Guest Post: Tom and Nimue from Copper Age Web Comic

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I'm excited to present you today with a guest post by Tom and Nimue Brown, the creative duo behind the Copper Age web comic and the Hopeless Vendetta. If you are not familiar with Tom's art, then you are in for a real treat. And if you enjoy what you see, make sure to visit their website for more of the Copper Age tale.

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Origins of Copper Age
Tom and Nimue Brown

Created by Copper Age, the webcomic www.itisacircle.com is a graphic novel, appearing week by week. When the first story arc – Personal Demons - is complete, we’ll hopefully get it onto paper, but in the meantime it’s good to be able to share the work with readers.


Set on the island of Hopeless off the coast of Maine, Personal Demons has a dark setting, with some Lovecraftian influence. The story revolves around Salamandra, a young girl discovered in a Gothic, decaying house by a witch. Unraveling who Salamandra is and where she comes from is key to the entire story arc, so no spoilers!

This tale was actually written as the first of several prequels for a much longer story featuring Salamandra as an adult. Tom began this section of the tale on his own before Nimue started working with him, but it’s changed a fair bit since then, both in terms of the story, and the art – both of which have become more complex and detailed along the way.

Copper Age is the third artist who emerges and is only possible when Tom and Nimue Brown are working together.

We have different ideas about when Copper Age started however, for reasons that should soon become apparent!

From Tom’s perspective, Copper Age as it is now, started when Nimue became involved.


Tom: While working on my own it was something, and sort of interesting, I could see some potential but it was only when the third artist started to appear, which was not really a conscious effort on anyone’s part, that I began to see what Copper Age was and could be.

Nimue: Now for me, Copper Age was a thing in its own right that Tom had created and I fell in love with. As I see it, it was all there just waiting to be let loose. It took me quite a while to pluck up the nerve to get involved. At first I really didn’t think I was a good enough writer.

When we collaborate, things happen that don’t occur for us the rest of the time. Over the last year, we’ve moved more towards working together in the rest of our lives. So even if we aren’t on the same project, we’re connecting and sharing ideas and influencing each other in all sorts of interesting ways.

Copper Age involves the concept of telling stories and sharing ideas in multimedia ways. Art and words are the primary mix at the moment, but we’re also interested in music, spoken word, film, animation and anything else we become able to play with. It’s gothic, sensual, and even with the paranormal fantasy elements, very human. We’re reflecting aspects of life, in odd and distorted ways, and striving after a vision of what the world could be, although I don’t think we’ve found it yet.

At the moment, the primary focus is the webcomic, www.itisacircle.com although we also have a newspaper for the setting – www.hopelessvendetta.wordpress.com which is a space we use to play and experiment. There are some more book-like things (we’re talking to publishers) and plans for all sorts of other creativity in various forms. We spend a fair amount of time chasing ideas and daydreaming about possible projects, never knowing which ones will reach fruition, but that’s all part of the fun.

People who are interested in keeping track of us are very welcome to sign up to the newsletter – which we send out sporadically through a yahoo group.