Writer-in-Residence - Shaun Richens

I'm happy to tell you all that Ben and his top shelf artwork isn't your only blast from the past this week.  As you've no doubt already gathered from the post title, your friend and mine Shaun Richens is back in town and is joining us for a few weeks as our next writer-in-residence.  But don't take my word for it:

Like all comic characters my death was never final, only a momentary absence from the scene. So once more I return to Thoughtballoons, and I can’t wait to write comics here again.

As with any returning character we’ll need to do a damn origin story -

So who am I?

I’m a dude who lives in London and thanks to it being so expensive to live here, I spend my evenings indoors making up stories and that I need try to convince much more talented people than I to bring to life with their art. So I am pretty much just you’re average comics writer. I’m lucky enough to work at Gosh! comics in London - so I’m pretty much 24/7 comics!

Why comics?

Because it’s the absolute best, right? It’s the only medium you can do anything in. Comics are the bastard love child of books and movies. They have all the best bits of both and the limitations of neither. If you want to do a universe spanning space opera you don’t need a hundred million dollars to make it. You want to do a slice of life story about running a factory you don’t need the greenlight, all you need in comics is the right collaborators and a vision and you’re away. With comics you don’t have to get permission to make something. It’s punk rock, it’s DIY - but at the same time it’s now the go to place for hollywood looking for the next big thing, but what they, and most people don’t realise is, it’s not the stories that are the next big thing - it’s the whole damn medium.

So that’s why comics - because it could never be anything else.

Where to find me?

We can find me Twitter @Shaunrichens - although I’m on a kind of self imposed exile from all social media whilst I try and break the back on my new writing schedule so it may be a bit of a Ghost town around there for a while.

I’d much rather you take a moment to read my previous work here at Thoughtballoons, just hit my name in the runs tab at the left and see my growth from amateur comics writer to a slightly better one.

Thanks for having me back.

And thanks to RKL for building the house we get to party in.

Shaun Richens.