Veronica Vera and Oliver Bareham

Veronica’s drawing of the pair, used as the profile picture of the comic’s Patreon page.

Veronica Vera and Oliver Bareham are the authors of Bittersweet Candy Bowl. Veronica writes and draws the comic, while Oliver edits, runs the store and handles the design work. The two are partners of over twenty years, and making BCB and its related projects is their full-time job.

Roles and division of labor

Veronica is the comic’s creator, its primary writer and its artist. Oliver helps with the writing and editing, is in charge of the store, and does all of the web and print design. Online, Veronica goes by Taeshi and Oliver by SuitCase. “Souppy” is Veronica’s own nickname for him.

Oliver also comes up with chapter titles, and Veronica says he “comes up with some bangers” and “loves titles with multiple meanings”. As of 2026, Veronica runs the official Tumblr largely on her own, since Oliver “just doesn’t have the energy for social media very much anymore”.

How the comic is made

The authors’ desks side by side, as photographed by Oliver in December 2020.

Veronica starts with loose scripts for key moments on her phone, which she works into thumbnails with pen and notebook before sketching the pages on a Wacom Cintiq in Photoshop. Once the dialogue is in, Oliver reads through and edits, and the two of them go over the pages together one more time. Veronica then inks, colors and shades, and Oliver finishes each page with halftones and final corrections before uploading it. A page takes about four hours depending on complexity, and their buffer runs anywhere from 5 to 80 pages. When asked about software, Oliver answered “Photoshop, always Photoshop!” The pair also use Wirecast for streaming.

Public history

Veronica began posting the comic to deviantART in 2006, the same year she moved to Sydney with Oliver to study primary school teaching. She later switched to a bachelor of fine arts and stayed on that course until the comic turned into a full-time job. Oliver, for his part, came out of UNSW with a law degree, though he “has chosen to skip the law career for now and stick to what’s fun”.

Oliver built the comic a proper website in 2009, and by the end of 2010 its footer was crediting both authors by their full names. They raised money for their first book, Volume One, in 2010 and printed it the following year.

The pair then made plans to move to New York City together, and did so in 2014. They returned to Australia in 2026. By their own reckoning, they are “probably done with cons for a while”.

Trivia

• The site’s description of the pair has aged along with them. The 2011 About page called Oliver Veronica’s “boyfriend slash HASBANDO”, while the current one says “partners of over twenty years”.
• “Souppy” beat out the obvious alternative. People at the time just called Oliver “Suity”, and, as Veronica tells it, “I wanted to be more original!”
• The pair did not create every character in the comic. Veronica has had some characters “floating around in her head since childhood”, while Tess was created by their friend Lily and Alec McCain by T. Ashley Jenkins.