence I can control. The most obvious one being my website.

Websites almost felt like they were a dying breed a couple of years ago (‘Guys, you just need an Insta account, yeah?!’), but now it feels like one of the only spaces left where you get to present your work in the way you want it to be seen. It's also free of all the well-documented negative stuff that comes with most social media, such as chasing likes, absorbing time, being buffeted by the algorithms etc. And sure, those things are all bad, but also from a purely aesthetic and curatorial perspective, I like that I get to decide how I present my own work. Which weirdly feels quite of liberating these days.

How freeing it is to make work in a format that suits your work rather than ‘the platform', or content that genuinely interests you rather than worrying it might infringe on a platform’s agenda!

So, in celebration of having such a basic revelation, I’ve had a long overdue update of my website, and to make my efforts worthwhile, you should take a look.

Also, like any task that involves reflection, I always forget how useful it is to take stock of what I've done in recent times. As each job and drawing gets finished and filed away, I often forget to step back and review what I’ve done, and what direction I'm heading in.

Similarly, I like the portfolio of work kept by my agency, BRILLIANT ARTISTS. Both feel like places to view what I do in a very unpolluted way, which is weirdly increasingly rare. An island of calm.

The personal take home is probably a reassuring reminder that it doesn’t really matter (something that I discussed in a recent newsletter, with it's accompanying illustration that apparently had too much nudity for Instagram’s taste), or rather to worry about it all less, and focus that energy in creating the work that interests me. It’s a reminder that should be written in neon on the KIOSK wall, to be honest.

Like I said at the start, I’m not sure what my plan is going forward, but for what it’s worth, these are all the ways you can stay up to date with what I do, or support my work » HERE.

You are, of course, always welcome at the KIOSK. And you can have a free cinnamon bun today for listening to me rattle on. Next time, I’m going to talk to you about drawing. I promise.

Enjoy the rest of your day, and I’ll see you all again soon.

Owen D. Pomery.

ps. Fashion brands often choose a celebrity around who they build a clothing collection. If my KIOSK newsletter has a holotype, it's probably Paul Giamatti, reading a book, dressed as an orangutan.

Peckish? Although the KIOSK doesn't officially do food, I could probably rustle you up a snack. Let's see what I've got back here.

A few times in this newsletter I’ve talked about how useful I’ve found it to engage in pursuits outside of my ‘profession’. I’ve found that this helps me directly, with things that share similarities with illustration, such as photography. But I also like the indirect ones, like playing petanque or cycling, both of which make me a healthier, happier and more balanced individual and definitely feed back into my work in unforeseen ways.

One of my interests that kind of falls right between those two camps, is cooking. I only relatively recently admitted to myself that I love cooking, and I've been trying to put my finger on my hesitancy to own up to this fact before, and why I do actually like it so much?

To answer the latter first, I basically like that it's a little piece of creative problem solving, as a break from the type I do as an illustrator. It has different rewards, and energy, and it involves using my hands in a different way too. There’s also a strong aesthetic and craft to it, but there are very few repercussions to getting any of it wrong. Kind of like doing a crossword. Which I appreciate sounds quite dry and technical, but that’s not how it feels to me when I'm in the kitchen.

Somehow this little task I can solve, really calms me down. It gives me time to think over the day, and to potter. Time is one of the important elements too. I had, until relatively recently, prided myself in the efficiency of getting something nutritious and delicious on the table in a relatively short space of time. A skill born of my student and travelling days. But while that’s a useful skill to have, I think it was over lockdown that I finally realised that I could spend more time doing this thing that I like, not less.

The food I make is not flashy, but I do try to take the time to do it in a way that is satisfying to me. I saw this clip of Bill Nighy explaining how to make beans on toast the other day which kind of speaks to this. It’s the specificity I like. I also just quite like Bill Nighy, so his thoughts on most things are quite enjoyable to me.

I guess it feeds into a general philosophy (clearly too grandiose a term) I have of trying to do simple things well. I think cooking is an easy place to start with this this kind of thing, as washing the dishes in such a manner is a greater challenge, although fear not, I employ it there too. I know a lot of you will be rolling your eyes at the witterings of a ‘zen bellend', and that's fair enough. I'm not perfect, I get as frustrated as the next person, but cooking seems to help.

