Rickard Sisters
@rickardsisters.com
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Sisters who make graphic novels together including Eisner nominated The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists & No Surrender with SelfMadeHero 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ ally 🔥This Slavery out now!🔥
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Book your place!

🔥 TROUBLE AT MILL 🔥

Saturday 8th November at Queen Street Mill textile museum - loudly celebrating Ethel Carnie Holdsworth’s This Slavery with riotous fun and steam engines and art and theatre and music and snacks

RickardSisters.com/trouble
Event poster for TROUBLE AT MILL: The Radical World of Ethel Carnie Holdsworth. The illustration is of a huge cotton mill on fire, with the townspeople watching. Launch of THIS SLAVERY graphic novel by the RICKARD SISTERS featuring THE COMMONERS' CHOIR JENNIFER REID • BURNLEY YOUTH THEATRE CLARION CHOIR • JULES GIBB • JENNY HARPER
SATURDAY 8 NOVEMBER
ENGINE IN STEAM FROM 12 NOON • PERFORMANCES 1pm & 2•30pm
QUEEN ST MILL TEXTILE MUSEUM
Harle Syke, Briercliffe, Burnley BBIO 2HF
Tickets £ 12
rickardsisters.com
Drawing the two sisters from This Slavery

(I’m so glad my children are not on BlueSky to see this 🫣 we might have to block them on Instagram)
rickardsisters.com
Well whenever we’ve been there (one weekend in June) it was positively sweltering
rickardsisters.com
Well you *are* a discerning viewer! Belper offered tropical conditions with mill backdrops this summer, so thank you for having us if that’s your home town.
Glad you like the look of the book ☺️
rickardsisters.com
How do you make a person stand out in a crowd?

Scarlett explains how she uses colour, movement and position on the page to help the reader understand the narrative in a busy page
Reposted by Rickard Sisters
groomb.bsky.social
Teenage life, above Shaw, Lancashire, 1957, photo by Bert Hardy.
Reposted by Rickard Sisters
selfmadehero.bsky.social
"This never-more-timely tale of the eternal injustice and biologically apologist is superbly readable, dramatically enticing and should be compulsory viewing for all – as long as we don’t force anyone…" - Now Read This! on #ThisSlavery by @rickardsisters.com!

🔗 buff.ly/U4sRgZt

#selfmadehero
rickardsisters.com
You can get This Slavery (and our other SelfMadeHero titles) from all good bookstores, your public library, or even the all-seeing sprawling corporation with fast delivery
A book cover: on a dark inky blue background a five women stand together holding up an ornate protest banner which reads Constance Maud’s No Surrender, a graphic novel by Scarlett & Sophie Rickard. They are dressed in Edwardian clothing and VOTES FOR WOMEN sashes. The girl in the centre, who wears the shawl of a working woman, holds a loud-hailer A book cover: on a bottle green background a man is painting an ornate sign which reads Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, graphic novel by Scarlett & Sophie Rickard. A young lad sits by his feet and is passing him a cup of tea in a tin mug. An older man in a painty bowler hat is reading a comic. A book cover. The text reads ETHEL CARNIE HOLDSWORTH’S THIS SLAVERY, a graphic novel by Scarlett & Sophie Rickard. The full page illustration shows two women standing back to back in a steep terraced street at sunset. The blonde woman holds a violin, the dark haired woman wears a man’s coat. A young man looks at them from an upstairs window on the left, and on the right there is a perky white and brown dog. In the distance the factory chimneys smoke. It’s all very ‘mills & doom’
rickardsisters.com
Hello America & Canada, it’s publication day for This Slavery!

It’s the story of two sisters living in 1910s UK who work in cotton weaving factories. It’s about women’s place in industrial capitalism, and how marriage can be about power & control.

It’s also an inch-thick comic with a dog in it
rickardsisters.com
This is what books are made of - a squillion tiny decisions on a page
rickardsisters.com
If you are in USA or Canada, please ask for This Slavery in your local independent bookstore or public library! And if you see it in the wild, please share photos with us!

