John Allison | |
|---|---|
 John Allison at the Barcelona Comic Fair (2022) | |
| Born | John Allison 1976 (age 47–48) |
| Nationality | British |
| Known for | Webcomics |
| Notable work | Bobbins, Scary Go Round , Bad Machinery , Giant Days |
John Allison (born 1976) is a comic writer and artist. He has been producing comics since 1998 and his work has won multiple Eisner Awards.
Allison started creating webcomics in 1998 with Bobbins , a series which ran on Keenspot. He ended Bobbins in 2002, later saying that he had fallen out of love with the rough and ready nature of 'Bobbins', and at the same time started a new comic, Scary Go Round . Then, in 2009, he ended Scary Go Round and started Bad Machinery . In an interview, Allison said that he ended Scary Go Round because "the work I was doing was becoming somewhat uninspired. I had a lot of characters that I didn't care about, and I was making whole runs of strips about characters that people didn't really like... I had lost perspective and direction. I was also losing readers for the last year and it was evident that changes had to be made." [1]
Allison described Scary Go Round as "a comic that I've been making since 2002. It started off as a comic about barmaids Tessa and Rachel, then it became more about Shelley Winters and her bizarre escapades. In recent times it is kind of a split between the Shelley Show and Tackleford Grammar School. It's always evolving." Bad Machinery focuses on several of those grammar school children, now teenage detectives. [1]
In 2013, Allison pitched a spin-off from Scary Go Round, Giant Days , to Boom! Box, a newly formed imprint of Boom! Studios for established artists outside the comics industry. [2] The series follows three young women—Esther de Groot, Susan Ptolemy and Daisy Wooton—who share a hall of residence at the University of Sheffield. The series began as a six-issue limited run, and was then picked up as an ongoing series. In 2016, Giant Days was nominated for two Eisner Awards and three Harvey Awards, with a fourth Harvey nomination for Lissa Treiman's work on the comic. [3] [4] In 2019, it won two Eisner Awards, for Best Continuing Series and Best Humor Publication. [5] It concluded later that year with a special over-sized issue. [6]
The success of Giant Days led to further work with independent presses. Allison went on to write the series By Night for Boom! Studios, and both wrote and illustrated Steeple for Dark Horse Comics. [6]
In 2024, Allison published a Conan the Barbarian webcomic on his website. Despite the character being public domain in the UK, he received a cease-and-desist from Conan Properties International, the holders of the Conan IP rights in the United States. This caused Allison to cease publication of the webcomic, saying that he did not "have the time or the energy to contest this." [7]
Allison currently resides in Letchworth Garden City. [8]
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| Year | Nominated work | Category | Result | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | Bobbins | UK National Comics Awards: Best Online Strip | Nominated | [10] [11] |
| 2002 | Bobbins | Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards in three categories: * Best Use of Color * Best Site Design * Best Female Character | Nominated | [12] |
| 2003 | Scary Go Round | Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards: Outstanding Original Digital Art | Won | [13] |
| 2003 | Scary Go Round | Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards in three other categories: * Outstanding Art * Outstanding Environment Design * Outstanding Use of Color | Nominated | [13] |
| 2004 | Scary Go Round | Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards: Outstanding Art | Won | Joint winner with Mac Hall [14] |
| 2004 | Scary Go Round | Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards in six other categories: * Outstanding Comic * Outstanding Writing * Outstanding Environment Design * Outstanding Character (Writing) * Outstanding Comedic Comic * Outstanding Story Concept | Nominated | [14] |
| 2005 | Scary Go Round | Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards: Outstanding Comic | Won | [15] |
| 2005 | Scary Go Round | Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards in three other categories: * Outstanding Art * Outstanding Environment Design * Outstanding Layout | Nominated | [15] |
| 2006 | Scary Go Round | Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards: Outstanding Comic | Nominated | [16] |
| 2007 | Scary Go Round | Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards in three categories: * Outstanding Comic * Outstanding Character Writing * Outstanding Writer | Nominated | [17] [18] [19] |
| 2008 | Scary Go Round | Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards: Outstanding Character Rendering | Nominated | [20] |
| 2016 | Giant Days | Eisner Award: Best Continuing Series | Nominated | Allison wrote for Giant Days. The nomination was for John Allison, Max Sarin, and Julia Madrigal. [21] |
| 2016 | Giant Days | Eisner Award: Best Writer | Nominated | [21] |
| 2017 | Bad Machinery, Vol. 5: The Case of the Fire Inside | Eisner Award: Best Publication for teens (ages 13–17) | Nominated | [22] [23] |
| 2018 | Giant Days | Eisner Award: Best Continuing Series | Nominated | Allison wrote for Giant Days. The nomination was for John Allison, Max Sarin, and Julia Madrigal. [24] |
| 2018 | Giant Days | Eisner Award: Best Humor Publication | Nominated | Allison wrote for Giant Days. The nomination was for John Allison, Max Sarin, and Julia Madrigal. [24] |
| 2019 | Giant Days | Eisner Award: Best Continuing Series | Won | Allison wrote for Giant Days. The nomination was for John Allison, Max Sarin, and Julia Madrigal. [25] |
| 2019 | Giant Days | Eisner Award: Best Humor Publication | Won | Allison wrote for Giant Days. The nomination was for John Allison, Max Sarin, and Julia Madrigal. [25] |
Girl Genius is an ongoing comic book series turned webcomic, written and drawn by Phil and Kaja Foglio and published by their company Studio Foglio LLC under the imprint Airship Entertainment. The comic won the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story three times, has been nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist and twice for Eisner Awards, and won multiple WCCA awards.
