Don’t Myth This: Previewing John Reppion And PJ Holden’s ‘Fascinating Folklore’

I already told you how good the combination of John Reppion and PJ Holden was with the webcomic weekly Folklore Thursday – now they’ve expanded them and are releasing them in the new Fascinating Folklore collection.

This is what artist PJ Holden has to say about the new collection…

“It’s a collection of the #folkloreThursday comic strips I drew based on tweets by John Reppion (from 2019 to 2020). The collection brings in the full year run and alongside each comic there’s an essay by John on the folkloric elements all beautifully designed by the gang at Liminal 11 – they’ve put together a great “pick up and read a random page” book.”

And as for what that all looks like, here’s two spreads from the book for you…

It’s released on November 9th and you can pick it up through all the usual outlets, comic shops and online.

Like I say, it all comes from Reppion and Holden’s Folklore Thursday strips, published through 2019 and 2020. They take so many different aspects of folklore, British, Irish, and global, and give us wonderful little strips to explain them, to fascinate us, to intrigue us. It was great on Twitter, it’s looking even better here in this new collection.

The folklore explored goes all the way back in history, the sorts of things deep-rooted into our cultural and societal psyche, and also goes deep into modern folklore.

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the tweets at the time, the exploration of folklore is always fascinating of course, but it’s the more modern elements that they’re exploring that really work for me. So alongside things like Jack in the Green, witches, Boudicca, Grendel, and more, we also see things like that Easter Bunny strip, delving into the ideas involved in the creation of certain aspects of folklore that happened over time. And then we have the really modern aspects of folklore, such as the magnificent tale of Seymour Cray (yes, he of the supercomputers) possibly believing in Elves – or something very close to home that many of us here in the UK will remember from the playgrounds of our childhood.

And alongside Reppion investigating so many intriguing elements of folklore, ancient and modern, we have PJ Holden’s artwork, a dynamic thing, adapting to every tale with something new, something fresh, no tale looking anything like the other.

It was a great thing online, but it was a wonderful surprise to find out that this one was coming out in a new collection, and especially as it’s one that looks so damn good.

Like I say, the book’s out on 9th November from wherever you get your comics. Order it now and then head over to the Reppion/Moore site, PJ Holden’s site, and follow them at @johnreppion @pauljholden.