Monday, 30 April 2018

Jack Kirby Song - new from the Socks

Brand new from The Socks (edited in my hotel room in Switzerland while working at Aiglon school, now you ask), is a musical tribute to Jack Kirby. Intended to be part of the audience-in music for the new show, Superheroes, it might not even make it that far. But it was fun to write, I hope you enjoy it.

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre* are Superheroes at The Gilded Balloon at the Edinburgh Fringe from August 1st to 26th - ON SALE NOW!

*Winners of the Bath Comedy Festival Lovehoney Best Joke Award 2018

Previews:
May 26 3.45pm & May 27 5pm Komedia Brighton

June 16 - Zion, Bristol

June 20 - Ludlow Fringe

July 11 - Neath
July 19 - Bedford Fringe
July 29 - Derby Bar One

- with more preview dates to be announced

Saturday, 28 April 2018

Superheroes 6th Preview - London April 27

Superheroes 6th Preview - London April 27 2018

Thanks to Juliette Burton, who gave us a slot after her Happy Hour show at the Canvas Cafe just off Brick Lane, the Socks were able to do an extra Preview of Superheroes, ahead of May's shows in Brighton, and following on from March's Bath show (which in turn followed 2 nights in Glasgow and 2 in Leicester). This was an invaluable preview, getting me back up to speed with what needs improving, while letting me test out the material I've written this month.

The audience, only about 15 strong but lovely, had already watched an almost 3 hour show featuring Juliette and three other comedians (Rik Carranza, Lorna Shaw, and Lost Voice Guy), being the surviving hardcore of a larger crowd, staying on after 10.30 on a Friday night. The Socks eventually started at just short of 11pm. They were what I'd call 'An Edinburgh crowd', being above-average comedy-savvy, younger and more cosmopolitan, so a very good testing ground. Here's what we gave them and how it went.

Opening gags - Wayne/Robin/Flash. Good. Opening with quickfire gags is a good start.

Opening gags continued - Awards (new). However, continuing with 7 more puns, no matter how good (and I'm pleased with this batch) isn't so good. It sets the show up as a night of puns and is not the best way of building their engagement. These should appear later in the show and even be scattered through it.

I'm A Sock song - The usual test of a new audience (only 1 of whom had seen the Socks before). They laughed in all the right places and we had them.

Cosmopolitan - Excellent.

Bob Kane gag - Good. One isolated arcane pun works fine.

Motion Capture - Brilliant. Delivery a bit messy, but the core gag works. Ending needs improving.

Ang Lee / Ditko gag (new) - Good. Two puns together work fine

Comedy Award / Nursery Rhyme gag - Good (excuses the gag).

Spiderman Song - Now seems a bit weak. Should replace this.

Plot / Maguffin gags (new) - Brilliant, and make the structure clear

Science Faraday/Sagan - Shortened by one gag, v good

Hulk gag (new) - First groan of the night, but good

Brother 1 - Excellent. Fewer prop laughs, all from the lines & characters

Your Racist Brother Song - V good, good laughs throughout

Batman - V good. New gag okay. Teeth - brilliant.

Urine/Nuts/Crazy gags (new) - Very good

Crossover inc callback (new) - Good. Needs to be called back later

Steed & Mrs Peel Song - Another weak song. I think I'm the only person who likes it, it'll have to go.

Avengers (moved) - Excellent. Much better in the middle of the show than as a finale.

Avengers Reel - Needs improving. (Failed to re-record it since Bath, will be better when shortened and keys changed)

Fantastic Four Appeal - V good, laughs in the right places (Needs callback later)

Brother 2 - Excellent. Good laughs from lines again, not so much from props

Shroedinger/ Tyson gags - Okay but spoil the flow slightly

Superman - Origin gag (new) v good.

Jor El/Kal El to The Kents - Excellent. First time an audience has properly gone with this routine. Need callback later.

Glasses - Not as many prop laughs as before, but that's fine as the lines funny

Dead Ringer Song - Excellent

Harley & Ivy - Messy start so audience puzzled for first half, then laughing for the rest.

Daredevil (new) - Very good, brilliant laughs for the new prop. Punchline disappointing.

Brother 3 - Very good.

If I've Learned speech - good

All By Myself - Very good, but need to perfect those prop changes

And we ended the show there, which was doubly fortuitous. Firstly, because I haven't written the finale properly (though it has a handful of new gags that didn't get tried), and also because the show was over-running and, unbeknownst to anyone, we had to get out of the venue by midnight or we'd get fined. So me finishing after, I think, 55 minutes was perfect.