I realised the other day that the reason I don't particularly enjoy using recipe books is because it feels like I'm being robbed of that small bit of creative problem solving I enjoy. And obviously don't even get me started on those phone adverts where someone photographs their fridge contents and it AI's up a meal for them…but I'm trying to not be too judgemental, I guess for some people food is nothing but an annoying chore, and I won’t presume to know what you life is like.

Anyway, by using recipes I don't get to ‘invent'. To bring things back to drawing (I'm an illustrator, remember?), following a recipe feels like the equivalent of tracing somebody else's artwork, so it can only really turn out the same (at best), or lesser. And however inferior my own creations are, they are at least, mine. But perhaps we're veering in the direction of my ego on that? Or, eggo.

My other hesitancy with recipes and cookbooks, relates to my fear of being labelled a certain way. The truth of it is, I’m basically scared that someone might mistake me for being…’a foodie'. Yes, it was horrible even just writing the word. You know what I mean though, right? I don’t want to be confused with someone who uses the term ‘mouth feel’ unironically.

Now, obviously I'm being a bit ridiculous, but we all have our hang-ups. However, it’s not just that, as I also feel slightly fraudulent, because people who like food, really like food. I have about ten Bob Dylan records and I’ve read his autobiography, but I still hesitate to call myself a fan, because you know there are some real fans out there, and I would fold under questioning if asked how to make some rudimentary ‘foodie’ staples, let alone the most basic of Bob facts.

I also rankle at being labelled as anything at all to be honest, so this bit is more of a note to self, as I realise that nobody else cares what I'm doing in my kitchen. But I think we all carry these little things around with us. ‘I don't what to be seen as THAT'. And that’s never particularly helpful. So, in short, I have been letting myself enjoy cooking a bit more in recent times, and I think that's probably okay.

Increasingly I find my creative/professional life inseparable to all the other areas anyway, as it's all facets of me, and none could really exist in isolation. In fact, it's only too apparent when the balance is off. When the late great photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson was talking to John Berger, he apparently remarked;

So what’s my new project? Probably some poached eggs on toast, if I'm honest.

Ice Cold in Monocle.

You know how meticulously I plan these newsletters, so you're probably wondering if I have any recent food adjacent commissions to share with you? You bet. I illustrated this article on which ice type should go in what drink for Monocle's winter newspaper, Alpino. Thought you might like a swig.

Okay, I leave you to it now. I’ve been a bit under the weather this week, so apologies if it’s not my best work, but it’s a low-key chat at a kiosk hatch, so don’t worry about it too much. Go find yourself some eggs.

Hope you’re doing good in the less exciting months and I’ll catch you next time.

Owen D. Pomery

I’m spoiling you at the moment, aren’t I? Anyway, thought you might want a break from illustration, so here are few films I watched and enjoyed last year.

As with my list of 2023 films, these aren’t all from the titular year, and they are not necessarily empirically the best I saw, they are unified simply by the fact they sparked some reaction from me. But enough of that, let’s rattle through ‘em…

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat.

Incredible documentary. Could not be more in my wheelhouse if it tried, but this is vital and visceral work for all those who are up for reckoning with colonialism. And jazz.

Anora.

It’s a delight to be allowed to share company with such an ensemble of well realised characters. Even as they chicane through humour, humanity, and horror.

‘71.

A robust B-movie thriller set during The Troubles. Shouldn’t be as rare as it is, but just nice to see a low-key, well made, thriller.

(NB. The kid in the foreground looks like he’s been AI face-swapped with Olivia Coleman.)

Conclave.

I thought I’d struggle to care about the machinations of the Vatican, but when it’s handled like this, I was on the edge of my seat.

Godzilla Minus One.

A big computer lizard is almost as hard a sell as organised religion for me, but again, when it’s done with heart, it turns out anything is possible.

Greyhound.

Tom Hanks diligently dodging U-boats as he escorts a convoy across the Atlantic. Arguably a peak ‘dad film’, but I’m not a dad, so I’m standing by this maritime procedural.

