At this year's London Book Fair, held March 10–12, Pan Macmillan CEO Joanna Prior gave a widely reported speech on the "reading crisis,” urging publishers to make better use of comic books. At a moment of growth for the British graphic novel market, which saw sales in 2025 up by more than 30% over 2024, could comics serve as a savior of print for an audience seeking eyeball-grabbing visuals, as well as words?
If so, LBF needs to catch up. A promised "Comic Space" at the fair never materialized. Instead of a hubbub of comics-focused activity, there was a shelf of Dark Horse and Italy's Panini Comics on one side of the Turnaround UK booth, next door to DC Thompson's small shelf in the Scotland booth. Comics distributor Diamond UK, with a wall of manga and pulp comics, was on the floor below, a small block away from the U.K.-based Rebellion Publishing, with a small shelf of 2000 AD. More of a comic spattering.
The real comics space was instead in nearby pubs, namely The Cumberland Arms and The Hand & Flower. That's where you could have found Dirk Wood and Jeff Boison, from stateside powerhouse Image Comics, meeting their British writers and artists. Image was also trying to bolster its relationship with Diamond UK after Diamond's U.S. arm filed for bankruptcy last year. Boison claims there’s been a rise in the number of English-language-focused comic book stores opening across Europe, which would make Diamond UK ideally placed to supply them.
Back at the fair, there was a notable reduction in the presence of French graphic novels among publishers, who usually sign plenty of rights deals at the show. This was blamed on the biggest comics trade show in the world, in Angoulême, getting canceled in December after boycotts from publishers and creators who cited poor organization and badly handled claims of sexual assault. Only French publisher Dargaud retained a decent selection, but where France dropped the ball, Korean publishers seemed to be picking it up.
It was left to children's and YA publishers to show everyone how it was done, with Heartstopper author Alice Oseman drawing a standing-room-only crowd. The final Heartstopper volume is set to be released by Scholastic, with a confident half-million-copy print run, this summer, but Oseman let everyone know that they had told Netflix not to release the final film until the book was published. (Not many authors, comics or otherwise, get to boss Netflix around.) Oseman was named the second-ever "Creative of the Fair," following last year's inaugural pick, graphic novelist Jamie Smart of Bunny vs. Monkey fame. The honors are seen as a sign that young comics readers are getting older but still want to read comics.
That's who Ben Smith, head of publishing at Rebellion, believes the sci-fi anthology weekly comic 2000 AD can appeal to, with the 50th anniversary of the 2000 AD magazine coming next year, a Duncan Jones–directed Rogue Trooper movie in the can, and better American distribution to comic stores rolling out.
Italy's Panini is targeting both markets, planning a collected edition of Judge Dredd creator Pat Mills's horror graphic novel series Requiem, as well as classic Disney Italy comics never before published in English. Nostalgia also fuels the success of their Kingdom Hearts graphic novels, with Star Wars manga and all-ages comics to follow later this year.
Nick Landau, co-founder and owner of publisher Titan Comics and the Forbidden Planet chain of comic shops, was delighted to see former Forbidden Planet staffers working at Turnaround. Meanwhile, another Forbidden Planet founder, Mike Lake, was hanging around the Diamond UK stand, teasing a very major British IP comics announcement this summer for San Diego Comic-Con.
One graphic novel pitch from the cordoned-off agents' tables was impossible to ignore. Represented by Nemonie Crayen of Jonathan Clowes, Los is a 300-page oversized painted graphic novel biography of William Blake, by cartoonist John Riordan, a Blake Society trustee, and is positioned as a Wolf Hall–style deep dive. Riordan has posted some of the opening chapters on his Substack for those who want a taste.
Publisher Twisted Comics launched a crowdfunding campaign for their Black Mirror graphic novel based on the Netflix show's virtual reality episode, “San Junipero,” at the fair. It smashed through its goal, boosted by donors who were given the chance to appear within the comic.
Former DC Comics Vertigo editor Tim Pilcher, manning the Insight Editions booth at the fair, believes that general publishers are finally getting back into comics again, a return to the "good old days" of the late 1980s and early '90s. But, he warned, "comics are a notoriously expensive and time-consuming product to create, sales are always in the long tail back list and, increasingly, in media licensing rights. If publishers stay calm and remain committed, we may, eventually, see a maturation of the market to become like France, but then again, I've been saying that for nearly 35 years."
One big change for next year is that the London Book Fair will move from its usual home in West London to the ExCel Centre in the far East End, better known for hosting MCM, the UK's biggest comic book convention. Maybe that will inspire a more cohesive "Comics Space" with a lot more room for comics to match those increasing sales, grab some eyeballs, and solve that reading crisis once and for all.
