I got a brief chance to catch up with an artist and comics creator I’ve known for years online but never met in person earlier this week. Oli East has created some fascinating and unique works based on his long walks, often following railway lines, and his new project sees him retracing the steps of Maharajah, an elephant from the 1870s. Bought from a circus Maharajah was to travel by train to his new home in a zoo in Manchester, but made his displeasure known in spectacular fashion (wrecking the freight train carriage he was to go in), so he and his keeper had to walk the whole way from Edinburgh to Manchester. I met Oli early in the morning in Edinburgh’s huge Waverley train station where he was getting ready to set out on his journey, creating sketches as he goes on his ten day walk following the same route as the elephant and his keeper, our very own comics Hannibal. The journey is being filmed for a documentary and the finished artwork by Oli will be shown as part of the third Lakes International Comic Art Festival in Kendal this autumn. (more details of Oli’s walk and project over on the FP blog)