As I said when we announced Broken Frontier’s 2025 ‘Six Small Press Creators to Watch’ list last week it’s a rare occurrence but every so often someone comes along with a debut comic so fully formed that you could be forgiven for thinking they had been working in the industry for decades. Chris King’s Cold Chips is one such comic. A short, slice-of-life story described by King as being “about kicking your heels on the North Yorkshire coast, sibling rivalry and……..Wolves!” Cold Chips is simply one of the most confident first-time self-published efforts I have seen in my nearly two decades of reviewing at BF.
It’s a story takes us back to those childhood days when being stuck with responsibility for a younger sibling could feel socially mortifying. That’s the situation teenager Terry finds himself in when his mother announces that he must look after his kid brother for the day. Traipsing around their small seaside town Terry’s guardianship largely consists of keeping as big a gap between himself and his brother as he can, and becoming irritated by how his presence scuppers plans with his mates. But an unlikely encounter will prove pivotal, and reveal to Terry just where his priorities really lie…
This is work that is less about plot and more about sharing experience. In the boys’ journey through their local surroundings King gives us something more psychogeographical in approach. It’s not about describing or analysing this environment that is full of echoes to its past glories, wistful nostalgia, and an almost anachronistic desire to hold onto dying traditions. Instead it’s about immersing us in it. Every single image feels like it is bursting with its own stories and anecdotes ready to be revealed.
Colour plays a huge part here in communicating these ideas while King knows exactly when to zoom in and zoom out in terms of perspective in order to ramp up emotion or bring us back to the slightly weary surroundings of a decaying tourist attraction. There’s a key change of tempo in the story which is for you, the readers, to experience firsthand but when it happens the complexity but also the subtlety of King’s use of body language is first rate in terms of visual characterisation.
King has more stories to come set in this storytelling world and there’s one small group of characters who we are introduced to here who may or may not be intended for further appearances. In the meantime Cold Chips is once again available from Chris King’s online store. Let’s make it sell out a second time.
Chris King (W/A) • Self-published, £7.00
Review by Andy Oliver
