Tula Lotay

Lotay grew up in Batley, West Yorkshire.^[6] She was adopted^{[citation needed]} when she was a young child and had dyslexia.^[6] She attended Dewsbury College and the University of Bradford.^[6]

In 2007, while an employee of the local comics and board game retailer Travelling Man,^[7] she founded the annual Thought Bubble Festival to promote comic books to the general public, especially children with reading difficulties.^[5][6] Before becoming a comics artist, she was on the British Comic Awards Committee but resigned in 2013 to pursue a full-time art career.^{[citation needed]}

Her first work was the cover art for Elephantmen No. 5 (2012), and in American Vampire: Anthology No. 1 (2013). She has also contributed to Red Sonja.^[2]

She illustrated issue No. 13 of The Wicked + The Divine, which was published in 2015^[2] and nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic Book.^[8]

Lotay and her Supreme collaborator Warren Ellis announced in 2015 that they were working on a new comic, Heartless. As of early 2018, Heartless has yet to be released, but work was in progress.^[9]

In early 2022, Lotay stepped down as manager of the Thought Bubble Festival to concentrate on her art career and family.^[7]

In 2019, in recognition for her work in creating the Thought Bubble Festival, Lotay was awarded the Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award^[10][11] at San Diego Comic-Con's Eisner Awards. Upon receiving the award, Lotay said:

"It's such an honour to be awarded the Bob Clampett Award by Comic-Con International. Although given in my name, this award is really for everyone who works tirelessly to make Thought Bubble what it is; a lot of whom are volunteers, who work so hard for the love of the medium of comics. I feel I'm accepting this award on behalf of them. For Clark, Martha, Bis, Amy, Steve, Pete, Nabil, Mikey, Chloe and Billie, and the hundreds of volunteers, exhibitors and guests who've supported us over the years and helped make the show what it is. We are so excited to continue our outreach programme and make it bigger and better than ever."^[12]

In 2023, Lotay won the Eisner Award for Best Digital Comic for her work on Barnstormers: A Ballad of Love and Murder with writer Scott Snyder.

In 2024, Lotay won the Eisner Award for Best New Series^[13] for her work with Becky Cloonan on Somna: A Bed Time Story published by DSTLRY