So, in conclusion, and in advance of Brighton: I now have a good story structure that holds it together and enables me to lose and insert material. We have lots of great one-liners, but need:

Replacement for Spider-man song, ideally with a strong routine

Replacement for Steed & Mrs Peel, again with a strong routine

Reduced and re-recorded Avengers Reel

Proper Finale (with callbacks to the running jokes set up already)

Tightened up props (especially Brother, whose mouth is not so funny it can be allowed to never work properly)

... and anything that tackles the many superheroes that haven't had a look in to the show yet. Wonder Woman and the X Men, for example (Brexit Men hit the cutting room floor this time round).

Onwards and upwards. Next stop Brighton Fringe, May 26 & 27. Book now.

June 16 - Zion, Bristol

June 20 - Ludlow Fringe

July 11 - Neath
July 19 - Bedford Fringe
July 29 - Derby Bar One

- with more preview dates to be announced

Thursday, 26 April 2018

My Top 10 Influential Comicbooks

TOP 10 INFLUENTIAL COMICBOOKS

Folks are doing this, so why not. 10 comics that influenced me.

1 - Terrific

Before this I'd read Playhour & Robin and Pippin & Tog, but when Terrific (and its sister paper Fantastic) started reprinting Marvel strips I suddenly started paying attention to comics. I remember vividly a three panel sequence by Steve Ditko where The Hulk emerged from a hole or a tank (which I can't find online, so I've probably Maconied it). This was when I first 'got' comic strips. I was five years old.

2 - Asterix

Four Asterix books came free with Total petrol*. Though I've been aware of that fact for nearly 50 years, I've not till now asked the question: where on earth was there a Total petrol garage? I've never seen one. Whatever, four Asterix books came free, the rest you had to pay for. To be honest, their content may ultimately be better than any other comic I go on to mention in the rest of this list. (Update: I've looked at the rest of the list, Asterix is the best of the stuff on the whole list. Sorry rest of the list.)

*Asterix The Legionary, Asterix The Gladiator, Asterix & The Big Fight, and Asterix & Cleopatra.

3 - Lion & Thunder

A series of amalgamations, using the British "Hatch, Match, Dispatch" publishing tradition, meant that I ended up reading comics by default. Terrific had been swallowed by Fantastic, which then became Smash & Pow Incorporating Fanastic. And just as I was getting into the revamped Smash, with its Eric Bradbury lead strip and Leo Baxendale centrespread, it was sucked into Valiant & Smash. I'd started reading a new comic called Thunder and, within 6 months, found myself reading Lion & Thunder which, with such strips as Geoff Campion's Spellbinder alongside Adam Eterno and Robot Archie, was such a delight I totally failed to notice the Marvel reprint strips had long since disappeared.

4 - Planet Of The Apes

Marvel came back into my life when I discovered the reprint strips based on my favourite TV show, Planet Of The Apes. I quickly discovered Marvel UK were producing about 10 comics a week, reprinting 40 pages of comic strips in black and white in every issue, meaning my generation was able to mainline every classic Marvel strip, from the early 60s superheroes through to the latest creations at a rate of over 300 pages a week. And you got change from a quid. The black and white litho printing of art from everyone from Neal Adams to Barry Smith, Gil Kane to Jim Steranko, enabled British readers to see the pages bigger, and clearer, than our American cousins had endured a few years earlier, buried in blotchy colours. This affected and nurtured a generation of comic artists who were about to flourish.

5 - Look-In

The highest quality printed comic art in the world at the time, by my reckoning. (As you can see from these copies in my collection, I treated them with scant respect, using them to decorate my diary). Though the stories only came in two-page instalments, the art by John Burns, Martin Asbury, Harry North & Mike Noble on such adaptations as The Tomorrow People, The 6 Million Dollar Man, Doctor In Charge and Black Beauty were devastating and put all other contemporary comic art to shame. Marvel art at the time looked so shoddy in comparison it convinced me that someday they'd be so desperate they'd even employ me.

6 - 2000AD

To begin with I dismissed 2000AD for not being as well written as the Marvel reprints, and new colour Marvel comics we were starting to be able to get (in particular Howard The Duck, which remains my favourite series of the period). But I got hooked when Starlord comic came out and, just like had happened in my earlier childhood, got subsumed into 2000AD. Early favourite were Dredd and Robo Hunter, with Bolland and Gibson being fan favourites. Then came Alan Moore and a proper revolution in comic book writing took place. See also Warrior.

