Creating Comics: Kate Ashwin, creator of “Widdershins”
Talented independent comic creator Kate Ashwin recently announced plans to end her long-running, ever entertaining web comic Widdershins, which she has been publishing for 15 years, so it seemed like a good time to catch up…
Kate Ashwin is a comic artist who lives in West Yorkshire, England, with her two fat cats and one very understanding husband. Her interests include houseplants, cheese, drawing people in nice coats with strange facial expressions, and never drawing a horse and carriage ever again.
She’s drawn and written over 1000 pages of webcomics since 2002, her most current project being the award-winning Victorian-era adventure story Widdershins, which is currently on its tenth Kickstarter-funded volume. She also wrote a novel which you can take a look at here, if you enjoy a goofy cyberpunk heist!
Kate has also contributed to, co-edited and provided Kickstarter support to the Cautionary Fables and Fairytales books, written stories for Dark Horse Presents and the Tammy and Jinty annual, contributed artwork to critically-acclaimed kid’s weekly comic The Phoenix, as well as being the current artist for Beryl the Peril in the yearly Dandy Annuals since 2025!
Plus, she doesn’t mean to brag, but she also makes a mean chorizo chilli…
Kate, it looks like it’s been over ten years since we chatted about Widdershins – and it seems a lot has happened since then! What’s behind the decision to bring the story to a close?
Woof, that’s a blast from the past! I especially like the part where we’re talking about Patreon as a brand-new thing just beginning to start up – very glad that one stuck around..!
With regards the ending, we all know webcomics have a bit of a murky reputation for not actually reaching a planned finish, largely due to the fact that they’re a lot of work for a lot of years for not much pay! Luckily for me, I started in this game very early and have been blessed with some extremely kind fans, so I’ve been able to keep going long enough to bring things to a nice, satisfying close, which is a fate all webcomics strive for!
I’m looking forward to starting something new soon – as much as I enjoyed Widdershins, after 15 years, I’m looking forward to drawing slightly fewer horses and carriages, and slightly more spaceships.
Creating any independent comic strip, let alone a web comic, with its demand for regular frequency, is an achievement in itself. How have you kept so disciplined?
“Disciplined” is a kind word for it! “Stubborn” also fits, ha ha. I like to finish a project once I’ve started it, so between that and the support from my readers and family, getting to the end was never really in question. I did slow down quite a lot after about a thousand pages due to some quite rough burnout, and I had to reduce my update rate severely, which wasn’t fun – fellow artists, try to take a break before you get to that point, it’s a tough recovery – but I’m on the mend now, and having a neat ending for the comic within sight really helped me get the work done.
I’m hoping to make a few changes for my next comic that’ll make pages a little easier to produce so folks aren’t waiting so long for their updates!
How many people do you think read the strip, online? Can you share any numbers?
I don’t really track it, honestly! ComicAd, the service I use to let other webcomics advertise on my site, says about three thousand people check in on an update day, but I have absolutely no idea how accurate that is!
I think it’s possible to get caught up in numbers a little too much, so it’s not something I look into, too often. I believe there’s a definite divide with webcomic readers between quality and quantity – you can have millions of people reading, but how many are actually supporting you with thoughtful comments, and a couple of quid here and there? I have really high quality readers, they’re very kind and engaged with the story, so the amount doesn’t really worry me too much.
How have your core characters evolved in the years since you began Widdershins?
Oh gosh, quite a bit! I’d intended for a few of them to take very particular paths, and that’s largely been the way it’s worked out, but sometimes they get away from you a little. Mal, in particular, went in a few directions I didn’t expect him to when I first thought him up! My intention with the last book was less to give a “final ending” for every last character, and more to point the reader in the direction it looks like each character is heading, and I hope I achieved that.
Would they say they’ve grown with you, or taken on lives of their own in response to reader involvement, which seems part and parcel of creating a long running web comic?
Both are true, I think those two concepts are quite tangled up with each other! Reader response is something you can’t help but take on board, and while you shouldn’t let it steer the entire ship, it’s definitely something that’s good to keep in mind.
For instance, I noticed a lot of folks weren’t too keen on Verity, a character who is very brash and abrasive, and one of my absolute favourites. I love a mean lady in fiction, they can be very fun. Rather than cut her from the narrative, I gave her her own book, so the people who weren’t too keen on her got to see a fuller picture of who she is. Judging by the comments, it worked quite nicely!
