William Blake’s Comic Book Origin Story

Posted in: Comics | Tagged: John Riordan, london book fair, Nemonie Crayen, william blake

London Book Fair 2026: William Blake’s 300 page comic book origin story by John Riordan, represented by Nemonie Crayen

One of the biggest scenes at the London Book Fair 2026, and one that needs extra security to get past, denied to a senior member of Publishers’ Weekly team yesterday, is access to the literary agents’ tables. Rows upon rows of agents, gathered in one place, here to do deals with authors, artists, publishers and other agents.

This year, I noted that agent Nemonie Crayen Roderick, director of Jonathan Clowes Literary Agents is looking for a publisher for one comic book creator telling the story of one of the great inspiring writer/artists, as Hitsville creator John Riordan is creating a 300-page graphic novel telling the “origin” of William Blake, called Los.

John Riordan is a Blake Society trustee and art director of its journal, but their best association is from the old Time Out weekly comic strip, William Blake, Taxi Driver, which John Riordan wrote and drew for two years, in which William Blake was somehow resurrected as a London taxi driver, ferrying the great and the good across the capital.  In 2011, John Riordan enrolled in a one-year MA in Illustration at Camberwell College of Art and in the middle of austerity and Occupy camping out in the churchyard of St Paul’s, he created for his course. Capital City, which won an award from the Association of Illustrators. And now he is going for Blake again.

John Riordan told the Blake Society in 2022, “My current Blakean endeavour is to write and draw a graphic novel biography of Blake’s life. I want to explore how the life feeds into the work, how Blake’s domestic and commercial life fed (or frustrated) his Imagination. I have given it the tentative working title of Los.

And he has been serialising that graphic novel on Substack, currently across eight posts, the last one posted yesterday for the start of London Book Fair. Might that be timely and fortuitous? He writes, “I love Blake (1757-1827, in case you’re wondering) for the same reason that I love comics – the magic that happens when you combine words with pictures! Though he’s probably best known as a poet, Blake was equally a poet and visual artist. He made his living, such as it was, as a freelance engraver, and his poems were originally published as lavish artworks, drawn and handwritten (backwards!) on to copper plates, then printed and handprinted by William and his wife, Catherine, and issued in limited numbers, each copy unique.”

“This reminds me an awful lot of comics, and once I had the blindingly obvious idea of telling the story of Blake’s tragic, inspiring and wonderful life as a graphic novel I couldn’t leave it alone. Blake, of course, was also fiercely independent. In his epic illustrated poem, Jerusalem (confusingly not the same thing as the hymn of the same name) he wrote ‘I must Create a System, or be enslav’d by another Mans / I will not Reason & Compare: my business is to Create’. Uh-oh! Passionate, uncompromising Blake tends to attract similarly ardent fans!”

“I want to do Blake justice then, more Wolf Hall than a whistle-stop guide. Obviously I’m going to do the visions (stay tuned for angels, ‘God’ at the window, psychedelic Old Testament prophets and more) but I also want to explore how the life and work of this visionary artist developed out of the tumultuous period and culture in which he lived, when politics, religion, literature, art and science were all turned upside down. This means spending more time with William, his family and friends, and in the unforgiving world of graphic novels/comics time means space, hence 300 pages!”

“Another reason I invoke the ambitious comparison of the greatly missed Hilary Mantel is that I don’t quite buy the ‘Everyone knows this isn’t what really happened!’ line regularly trotted out by writers who have taken HUGE liberties with the historical record. There is lots that we do know and quite a lot that we don’t, about the life of Blake, but I’ve gone great pains to avoid moving the order of events, inventing characters or combining historical characters. Having said that, this will ultimately not be a lecture of a dry biography, it will be an Imagining, my Vision of William Blake. Below I’ve posted the first twelve pages for free, then it’s subscribe to imbibe.”

Happy to share, and I hope John Riordan has a successful London Book Fair. Because it looks like that futurity may be upon us any day now, at least if Nemonie Crayen has anything to say about it… and might we hear an Alan Moore back cover quote in the offing?

For notes on these pages, check the Substack…

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