Mark Stafford Brings Drunk and Drawn and Cannibalised! to Thought Bubble

Mark Stafford is taking two new small-format art books to Thought Bubble’s 20th convention, offering attendees two distinct routes into his recent work: one rooted in live drawing events and another tied to an upcoming computer game. Drunk and Drawn is an A6 collection of posters, while Cannibalised! is a B6 landscape book assembling concept and storytelling art created for Wolf & Wood’s forthcoming My Cannibal Family.

Both books are set to be available from Stafford’s table, C49b, in the 2000 AD Hall at the Harrogate Convention Centre on November 14 and 15. The two-book release is especially notable because it places a recurring comics-community project alongside development artwork for a game, rather than presenting either practice as separate from the other.

Two books, two sides of a working cartoonist

Drunk and Drawn gathers recent posters made for Drink And Draw events hosted by Stafford in London. These sessions take place at the end of each month at Gosh Comics, Broken Frontier and the Royal George pub. At A6 size, the book is positioned as a compact selection of promotional illustration produced around those gatherings.

The title identifies the book’s subject plainly, but the posters matter beyond the immediate event information they originally carried. Posters are designed to catch attention quickly: they need a clear visual hook, a readable idea and enough personality to make an invitation feel worth accepting. Collected together, they can also show how an artist treats a repeated assignment without making every piece feel identical. In this case, the collection provides a focused record of Stafford’s recent work around a continuing social and drawing practice.

The second book heads in a markedly different direction. Cannibalised! is described as a randomized look at artwork Stafford produced over the last couple of years for My Cannibal Family. Its B6 landscape format contains concept art and storytelling work, both terms that are useful to separate when considering artwork made during game development.

Concept art is visual development work used to explore how a project may look, feel or communicate its ideas. It can include characters, places, props, mood pieces and possible visual directions. Storytelling art, meanwhile, concerns how information is arranged and conveyed through images: a sequence, a scene, a moment of action or an implied narrative beat. The supplied details do not establish exactly which kinds of pieces appear in Cannibalised!, but its framing promises a view into both the exploratory and narrative-facing sides of Stafford’s contribution.

The word “randomized” also sets an expectation that this is not necessarily a linear production diary or an exhaustive archive. Rather, it is a selected peek at a body of work. For readers interested in the path between standalone illustration, comics craft and game art, that distinction is worthwhile: a book of development material can illuminate ideas and visual processes without claiming to document every stage of a game’s making.

What is known about My Cannibal Family

Cannibalised! draws from work made for the forthcoming Wolf & Wood computer game My Cannibal Family. That connection makes the book a companion piece to a project still on its way, not a retrospective built after a finished release. The available information confirms Stafford’s art was created across the last couple of years and that the volume includes concept and storytelling material. It does not specify the game’s release date, platforms, gameplay systems or the precise role of each piece reproduced in the book.

That uncertainty is important for prospective buyers. The book’s appeal is clearly in its art and in the window it provides on a collaboration, rather than in a promise of a definitive guide to the game. Fans who want to follow game-development news more broadly can also see how other PC projects are taking shape, including the announcement of Beholder 4 for PC.

Stafford’s comics background gives the My Cannibal Family material additional context. He is a London cartoonist and a longtime artist-in-residence at the Cartoon Museum. His collaborations include Cherubs! with Bryan Talbot, and Lip Hook, The Man Who Laughs and The Bad Bad Place with David Hine. Those credits describe a career that already crosses illustration and comics, making a small book focused on game artwork a natural extension of a varied output rather than an isolated detour.

Thought Bubble’s setting matters

The books will arrive at Thought Bubble during the festival’s twentieth edition. The convention itself takes place on November 14 and 15 at the Harrogate Convention Centre, following a week of festival events across Yorkshire. Thought Bubble is a UK comic-art festival spanning comics, illustration, animation and related work, with its convention focused especially on comics creators and supportive of small press.

For a release such as these, that emphasis is practical as well as cultural. Small art books are often most compelling when an artist can put them directly in front of readers who already care about drawing, printed objects and independent publishing. A convention table lets visitors encounter both books side by side, see their different physical formats and connect the projects to Stafford’s wider body of work.

Thought Bubble began in 2007, founded by Yorkshire artist Lisa Wood, also known as Tula Lotay, as part of the Leeds International Film Festival. Its first event was held in the basement of Leeds Town Hall on November 10, 2007, with a few hundred attendees. The convention later moved from Leeds to Harrogate in 2019, following the need for more room and issues involving Leeds City Council. That growth provides useful context for the current edition: a festival that started as a local effort to raise comics’ profile now provides a substantial meeting point for artists, publishers and readers.

How the new books fit Stafford’s bibliography

The new pair should not be confused with Stafford’s larger collection Salmonella Smorgasbord, published by Soaring Penguin Press. That earlier volume collects work across decades, including strips, illustrations, posters, beer labels and other material, with contributions from David Hine and Bryan Talbot. It remains available through Amazon.

Where Salmonella Smorgasbord surveys a broad range of output over a long period, the two Thought Bubble books are narrower, recent and project-led. Drunk and Drawn concentrates on the poster work orbiting an ongoing set of drawing events. Cannibalised! concentrates on art created for a particular forthcoming game. Neither is presented as a replacement for the larger collection; together, they instead offer two compact slices of Stafford’s current activity.

That contrast may help visitors decide what each book represents. Someone drawn to event posters, social drawing culture and concise graphic work may find the A6 Drunk and Drawn the more direct choice. Someone interested in art made in the course of developing a computer game may be more interested in the B6 landscape Cannibalised!. Readers following Stafford’s work across media may see the strongest appeal in the pair as a set: one volume reflecting public-facing community events, the other revealing material from behind the scenes of a forthcoming game.

What attendees can plan around

• Creator: Mark Stafford.
• Books: Drunk and Drawn and Cannibalised!.
• Location: Table C49b, 2000 AD Hall.
• Convention dates: November 14-15.
• Venue: Harrogate Convention Centre.
• Formats: Drunk and Drawn is A6; Cannibalised! is B6 landscape.

No price, print quantity or wider retail plan is stated for either new book. The confirmed purchasing opportunity is Stafford’s Thought Bubble table. For collectors who value clearly defined context, that makes the essentials straightforward: these are two small, recent art books with separate subjects, brought directly to a creator-focused convention by the artist who made them.