Drawn to Extinction: Comics, Craft, and the Battle for Originality in the Age of Ai

Drawn to Extinction is a book about comics, about people, about craft, and about the quiet, relentless labour that turns blank pages into worlds you carry with you for life.

With a foreword by Pat Mills, co-creator of 2000AD, this book sets its stall out early, not as an obituary, but as a reckoning.

Part love letter, part warning, it traces the history and humanity of comics, from the raw energy of British weeklies to the global dominance of superheroes, and asks what happens next.

As generative Ai tools rise, trained on the very work creators poured themselves into, the line between homage and extraction begins to blur. What once felt like inspiration now starts to look like replication.

Through conversations with some of the industry’s most respected voices, including John Wagner, Torunn Grønbekk, Hannah Berry, Ram V, Patrick Goddard, Dan Cornwell, Frazer Irving, Steve McNiven, Dr Julia Round and more, Drawn to Extinction captures the lived reality of making comics today, the passion, the pressure, the community, and the growing sense that the rules are being rewritten in real time.

This isn’t a rejection of technology, it’s a question of what we value, and what we are willing to lose in the name of progress.

Because the machine doesn’t dream, it replicates. And when replication starts to replace creation, something deeper is at risk, not just jobs or industries, but the human fingerprints that make stories feel like they belong to us.

For longtime fans, curious newcomers, and anyone who has ever felt the pull of a story told in ink and imagination, this is both a celebration and a call to attention.