Kickstarting Comics: ‘A Stormy Day With Badger And Vole’: An Orcadian Comic From Howard Hardiman

by Richard Bruton

One Badger, one Vole, a wonderfully simple and quiet love story set in Orkney. Beautiful work from Howard Hardiman. And up for funding right now.

Howard Hardiman‘s Badger has long been a favourite of mine, right back to 2008 and his first beautifully sad little adventures of a lonely badger wandering around Brockley in London. And now he’s back, relocated north to the wilds of Orkney, just as author Hardiman did a few years hence.

A Stormy Day with Badger and Vole is described by Hardiman as “a domestic love story about a Badger and a Vole living in Orkney with their cats, dogs and sheep. And a lot of rain.’ He says you can expect ‘cups of tea, spinning, and running from horizontal hail.”

It’s a perfect example of a comic book that just absolutely charms by simply being, where the characters don’t have to do too much to make you fall in love with them.

The Kickstarter for the book is here, fully funded already, but it runs to 10th January with the book expected in Spring of 2023 – it’s one that you absolutely must back right now, it’s going to make your life just that little bit better and happier.

This new story, A Stormy Day with Badger & Vole takes place in the depths of a winter on Orkney, north of Scotland, where it’s dark and stormy, one of those days up there where the rain comes at you horizontally and the ideal way to experience it all is inside, cosy and dry by the fire. It’s just Badger and Vole carrying on with their blissfully quiet life, together and loving being together, with their love coming out in all those simple and beautiful small ways.

As with all the other Badger tales, this one’s done without text or dialogue, the whole story is there to be explored in the quite gorgeous artwork.

For the Kickstarter, there’s the standard PDF and signed print copies of the book, expected to be around 40-pages, a sketch of an animal of your choosing that will also make an appearance as a picture on the walls of Badger & Vole’s home, original artwork, plus some very Orkney extras on offer – hand-washed and spun wool from Howard’s fields up there, and even a hand-knitted scarf from wool from the fields up there.

Howard’s been making comics since 2006 or so, putting up drawings of a lonely badger wandering around Brockley in South London, where Howard used to live. As Howard moved, so did Badger, and he’s now made the trek north to Sanday, a small island of 550 folk in Orkney, off the northern tip of Scotland.

Over the years, Badger’s tale moved on and he experienced more and more, until we get to now, on Orkney, happy and in love with his husband Vole – which is just a perfect thing for all of us who became so invested in this charming yet melancholy character.

I first discovered Badger in 2008, where I had this to say about the first little book…

“Badger is just 49 pages long with just 91 completely wordless panels. It’s an incredibly simple little tale. Yet it’s one of my favourite comics all year. It’s certainly the saddest. This tale of a lonely little badger living all alone in his London flat is heartbreakingly, tear-jerkingly sad. I sat there after reading it and was struggling to hold back the tears. It’s very easy to describe, but very difficult to get over the complete sense of sadness that saturates every page.”

But the joy of Badger has been in seeing how Hardiman has taken that oh-so-sad initial idea of the lonely times in London and developed his character, bringing in so much depth and beauty to something that was so wonderfully done from the beginning. Which is why this latest adventure of two happy creatures living their happy lives is such a joy to see.