ROMO 2, Week 13
Every Day is World Book Day around these parts!
“A vagrant’s tour across dairy pastures many moons ago.”
Hello,
As you have probably gathered by now, today - Thursday, March 5th, 2026 - is World Book Day! WA-HOO!
And we ARE!
A possibly lesser known fact, it’s a World Book Day within Will Eisner Week.
If you don’t know who Will Eisner is and was, then you really should. Get thee to a Google hencewith. Aside from being an early example of a comic book creator who did it all - the complete package (conception, design, writing, drawing, editing, right down to the lettering and colouring in many instances), he also led the field in terms of graduating from decades of a regular syndicated newspaper strip (The Spirit) and informational comics for the military (PS Magazine) and others, to graphic novels. A Contract With God* may not have been the very first ‘graphic novel’, but it certainly helped to establish and enshrine the term - even if it’s too widely used and somewhat misunderstood these days, since I’ve seen it applied even to a single-panel gag. It’s OK to call them ‘comics’, folks. That IS what they all are and will always be - whether in the form of cartoon strips, comics, graphic novels or manga.
*I still have my hand-signed copy of that book somewhere. He dedicated a note of encouragement to me as a young creator of about 17, and I treasure that advice.
Since I’m here to celebrate him this week, I’ll declare that I mostly do it because he was not only a sterling example but also a huge champion when it comes to Creator’s Rights. Way back into the 1940s he knew the difference between licensing your creations and selling or ceding the copyright on them into others’ hands. Amongst all of his contemporaries, such as the likes of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and almost everyone else right up until the present day, he was about the only one to retain all of his rights, and to benefit from doing so. The sad and tragic history of comics as a business, as a trade - one of gross exploitation - could have been very different if only more creators had paid attention and done as he did. Don’t waive or surrender your copyrights! ©
Luckily his work was also exemplary. So here’s to you, Will Eisner! The kid done good.
Today, for World Book Day, in partnership with the London Borough of Newham and most likely with the support of National Literacy Trust funding, I’ll be leading a workshop for two classes of local schoolkids in the Beckton Globe Library. ROMO the WolfBoy will be front and centre in my encouraging them to make use their lively imaginations and to let that guide their pencils and markers in creations of their own!
Did somebody mention ROMO?
Now that it’s March, I can tell you that ROMO the WolfBoy is their official Comic of the Month! YAY! <shower of confetti and - ouch! - was that a bottle-cap?!>
This is what they say about it:
“Like a winter fog, mystery and intrigue permeate every track and canvas flap of this travelling circus. So many questions and a fair few sleights of hand – even some sabotage! Then there’s the equally elusive question of ‘Romo’, their mute so-called WolfBoy whose past flights and frights flash no more than momentarily before his mind’s eye. How much will be revealed by this performance’s end?
“But let’s be clear why you’re here: ROMO’s like nothing I’ve clocked eyes on in comics. A cursory comparison could be Posy Simmonds for composition-with-text and the countryside, but that’s contemporary and most middle-class. This is like a vagrant’s tour across dairy pastures many moons ago. It is a heavenly parade of spectacle as the caravans circle, the circus tent’s hauled heavenwards and they travel to town to broadcast their arrival. It’s more like a melee at times (it would be if one voice had its way), and I love the way that our performers are picked out from the crowds by colour, and the use of light at night, torches flaming gold against the predominant blue.
“The choreography is impeccable as the clowns abound, the trapeze swings with ease and a musician beats on his big bass drum. There’s nothing like pencil lines for loose, flowing movement. And then (again) there’s Romo himself, as lithe as you like, perching, pouncing, giggling and frowning, for he spots more than most, even if he doesn’t quite understand what’s going on.
Targeted at early teens, I know that they won’t have seen anything like this before – not the content and certainly not the insane energy level and if it is, for us, a tad over-wordy when we wanted to race on, that smacks more of a creator firing on 5 million billion cylinders, releasing everything boiling and roiling inside them before they burst.
And no one wants bits of burst creator congealing on their kitchen walls.
Page 45 Comicbook Of The Month, Ladles and Germs.
Now, I appreciate that this is meant to be a production blog for Book Two. And I’ve been remiss given all the necessary hoohah around the retail launch for Book One and all of the duties that entails. But I’m both out of time and space to show much more this episode. So please keep those dials where they are and be sure to Tune In NEXT WEEK, when I’ll be sharing New Artwork and Some Exciting New Developments!
Just today, on World Book Day, ace comics creator Tony Salmons wrote on Facebook:
“Weird thing I lived with my entire life. As I learned to draw and earn my own voice in Comics I dragged one foot often. I was concerned that I would get so far from Kirby (some others) and Fun Comics that I would lose my awe and esteem for them.
It turned out just the opposite. Everyday my appetite for Comics is reborn and gratified.”
An image by Tony Salmons - nothing if not ace stylist and a true original.
And I replied to his post with this :
“I still love and collect comics of almost every stripe. I am in love with THE FORM. Its myriad modes of expression. A whole still new and relatively young global language to explore. New discoveries Every Day."
“I was worried that working in comics would as you suggest despoil my love of them. The biz certainly sucks the big one, and so one would think that myself - or Mr Salmons - could and would fall out of love with the form. But I still devour them on a daily basis, even more than I did as a kid, and after 40 years of basic survival in making them myself. So well said and AMEN, Tony. AMEN!”
Celebrate World Book Day by reading a comic… or graphic novel, or a manga…
I LEAVE THE LAST WORD TO…
Will Eisner’s Drawing Board. The mucky pup.