Technically, have you changed the way you have created Widdershins down the years and if so, what has been the biggest change?
The first two books were pencilled and inked on paper, scanned in, and coloured the fourth onward I used Clip Studio and haven’t looked back since, it’s a fantastic program for comics
The biggest change was probably my first tablet monitor – I’m not sure if it sped up my process as I do a lot (too much) of erasing now that I couldn’t do in pen and ink, but I’m much happier with the final product, which is what counts in the end.
How long was it before you felt able to “monetise” the strip? (I hate to use that term about a creative project, but at the end of the day I know you have to eat!) Was it because of a specific readership level, or the success of the tie-in publication of books through crowdfunding/ at conventions – or a combination of both?
So I’m a bit of a weird case here, I think. Widdershins was actually my second webcomic- I started it after I finished my first, Darken, which I did entirely for fun- and I went into it hoping to make a career out of it. My husband and I discussed it and, since I had a genuinely dire job at the time (I was an online bingo chat moderator between the hours of midnight and 4.00am…) we decided it’d be worth me trying to make this comics thing happen.
Thanks to his financial support with his much more stable job, I was able to do Widdershins full time from the very start, and by the time the second book rolled around, Kickstarter had finally set up shop in the UK. Between that, Patreon and a whole lot of conventions, I’ve been stumbling along to varying degrees of success since.
What are the biggest challenges for a web comic creator getting their work seen, when you’re up against global competition for eyeballs?
I have to say, I have no idea what the best way to make a start is nowadays, for a new webcomic creator. I have some pretty strong and wholly negative opinions on the way Webtoon is run, but for a lot of younger readers, it’s the only place they look to read comics – largely because they’re all in one place, on an app. It can feel a little rough to see the dominance that it wields, especially when so many of its comics are quite mass-produced, and simply aren’t labours of love like the webcomics that came before them.
That said! There’s still a lot of us out there doing things independently, and a lot of reectives such as Chimera Comics and SpiderForest that work much like a curated webring, as well as a community of likeminded creators
Hosting on ComicFury also has that community aspect, and if you have a poke about, there are a lot of Discord channels for folks to talk about creating, too. Make friends and chat, join webrings like Knifebeetle, and you’ll end up finding an audience.
Like I said before, it’s quality, not quantity with readers. You want a community more than you want a large number, I promise you!
What’s your happiest memory of creating Widdershins?
I’ve had a lot of wonderful fan interactions at conventions that I treasure to this day- cosplayers, personalised gifts including a cupcake, a puppet, a candle based on a character! Some very lovely people with some very lovely words that keep me going to this day.
For the more online memories, I remember very much enjoying how people reacted to the end of the ninth book, as everything fell together exactly as I wanted (chaotically!) and the reader response was just incredible.
Even the mundane parts though, I’ll remember with fondness. There are certain pages where I can look at a panel and remember which podcast I listened to while drawing that figure, or where I was sitting in which place as I drew that background, or what was going on in my personal life while I drew a particular scene.
That’s an unexpected benefit of having drawn the same comic for 15 years – it’s like there’s a secret map embedded in there for just yourself. It’s quite special, really..!
I ask this of all the amazing comic creators I interview, but what one piece of advice do you offer aspiring comic creators looking to get themselves established?
It looks like last time I said “just make the thing!” and I still agree with past-me. Don’t fuss about whether you’re ready or not, just make something. Start small, just a few pages, get used to something having a beginning and end – even do an interpretation of an existing story, like a fairytale, if you’re not sure what to do. Make things, take joy from it, then share that joy with the world. It’s a gift to be able to do so
Kate, thank you for your time, and the very best of luck with your next project!
• The final Widdershins Kickstarter is now live – otherwise known as your last chance to grab signed/sketched bookplates, and the larger character sketches! It’s also the best time to grab a full set of books too, or cheaper sets of downloadable PDFs if you prefer things digital, or would just like to support the comic! Please go and check it out!
Head downthetubes for…
• Taking the Widdershins route: An interview with web comic creator Kate Ashwin (published in 2014)
- About the Author
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who MagazineandOverkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
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