There was a lot of wildlife in the titles for the comics suggested by pupils in schools this week. I did a day and a half at Ruskin Juniors in Swindon, and two days at Northbury Primary in Barking, doing the Year 6s at one and the Year 5s at the other. Zombie Chickens is my favourite cover (sometimes the logo just works out right, being drawn at speed during the class), and Assassinate Trump is one of those covers that you realise afterwards is the sort of thing that might come back to bite you. What can I say? The teacher didn't have a problem with it. Primary school kids find no-one funnier than Donald Trump. And in a class that is 90% BAME and probably 50% Muslim, all I can say is that he started it.
Meanwhile in Swindon, the titles again erred on the side of inadvisability. I managed to disguise the worst of the Rainbow Farting Pig, but if anyone comes back complaining about my insensitive attitude to recently deceased Nans, I can only apologise.
It's always good to have the opportunity to google a bit of reference and knock out a simple but effective front cover, so I was pleased with my dolphins. And the flipcharts this week have benefitted from my arriving in good time every morning. A worrying trend I'm finding in schools recently is that kids don't recognised Minnie The Minx. They guess everything from Pie Face to Dennis The Menace's Gran (do I draw her looking very grandparental? That comes up a lot). But few get Minnine first time.
And back in Northbury, here we see me doing my politically correct over-compensation, making sure the kids are well represented on their comic covers. I'm sure the kids aren't that fussed, or even aware of such things, but I like to make sure my comics don't end up whitewashed like, for example, Eastenders. (Right now Albert Square, ostensibly set in East London, seems to have more gay characters than Asians, which is a bit weird).
The celebrities these 7 groups chose for my demonstration strip were Cristiano Ronaldo (three times), Donald Trump (twice), Ed Sheeran, and, for a bit of much needed variety, Leonardo Da Vinci.
Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing and drawing for The Beano, Marvel, Doctor Who et al, runs Comic Art Masterclasses in schools, libraries and art centres - email for details, and follow him on Facebook and Twitter. View the promo video
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