Kneecap.

From dad film to lad film (don’t say I don’t contain multitudes), the story of Irish language rap group Kneecap, played remarkably and charmingly by the actual members. And who doesn’t like a scrappy underdog story?

Los Angeles Plays Itself.

Poetical nonfiction about how Los Angeles has been depicted and reflected on screen. Worth it for the sheer wealth of film clips from across all genres and time periods.

Sing Sing.

Prison drama about theatre rehabilitation. A powerful dose of humanity and empathy. No, you’re crying. And I’m crying. Yes, okay, we’re all crying.

Thief.

As a big Michael Mann fan, it was criminal (sorry) that I hadn’t seen this already, but it certainly didn’t disappoint. James Caan is an absolute delight, and it looks incredible. Make me want to hang out in all night diners and walk the glistening streets.

‘Rewatch Corner’.

Heat.

And speaking of Mann... Possibly my favourite film of all time, Heat frequently gets a rewatch in my house, but as luck would have it, there was a screening at the Garden Cinema. Always a pleasure to see it on the big screen, and it still gets me every time.

The English Patient.

They don’t make ‘em like this anymore. A big/small story, told well, and looking beautiful. It’s hard to see what’s gone out of fashion, but I guess I’m old.

Also, it’s hard to think of hotter looking couple than Fiennes and Scott Thomas, dishevelled by the desert, and in 30s/40s attire. But that’s probably unfashionable too.

And what was the most batshit film you watched in 2024? Hmm…let me think…

So, for what it’s worth, there you have it. Bit a of ‘blokey’ list this year, wasn’t it? But that’s the way it goes. Hope you saw some good things too. Or failing that, some interesting things.

See you amongst the popcorn soon.

Owen D. Pomery.

A little further along the quayside you spot a yellow kiosk selling journals, notebooks, coffee and such. As you approach, you see it’s run by a dishevelled but presentable illustrator/author. He sleepily gestures you over.

Hello. And welcome back. Time for a quick coffee and a chat? Well, first up I want to warn you all that this newsletter might contain some serious ‘old man energy’. But I am aware of it, and will do my best to keep it in check, so don’t all jump into the comments straight after. With that in mind, let’s go on an adventure!

I think I’ve mentioned this before (the repetition is not the old man bit), but one of my favourite quotes is by Sartre, when he described adventures as…

I was thinking the other day about the various ways life is supposedly streamlined by different apps, delivery services, AI, etc. and they’re all advertised by saying you no longer have to go the bank/store/takeaway or whatever anymore, so you can spend that time doing what you really like doing. A lot of people (myself included, although I don’t seem to have the time these days) like to play video games, and one of the interesting genres to emerge is the more admin based or repetitive task type games. People enjoy the cathartic satisfaction of a simple fetch quest executed well and ticked off.

Which is fine. If you want to save time by buying stuff online, so you can spend that time pottering around a shop in a digital world, there’s no judgment from me, but it is a different experience, because someone created that experience. It might be influenced by something the creator experienced themselves (a shop they actually went to) but more often it’s based on another fiction they have consumed, like the type of shop they’ve seen in another piece of media. Obviously this is a well documented thing, such as, ‘we based it on the feel of a spaghetti western’ rather than, ‘we went back and studied as much source material on the old west as possible’, and it’s all valid in fiction, but we can’t keep copying copies forever, can we?

I love a real life ‘side quest’. Don’t get me wrong, I have mundane chores that I’m not thrilled about doing like everyone else, and I’m not rubbing my hands together at the thought of a trip to the Post Office, but there’s definitely part of me that perks up when an errand presents itself that takes me out of my way. I might get to go to a part the city I’ve not been to before, enter a new building, meet some strange characters, and the thrill comes from the fact that however banal the errand, I don’t know exactly what the outcome will be.

Talking to a friend in the pub the other night, they remarked after a story I’d just told, that I frequently seem to get myself in odd situations. Now, I don’t think of myself as a particularly storied individual, I avoid trouble like everyone else, but there was something to what he was saying. I often find myself considering a path that has no inherent benefit to me one paper, and to some degree it might even seem like an actively ‘bad idea’, but curiosity gets the better of me.

