'LiveStock'.
Hannah Berry is a British comic artist who rose to notability through atmospheric mystery thrillers like 'Britten & Brülightly' (2008) and 'Adamtine' (2012), as well as the witty satirical dystopian graphic novel 'LiveStock' (2017). She is known for hiding meaningful details and amusing jokes in the panels of her longer adventure stories. Even though Berry works in a realistic style, this didn't keep her from creating magazine gag comics, such as 'Vox Pop' (2016-2017) in The New Statesman and 'Premeditations' and 'The Clapham Omnibus' in Prospect Magazine (2018-2021). For years, Berry has been an advocate of comics as a medium of self-expression and being more than just children's literature. Between 2019 and 2021, she was the U.K's third official Comics Laureate and also the first female artist to enjoy this honor.
Early life
Hannah Berry was born in 1982. Her mother was Ecuadorian and when her family moved to the United States, Berry went to a school in Maryland for a while. She also spent part of her childhood in Hampshire, near Basingstoke. With help from her grandfather, Hannah Berry learned the English language by reading comics. This gave her the insight that comics are a "phenomenal and almost untapped" literacy tool for people learning a foreign language. In a 5 July 2017 interview conducted by Thomas Giddens for the website comics.grid.com, Berry said: "(...) I think people when they're new to comics don't understand that it's not about writing a story and then illustrating it, it's about these two different languages and there's a kind of- this sounds incredibly twatish - there's a kind of friction between the two; they'll never be exactly corroborating with each other. There's something between the two: there's something in the dialogue which is different to the image, and between them they build up an extra level of understanding. The possibilities are incredible and I find that so exciting. Also, you can do so many things with the form as well that I think you can't do with other mediums. (...) I mean, you basically have access to all of time and space with comics, with the panels and the interface and the images and text and it's, oh it's so exciting! I could, I could do them forever. My goal is to try and get everybody to do comics. I'm really just here to proselytise."
'Britten & Brülightly'.
Hannah Berry studied illustration at the University of Brighton. Among her graphic influences are Nicolas de Crécy, Raymond Briggs, Juanjo Guarnido and Bill Watterson. She adores the films of Christopher Nolan, David Fincher and Joel & Ethan Coen and enjoys watching crime TV series such as 'Columbo', 'Murder She Wrote' and 'Diagnosis Murder'. After graduation, Berry worked as administrator at the probation service for 4 years. She had to format pre-sentence reports by offenders for the court. This gave her access into the background and crimes of all these suspects and made her realize that it bore little resemblance to what she had seen in crime series and films. At a certain point, she also worked at Blockbuster Video, which provided her with more inspiration for her first graphic novel.
Britten & Brülightly
In her spare time, Berry wrote and drew 'Britten & Brülightly' (Jonathan Cape, 2008). The book revolves around an Ecuadorian private detective, Fernández Britten, who feels remorse over spying and tar-and-feathering so many people over the years. He and his sidekick Brülightly try to find salvation by taking on a case which could actually make a positive change, rather than ruin his victim's career. They delve deep into the suicide of a certain Berni Kudos, whose widowed fiancée Charlotte has the feeling there was more to his death than depression. Trying to make a comic book all on her own during after-hours was already a daunting task. Yet Berry even went through a self-described "macho act" by hand-painting every panel. It was a painstaking process, but the end result justified the means. Her atmospheric noir-like tale captivated both readers and critics and was translated into French, Dutch, Italian and Serbian.
'Adamtine'.
Adamtine
Hannah Berry's next graphic novel, 'Adamtine' (Jonathan Cape, 2012), was also a mystery thriller, but with a darker turn. The story revolves around a mysterious serial killer, the "Postman", who terrorizes the country. Some people suspect Rodney Moon, who nevertheless denies being the notorious criminal. Yet there are strong hints that he is at least familiar with the killer, since he admitted passing on his notes to police inspectors. The plot thickens when Moon disappears. In the light of these events, the story follows four people on a train at night. When the vehicle suddenly breaks down, all other passengers vanish without a trace, leaving the four remaining travelers unsure of their fate. 'Adamtine' received excellent reviews and was praised as a disturbing psychological horror story, something most critics considered difficult to pull off in the comics medium. As a huge fan of the Japanese horror classic 'Ringu' (1998) and Emily Gravett's 'Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears' (Gravett, 2008), the author wanted to make something metafictional, where the medium itself becomes malicious. In some panels, for instance, one can see faces in the darkness watching the characters and also somehow watch the reader.
'Vox Pop'.
Magazine cartoons
In May 2016, Berry started publishing her gag comic 'Vox Pop' (2016-2017) in the weekly magazine The New Statesman. The comic was unusual in the sense that it had no recurring characters and addressed current events without being directly political or topical. Each episode featured a regular person delivering a monologue, often speaking directly to the reader. They are common people of all kinds of ages, sexes or races. Berry self-described 'Vox Pop' as a "weekly cartoon strip (...) about humans, because they are weird and wonderful."
On 31 August 2018, Berry launched her monthly gag comic 'Premeditations' in Prospect Magazine. Just like 'Vox Pop', the comic doesn't feature recurring characters, only different regular people in different situations, most of which involve some kind of revenge on others. The joy of reading 'Premeditations' is trying to figure out how the character will act out his or her premeditated payback. Berry often plays with the situation by stretching it out until the revelation in the final panel. During her tenure with Prospect Magazine (2018-2021), Berry also created another comic feature, 'The Clapham Omnibus'.
'Premeditations'.
