THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH 2024! 10 YEARS OF THE BF SIX TO WATCH! Alba Ceide’s Tall Tale is one of the stories you can read in this year’s WIP Comics two-book release Tall Tales & Short Stories (look out for a full review of that later in our Thought Bubble Month 2024 coverage) but the 2021 Broken Frontier Six to Watch artist will also be debuting her own one-off edition of the comic strip at TB in its own very tactile format.
Leaning heavily into the idea of the “tall tale” as an exaggerated or outlandish version of actual events, Alba Ceide’s Tall Tale begins with an everyday autobiographical commuter story. Enduring a class of mildly annoying school kids on a tube train carriage becomes something more serious when the adults supervising get off and leave one pupil behind. Realising she has to reunite pupil with teachers our on-page version of Alba sets off on her mission.
In the process, though, the child’s stuffed rabbit toy is left behind in the c onfusion. Or is he? Because, as events progress and get wilder and wilder, commuters begin to take on anthropomorphised animal forms and the forgotten rabbit becomes hunter, stalking his prey…
Let’s focus on that presentation first before moving back to narrative. Bound up with a bow, Alba Ceide’s Tall Tale opens up into a downwards-unfolding concertina comic strip. Each page provides a landscape-style reading experience with the minicomic allowing you to choose whether you simply flip each couple of strips over or pull the whole thing out into one long elongated comic. It’s an intriguing experiment and one that changes the way the reader interacts with the story.
In its book format in Tall Tales & Short Stories, for example, the chaotic nature of the strip in tighter, multi-panelled form gives it a more animated and frenzied feel. In the self-published one-off version the reader is more likely to find themselves pausing and spending more time on each sequence, the page-turn inviting us to linger and absorb more of the details before moving onto the next segment. And the use of colour here is, quite frankly, sublime. A lovely story of unlikely encounters and childhood imagination.
Alba Ceide’s presentation on the comic at the Autobán comic fair in Spain
It remains a mystery as to how Alba Ceide’s profile in indie comics isn’t far more pronounced than it currently is. This is a fun, frenetic story with an innate charm but it’s Ceide’s visuals, as ever, that really stand out. One of the finest cartoonists currently active in UK comics the sheer energy of her art is always a delight. It’s the kind of work that if pitched at the all-ages market you could easily see as being a perfect fit for Monster Fun, The Phoenix or the Beano. But it lends itself to more weighty subject matter as well, as anyone who has read her ecologically-themed Earth Blues comics can attest. If you’re unfamiliar with Ceide’s practice this is an essential buy at Thought Bubble this year.
Alba Ceide (W/A) • Self-published
Review by Andy Oliver
Visit Alba Ceide’s online store here.
Alba Ceide will be at Table C26b in the Travelling Man Hall at Thought Bubble.
Thought Bubble 2024 runs from November 11th-17th with the convention weekend taking place on the 16th-17th. More details on the Thought Bubble site here.
Read all our Thought Bubble 2024 coverage so far in one place here.
Art by Rocío Arreola Mendoza