And the reward? Well, frequently there isn’t one, and I literally end up just doing the tedious task without incident. ‘Character building’ is a fairly outdated phrase that is often used to reframe actual traumatic events, so I’m not talking about that, but I do find experiences in the real world are useful for building the characters I create. The people and places experienced on my odd little excursions are what populate the work I make, from an overheard conversations lifted word for word, to an architectural detail, or an imagined punchline triggered by a real world set up.

It’s a cliched answer to the cliched question of ‘where do you get your ideas from?’, but yeah, mostly it’s just stuff I’ve seen and heard in the world.

I think this is what people mean when they say ‘write what you know’. Everything you experience through your own viewfinder is unique to you. Alien is an incredible film, but we’ve all seen it, and we’ve all borrowed from it, and we’ve all been influenced by it. That’s okay, we’re all building on what has gone before, but if the pot is not rejuvenated with unique, new, individual experiences once in a while, the milk starts to go sour. We all know what this looks like, you see it in shows when you realise people aren’t speaking or behaving like people, they are just behaving like someone in a film would.

So, my one small (and personal) solution is to try and embrace the mundane side quests of life with the optimism that something might come from it, and hopefully at worst you have an interesting story to tell when you’re next down the pub. Or chatting to friends online in a virtual pub. Or indeed, stood outside a kiosk in a strange seaside town.

Old Man.

As I said a the beginning, I’m aware this might all sound like some old guy saying you should get out in the real world like they did back in his day, but I’m not advocating for people to do that if they don’t want to. I’m very aware that as a six-foot, white, able-bodied, straight man, there are less obstacles in my world than there are for many, and I often have the luxury of choice as to how involved with the world I want to get.

Many years ago, in an attempt to allay my fears when I was kayaking in the open sea off the coast of New Zealand, a guy I knew once said;

I think about this a lot. And I know this sounds like I’ve made it up, but a few years later that guy sadly passed away. So please stay safe out there, and remember that Sartre quote from the start. There is beauty and interest in the small and banal things available to you, you don’t have to infiltrate a drugs cartel to get a good viewpoint.

Okay, that’ll do us for now. Go and see what you can find.

Owen D. Pomery.

ps. If you haven’t seen Alien, you should. It’s great.

As it’s cold in the KIOSK at the moment, I thought I’d warm us all up by talking about ‘heat’. For the new people, in this occasional sub-series of the newsletter I talk about an individual scene in a comic or graphic novel I like and why. And usually I’m focusing on one particular element. The first one was about Tintin and explains the concept more fully, but you’ll get the idea, and it’s more fun than it sounds.

Today we’re looking at a quick scene from this short and minimal, social sci-fi…

The Oven. Sophie Goldstein. (2015)

So, as discussed in previous episodes, one of the things I think the medium of comics does particularly well is ‘feeling’. And that subtly of showing, not telling, is perfect for emotional tone, but it also works great for simply creating a visceral environment.

A key way it can do this is with selective details. Again, comparing it to film and books (two mediums that comics often feels sandwiched between), I really like how comics can come in on the inside lane with this one. Film is often restricted by rendering the whole scene with the same level of fidelity and has to focus or zoom in on the details it wants you the concentrate on. Literature has to choose what you need to know about an environment and then choose how much or little to convey beyond that. Such as, ‘It was hot’ versus, ‘The heat was oppressive, permeating everything in a relentless…’ well, you get the idea. But deployed less than expertly, the options are often clunky, or just a banal, orientating requirement.

I’m being a little unfair and reductive, there are of course plenty of ways that good books and films convey atmospheric things subtly, but comics do have a special knack of being able to slip in visual signifiers without intruding too heavily on the experience.

Okay, so here’s the three page scene.

First up, these won’t always contain nudity, it was just the way it worked out. But also, it’s another great example of what I was talking about in For As Long As It Rains, as in this case, we’re dealing with some classic ‘narrative nudity’. In fact, it’s one of the visual signifiers of the environmental conditions I was just talking about, and Goldstein is using to convey the feeling of heat. Our subject for today.

