Paul O'Connell is a self-publishing comic strip writer and artist working in digital and traditional mediums. His comic strips have appeared in a number of international magazines, comic anthologies and zines and his cult comic book series The Sound of Drowning has earned a great deal of critical praise.
"O'Connell has few peers in his field" - Dazed and Confused
"A devastatingly funny, misanthropic and strangely beautiful carnival of delights...the finest young auteur to detonate into British comics in a decade." - 3 a.m Magazine
"These comic strips disturb and amuse, mock and condemn. Part Lynch, part Coen, part Biff, part God-knows-what, there is something fantastically original going on here and it's really quite addictive. Theatre of the absurd writ large in words and images." - Charlie Williams, Deadfolk, King of the Road
"...scrapes together the depths of egoism, narcissism and personal perspective and constructs mudhuts of the human psyche. Whether waging a one-man struggle against Galloism or plumbing his own experience, Paul's comics explore what makes us tick...not so much strips, but pin-holes into a different dimension...images, thoughts and dialogue sprawl across the page in gorgeous disregard for the formulaic mould of conventional comics - readers don't so much read his comics, but explore their own path through this dark, manic and extremely funny world." - meat magazine
"Paul O'Connell's Sound of Drowning strips are my favourite Brit finds of recent years. He has a knack for nailing a specific kind of urban unease, for detailing the fantasy lives of the impotent, and our disquiet at the gulf between our shiny expectations and the shabby reality around us. Equally alarming and amusing, creepy and poignant, they read like pop culture fever dreams, or the nightmares other comic books have after too much cheese and bad medication. Highly recommended and bloody funny too." - Mark Stafford, The London Cartoon Museum
"A visionary comic that invites us to rethink the (in)human condition.
Dark, absurdist, hard-boiled and gritty." -- D. Harlan Wilson, Dr. Identity & The Kafka Effekt
"Weird, witty, sometimes touching, often chilling…it's so damn well written. It makes you realise how little skill and poetry there is in a good deal of comic writing." - Dan White, Tony is Werewolf, Beau & Me, etc
"Pretty F***king Amazing"
- Ed Piskor, Wizzywig, American Splendor
Friends and collaborators
