JORDAN COLLVER Marries Education to Illustration, Debuting PETS TELL TALES

Interviews Editor, Andrew Irvin, sits down with Eisner-nominated illustrator and science communicator, Jordan Collver over Pets Tell Tales from Wren & Rook and so much more!

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COMIC BOOK YETI: Jordan, thanks for stepping into the Yeti Cave today to discuss your work. Firstly, how is the autumn shaping up in Bristol?

JORDAN COLLVER: Thank you very much for welcoming me into the cave! My autumn is off to a great start so far. Both my kids are going to the same school for the first time (which makes me proud and also means I have more time to draw), my first published book came out a couple months ago, and I just wrapped art on the second. I’m now starting to sink my teeth into other projects for the first time in over a year, so all things considered I’m feeling pretty good.

CBY: Glad to hear it! I first encountered your work last year on social media, and the piece that caught my eye was your full-page comic, “Gone with the Wind,” for, “Electric feels: the role of visual methods in energy futuring” – an engaging exploration of speculative developments in large-scale wind energy operations in Scotland, including the sort of foreseeable challenges faced with weather of increasing severity. Can you start by sharing a bit about how you ended up working on this project specifically, and explain how you began working as a research communicator through illustration in this manner more generally?

JC: Thanks, I’m glad you like that one. It was commissioned by the Power2 project as part of a series of artistic responses to their research exploring the intersection of digital energy, technology, and human emotions. I had applied to a different funded project a couple years ago which I unfortunately didn’t get, but one of the researchers from that remembered me and got in touch asking if I’d be interested in this one because they were hoping to include a comic as one of the pieces. As you point out, it fit perfectly into my wider work of turning academic research into comics - or if not directly “translating” the research itself, then engaging with it creatively in some way. 

I’d been making self-published comics for a few years and when I saw that the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol offered a science communication masters course, I saw it as the perfect way to combine my love of comics with my interest in science. I did my dissertation on science comic creators, which my supervisor and I later adapted into a paper in the Journal of Science Communication. After graduating, I started taking on more projects and expanding my repertoire into other subjects like history (which was my original undergrad) and building up some regular clients, until it eventually became my full-time job right before COVID hit. I’ve been doing it ever since.

CBY:  I think your approach to your masters is a very good example of a degree taken on with deliberation, purpose, and professional complementarity, which is very similar to how I've been utilizing academia throughout my career. Your site mentioned you being from Canada initially, but having settled in Bristol, UK. As someone who has always been inclined towards moving to new places when the opportunity arises, I’m curious, what initially brought you to England, and what has kept you interested in remaining there?

JC: Ah yes. I was having a bit of an existential/identity crisis in university so I jumped at the opportunity to go on a study abroad year in Leeds to expand my horizons from my evangelical Christian upbringing. I started up the university comic book society there as a way to make friends, which I did - notably writer Rik Worth with whom I now make comics (and who also introduced me to his housemate, with whom I am now married). We moved to Bristol for my wife’s work, and it turns out the city has a thriving creative scene, where I met long-time colouring collaborator Owen Watts. So you could say it was a combination of religion, love, and comics… all the good stuff!

CBY: Ah yes - love; that's how I ended up emigrating, too. As an illustrator, you have a bold style; delivering firm ink work with a vivid approach to color. What tools and techniques have you adopted over the course of your career to arrive at your aesthetic? I’m often curious as to the blend of analog and digital in the workflow of artists, and you’ve mentioned using both traditional pen-and-ink with digital tools. Have you made any shifts in your style as you’ve tried out new methods or learned about new technology for your art?

JC: It’s remarkable how much of an impact one single pen can have on your style. I started out using a scratchy dip nib pen on my first comics, with lots of messy hatching. Then I switched to mainly using these brush pens that you can fill with different amounts of water and ink, which resulted in loose, brushy strokes and inky washes. Once I came across the Pentel pocket brush pen I haven’t looked back, and I’ve most recently added the Tombow Fudenosuke hard-nibbed brush pen for even tighter strokes, combined with some trusty Staedtler pigment fineliners. But it’s all been a trajectory of paring back the linework to focus on smooth, clean forms with spot blacks - all corresponding to an increase in cartooning.

I’ve dabbled with digital-only paintings and poster art, but with comics I like to keep it simple and stick with drawing physically on paper (you can’t beat it), which I then scan in to tidy up anything I missed and colour it in Photoshop (now Clip Studio Paint) using my Huion tablet. I prefer to limit myself to minimal, flat colours. And when I don’t do that myself, I send it over to my trusty friend Owen Watts.