I think the various ways these pages convey the temperature is a real masterclass in graphic communication. However, that’s a pretty dry way of saying it, so just look at the pages and I think you’ll agree it just feels hot, right?!

But let’s spoil (or enhance) the magic a little, shall we? Firstly, the choice of colour palette is great. Various shades of orange, and the extreme contrasts of white to black, run though the whole book. I think the choice to make the colour of the suns black is genius, making the source of the heat read visually as hot as the shaded areas, giving the feeling of the heat being everywhere. The orange that runs through every page (even the page edges, if you’re lucky enough to have a physical copy) glows like an ember, almost radiating warmth into your hands as you read.

In terms of the small details, the minimal illustration style means that everything included in a panel is very much there for a reason. The sweat, the dust, the contrast - they all combine to give you the key information you need without saying a word. This frees up our characters to have more naturalistic rather than expositional dialogue. Not that we need much dialogue either, because the body language is superb too. I love the slump down the wall and the fall onto the bed, and the top panel of the last page features one of the best ‘flopped characters’ I’ve seen.

Another simple device is the perspective jump. We see the suns and their effect as experienced by the characters on the ground, and then we get a nice flip in the second to last panel. We see the suns’ view down on the tiny figures cooking in their little house, as viewed though the skylight. Much like…an oven.

There are so many things going on with amid the deceptive simplicity of these three pages, and when they’re all played together as a chord the reader just gets it. It’s HOT.

I think that will do us for now, we don’t want to pull it apart completely, do we? If it looks like something you would like to read, you should track a copy down. Originally published by AdHouse Books (now sadly defunct) you can still get copies from various places, and it looks like Goldstein sells them herself, so you should probably pick it up HERE.

Thanks again for dropping by for a chat and we’ll do it again soon. Hope your January is going well, or at least not too awfully.

Owen D. Pomery

p.s ‘Narrative nudity’ is not an actual thing, but it can be if we want it to be. Just start dropping it into conversations.

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I won’t waste your time with the old ‘don’t judge a book by it’s cover’ adage, or even the more contemporary admission that of course we all judge books by their covers. In truth, both are misleading, because ‘judge’ and ‘choose’ seem to get used interchangeably, and no, we shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover, but we most certainly do choose them that way.

So, once again we stand at a point where the waves of creativity crash against the cliffs of commerce. But it’s a new year, so let’s keep it light, shall we?

One of my favourite books I read last year was A Season in Sinji by J.L Carr. The edition I have I found in a charity shop, and it sat on my shelf for a long time before I got around to reading it. If I’m honest, one of the main reasons for this delay was the cover. Despite getting top marks for using illustration, it wasn’t exactly calling to me…

But I finally got past that and read it. When it came to finding a more suitable cover image for my ‘books of the year’ newsletter, I was struggling; as it seemed A Season in Sinji had been dealt a pretty bad hand over the years when it comes to cover design. In the end I opted for the most recent version, which although is not in any way exciting, was at least not too off-putting.

A bit more rummaging revealed a couple more. The original 1960’s release, which murkily does the job, but again is fairly uninspiring, and the weird (and almost spoiler-ish) 80s/90s edition, with its very representational illustration cover. Neither is great, but the book is set in WWII on an airbase in West Africa, so at least the planes/sea make some sense, however clunkily deployed.

However, the grand prize, the real gem of them all, was the following. I obviously don’t need to tell you it’s from the 70’s, but get a load of this…

What the hell is going on here?!

Now, there is some cricket in the book (although I’m surprised how much this gets mentioned, with some calling it ‘a cricket novel’, whatever that is?), and there is also an element of unrequited love in the spectre of a largely absent character. But how the image above came to be, I have no idea. More intriguingly, it’s a photograph, which presumably means the person whole came up with it had to run the concept past someone else. Who, in turn, green lit a budget for him to get a photographer and the models needed to put his masterpiece together. No one at any point raised an objection.

When I picked up my copy, I was slightly concerned that it was a different J.L Carr to the one I had enjoyed reading in A Month in the Country, as the cover suggested something tonally quite different. Had I come across this 70s edition, I would have been absolutely sure it was merely an author of the same name, a J.L Carr who wrote softcore erotic cricket novels. Now, I’m not saying that wouldn’t have been fun, but that is literally the opposite of A Season in Sinji, which is an exploration of class, hypocrisy, colonialism and war.

