Forget wild swimming, take up wrestling. Josh Hicks, author of Glorious Wrestling Alliance is our first guest of the year, on Jan 31st, in conversation with Alex Fitch of Resonance FM.

Join us for another Zoom-based hour of comics chat by signing up to the event here. Alex Fitch, of Resonance FM's Panel Borders, will interview Josh Hicks about his recently-published Glorious Wrestling Alliance, which follows the escapades of 'the universe’s least-professional wrestling company'.

Josh also runs Carp Publishing Endeavours, a micropress based out of Cardiff, and co-founded Cardiff Comics Carnival. Find out more about all of this on his website here.

Cartoon County is Brighton and Hove's friendly comics community, now gone online. Everyone's welcome to come along! Register as above and we'll send you the link nearer the day.

Our guest for 7pm, on 29th November, is Simon Moreton, small press cartoonist and lecturer in Creative Arts, who has won a cult following for his self-published title Minor Leagues. Where? is an expanded version of a story serialised in Minor Leagues, and mixes text, photo collage and comic strips to create a heady mixture of folklore, autobiography and ruminations on our relationship with the landscape. The excellent nature / wildlife publisher Little Toller are to be congratulated for having recently published Where? as their first graphic novel. Simon will be talking to Alex Fitch, our resident comics interviewer from Resonance FM, about this new direction in his work as well as recent self-published titles such as What Happened, What is Britain? and Plans We Made...

Register for this free event here on Eventbrite.

More info about Simon's work here https://www.simon-moreton.co.uk/ and https://smoo.bigcartel.com/

Our Halloween week guest is Josephine Edwards, aka JMKE, who will be talking about her comic Will o'the Wisp, published by Breakdown Press. A ghoulish orb named ‘The Will- O’-The-Wisp’ flickers from the wick of Earth’s lantern in the midst of a barren void. The glimmer offers salvation to the hopeless, wayward traveller in the form of a point of reference. Like a mosquito to a zapper, the hopeful traveller is drawn towards the glowing siren, who hovers over deep bogs, swamps and marshes. We don't want to over-ghoul you, but you just really need to join us – Monday 25 October at 7pm! Register on this Eventbrite link for a place at this very special event. In the meantime you can explore JMKE's work at www.jmkeworld.com and maybe pick up a piece of art, a tattoo, poster, portrait or read some of her weird and wonderful stories along the way. And you can buy a copy of Will o' the Wisp here.

Do join us for a session with graphic novelist and Cartoon County regular Jaime Huxtable, as his latest work, a graphic novel version of George Orwell's Such, Such Were The Joys is about to be published by Pluto Press. The roots of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four began to grow in Orwell's formative years as a pupil at a strict private school in Eastbourne. His essay Such, Such Were The Joys ably adapted here by Sean Michael Wilson, recounts the ugly realities of the regime to which pupils were subjected in the name of class prejudice, hierarchy and imperial destiny.

This graphic novel vividly brings his experiences at school to life. As Orwell earned his place through scholarship rather than wealth, he was picked on by both staff and richer students. The violence of his teachers and the shame he experienced on a daily basis leap from the pages, conjuring up how this harsh world looked through a child's innocent eyes while juxtaposing the mature Orwell's ruminations on what such schooling says about society.

Today, as the private school and class system endure, this is a vivid reminder that the world Orwell sought to change is still with us. For those who are eagerly awaiting the Soaring Penguin publication of Tobias Taitt's autobiography Black, stunningly brough to life by artist Anthony Smith, and as serialised in Aces Weekly, you will see that Orwell's experiences are sadly as fresh and relevant as ever.

Adapted by Sean Michael Wilson, and illustrated by Jaime Huxtable, Such Such Were the Joys is available from Pluto.

Please register on eventbrite for a link to the session, with Alex Fitch in the chair.

Join us for another online version of Brighton's friendly comics meetup, in which Alex Fitch interviews Sabba Khan for the Resonance FM show Panel Borders, with audience Q&A afterwards. Free, open to all, starting at 7pm on Monday 6th September.

Sabba is a cartoonist and architect who has contributed short comics to exhibitions in the British Library, Ort Gallery Birmingham, and Truman Brewery, Brick Lane and her work has been featured in titles released by Abrams New York, the Wellcome Trust and Popshot Magazine.

She'll be discussing her first book length project, The Roles We Play, which was shortlisted for the Myriad Editions First Graphic Novel competition in 2018 and has just been released by the publisher.

The book explores what identity, belonging and memory mean for Sabba and her family against the backdrop of the history of British Pakistani displacement from Mirpur in Azad Kashmir, a district submerged by the waters of a dam built after Partition.

For a free ticket, register here and the link will come your way! https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cartoon-county-with-sabba-khan-tickets-167144233903