Serpent in Hell, originally published in 1992 as a 36pp A5 comic, is now available as a digital download. A miserable and embittered fable of alienation and despair. Contains many obsessive images of a wretched, suffering snake and some disconcerting drawings of The Devil. The drawings are aspiring towards the condition of old engravings, and the book attempts to emulate the look of an 18th-century chapbook or pamphlet.

“Cover me up with squares of turf / And I will consort with my brother worm…”

Download Serpent In Hell as a PDF (14.96MB)
Contains some adult content and will probably not be suitable for young readers.

That is a simple ambiguity, clearly explained within the narrative itself. Its deeper resonances, however, can only be probed and explained within the context of each individual reader’s experience and understanding. More than almost anything else in comics, Pinsent’s work defeats the techniques of objective analysis – all this review can do is tell you what I think of this tale. You, whoever you may be, will find other matter for digestion within its pages. Perhaps this is why Pinsent is generally held to be brilliant, but has never achieved wide acceptance; his work holds little that is susceptible to consensual understanding.

For what it’s worth, then my reading of IT’S NOT SATIN perceives a cold condemnation of art’s very artificiality. Its nameless protagonist does not (cannot?) communicate in words, only in symbols; caught up in an entirely private world of meaning, he (she?) interprets a moment of fleeting, trivial human communication as the trigger for a passion which can only be consummated dispassionately. With the help of artisan’s tools, the loved one is captured and objectified, adapted completely into the artist’s world and thereby removed from real life. From this chilling expression of a dichotomy between art and life, perhaps the closing pages, in which the artist feels compelled to release his loved one’s spirit, offer a means of redemption. Perhaps…but there the story ends.

And perhaps no-one else would read the story in this way. As with all reviews, you can read them but they cannot embody your understanding. Ed Pinsent reminds us that only you can do that. For the questions that he asks, give him your support.
Mike Kidson
From ZUM! No 3, January 1992

It’s Not Satin, written and drawn in 1990, was one of my rare full-colour stories. It has previously only been available in a black-and-white photocopied version, printed half the size of the original art. This web publication is the first time it has been released in its full colour version. (EP)

Download It’s Not Satin as a PDF (4.25MB)
Adults only! Not suitable for young readers!

Voice of a Dream from 1988, now available to download as a PDF (11.41 MB).

Adults Only! Not suitable for young readers! Contains images of sex, death, blood, mutilation, castration, nudity, and some nightmarish themes.

Ed Pinsent’s digital comics are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.