I’m sure you’ve all seen you’re own examples over the years, and having some knowledge of how the world works means that we kind of know it must have come about by someone involved in marketing thinking ‘Hey, this book with a couple on the front is selling well, so lets stick a couple on the front of that old war book that isn’t shifting.’ Sometimes that works, even if people are a little miss sold, but in an example like this, I don’t think anyone gets what they want.

It seems although A Season in Sinji did not sell particularly well upon release and is still fairly unknown today. There’s a million reasons for why a book sells or doesn’t, but I can’t help thinking that this one didn’t have the best start in life.

I have a friend who is book cover designer (Robbie Porter, you should check him out) and after a book is released, he will often post all the iterations that were in the running. It’s a fascinating glimpse into the process. Whether you are familiar with the book or not, it’s wild how diverse the different ways the publisher has considered marketing it, and how easily your brain would bracket it as ‘one of those books’, depending on the route chosen. We all have our biases too. A matt yellow cover with a black and white photograph and nice font will get me every time, if you were wondering.

There’s plenty more to say about covers, particularly relating to the kind of books I make, where it’s expected that you will design/draw the cover too, which comes with a whole set of other questions. But let’s save that for another time, shall we? Hope your 2025 is off to a good start, and if it’s mediocre start, that’s okay too. One day at a time, and I’ll see you for a coffee soon.

The only thing left to tell you is that my new graphic novel will be called ‘Three Wickets Up’ and will be a powerful work of cricketing erotica, if that’s not an oxymoron. I just need to read up on the rules of cricket. And erotica.

Owen D. Pomery.

Hope you’re enjoying a seasonal break of some sort, and if it’s not fully relaxing, then perhaps I can help with a quiet moment and a few suggestions of books I have enjoyed this year. This is something of a tradition (well, this is the third year), but I see that there are a lot more of you now, so welcome if you’re new here, and let’s just recap what’s going on.

As ever, these books are not all from 2024, just my favourite books that I read over the year. I read nonfiction in the mornings and fiction at night, as a way of balancing out what I consume.

Reading felt like a bit of struggle this year for some reason, I think I got stuck on a few slow movers. But I read about thirty books all in, and these are the ones I’m sharing with you. They’re in no particular order and I’m not promoting any of them particularly, just something you might want to spend your book tokens on if any sound like something you’d enjoy.

Right, let’s get into it.

Top 5 Fiction.

West - Carys Davis

Almost parabolic in nature, West is a reminder that there are two sides to every story of obsession; all that you are going after, and all that you leave behind. Considering it’s huge western scope, it’s incredibly economic writing, while never feeling stark or unrealised. It gently insists that we look at a story that doesn’t arc in the way we might hope, or have been taught to expect. A concave, perhaps. But no less satisfying as a a result.

Pereira Maintains - Antonio Tabucchi

Quiet defiance is the less glamorous of revolutionary approaches. Doing what you can in the face of fascism, while trying to protect your relatively secure life, is the reserve of those who have something to lose. But Pereira is nudged by increment to the realisation that the only important thing might be to act in the way he has some control over, however small. It’s also nice to spend time with such a thoughtful character, following the middle-aged widower as he wanders through the sun soaked streets of Lisbon stopping into his favourite cafes for information, and ordering his signature glass of lemonade and ‘omelette aux fine herbs’.

Mr Norris Changes Trains - Christopher Isherwood

A Single Man is one of my favourite books of all time, so it was interesting to read the work of a much younger Isherwood. I was happy to find it still has his compassion and observation that lead to such beautifully realised characters, particularly the titular Mr Norris. It’s deceptively light in tone at first, as we view the world through the sympathetic and optimistic eyes of the narrator, but as it develops, and the truth of what is brewing in 1930’s Berlin begins to surface, Isherwood reminds us that it’s all fun and games, until it’s not. Much like Pereira Maintains, you can obfuscate or look away, but there’s always a line, and you know what you have to do.