Keenspot is a webcomics/webtoons portal founded in March 2000 by cartoonist Chris Crosby, Crosby's mother Teri, cartoonist Darren Bleuel, and Nathan Stone.
Scary Go Round is a webcomic by John Allison. Running from 2002 to 2009, it is set in the fictional North Yorkshire town of Tackleford and follows university students battling fantasy and science fiction threats to the town. The comic was a successor to Allison's first comic, Bobbins, and was followed by Bad Machinery, all of which take place in the same general setting.
Ryan North is a Canadian writer and computer programmer.
Brad Guigar is an American cartoonist who is best known for his daily webcomic Greystone Inn and its sequel Evil Inc.
Chris Crosby is a co-founder and the chief executive officer of Keenspot, a company providing a platform and network for webcomics. They are also a comics writer and artist, with works including Superosity, Sore Thumbs, and Snap The Punk Turtle.
Boom! Studios, is an American comic book and graphic novel publisher. They are headquartered in Los Angeles, California, United States. The company is a subsidiary of Random House division of Penguin Random House since September 2024.
The Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards (WCCA) were annual awards in which established webcartoonists nominated and selected outstanding webcomics. The awards were held between 2001 and 2008, were mentioned in a New York Times column on webcomics in 2005, and have been mentioned as a tool for librarians.
Bobbins is a webcomic written by John Allison. It ran from 21 September 1998 to 3 June 2002, but shifted into reruns with commentary on 17 May 2002. It has made occasional returns in John Allison's website in between his other comics since 2013. Webcomics portal Keenspot kept the Bobbins archive freely accessible online, but the archives eventually moved to Allison's own site.
Bad Machinery is a webcomic written and drawn by John Allison and set in the fictional town of Tackleford, West Yorkshire, England. Bad Machinery started on 21 September 2009 loosely based on characters and situations from John Allison's previous webcomic, Scary Go Round. New full colour paneled pages appeared four times a week.
Lackadaisy is a webcomic created by American artist Tracy J. Butler. Set in a Prohibition-era St. Louis with a population of anthropomorphic cats, the plot chronicles the fortunes of the Lackadaisy speakeasy after its founder is murdered. The comic mixes elements of comedy, crime and mystery. It won multiple Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards in 2007 and 2008, and in April 2011 it was nominated for the Eisner Award for "Best Digital Comic".
The history of webcomics follows the advances of technology, art, and business of comics on the Internet. The first comics were shared through the Internet in the mid-1980s. Some early webcomics were derivatives from print comics, but when the World Wide Web became widely popular in the mid-1990s, more people started creating comics exclusively for this medium. By the year 2000, various webcomic creators were financially successful and webcomics became more artistically recognized.
Notable events of 2009 in webcomics.
Notable events of 2002 in webcomics.
Notable events of 2005 in webcomics.
Notable events of 2010 in webcomics.
Notable events of 2008 in webcomics.
Giant Days is a comedic comic book written by John Allison, with art by Max Sarin and Lissa Treiman. The series follows three young women – Esther de Groot, Susan Ptolemy and Daisy Wooton – who share a hall of residence at university. Originally created as a webcomic spin-off from his previous series Scary Go Round, and then self-published as a series of small press comics, Giant Days was subsequently picked up by Boom! Studios first as a six-issue miniseries and then as a monthly ongoing series. In 2016 Giant Days was nominated for two Eisner Awards and four Harvey Awards. In 2019, it won two Eisner awards, for Best Continuing Series and Best Humor Publication.
The Eisner Award for Best Digital Comic is an award for "creative achievement" in American comic books for material originally published digitally.
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