Publication date for North America is this Tuesday, and it’s gone down well in the month it’s been out in Britain & Ireland.
A book cover. The text reads ETHEL CARNIE HOLDSWORTH’S THIS SLAVERY, a graphic novel by Scarlett & Sophie Rickard. The full page illustration shows two women standing back to back in a steep terraced street at sunset. The blonde woman holds a violin, the dark haired woman wears a man’s coat. A young man looks at them from an upstairs window on the left, and on the right there is a perky white and brown dog. In the distance the factory chimneys smoke. It’s all very ‘mills & doom’
rickardsisters.com
Oh Matthew thank you so much! We do value your expert opinion 😊

And it’s so great to find you again on here - we haven’t seen you since the old days in the other place
rickardsisters.com
You know how sometimes you glimpse your previous self in a photo or something and get a shock?
I can’t get over how mean I (the writer) was to Scarlett (the artist) in this exchange about this panel of No Surrender graphic novel 🫣 she puts up with so much
Screen shot of texts between Scarlett & Sophie in the drawing phase of No Surrender graphic novel: 

Sc: It's BONKERS
So: It really is
Sc: I tell you what's bonkers
Sc: Drawing 40-60,000 women
So: Hahaha just follow the instructions the writer sent you, it'll be fine
So: See you in 10 years
Sc: I would just like to take this opportunity to thank the Pankhursts for insisting everyone wear white
So: Why did they do that
Sc: If only the memo had extended to the crowd
So: Apart from to save your trouble
Sc:To make it easier for me 110 years later A full page street scene from No Surrender showing the head of the procession on Women’s Sunday 1908, the biggest public demonstration London had ever seen. There are hundreds of individual women crowded in, most of whom are wearing white.
rickardsisters.com
This looks cool 👇
averyhill.bsky.social
Thrilled to share that @julesscheele.bsky.social is adapting Virginia Woolf’s Orlando as a graphic novel biography with Avery Hill! From Elizabethan courts to the present day, a timeless journey reimagined in comics. ✨📚
rickardsisters.com
Same! Then we ran inside and bought a copy. We’re planning to use it as a tourists’ guide to Brockley after enjoying the story
A photo of a book: How to Make Life Better When it Feels Like it’s Getting Worse by Simone Lia & Fluffy Pulcino
Reposted by Rickard Sisters
selfmadehero.bsky.social
TROUBLE AT MILL!
On November 8th, #ThisSlavery is being launched on a downright industrial scale!
Only a few tickets are left, so BOOK NOW!
🔗 buff.ly/3zUfxuL

@RickardSisters.com

#selfmadehero #indiecomics #booklaunch #newcomics #publishing
rickardsisters.com
Come to Burnley to make some noise with us about Ethel Carnie Holdsworth! There will be choirs and young actors and looms and a massive steam engine and peculiar temperance drinks - a riot of weaving and resistance - Sat 8th Nov RickardSisters.com/trouble
An illustration promoting the TROUBLE AT MILL event, depicting Rachel and Jip from This Slavery graphic novel, bearing a sign that says JOIN THE PICKET! Saturday 8th November
rickardsisters.com
Thank you Andrew, glad you enjoyed it!
rickardsisters.com
This is exciting to see - Autumn begins here (northern England) with the celebration honks of the geese arriving from the north, we love to welcome them
rickardsisters.com
If you’re coming to Thought Bubble you can try it for yourself and chat to Gabbi in person.

If your school, uni, event, book festival, art fair or carnival needs a travelling library to visit, see www.graphicnovelreadingroom.com or @gnrr.bsky.social
Graphic Novel Reading Room
www.graphicnovelreadingroom.com
rickardsisters.com
Hands up who’s used the Graphic Novel Reading Room?
Honestly *the best* service: a pop-up/travelling library where you can browse and read, with Gabbi’s excellent recommendation/suggestions thrown in to widen your horizons. Here we are at LICAF with Gabbi and Matthew Dooley (FLAKE)
A van and gazebo bursting with books! Sitting in deck chairs at the front are the Rickard Sisters (eating as per), Gabbi who curates, owns and runs the amazing Reading Room, and Matthew Dooley who made the awards sensation FLAKE and ARISTOTLE’S CUTTLEFISH. Thank you to Emma at SelfMadeHero for taking the picture
rickardsisters.com
One or two details from a page of This Slavery graphic novel (including the fun stuff you aren’t even supposed to notice)
rickardsisters.com
We should all be available to afford nice things! Imho oysters, wild swimming and novelty ornaments are all hideous prospects but we should still have the option to choose them. My preference would be staying in with a book and a mince pie but we’re all different
rickardsisters.com
What have oysters, wild swimming and novelty ornaments got in common?