A Season in Sinji - J.L Carr

As a fan of A Month in the Country I was keen to read another J.L Carr novel, but I was trepidatious as I’d never heard of this one prior to finding a copy in a second-hand bookstore. Still, it had me at ‘wartime west Africa’ and I ignored the fact it seems to be described everywhere as a ‘cricket novel’. Based on Carr’s own wartime experiences, the narrative is very Catch-22 in approach, by viewing the madness from the bottom up. War and cricket aside, it’s really a book about class and all that comes with it, seemingly banal and petty at first, but building to a devastating climax. If you need any more convincing, Carr considered it his best work.

The Dig - Cyan Jones

Head and shoulders my favourite fiction of the year. The dark and cruel beauty of a rural life laid bare. The writing is so stark that sentences are frequently left poetically abstract, but instead of alienating, it draws you in and makes you almost complicit via your interpretation. Did you actually think that, or was it on the page? Almost painful to read at times, as you get the impression that Jones is not afraid to go to some truly horrific places, while never feeling exploitive of gratuitous. It wasn’t the light holiday reading I was looking for, but its memory will last far longer than the trip I imagine.

Top 5 Nonfiction.

A Flat Place - Noreen Masud

I didn’t expect this to end up the list, even when I was half way through it. But it’s here as it gave insight to an experience alien to me, although probably far too common. It’s an account of trauma, but delivered through the lens of experiencing things spatially. There’s also the shadow of history and colonialism stretching across it. Not a barrel of laughs, but that’s not why you came here, is it?

Question 7 - Richard Flanagan

It’s a bit of cliché to say that something defies classification, but Question 7 is sort of about everything. Essentially though, Flanagan attempts to prescribe some kind of meaning to the horrors his father endured during WW2, and by extension, why humanity does the things it does to one another. Part memoir, part history, it is so much more than the sum of it’s parts, a true meditation on who we are and how we got here. Devastating and beautiful by equal turn, in the manner of Vonnegut or Heller.

Q & A - Adrian Tomine

I talked about this in my last newsletter, and as I discussed there, it’s rather tailor made to my particular life and interests. The comics writer and illustrator talks through the most frequently asked questions about his career. I think you would have to at least be aware of and like Tomine’s work to get something out of it, or be an illustrator, but it’s my list, so it’s going on. I found it both reassuring and inspiring.

The Unwomanly Face of War - Svetlana Alexievich

This was a hard read in the mornings, as these accounts of Russian women during WW2 (collected through interviews by Alexievich), are incredibly raw. Unapologetic and open, they are a record and viewpoint often eclipsed by classic narratives of heroism or more banal factual accounts. It was frequently gut-punchingly dark, but absolutely brimming with humanity too. And a monumental reminder that, as war photographer Don McCullin so rightly observed about all conflicts, women and children are the ones that pick up the cheque. Every time.

The Ship Asunder - Tom Nancollas

I think the concept of this book is better than the execution. I don’t mean that to sound as harsh as it does, but more praise of it’s core idea, that buildings, names, phrases, attitudes we use all the time are frequently remnants of Britain’s nautical past. The missing bit in the story being the ships themselves that have long since rotted away or sunk to the bottom of the sea. So, we are existing in history as expressed through negative space, the relief formed in their absence. Nancollas walks us through those missing artefacts and why we have what’s left.

There we go, 2024 is all wrapped up, but I’m not going to dive headlong into an existential crisis about it, so I’ll let you get back to whatever you’re up to and we’ll catch up in the new year.

The KIOSK has erratic opening hours, as you know, but I’m usually here pottering about, so thanks for dropping by in this busy time. I don’t know why my last newsletter became so popular, but it’s really nice to see some new faces too, and in the meantime, you can cast your eyes over all the previous issues on the shelf.

See you soon.

Owen D. Pomery.

I was talking to friend recently about the merits of creating physical things, and we went on to muse about the fact that that was how all work previously used to exist. It was either in print, or it wasn't. And there was kind of a beauty to that fleetingness and detachment. I won't be the first to point out that there is sometimes something less than satisfying about creating an image ‘for online', because it’s not really clear what that means. ‘Online’ kind of means ‘everyone and no one’.

