Gareth Hopkins has always gone his own way in comics – which has always made his books like Petrichor and Explosive Sweet Freezer Razors amongst the most interesting to read. Gareth has now come together with his daughter Martha to create a new publishing imprint, Absolute Collider. 

The press has published works featuring art by Gareth and Martha as well as writing from rapper Andrew Mbaruk and writer Kate Dowling. You don’t even need to feature anyone bearing the surname Hopkins to appear and the book Shedding by Anastasia Hiorns became the first such to appear.

The Absolute Collider books are diverse then, but do share an aesthetic sensibility. Gareth is known for his abstract illustrations, with shape, form and colour setting tone and mood for his books. This can be seen in his book ‘A Dream of a Beach During a Storm in Winter’. Use of pale blue, black, green and sea-grey colours form a palette which provides the raw, salty roar of an angry ocean and accompany his minimalist words (“skybound, seabound…seethe of black sand”) perfectly.

Panjabear and When It Looks Like I’m Thinking I’m Not by Martha Hopkins move from fridge-door abstraction to more developed work with tone and emotion from dark slashes to happy bubbles. Cacophony by W.G Hopkins is a sleep paralysis nightmare of a story with suitably eldritch art by Gareth.

A favourite of mine was Atlas with Vancouver based rapper Andrew Mbaruk. You can listen along to Andrew’s track on bandcamp while you read the comic, which actually works really well. A reflection on art, ego, race and religion – or at least that is how I took it. It is illustrated by Gareth in swirling explosions of colour, organic folds and layers that birth trees and people.

Kynance is another collaboration, this time with writer Kate Dowling. A story of memory and home brought to life with sounds we can’t hear but echo in our own thoughts and consciousness. Gareth’s art is like the unfurling dream, unreachable and without form, settling into house-shapes and window-visions.

In the spirit of innovation, Shedding is a work in ink and thread by artist Anastasia Hiorns. With an old diary as a canvas, it tells a tale of a sort, featuring panels and speech bubbles. But the speech bubbles are empty and the maybe-beings who inhabit the panels are amoebic shapes. It makes no concessions and is very much a bring-your-own-interpretation comic.

Well, I did say it was a diverse array of books and there are lots I have not even mentioned. Catch Absolute Collider at Thought Bubble ‘23 or online. They very much live up to their claim ‘We make what we want to. And then we print it.’.