And of course, you can’t underestimate the influence of artists you admire, and how shifts in who you’re into at any given time tracks onto changes in your own aesthetic. In addition to countless of my peers and pals who are a source of ongoing inspiration, the biggest influences on my current style are probably Fleischer and early Disney animation, Schulz, Watterson, Hernandez, maybe a touch of Miyazaki, Radio Times illustrator Eric Fraser, and Jason Lute’s masterpiece Berlin had an enormous impact on the way I draw from around the time I started working on Hocus Pocus.

CBY: To be honest, I didn't even read to the end of your response before I started searching up where to buy those pens, but coming back to your influences, you've cited some indispensable classics. Having written for The Journal of Science Communication and three recent publications with University of California, Merced you’ve also worked as an artist for the Eisner-nominated comic series Hocus Pocus: Magic, Mystery & The Mind with psychologist and magician Richard Wiseman, and aforementioned writer Rik Worth. Your career has involved navigating very different spaces in the publishing world, so I’m curious; what guides your collaboration? How do you devote your attention towards specific topics and decide which work to prioritize when you’ve clearly got a broad range of interests and ability to engage with topics that run from medical textbooks to journalism to wholly comic-focused publications? 

JC: I feel very lucky with my work, because I basically get to choose projects and subjects that interest me personally. It might be that the research is a topic I want to learn more about, or am already familiar with and now get to turn into my favourite medium. Or it could present interesting technical or artistic challenges, like using the simplification of cartooning to draw clear, accurate and memorable medical diagrams. My guiding principle is basically, “am I going to be excited to sit down and draw this every day?” And it hasn’t really led me astray yet.

CBY: To follow that line of inquiry – across all the publications you’ve contributed to, which do you find to be the most fulfilling to work with from an editorial standpoint? Which do you find are most favorable in their remuneration or editorial support (and does that differ from their reach and the response you receive to the work)?

JC: Again, I’m really happy with this little niche I’ve found myself in, working with research projects. The sciences tend to have more of a budget compared to the arts, often with funds specifically ringfenced for “public engagement/outreach,” which is where comics come in. I’ve found that they are very trusting about my creative expertise and don’t try to get involved with what I can/can’t do, aside from being there to support me by answering questions, providing visual references, explaining something that’s unclear, checking a visual metaphor works etc.

Pets Tell Tales is my first time working with a traditional publisher, and I’m not sure how representative it is, but having come from a small press background I’ve been bowled over by having access to multiple editors and entire marketing and PR teams. Our editors have been fantastic and are basically there to enable us to realise our vision for the book in a way that will work best, and act as a third set of creative/professional eyes, rather than to tell us what to do (or are absent altogether, as I have also heard from some people’s experience).

CBY: Are there any creative collaborators or publications you’d like to work with given the opportunity? What sort of projects have you been building up in the background for which you’d like to find a home, or a team of people to help you flesh out ideas and create larger comics to bring to the public?

JC: As you can probably tell, I love working with researchers; I find it so stimulating to take a deep dive into whatever subject their expertise is in. So I’m happy to keep working with them until humans run out of things to study. I aspire to do something with organisations like Humanists UK or Trillium Gift of Life Network (organ donation) one day. But I’ve already got the best creative collaborator I could ask for in Rik. We share so many of the same intellectual interests and creative sensibilities. We’d love to do a book about Bigfoot (or Yeti!), UFOs, or a sort of history of the Devil. But there’s one idea for a graphic novel that we’ve had in our back pocket for years, which is about the real-life friendship and rivalry of Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini. It’s a big, complicated story centered around a personal drama that draws together all the different threads of what we care about. We had a few bites a while ago but have shelved it for now. One of the limitations of being self-employed is that I’m just one guy. So something I might explore in the future is putting together a sort of collective or consortium of several creators that would allow me to take on more projects. We’ll see… 

CBY: A creative cooperative wouldn't be a bad idea - the power of the firm is also its weakness; more capacity means more complexity, but it seems like you're highly capable of mapping complexity on the page, so I'd be keen to see the venture you pull together. You’re also an Associate Lecturer in Science Communication, actively practicing what you teach. As someone who has watched attention to my comic interviews generally outpace interest in my research outputs (relatively speaking, as neither get all the much traffic in the grand scheme of the global media landscape), what strategies do you share with your students around bridging the gap between these elements? What is most effective in connecting the two; capturing the imaginations of a broader readership, and disseminating findings?