How can any image bear the weight of having an audience of, ‘the world’?

The image above for example (created for something it didn’t end up getting used for) is something I’m happy for people to see, but I don’t really want EVERYONE to see it, or to hear the world’s thoughts on it, or have it mauled over on Twitter or wherever. It currently feels fairly safe here to put something up which ‘is what it is’, but maybe that too will change too?

It's a good time to reflect on such things, with the death of places like Twitter. Online has been good to me, and I've generally always found a way to make it fun or at least palatable, but it’s an ongoing project. Running the KIOSK for example, is one of those ways that I really like, but it’s never been an end goal of mine to be a content provider. Making physical things is probably the main reason I got into the game, and one of the first things I started doing when I became an illustrator was to self publish zines and comics.

I’ve been lucky to experience lots of different versions of my job since then, but there’s still something special about seeing my work ‘exist’. In my current period of reflection, I remind myself that it’s never less of a thrill to experience something you’ve made so viscerally.

Q&A.

I recently read Adrian Tomine's book, Q&A, which basically takes the form of a non-fiction series of frequently asked questions about his career as an illustrator and graphic novelist. These range from the banal (what type of pens do you use?), to the specific (what did it feel like to see your graphic novels as a film?).

As a long time admirer of Tomine, and the fact he works across comics, writing, and illustration, his career has always be something approaching aspirational for me. It was reassuring and interesting to hear his responses to questions that I get asked myself, and fascinating to learn what he thought of things that I can only wonder about.

It was particularly serendipitous that as I was reading his thoughts about having his work in The New Yorker, I had a piece on those hallowed pages that same week. In fact, there is even a review of Q&A in the same issue that I was in. I didn't grow up with The New Yorker, I became aware of it and grew to admire it chiefly because my heroes (people like Tomine) were in it.

I really liked how he described the feeling.

Reading how excited he still is to be on those pages, made me re-experience how grateful how I am to have had a my work in there too. Anyway, here’s the most recent piece that I did.

Comics.

So, yeah, on balance it’s been something of a reflective year, this one. But truth is, I have been doing things. Planning things and thinking about things. Writing things. Which is all work, just invisible work, and I guess it feels less ’physical’.

I've also been renewing my comics vows. I always make a fairly bad joke among friends that I quit after every book I finish, but inevitably, I think of a new idea, and off we go again. However, it pays to take a breath and make sure I spending my time on the thing I really want to do.

I recently went to Paris for a couple of days to catch the Comics, 1964-2024 exhibition at the Pompidou centre. It was really great. Seeing comics (a much denigrated medium in the UK) given such a platform and prominence was so enlivening. I got pore over classics I had grow up on like original Tintin pages, or artists I’ve later came to love like Andre Julliard and Hugo Pratt.

I left with something of a spring in my step, the feeling that, if only in a tiny way, I got to be part of this ‘thing', and was given the very rare opportunity to feel slightly proud of that fact.

(Julliard, Herge and Pratt.) The last one being possibly one of my favourite ever comics panels. Just look at those lines!

As you can see, I've seamlessly brought us back to the start. The physical. And it's almost as if I planned it.

McSweeney’s

Speaking of physical, I also got to design and draw the cover of Celine Ipek's A Resting Place, one of the titles in the McSweeney's new fiction collection. They are obviously famed for their love of the physical too, and this collection was no less lavish, presented in a concertina box thing with the individual stories within.

On a final physical note, ‘tis the season and all that, so if you were interested in picking up my books for friends and family, you can find them HERE, or wherever you get your books from.

And I do a selection of prints HERE.

(I have no idea on postage to various countries and cut-off times etc. It seems to get more and more random these days. Either way, I’ll just keep sending them out. Sometimes it’s super quick, other times sluggish. We don't know.)

So, that’s about it really. Coming up soon, I'll be doing my ‘books of the year’ (I know you can’t wait) and probably some recommendations of other general stuff I've enjoyed. Swing by the KIOSK for a quiet moment between all the merriment and madness and I'll be here. I might even put some lights up if you're lucky.

Keep your head, and see you soon.

Owen D. Pomery.