This Press Kit page is also downloadable as a PDF file (876 kB)
Stuart McMillen is a comics artist based in Canberra, Australia. He specialises in creating longform social commentary comics based on real-life historical events.
Since becoming a full-time comics artist in 2011, over 1.5 million unique individuals have visited Stuartās website and read at least one of his comics.
In 2023, Scribe Publications signed Stuart to create an expanded adaptation of his online comic about the last town in North America to receive TV reception. The Town Without Television is set to become Stuartās debut book, published by Scribe in both Australia and in the United States/Canada in 2025. More information about this project.
A major touchstone of Stuartās back-catalogue is his comic Rat Park (ratpark.com). Since it was first published in 2013, Rat Park has found an enduring success with audiences who see it as a touchstone for sympathetically explaining the topic of addiction. As of 2023, the comic has been viewed over 700,000 times (by over 560,000 unique visitors) via Stuart’s English language website, as well as over 160,000 times through translated versions on Stuart’s website. Rat Park is prescribed as required reading in multiple college curricula around the world, and has been featured in publications such as McGraw Hill Educationās U.S. college English textbook Writing to Read, Reading to Write, 2nd Edition (2023) by Alison Kuehner.
All of Stuartās comics are freely available to read through his website (stuartmcmillen.com/comics). Newcomers are suggested to start with Stuartās Top 10 comics list, or by browsing his comics grouped by topic.
Stuart is a crowdfunded comics artist, with an ongoing Patreon campaign hosted at crowdfundstu.com. The combined donations from readers supporting this campaign helps him to continue operating as a self-employed independent comics artist. As of 2023, Stuart has raised a total of over A$125,000 from various crowdfunding drives held to support his comics. This total has come from the support of over 500 individual donors.
An enthusiastic international team of volunteers have translated Stuart’s comics into 11 languages. [More info here]. These languages are selectable by the drop-down menu in the top-right corner of the stuartmcmillen.com website.
Stuart McMillen was born in Bundaberg in 1985, but now lives in Canberra where he has been a studio resident of Gorman Arts Centre since 2018.
Journalists are welcome to contact Stuart for interview requests via his contact form. Preference is for interviews conducted via phone/video-chat, rather than written interviews.
To help your research: use the CV section to see the various ways that Stuart has ‘popped up’ over the years, including media appearances and republishing credits. Also, a fair amount of self-reflective commentary already exists in the FAQs, and in the ‘Comics Discussion’ blog posts.
Please credit photographer Andrew Sikorski when republishing the photographs.
You have express permission to republish Stuart’s artwork in publications / websites describing or reviewing Stuart’s comics. (Stuart McMillen retains copyright, and disallows use for all other purposes).
Note: each of the below RGB JPEG images range between 2 and 12MB in file size, averaging 4MB.
Email Stuart if you are chasing images other than what is supplied here.