Why I Started Making Comic Books for My Son

It started, as most good ideas do, with a problem I couldn't solve any other way.

Two problems, actually.

The first was practical: I needed a way to talk to Nico about the big developmental stuff — brushing his teeth, using the potty, the things that feel enormous when you're two and a half and the world is still so new. Books help. Stories help. But I wanted something that was his — something with his face, his life, his dog, his world. So he could see himself in the story and think: that's me. I can do that.

The second reason was a little more personal.

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I am obsessed with photographing Nico. Completely, unapologetically obsessed. I take hundreds of photos. I want to capture everything — the way he looks right now, the things he says, the way he runs with his arms out like he's about to take flight. Part of it is pure love. But part of it is something deeper: I didn't grow up with many photos of myself. Not many captured moments, not many things I could hold and look back at and say — that was me, that was my childhood, that was real.

I wanted Nico to have something different.

So I tried to build a scrapbook. Then collages. Then videos. But there were too many photos, and they didn't quite tell the story I was trying to tell. The right moment wasn't always captured. The lighting was wrong. The expression wasn't quite it. I kept trying to fit real life into a format that wasn't working.

And then it hit me: what if I stopped trying to document the moments, and started creating them?

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That's how The Adventures of Nico Human was born.

Instead of searching through thousands of photos hoping to find the one that captured a memory just right, I could build the memory. Draw it, write it, make it exactly what it needed to be. The story of the day Nico decided he was Spider-Man. The day he and Olive went on a treasure hunt. The day he finally, triumphantly, used the potty.

I could make those moments beautiful and permanent and his — without worrying whether I'd actually taken a good enough photo.

The first comic I made was the Spider-Man one. Nico had been completely obsessed — still is, honestly — and I made a little story of him waking up in his bed, realising he had powers, heading out into the world to be brave. I showed it to him and he just... lit up. He kept asking to read it again. And again.

So I made another one.

And then another.

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Now he wakes up asking if there's a new story. We read six to ten books a day — he has over 400 books already and he's only two and a half, which tells you everything you need to know about this child — and the Nico Human comics have found their place right in that collection. Personalised, permanent, entirely his.

Olive is in every story, of course. She's his sidekick, his buddy, his chaos companion — in real life and in the pages. It makes it feel close to home in a way that no other book could. Because it is home.

The themes I keep coming back to are his imagination and the small things we're learning together. Every story has something real in it — a lesson, a milestone, a moment we actually lived. But wrapped in adventure, in colour, in the kind of magic that a two-and-a-half-year-old sees everywhere he looks.

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If you're a parent reading this, here's what I want to say:

You don't have to be an illustrator. You don't have to have the perfect photos or the perfectly organised scrapbook. But if there are core memories you want your child to carry — moments you want to make real and lasting and theirs — it's worth finding a way to capture them that actually works for you.

For me, it was this. A little boy, his dog, and the stories only we know.

I'm still making them. He's still asking for more.

And honestly? I think I'll be making them for a long time.

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The Adventures of Nico Human will be available in the shop soon. If you want to be the first to know when the first comic drops, join my newsletter below — and if you have a little one who loves stories, I have a feeling they're going to love Nico and Olive. 🌿