The Historical Comics Collective

Comic book creators who specialize in historical fiction & historical nonfiction.


⬆️ Illustration by Sierra Barnes.

Members of the Collective

In alphabetical order by last name.


Tantz Aerine

Paul Axel

Sierra Barnes

Richard Cowdry

Harper Crane

G. E. Gallas

Riley Hamilton

Esin Köseoğlu 

Jonah Newman

Erik Thurman

Matthew Wilding


Scroll down for more information!


Tantz Aerine

She/Her 🇬🇷🇨🇦


Tantz Aerine (aka Tanya Maria Geritsidou) is a Greek-Canadian psychopedagogue, social scientist, novelist, and webcomic creator. Her poison of creative choice is political high fantasy and historical webcomics. She has received high praise for the high fantasy trilogy The Art of Veiling, a coming of age story of a young apprentice sorceress who suddenly has to deal with politics and machinations, for which there is no counter spell, and for the historical webcomics Without Moonlight, a war drama about Greek resistance and civilians during the occupation of Greece in WWII. When she's not making comics, Tantz frustratedly watches people who don't know history, repeat it.


⬆️ From Without Moonlight.


Paul Axel

He/Him 🇺🇸


Paul Axel has been writing comics since 2013 and his debut historical fiction murder mystery Rotten Roots. Since then, he's written across all sorts of genres, but his first love remains history and historical fiction. His latest work, The New Amsterdam Game: Gooseberry's Midnight Ride, is a sword-swinging spy action story set in Revolutionary New York City. You can find most of his work on GlobalComix at globalcomix.com/a/paul-axel or his website: paxelcomics.com. When Paul's not writing comics, he's teaching high school history and civics!



Sierra Barnes

She/Her 🇺🇸


Sierra Barnes is a historian-turned-comic-creator who currently lives in Washington, DC making webcomics and print comics based on history and folklore! She is particularly interested in the relationship between history, mythology, and memory, and her comics (including webcomic HANS VOGEL IS DEAD) reflect this. She has a BA in Germanistik and History, and a minor focus in Slavic Studies from the College of William & Mary, and an MFA in Comics from the California College of the Arts. When she's not making comics, you can usually find her haunting cafes and museums like a very nerdy ghost.



Richard Cowdry

No Pronoun Preference 🇬🇧


Richard Cowdry is a comic artist from England, now living in Berlin. He was lucky enough to win the ComicInvasionBerlin first prize award for 2020. He is writing and drawing a non fiction graphic novel about the weird and colourful history of fossil hunting way back in the years when people knew nothing about dinosaurs. He hopes to finish the book this year.



Harper Crane

They/Them 🇺🇸

Harper Crane grew up in the Pacific Northwest and graduated with an art degree from Portland State University. They are interested in exploring narrative in art through short comics, zines, and other sequential projects which they self-publish online. Harper works primarily in the realms of genre fiction, attracted to the way fantasy, horror, and science fiction allows for speculation into our past, present, and future. Along with comic making, Harper makes expressionism inspired paintings.

They're currently working on a gothic horror webcomic called Masonry of the Body set during the year of 1816's volcanic winter.



G. E. Gallas

She/They 🇺🇸


G. E. Gallas is a writer-illustrator best known for her graphic novels: The Poet and the Flea about the poet-painter William Blake and The Plague and Doctor Caim about a 17th-century plague doctor (Cast Iron Books).



Riley Hamilton

He/Him 🇨🇦


Riley Hamilton is a comics writer and letterer from Ottawa, Canada. While studying History at Queen's University, he joined the campus comics club and helped write and letter their first comic series, Gael Force. After graduating with a BA in History, Riley began writing his current series, SPQR, focusing on the lives and troubles of ordinary people throughout the breadth of Roman history. In his spare time, Riley can be found reading science fiction and questioning his choice of favourite sports teams.



Esin Köseoğlu

He/Him 🇹🇷


I'm Esin, a high school student who draws comics and illustrations as a hobby. I'm currently making Little Miss Allison Blue, a hi-fi dramedy webcomic, which focuses on a girl who is living through World War II. I'm heavily interested in WWII and the history of computing- and I think that can be seen through my webcomic.



Jonah Newman

He/Him 🇺🇸


Jonah Newman is a cartoonist and editor based in Brooklyn, New York. His comics include the webcomic Empire on Edge, a historical fiction drama set in Napoleonic Europe, and "Napoleon's Gay Minister," a comics biography of Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès. When he's not creating, editing, or reading comics, you might find Jonah playing softball, listening to history podcasts, or hanging out with his two kids (who are cats).



Erik Thurman

No Pronoun Preference 🇺🇸


Erik Thurman is an award-winning author/illustrator who specializes in comics journalism and nonfiction comics about current and historical events in Asia and North/South America, with a focus on social conflict, education, migration, and human rights.

In the past, Erik has investigated political kidnappings of university students in the Philippines, covered economic inequality and demonstrations in China, worked as a teacher in a South Korean orphanage to illuminate child abuse in neoliberal education, reported on migrant labor abuse and modern-day slavery in Qatar and India, went undercover to research human rights violations perpetuated by a multinational mining corporation in Latin America, and investigated the military cover-up of an assassination of an indigenous activist in the southern conflict zone of Chile.


He is currently working on a graphic memoir titled The American Immigrant -- a coming-of-age story of a former US soldier who goes abroad to pay off student loan debt by working as a teacher, but gets caught up in a decade-long battle against neoliberalism in education, rising global authoritarianism, and white supremacist fascism.



Matthew Wilding

He/Him 🇺🇸


I'm Matthew Wilding. I write comics and my day job is creating the programs, exhibits, and interpretation at Revolutionary Spaces, the stewards of Boston's Old State House and Old South Meeting House. I have upcoming history works, including a 6 issue story being illustrated by Matt Rowe called Free Hands. Free Hands is based in part on Daniel Defoe/Robert Johnson's General History of the Pirates and is informed by Dr. Marcus Rediker's work on the maritime world--particularly Villains of No Nation and Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.

I am also working on a few colonial American stories, including a short about British executions of deserters on Boston Common during the 1768-71 occupation.

My current work can be found at SequentialDecay.com. I also have a comic coming to stores through Source Point Press in May called Nightmare Man

⬆️ Here's a page from Free Hands



Submissions


Do you write, illustrate, and/or create historical fiction and/or historical nonfiction comics (webcomics, graphic novels, minicomics, zines, etc.)? Would you like to join The Historical Comics Collective? Email me, G. E. Gallas at gegallas@hotmail.com the following: 

  1. An illustration from and/or related to your historical fiction and/or nonfiction comic(s). 
  2. A 3-5 sentence blurb about you (i.e. a mini-bio). 
  3. Links to your website, where to read/buy your comic(s), or any other links you want under your profile (Twitter, Instagram, Linktree, etc.).

The Historical Comics Collective is 100% FREE to join! Please let me know if you have any questions.