The Sound of Drowning

"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

"...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, Terminus, Tony is a Werewolf etc

"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

Paul O'Connell is a writer and graphic artist whose work has appeared in a variety of international books, magazines, zines and comic anthologies. As well as self-publishing collections of his own solo and collaborative work under the title of The Sound of Drowning, Paul's work has also been published and exhibited in the UK, Australia, New York and Europe.

Publications include Dazed and Confused, Design Week, The British Journal of Photography, The Guardian, Scottish Sunday Telegraph, Torpedo Fiction Quarterly, Time Out, The Stool Pigeon (regular feature), CTRL+ALT+SHIFT 'Unmasks Corruption' anthology, Advanced Photoshop Magazine, Bizarre, Meat magazine, The Comix Reader, HIVE Quarterly,Trespass magazine, Milk & Wodka, Blurred Vision, Lazlo Magazine, Italian Cosmopolitan (!), Fat Chunk and Komikaze.

"Paul O'Connell's art belongs in the pantheon of the comic greats. Combining an instantly recognisable style that draws on a plethora of modern pop culture references with a pitch-black sense of humour, his writing and illustrations are incisive, funny and always provocative. He's probably the best comic artist in the UK right now." - Ben Myers, The Guardian and author of 'Richard'

"Ooerr - what is that strange sound? It's the sound of the synapses sparking in Paul O'Connell's brainbox as they bypass sense and sensibility to unleash another of his unsettling, innovative experiments. They're comics, Jim, but not as we know them." - Paul Gravett