LiveStock
In 2017, Berry published her third graphic novel, 'LiveStock' (Jonathan Cape, 2017). Contrary to her previous two books, 'LiveStock' was set in a nearby future when the government conducts human cloning. To legitimatize the experiments, they use the dim-witted pop singer Clementine Darling as a media distraction. The officials announce that her upcoming baby will need a heart transplant, which only human cloning can bring about. 'LiveStock' is a witty satire of government intrigue, corporate greed and celebrity culture. In a 22 May 2017 interview by The Herald Scotland journalist Teddy Jamieson, Berry said she was inspired by a conspiracy theory that U.S. President George Bush Jr. seemed to use sensational media stories about pop idol Britney Spears to overshadow any ongoing possible political scandal at the time. While she didn't believe the theory, it did give her an alibi to express her disgust about tabloid stories involving media stars and how the masses just eat it up. The British cartoonist Posy Simmonds praised 'LiveStock' as "engaging and timely, a rich brew of celebrity, menace, media-spin and human cloning", while writer Pat Mills called it "a savage and satirical read".
Style
Berry said in the previously mentioned interview with The Herald Scotland, that she enjoys dropping hidden details, clues and Easter Eggs in her artwork, which she sees as something personal, like having a "cheeky joke with each reader". She also avoids borders for her panels, because in her opinion a story flows better if there are no outlines, so they border themselves.
'The House on the Cliff' ('La Villa Sur La Falaise').
Graphic contributions
In addition to her own books, Hannah Berry has regularly contributed to anthologies. For instance to the collective graphic novel 'IDP: 2043' (Freight Books, 2013), released at the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. The dystopian tale depicted Edinburgh 30 years in the future, after sea levels have risen and resources diminished. Besides Berry, several European novelists and comic artists collaborated on the book, including Barroux, Kate Charlesworth, Dan McDaid, Pat Mills, Denise Mina, Will Morris, Adam Murphy, Mary Talbot and Irvine Welsh. The same year, Berry also made a graphic contribution to another celebration graphic novel, namely 'La Villa Sur La Falaise' (Casterman, 2012), which honored the 10th anniversary of the French publisher's imprint Écritures. Based on a script by Benoît Sokal, it featured work by 10 graphic novelists, among them Cati Baur, Fred Bernard, Isabel Kreitz, Gabrielle Piquet, Nate Powell, Davide Reviati, Sylvain Saulne, Kan Takahama and Jiro Taniguchi. The story was only published in French, but Berry made an English translation of her contribution available on her site.
In addition, Hannah Berry contributed to 'Above the Dreamless Dead: World War I in Poetry and Comics' (Duffy et al., 2014), Ravi Thornton's 'Hoax: Psychosis Blues' (Thornton et al, 2014) and Scream! & Misty's 'Halloween Special: Return to the Sentinels' (Berry and Willsher, 2017). For Rebellion Comics, Hannah Berry revived a classic 1978 comic story from Misty magazine ('The Sentinels' by Malcolm Shaw and Mario Capaldi), about a gateway to a terrifying alternate reality where Britain has been occupied by Nazi Germany since 1940. Working with artist Ben Willsher, Hanny Berry wrote the follow-up story 'Return of the Sentinels', which appeared in the 2017 'Scream! & Misty Halloween Special'.
In 2017, she wrote and drew a story for the political satire 'The Corbyn Comic Book' (SelfMadeHero, 2017), a comic book anthology targeting Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. A year later, she drew a story about strike leader Jayaben Desai for 'We Shall Fight Until We Win' (404 Ink, BHP, 2018), a collective graphic novel focusing on various important female activists and trailblazers in British history.
In 2020, Berry joined in with 'Planet Divoc-91' (Wowbagger Productions), a science fiction-themed webcomic anthology which was in fact a satirical allegory for the COVID-19 pandemic. Threatened with extinction, a group of young adults are sent to another planet. She contributed the third chapter, 'Eedyats In Every Galaxy'. It was also the first time coloring and lettering were done by other artists, James Devlin and Hassan Otsmane-Elhau.
'The Best Job In The World' (2024).
Scholarly comics
In 2023, Hannah Berry turned to graphic medicine with the comic story 'Needlestick' for The New England Journal of Medicine. Funded by the Exeter-Duke Collaboration Fund (2020-2021) and an Enhanced Research Award from the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health at the University of Exeter (2021), this comic was used to teach medical students about the role of shame in their training to become doctors. In the following year, Hannah Berry made a comic for 'Reading Bodies: Burnout, Overload and Resilience' (2024), a project in collaboration with the University of Exeter, focusing on the hardships, essential persistence and rewarding aspects of certain life goals in science and the creative arts. Her contribution dealt with comics: 'The Best Job In The World!'.
Recognition and advocacy
In 2017, Hannah Berry's 'LiveStock' won the "Best Writer Award" at the Broken Frontier Awards. In 2018, she was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. On 13 October 2018, at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, Hannah Berry was named UK Comics Laureate, succeeding Charlie Adlard and before him Dave Gibbons, making her the first woman in the role. During her tenure, which lasted until 2021, she instigated and carried out the first national survey of UK comics creators to gain a better understanding of the industry and those working within it. This led to the founding of the Society of Authors' Comics Creators Network - of which she is on the steering committee - which advocates for creators and offers professional support. She is also co-founder/director and 1/6th of the Comics Cultural Impact Collective CIC, raising awareness of the cultural impact of comics and making the case for better funding, support and recognition. On 14 April 2021, Berry was appointed as Trustee of the Cartoon Museum in London.
Hannah Berry co-hosted the 'No YOU Hang Up' podcast with Dan Berry, interviewing creative guests, and wrote several episodes of the multi-award-winning scripted science fiction podcast 'The Rez' (2021-2024), aimed at nine to eleven-year olds. The Rez also came with a game-based website and a comic book.
Self-portrait.