JC: I have held that position at UWE (where I did my masters), but not for the past couple years. I’d love to supervise some more dissertation students in the future though, and in the meantime I’m happy to do the occasional guest lecture. To answer your question the best I can, though, I happen to find most research in science or history to be inherently interesting… which isn’t particularly helpful. But I think prioritising sharing that interest with other people is a great way to start to break down those barriers. Readers can pick up on your excitement, and that excitement can be contagious. Unsurprisingly, I think that comics are one of the best ways to do that, because they are visually exciting.

CBY: Excitement and enthusiasm go a long way (with the caveat of how possible wandering into mad scientist territory might be in trying to convey ideas at the edge of the Overton Window). Speaking of science communication – what are your favorite onomatopoeia phrases for various gizmos and gadgets across the range of technology you’ve depicted? (I can’t help but think of Scientific Progress Goes “Boink’” - the Calvin & Hobbes collection from Bill Watterson.) Have you had the opportunity to make up any new sound effects to describe phenomena or processes in your writing?   

JC: That’s a good question… nothing specific to scientific processes that I can think of. I tend to go for pretty straightforward sounds like, “bleep, boink, sploosh, whoosh” and am quite fond of using ordinary words like “nudge, click, wobble, gasp, barge!” etc. Easily the first thing to come to mind is from a one-page comic Rik and I did about a character from our first comic together, where he punches some goon in the mouth, knocking out some of his teeth. Beside one it says “TOOTH?” and the other “TEETH!” It’s not really even a sound effect but it made us laugh and still does. 

As for actually spelling out a sound, I’m probably most pleased with the low HNNNN of a pipe organ I drew in Hocus Pocus. My favourite sound effects are ones that are integrated into the panel itself, something Frank Quitely (for example) is a master at achieving.

CBY: That organ noise also masterfully works in notation on the bass clef, providing a visual reference point for an infrasonic frequency - a brilliant amount of information in a single panel. Working on a cross-disciplinary PhD., the intersection of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) with HASS (humanities, arts, and social sciences) is central to most of my work. I think of figures like Leonardo Da Vinci, Maria Sibylla Merian, John James Audobon when I consider individuals bringing science and research together in their art. In your opinion, who are the best artists amongst scientists, and scientists amongst artists? What’s the best synthesis of art and science you’ve seen hit the page?

JC: It’s not exactly a “page”, but my favourite art-science is the Voyager Golden Record, encoded with music, soundscapes, and imagery from our planet, sent out into the depths of interstellar space. It is such a beautiful example of creative thinking within an otherwise rigidly empirical framework, and how science itself is a cultural output that can have aesthetic value. I have the glyphic markings on its golden cover framed on my office wall.

I’d also have to say the cave artists. Those prehistoric men and women were masters of both creative expression and material experimentation, all in an attempt to better understand their world and themselves. Again, I have some of their ancient markings pride of place on my wall.

Some of the most numerous scientists who make art, and vice versa, I seem to come across are paleoartists - people who draw prehistoric life including dinosaurs. Just jaw dropping works of scientifically informed beauty, often communicating the latest technical findings, they really blur the boundary between who is a scientist and who is an artist. The amount of knowledge and skill that goes into each drawing is staggering.

CBY: Serendipitously, Hachette Children’s Group, publisher of your latest collaboration with Rik Worth, Pets Tell Tales: Ancient Egypt, called on the Yeti Cave around its release for some press coverage after I'd already reached out to you individually. This sounds like the promising premise for an open-ended series of animals exploring history. Perhaps I’m being presumptuous, but I can see why Hachette is putting it out into the world. What would you like our readers to know about this new publication?

JC: I would say Pets Tell Tales has been the most exciting and gratifying creative project of my life so far. It's a 200-page comic about life in ancient Egypt, as told by the animals who were there. On top of being a comic (i.e. - the best medium), Egypt is a perennially interesting subject, and looking at its history through the lens of animal characters provides so many unique opportunities for memorable storytelling and different (often literal) perspectives. I think the central pretense that, “humans don’t really know what’s going on so the animals are there to set things straight” is something that kids can really relate to. The world, run by ridiculous grown-ups, is often baffling. 

As well as providing the “big picture” of Egypt’s history from its origins to its decline, we also tried to venture off the beaten path a bit and talk about some maybe lesser-known aspects of Egyptian life - not just the gods, kings and conquests, but everyday people. What did they do for fun? What was it like to work as a labourer, marketplace worker, or farmer? And, crucially, explore the different ways humans and animals interacted along the way - from pet cats to sacred dung beetles and police baboons (it’s true)!

