Hay Hay!

Festivals! Awards! Robots?

I was at the Hay festival in Hay-on-Wye last week, and boy oh boy did I have a lovely time! I posted about it on instagram and bluesky and stuff, but here is a kind of digest version for the long read crowd (i.e. the BEST people, i.e. you.)

Here’s me and my colleague Thiago De Moraes - an incredibly talented writer and illustrator and just an absolutely delightful person to spend a couple of days hanging out with in a field in Wales. We were doing a big theatre show with the brilliant (and equally lovely) Laura Ellen Anderson…

…and, as that picture gives a hint, it really was a BIG show. I don’t think I was quite braced for the size of the crowd; apparently we had been upgraded to a bigger venue because they had sold so many tickets? NOT TO BRAG, but:

…that’s right, Neil Cameron and friends got bumped up to the bigger venue at the expense of Penny Mordaunt and friends. Comics: bigger than Tory ex-cabinet ministers! (Was Penny Mordaunt a cabinet minister? I’ll be honest, I mostly just remember the big sword thing.)

Success! Fame! Okay admittedly people still can’t spell my name right, so not like FAME fame, but still.

Oh and later I got to go and do an incredibly rare thing for me, a Proper Grown-Up Author Event, where I got to sit in a CHAIR and everything!

Incredible scenes. I was interviewing the brilliant Astrid Goldsmith about her debut graphic novel The Crystal Vase, which I hugely recommend and which it was honestly a pleasure to have the chance to really dig into and talk about, with a creator as funny, thoughtful and perceptive as Astrid. Go check it out!

It was quite a warm day in Hay, to say the very least (my publishers had shipped the big donut costumes all the way there but in the end we were not allowed to have anyone wear them because it would have been so toasty inside as to constitute a THREAT TO LIFE), and in between those two events I sat and signed books in an incredibly hot and sweaty tent, without a break, for three straight hours. Which is kind of mad, but the truly mad part is the fact that that necessarily implies that some people stood in a queue, in an incredibly hot and sweaty tent, for three straight hours.

It goes against everything I stand for, but I am forced to conclude that these ‘donut squad’ things… might be getting a bit popular?

Anyway, thanks to all who came along, and who were unfailingly lovely and delightful despite having the atmospheric conditions. I met some fantastic families, including… THIS absolute legend of a dad:

Just to be clear, that is not a Donut Squad temporary tattoo. That is a Donut Squad TATTOO tattoo.

Absolutely incredible scenes. I think that is a world first? And, given the average age of our readership, probably a record that will / should stand uncontested for quite some time. AWESOME SPRONKY TATTOO DAD, we salute you.

Also! Speaking of donuts. Bit of news:

I am enormously excited to announce that Donut Squad Take Over the World has been SHORTLISTED FOR THE The Week Junior BOOK AWARDS!

…alongside this comprehensively STACKED line-up of ABSOLUTE LEGENDS:

Truly incredible. So many great comics and creators on that list. So, you know, there’s no way in hell I’m winning this thing, but just, as a fan of the art form: what a cool thing! What an amazing time we’re in right now for comics! And I get to be part of it. Honestly incredible. And apparently there’s an actual proper awards ceremony for this, so you know. That’s a fun night out? Which at my time of life and stage of boringness, is always something to celebrate in itself. Hooray!

UPCOMING EVENTS

This one’s just been announced: the aforementioned Thiago De Moraes, Laura Ellen Anderson and myself are getting the band back together, with BONUS SPECIAL GUEST ARTISTE the incredible Jess Bradley of Squid Bits fame (out as a book this week! Going to be HUGE, don’t sleep on it!) for another big Phoenix Draw-Off Spectacular type show, at the Bath Children’s Literature Festival. Details and tickets here!

THE MEGA ROBO CHRONICLES

Hey, here’s a bit of Mega Robo Bros news! The writer and critic Alasdair Stuart has posted the first part of a deep dive into the whole MRB series, over at Sci-Fi Bulletin:

It’s so cool to see. If you’ve haven’t yet met Alex and Freddy or explored their adventures, I think it gives a great sense of it and hopefully makes some people want to dive in!

Anyway, speaking of Alex and Freddy, let’s check in on them and see how they’re getting on in their housebound LOST ADVENTURES, from back in between books 7 and 8.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | And now… Part 6!

…that’s right, it was another format-busting one, where I broke the rules of the 4-panel grid. (I think this is the last of those. It’s almost like a knew, on some level, that one day in several years’ time I would be attempting to reformat these to work in a vertical-scrolling newsletter format, and they would be a total ball-ache? THANKS, Past Neill!)

Anyway: dive into the Mega Robo Bros series with this handy new linktree I made providing easy links to a bunch of places you can buy it! Enjoy!

GOOD COMICS

CRY WHEN THE BABY CRIES by Becky Barnicoat - a graphic memoir about becoming a parent that somehow does justice to the sheer scale of that experience in all its aspects, in that it is absolutely horrifying, incredibly funny, and profoundly moving. Incredible, and hugely recommended.

I would say this book should be mandatory reading for anyone thinking of having kids, but then… the human race MIGHT, just possibly, die out? It is *very* honest.

(That’s not fair, it is also very honest about the good parts, and the love. But it is possibly the body-horror-and-psychological-ruination stuff that will stay with interested childless readers.)

Also, just in terms of format, this thing is incredible. I think it might be the Future of Comics? And also possibly just the Future of Books, Generally? It’s really quite a thing.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

CONTEXT FREE DONUT SQUAD PANEL OF THE WEEK

Love to all my fellow creators, out here making Fun Entertainment for Children, in the year 2026.

Okay thanks bye xx