Alex Gamsu Jenkins’ comics remind us of how gross we really are

Illustrator Alex Gamsu Jenkins’ latest works are absolutely gross. But in the way we’re all gross, spot popping, alarm ignoring, sleepy, procrastinating people deep down. Earlier in the year, we caught up with Alex on his surreal one-panel personal works and now the south London-based illustrator has expanded these pieces into short comics and the results will have you in stitches as your eyes flip across each panel of four.

Alex originally got into making these comics “as initially I was trying to practice animation and the sketching of the game sequences would often end up looking on paper like a rough comic,” he tells It’s Nice That. And while an animated outcome was his desired aim, the illustrator enjoyed the process of just sticking to four stills just as much.

“The most enjoyable part is adding something punchy or humorous in the final frame,” explains the illustrator of this process, “and it’s often a refreshing challenge in trying to think of the ending or the theme to the panels.” Comics, while not being obvious in Alex’s portfolio immediately, are actually a tangent of illustration he’s been playing with since he was a kid. Looking back on these works, which he’s returned to every now and then, although often “they’d be an attempt at a manga style and usually last about three or four panels (due to a lack of attention span)”, the illustrator relishes in the “sense of nostalgia in the feeling of revisiting this past time,” he says.

While they may be a mere pastime to the illustrator, Alex’s new works are refreshingly eye-opening for us and we only hope for more. And actually making them move, as the illustrator’s original plan was, could be brilliant too – somebody commission this man for a series!