As a result, I think both kids and their grown-ups are going to love this. It’s ostensibly for readers 7+, but I genuinely made it as much with readers 30+ (me) in mind. Even if you’re already familiar with ancient Egypt, you might still learn something new or see it in a new way thanks to the narrative format. I poured everything into making every panel as visually accurate as possible for a black and white cartoon to be. Our aim was to create funny and heartfelt stories that are educational in a way that doesn’t feel like it - or better yet where the information is part of what makes it entertaining.

Pets Tell Tales: Ancient Egypt is out now and Rik and I have already finished Ancient Rome which is out in February, 2026. And we have ambitions to hopefully expand it into a larger series, depending on how well these two do. Humans and animals have coexisted throughout our entire history, so there are so many potential directions for it to go!

CBY: I'd love to see the relationship between humans and animals explored across the cultural landscape with our whole timeline for reference. Since we spoke a bit about your approach toward science communication at the tertiary level, Pets Tell Tales: Ancient Egypt instead aims at educating a younger audience over history, geography, and culture. I know writing requires different voicing to connect with different demographics, but as an illustrator, what particular ways do you find yourself adjusting your art style to appeal to a primary education readership?

Tragedy of the Commons

JC: Most of the things I’ve done have been aimed generally at “all ages” audiences, so the shift to specifically younger readers wasn’t much of a leap. That said, I was a bit nervous at first that maybe my style wouldn’t be simple or “silly” enough. Should I change the way I drew somehow to make it more appealing? But once I got started, I quickly realised that kids are smart and can tell if you try to pull a Steve Buscemi, “how do you do, fellow kids?” What’s going to appeal to them is authentic art that doesn’t condescend. And fortunately I can remember being a kid and what it felt like to stare at certain comic spreads or book illustrations for hours on end, so I was trying to replicate that feeling in myself as I drew.

I continued to push towards simplified and exaggerated cartooning, both for the sake of comedy and clarity. But I suppose the main thing I found myself adapting was the way Rik and I “comicked.” Clear storytelling was the priority, not flashy formal experimentation, which meant keeping the page layouts nice and straightforward so readers could focus on what was going on.

We’re already introducing a lot of information in the book as it is, and we were mindful that this might be the first comic some kids picked up, let alone still gaining confidence with reading in general, so we didn’t want to lose anyone to confusing panel structure of all things. That’s not to say there isn’t still plenty of cool comics stuff you can do! It’s just a new challenge… it was actually really nice to work on my “back to basics” chops.

Oh and of course I drew lots of bums and poo and prat falls, but I don’t need an excuse to do that.

Houdini & Doyle: A Certain Symmetry

CBY: Tarō Gomi's Everybody Poops has been around nearly fifty years, so I think the bar is set for young readers, and you know how to take things to the next logical step. We’ve talked about some of your work and varied influences, but to conclude, what sort of work from other creators (comics, films, music, literature, etc.) entirely unrelated to your own material have you been enjoying lately? What should our audience give a look after they check out your work?

JC: I read mostly non-fiction books, including comics, and most of my reading time over the past year has been devoted to visual research for ancient Egypt and Rome. But I’ve been really enjoying “The Illusion of Life” by Disney animation vets Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston about the fundamentals of imbuing lines on the page (or cell) with vitality. It’s an absolute trove of practical and theoretical wisdom from animation history. On second thought I guess that’s not entirely unrelated. The comic I’m currently reading is Miles Davis and The Search for The Sound by Dave Chisholm (Ed. - see the chat with Dave here). I watched Chinatown with Jack Nicholson for the first time since I was a teenager and subsequently re-watched it two more times. And I’ve been listening to a new record by the band Vulfpeck.

CBY: Jordan, thank you for the recommendations, and for making time to stop by the Yeti Cave! If you’ve got any portfolio, publication, or social media links you’d like our readers to check out, please feel free to let us know below! 

JC: Thank you so much. I’m currently in the process of rebuilding my website since leaving Adobe, which hosted my previous portfolio. But when that’s up and running it will be www.jordancollver.com 

In the meantime, my email is: jordan . collver @ gmail . com I share my art and works-in-progress on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/jordancollver.bsky.social

You can pick up a copy of my newest book Pets Tell Tales: Ancient Egypt here: https://geni.us/PetsTellTales

And pre-order Ancient Rome (out in February): https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/pets-tell-tales-ancient-rome-jordan-collver/c23214fddadb9867?ean=9781526366412&next=t&next=t

Hocus Pocus: Magic, Mystery & The Mind!  https://www.vanishingincmagic.com/ebooks/hocus-pocus-book/

Thanks again! Comics forever.

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