Emily in Purgatory

Rees-Mogged on Saturday

Dec 01, 2025

∙ Paid

First of all, a quick note: I’ll be back in SF from December 9th till 16th, and I’m doing a small event with Josh Pettinger on Saturday, the 13th, at Mission Comics. Come by for a rare chance to buy my newest comics, and get the older books signed. Josh had a very funny book from Fantagraphics earlier, and I have a very depressing one coming out soon (unfortunately, not in time for the event).

world premieres of the new issues of our comics

I’m back from my self-imposed French exile, which ended with a little miracle. In the last couple weeks I was sharing the residency with one Nathan Cowdry, and we even jammed out a short comic together:

If you find any of this offensive, it’s 100% Cowdry’s contribution. Anyway, one drunken evening I was trying to find this amusing Instagram post by the UK conservative politician Jacob Rees-Mogg:

As soon as I found the page, however, Nathan tapped ‘follow’ and I became trapped in the Rees-Moggverse. Next day, when I saw some JRM content pop on my feed, I decided to draw some fan-art, from the perspective of ‘my new son Colby:’

I mentioned Mr. Rees-Mogg a few times, and a couple of my followers chimed in. To be honest, I didn’t expect it to work, since these accounts tend to be a bit fake, and my trolling was so obvious, but imagine my delight when next day, I woke up to this missive:

And so, for 24 hours this was broadcasted to his 70k followers:

I posted the same thing on Substack too, and got a humble, but pleasant ‘like’ from Mr. Rees-Mogg’s account. Yes, he’s on Substack, too, and so is Lizzo. To close off the subject of my Rees-Mogging, here’s a very French mini-documentary about young JRM (aged 12, incidentally):

And if you missed it, my previous French dispatch (god, how I hated that film, even thought it was filmed in Angouleme, and famous actor Bill Murray had a drink with my ex-studiomates, shortly after I left):

And now, a sequel of sorts to my older fanfiction of Emily in Paris, a show that I still haven’t watched, and probably never will.