'Keep Moving'
- D Haller
- Aug 10
- 7 min read
Tom Smith is the incredibly talented editor of Liverpool-based Frisson Comics as well as the writer of extraordinary graphics novels such as Take Only Photographs, Leave Only Footprints. Within this interview, he shares the highs and lows of small press publishing, advice for emerging creators and some great tips on where to get the best pizzas in Liverpool.
How did you break into the comics industry?
I didn’t. The good thing about comics is that you don’t have to. You just need to get the work done and put it out there, there are the events in person and avenues online to do so. That’s still not as easy as it sounds though, the main two barriers to someone wanting to get into comics are the time it takes to make the thing, and if you want to have it in print, having the money to print it.
I was fortunate enough to get started by getting a little bit of both after being made redundant.......... I had worked at a cinema for nine years and had just gotten into making comics with my girlfriend Katie. The money I got.......... wasn’t much. What it did enable us to do though was give ourselves time to get our first book done and take it to as many comic conventions as we could. It felt kind of disheartening at first because we didn’t find much success initially and eventually had to go back to day jobs. But we learned a lot in that free time – what conventions were worth doing and how to approach getting our work out there. We’d also met tonnes of great fellow creators who were almost always supportive and often were experiencing the same ups and downs.
During the covid lockdown we also ended up with a lot of time to work on projects and our respective Etsy shops. Luckily we were both in a position at the end of lockdown to not have to return to our jobs and take the leap into doing this full time.
You mention collaborating with your partner Katie Whittle, what’s it like to work with your significant other in bringing these stories to life?
For me it’s been pretty much instrumental. I don’t think I would be doing what I was doing if it wasn’t for Katie – I don’t think I would have considered comics as a medium to work in. I read the Beano and a few Marvel books as a kid, but my interests were in film initially. It’s what I was most into and had studied at Uni.
When I started going out with Katie, I was pretty unenthused with creating I'd had a few attempts at making short films but was at a point where my friends now all had full time jobs and people willing to collaborate on something like that were few and far between. I had a couple of attempts at making animations that didn’t really go anywhere. It was Katie who suggested maybe working in comics, but I wasn’t initially convinced. She lent me a stack of her comics, stuff like The Crow, Sandman, Maus and some Junji Ito and Alan Moore stuff. Lots of stuff I’d heard of but never bothered to actually read and it really did give me an increased appreciation for the medium, that I could tell the kind of stories I wanted to tell through comics just as well or possibly better than other media.
Eventually Katie ended up asking me to write her a story that she could illustrate as her final MA project at Uni. Eventually the project ended up becoming our first book, Take Only Photographs Leave Only Footprints. That basically started everything off for me and I love working with her, we share a lot of the same interests and tastes in horror.
She now also has her own really good thing going as Chatterpie Illustration which is amazing but, apart from a couple of shorts for Knock Knock, we sadly haven’t had much chance to work that much together recently. We are planning on releasing a new book hopefully for this year though where we have both written a ghost story for the other person to draw.
Which of your graphic novels would you like to return to whether that be a prequel, sequel or spin-off?
I don’t think I would like to. I think it’s just better to keep moving forward and make something new. I can’t think of anything I’d like to go back to at this point, just other projects I’d like to do.
What are the joys and the difficulties of being a small press publisher?
I get quite a bit of satisfaction from editing and contributing to our annual horror zine Knock Knock. It’s been nice to see the community around it grow and see all the amazing artwork from contributors all over the world and see them happy to have their work in print and be excited to be part of the book.
Another high point was getting to co-edit the Blobby Horror anthology with Erika Price and especially to have the opportunity to do a couple of comics for it. Erika is a creator who I hold in really high regard, and it was a real privilege to get to work with her and all of the other artists who made such great contributions to it. It has also been really fun to see it delight and disgust people when they see it at conventions.
The difficulties mainly fall into more boring categories of things such as costs rising both for things like printing but also for postage to basically anywhere. Between Brexit and the various postal price increases in the US it’s been a lot harder to reach an audience outside of the UK.
Are there any plans to expand Frisson’s output? Whether that be long running comic series, poetry or zines.
We’re always looking at putting out new books but rarely have concrete plans except the annual release of the new Knock Knock issue. I don’t think I could plan too far ahead in terms of projects because I find it hard to concentrate on anything other than what I’m really interested in at the moment. If I planned that far in advance, I think I’d just depress myself with the amount of stuff I didn’t get done.
What advice do you have for others tabling at Thought Bubble?
I’m not really sure, I just try to have fun. Normally at other more pop-culture aimed events, it can be difficult to engage people at your table cause the focus is rarely on comic books, even in the artist alleys sometimes. With Thought Bubble you don’t really have that problem - everyone’s there for the comics! So, if I had any advice, I’d say get comfortable talking to people about your work and just try to have fun. If you’ve gotten a table, you must already be doing something right.
Also don’t get so hung up on sales too much. I’ve had Thought Bubbles that have been amongst the best of the year for sales and some that have been far from it, but it has never been wasted time. Even if you don’t sell a thing there are so many people that will become aware of your work that weren’t before. On top of that, there are now four halls full of people from industry professionals to people just doing their own thing and you have the opportunity to draw on all of that collected knowledge, even if it’s just having a chat to the person on the next table.
What's the next big thing for Tom Smith?
Besides the work I do for Knock Knock I’ve got 3 upcoming projects at various stages.
I’m working on Lemon Drops written by Sean Clarke with art by me. It’s a post-apocalyptic horror series planned for three or four issues, the first of which has already been written and I’ve managed to draw about five pages of the first issue so far. It’s a really personal story for Sean so I don’t know how much to say about it at this point. In terms of vibes it’s a bit like I Am Legend written by Mike Leigh which was a major draw, at least for me, when we talked about doing it.
Secondly Katie and I are planning on doing a duo of ghost-story comics with us each writing a story for the other person to draw. The aim of it was to try to simultaneously play to each other’s strengths whilst providing a challenge to do things we usually avoid in our work. We’re still in the process of exchanging stories so I’m really looking forward to see what she’s come up with!
Thirdly I’m working on a more nebulous project to work on in my downtime from the other two projects. It’s kind of a loose, surreal and very vaguely autobiographical zine about all of the horrific true stories I’ve been told by people growing up and I don’t really want to say much more than that because I don’t think I really know yet know what it will end up being. I’m not writing a script or anything for it just putting it down on the page as it comes.
If you’d like to see more of his and Frisson’s Comic work, make sure to check out the upcoming issue of Knock Knock which will debut later on this year. In the meantime, check out Frisson Comics’ Etsy, Instagram and website, all of which are linked below, for more of his work as an artist, editor and writer. Additionally, if reading this piqued your interest about Katie Whittle and her work, I’ve linked her Instagram and website below as well.
Frisson Comics:
Katie Whittle:
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