Panel Borders – Panel Borders and other podcasts

Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration: In this month’s Panel Borders, Alex Fitch looks into and around the new Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration. Interviewees include Lindsey Glen, Director, Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, MURUGIAH discussing his solo show in the Centre, and Paul Gravett chatting about curating the opening sequential art exhibition Queer as Comics.

Shorter edit originally broadcast on Resonance FM, on Weds 1st July 2026

For more download formats, and to stream the podcast, please visit archive.org

Links: Info about exhibitions at Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration

Fantastical Worlds: In this month’s Panel Borders, Alex Fitch talks to a quartet of creators who make comics about Fantastical Worlds. In a panel discussion recorded at Thought Bubble Festival 2025, Donya Todd (The Witch’s Egg), Linnea Sterte (World Heist), Dave Cook (Killtopia), and B. Mure (Ismyre) discuss creating strange new worlds to tell stories inspired by real world conflicts and personal experiences.

Shorter edit originally broadcast on Resonance FM, on Weds 1st April 2026

For more download formats, and to stream the podcast, please visit archive.org

Links: Info about B. Mure’s Ismyre comics

Fighting for Independence: To celebrate Women’s History Month, Alex Fitch talks to a trio of female creators whose recent work depicts characters struggling for independence. The Rickard Sisters chat about their latest graphic novel This Slavery, which adapts a Romance novel by Ethel Carnie Holdsworth featuring a fiery Marxist-feminist polemic. Also, animator turned cartoonist Liza Cooper discusses her series of books about Meems and Feefs – a pair of naughty ferrets from outer space. Both Q and As were recorded at Cartoon County in Brighton.

Shorter edit originally broadcast on Resonance FM, on Weds 4th February 2026

For more download formats, and to stream the podcast, please visit archive.org

Links: Publisher SelfMadeHero’s page on This Slavery

Creepy Adaptations: In a belated Halloween episode of Panel Borders, Alex Fitch talks to a trio of creators about their work on creepy adaptations. Graphic novelist, Lucy Sullivan, and film director, Dylan Southern, have worked together on The Thing With Feathers, an adaptation to screen of Max Porter’s award-winning 2015 novella. Lucy has created new comic book art for the film, shown as the work of lead character – played by Benedict Cumberbatch – who’s trying to capture on paper a nightmarish crow that continuously haunts his dreams.

Shorter edit originally broadcast on Resonance FM, on Weds 5th November 2025

For more download formats, and to stream the podcast, please visit archive.org

Links: Daniel Bell’s Comics, including his ‘bigcartel’ shop

Inspired by the Twentieth Century: Alex Fitch looks at the work of cartoonists influenced by the culture of the Twentieth Century. In a Q and A recorded at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, artist Juanjo Guarnido discusses his much loved anthropormophic graphic novel series Blacksad, and in a conversation recorded at Cartoon County, Digital Archivist Clair Waller discusses the British Cartoon Archive in Templeman Library, University of Kent and their current exhibition Laughter in the Long Twentieth Century.

The Lakes International Comic Art Festival returns to Windermere on 26th and 27th September, and the exhibition Laughter in the Long Twentieth Century rund until the end of October.

Shorter edit originally broadcast on Resonance FM, on Weds 17th September 2025

For more download formats, and to stream the podcast, please visit archive.org

Links: Juanjo Guarnido and Blacksad

Comic Book Team-Ups: Alex Fitch talks to a trio of creators about their collaborative work. Matt Wakeham discusses writing and compiling the new coffee table book of Phoo Action, a cult comic by Jamie Hewlett that Wakeham wrote the second series of and adapted for television, which was originally serialised in The Face magazine. And in a panel discussion recorded at Thought Bubble festival, Alex chats to Blake and Tini Howard about working together on such comics as Punchline and Batman: Urban Legends, as well as the latter’s solo work on Harley Quinn and Excalibur.

Shorter edit originally broadcast on Resonance FM, on Weds 5th February 2025

For more download formats, and to stream the podcast, please visit archive.org

Links: Tini Howard’s Instagram site

Innovative Trans Cartoonists: In the second of two Pride themed episodes of Panel Borders, Alex Fitch talks to a pair of innovative trans cartoonists about their magical realist books inspired by autobiography. Artist and musician The Mollusc Dimension discusses his short story collection The Weird and Wonderful Surviveries of Squid Horse which sees the creator take on a variety of mollusc inspired identities to explore vignettes from the past, in an interview recorded at Cartoon County, Brighton. Steven Appleby discusses the creation of Dragman, a full length graphic novel by the acclaimed Guardian cartoonist, which mixes personal experiences of transphobia and awakening with an irreverent superhero narrative, in a Q and A recorded at Space Station 65 in London.

Shorter edit originally broadcast on Resonance FM, on Weds 2nd July 2025

For more download formats, and to stream the podcast, please visit archive.org

Links: Steven Appleby’s website and Instagram

Veteran Gay Cartoonists: In the first of two Pride themed episodes of Panel Borders, Alex Fitch talks to a pair of veteran gay cartoonists about their auto/biographical books on LGBTQIA+ history. Kate Charlesworth discusses Sensible Footwear: A Girl’s Guide published by Myriad Editions, which tells her history as a lesbian cartoonist, interwined with the history of notable queer lives in the 20th Century; David Shenton chats about his graphic novel Forty Lies – A Work of Ipsedixitism Published by Knockabout Comics, which mixes tongue in cheek autobiography with a chronicle of the gay community, in an interview recorded at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich.

Shorter edit originally broadcast on Resonance FM, on Weds 4th June 2025

For more download formats, and to stream the podcast, please visit archive.org

Links: Kate Charlesworth’s website

Fantastical Kickstarters: In this feature length episode, Alex Fitch chats to a trio of comic creators who are launching new titles on Kickstarter. Renowned comics creator Ilya discusses his new Graphic Novel Romo the Wolfboy, a beguiling tale of outsiders and intrigue in a Victorian Circus, Science Communicator Sara Kenney chats about her time travel / rave culture mash-up Acid Box, and Warped and Torn Comics’ Harrison Perry explores their latest title Atonement of a Monk, about MMA fighters in the 22nd Century, in a Q and A recorded at Cartoon County, Brighton…

N.B./ The Kickstarter campaign for Romo the Wolfboy ends at 8.50am BST, Thu, June 19th 2025

Shorter edit originally broadcast on Resonance FM, on Weds 7th May 2025

For more download formats, and to stream the podcast, please visit archive.org

Links: Info about Acid Box on Kenney’s website

First Graphic Novel Award 2025: In this month’s show, Alex Fitch hosts the launch event for the 2025 First Graphic Award. Available to any unpublished comics creator, the competition looks to providing the winner with a publishing contract for their first graphic novel. 2023 long listed and short listed artists Kelly Vassie and Myfanwy Tristram, discuss how being nominated has had an impact on their work, while Alex and Dr. Ian Williams reflect on their experience of being judges, and the kinds of entries that might do well. Introduced by First Graphic Novel Award founder and publisher Corinne Pearlman. Please note the deadline for entry is April 22nd 2025…

For more download formats, and to stream the podcast, please visit archive.org

Links: Info about the First Graphic Novel Award