We’ve survived 2024!

This year has been a rollercoaster, with some ups and downs across the board. As is tradition, we’ve got a review of the year in numbers, though things are little bit more chaotic than usual. Let’s dive right in!

Our numbers are chaotic, but for now let’s focus on the one big thing that we didn’t get to address in last year’s review: the January announcement of When The Blood Has Dried! As a collective, we’d been sitting on that news for a long time, and 2024 became the year to celebrate Gary’s remarkable achievement and the beginning of his relationship with Mad Cave Studios. (And this just in – it’s been included in the Irish Examiner’s list, Best of the year in comic books and graphic novels! 

Now, the numbers game.

New Members of Limit Break Comics

Last year, we published the first book by someone not officially in the collective. This year, we sent out invites to some comics friends to join the family.

To celebrate our sixth birthday, we brought James Killian, Mari Rolin, Alice Coleman and Colin O’Mahoney into Limit Break! The date coincided with DCAF in July, and so Paul and Mari spent the day with their phones buzzing with reactions to the news on social media. (Sorry Mari, the ‘collaborator’ function on Instagram will do that!)

You’ll have seen them all in our books in the past. James has worked with Paul on a number of short stories – including a story in Turning Roads – and has been in each anthology to date. Mari and Colin have worked together on shorts for the anthologies as well, showing us what a good pair can do in the world of comics. And Alice’s letters have popped up repeatedly – and will continue to do so! – ever since Seamus joined us in 2022.

We’re thrilled to have them with us. (And we’ll talk about them more a little bit later!)

Media Appearances

With When The Blood Has Dried on the shelves this year, two attempts at a Kickstarter, and general news popping up, we had a grand total of 15 media appearances in 2024, and two seasons of our very own podcast!

Paul had two appearances on FM104 during the year – the first to mark the 6th anniversary of Limit Break and the introduction of the new team members, and the second for the second attempt at funding Wish Upon a Star on Kickstarter. He also had a live radio appearance on Phoenix FM for Wish Upon a Star. As is typical of these sorts of things, a lot of focus goes to questions like “what is a comic collective?” and “what’s the comic industry like in Ireland?”

Gary’s own appearances included a text interview with Broken Frontier, a piece in the Sunday Mail in Ireland, and 9 podcast interviews, all promoting When The Blood Has Dried to a local and international audience.

Part of the promo began at home, with the launch of The Nth Panel Grid – our very own comics podcast!

Season one focused on Gary’s book, with Paul in the interviewer’s seat for five episodes. That was followed by a second season, in which Paul interviewed a few of the creators of Wish Upon a Star, and interviewed Andy Oliver for a special episode all about Small Press Day. You can expect to hear more from us on the podcast in 2025.

Event Spaces

Somehow, we managed to attend more events this year than last.

With two MegaCons, two Dublin Comic Cons, and four DCAFs, our calendar was already pretty full. Throw in our MCM London debut, Gary’s signing at New York Comic Con, and Mari’s debut at CCXP in Brazil, among a host of others we love to attend each year, and we reach 16 events. (Plus a signing or two for Gary!)

Two big highlights for us were Thought Bubble – our favourite event of the year, now and forever – and Octocon. Paul chaired the convention for the last time, and Gary was a Guest for the first time! (Paul may have had something to do with it, but didn’t make the decision without consulting the committee first.)

Our big list also doesn’t include the five days that Paul spent at Glasgow 2024, as his Limit Break hat was only partially on – he was also representing Octocon, and recruited half his guests for the convention while in Glasgow!

New Books to Print

With some Kickstarter issues this year, we only put one comic to print in 2024, along with two zines.

Limit Break Presents #2 is our only core title for the year, but it’s one that allowed us to properly introduce James, Alice, Mari and Colin in a much more inclusive way than just an announcement.

Accompanying the book are two DnD-related zines by Paul: This Party is a Coven and This Party is Assembled, respectively inspired by Agatha All Along and Avengers. (Paul would like to remind people that DnD is his personality now.)

New Books Outside of Limit Break

While things were slow under the LB roof, the team was part of six books published this year!

We’ve already spoken quite a bit about When The Blood Has Dried, but when Gary wasn’t promoting his fantasy debut, he was translating Flash Gordon into Irish! The comic was published weekly in The Echo in Tallaght, and has been collected in TASQ Force.

Paul breached the barriers around the literary world – thanks to a special invite by Ruth McKee – to write about comics in The Irish Writers Handbook 2025. He was also part of the launch event at Chapters Bookstore in Dublin for Irish Book Week 2024, which we believe is the only organised inclusion of comics in the week. (Maybe we can change that for 2025!)

In November, Secrets of the Majestic graced the halls of Thought Bubble and the toilets of The Majestic in Harrogate. The book was co-edited by Chris Mole and Gary Moloney, and included a story by Paul Carroll and Lane Lloyd, and print art by Gareth Luby (with colours by Paul). A display was up in the hotel about the book. We aren’t making this up.

Kill Your Idols is a new book from James Killian, written by Alex Bennetts. It was published just in time for Thought Bubble, and announced just a few days before the convention. If you like music and crime, it’s your jam. Pun intended.

Chaotic Neutral crowdfunded towards the end of the year, with Mari Rolin on art with writer Rodrigo Ortiz. The story has been unfolding as a webcomic since 2020.

Here’s to 2025

Despite its challenges, 2024 has set us up to look ahead with some optimism. Developments in social media (hi Bluesky, we love you) have made things slightly less stressful, the podcasting plan allows for greater sociability with creators in the anthologies, and the newsletter is easier to fill with more people working on it.

In the background, Paul has been developing plans for future anthologies, as well as surveying people on the state of comics anthologies. The Report from that will help to inform things going forward, particularly as far as crowdfunding is concerned.

2025 will see the publication of Wish Upon a Star and, with some luck, Meouch #3 – the inks are coming along swimmingly! And that’s just to get us started.

We’ll have more news in the near future, but for now we’re excited to getting back to making comics, and to sharing some exciting stories in 2025.

Happy holidays,

Paul, Gareth, Gary, Seamus, James, Mari, Alice and Colin