Welcome to Ink & Imagination, brought to you by Those Two Geeks.

Long before superheroes leapt across American pages, Britain experienced its own comic revolution – a riotous explosion of humour papers, illustrated rogues, and working-class satire that transformed the nation’s reading habits.

In this episode, we journey back to the Victorian era, exploring the decades that paved the way for the British comics boom of the 1890s. From the refined satire of Punch to the raucous charm of Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday, and from the rise of the penny press to the mass-market dominance of Alfred Harmsworth’s Comic Cuts and Illustrated Chips, we uncover how cheap printing, rising literacy, and urban life created the perfect storm for a new form of storytelling.

Meet the tramps, tricksters, and troublemakers who became Britain’s first comic icons, and discover how their slapstick antics shaped a uniquely British comic tradition that echoes through The Beano, 2000 AD, and even Viz today.

This is the story of how laughter, class, and ink collided – and how a humble penny bought the earliest building blocks of modern comics.

Music created by Alex K Cossa via Suno

Welcome to Ink & Imagination, brought to you by Those Two Geeks.

In the second half of our Creator Rights special, a new generation takes up Jack Kirby’s fight, and nearly burns the industry to the ground doing it. It’s the 1990s. Comic book artists like Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, and Rob Liefeld are household names, outselling even their publishers. Tired of seeing their creations owned by corporations, seven superstars walk out of Marvel and form Image Comics. A publisher built on a single rule: “The creator owns the creation.”

This episode explores how Image Comics changed the balance of power, how greed and hype pushed comics to the brink, and how the fight for creator rights reshaped the medium in both triumph and tragedy.

Because every rebellion has its price, and every artist’s freedom comes with a fight.

Music by Nicholas Panek from Pixabay