7 - The Spirit

The longest delay between a comic coming out and me discovering it has got to be the forty years that passed between Will Eisner's Spirit appearing in American Sunday newspapers, and my starting to read it when it was reprinted by Kitchen Sink Press in the 80s. These strips, especially Eisner's artwork and storytelling, were as impressive then as they must have been when they first appeared. As I had the pleasure of saying when I gave a speech introducing Will at the 2003 Raptus Comic Festival in Bergen, I had for years attributed to lesser later copyists most of the techniques that Eisner had in fact originated. If my comic strips have draw on/ borrowed from one person more than any other, it's Will Eisner. (Also Doonesbury, I "do" Doonesbury so much!)

8 - Swamp Thing

That period in the early eighties, when American comics started using British talent, was something so momentous it's hard to describe to a younger generation used to an international publishing world. Just 10 years later I was to find myself working for Marvel, but in 1983 that was beyond our comprehension. DC and Marvel were so distant, so unreachable. And the fact that our own Alan Moore was then writing comics that made his American contemporaries look so primitive, derivative, old fashioned, it really was something to experience live. The post-modern approach to comics, whereby writers will "do an Alan Moore" and revive an old or rather silly character by bringing it into a gritty realistic world or deconstructing and remaking it, has become the norm, leading to the Christopher Nolan Batman films and the DC and Marvel Cinematic Universes, of which we're no doubt going to tire soon. 35 years ago, on a typewriter in Northampton, is where that glorious nonsense started.

9 - Viz

Somewhere in a parallel universe, a guy called Chris who had no pretensions to being a comics creator and little or no interest in the world of comics started writing and drawing some nonsense that, quite possibly to his surprise, lots of people liked. Within a decade it became the biggest selling comics magazine in Britain, probably the world, and 40 years on it's still going. Viz remains possibly the only comic book that has genuinely made me laugh out loud (though Giles and Doonesbury are personal favourites, and make me smile, they've never made me spit a drink like Viz).

10 - Beano

I never read The Beano as a kid, having discovered Marvel reprints when I was five. But in 1999 I somehow noticed they were running long-form stories by writer-artist Mike Pearse and that they were excellent. The best storytelling I had ever seen in the Beano. I endeavoured to follow in his wake and, thanks to visionary editor Euan Kerr, found myself being able to write and draw a number of serialised comic adventures in the Beano, for a good few years, which remain the work of which I am proudest. Mike Pearse's work remains my favourite work I have ever seen in that comic, though the work of a recent generation including Gary Northfield and Nigel Auchterlounie has been of a similar high standard. I have my fingers crossed for its continued survival.

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 here.

Tuesday, 24 April 2018

Fighting The Superhero Way - new from the Socks

A new song and video from the Socks, Fighting The Superhero Way. If it's lucky, this will be part of the audience-in music for Superheroes, so you'll only be subjected if you come and see the show live. Which you will be doing, won't you?

June 16 - Zion, Bristol

June 20 - Ludlow Fringe

July 11 - Neath
July 19 - Bedford Fringe
July 29 - Derby Bar One

- with more preview dates to be announced

Parket? Radio sitcom joke cock up

Badly Done Joke Alert!

If you listen to the trailer for Radio 2's Funny Fortnight (on this iPlayer clip 10 mins in) you'll hear a gag that's not only unoriginal (of which more shortly) but also absolutely buggered up.

From new sitcom The Taylors, the exchange goes:
"That old flooring, what's it called?"
"Parquet?"
"It was, but it's much warmer now we've got the carpet down"

Now I know it's an old gag because I used it in my BBC radio sitcom pilot Meanwhile, recorded in the self same Radio Theatre in 1998. But that's not the worst crime. The worst crime is the delivery.

The joke works because "parquet" sounds like "parky", an old-fashioned word for cold. But in this clip, the actor pronounces the word "par-ket". Which renders the whole gag meaningless.

How someone could have let that slip into the recorded sitcom without noticing it - then used it IN THE TRAILER! - defies description and beggars belief.

If I'm so clever, why aren't I writing a new sitcom on BBC Radio you ask? Probably because I post bitter and twisted things like this. Even I wouldn't want to work with me.

Parket. Kids today.

June 16 - Zion, Bristol

June 20 - Ludlow Fringe

July 11 - Neath
July 19 - Bedford Fringe
July 29 - Derby Bar One

- with more preview dates to be announced

Demented Donkey Fights The Environment - comics by kids

A busy weekend of Comic Art Masterclasses, taking me from Milton Keynes to Sutton Coldfield, to Liverpool, and back to Milton Keynes, included a couple of days where I was trying to get the kids to tailor their strips to the theme of the environment, climate change, and the like. Here were the covers created with the pupils of Longmeadow in Milton Keynes. Because these are going to be printed in a colour magazine in the summer, I was pleased with how they came out, drawn in the class on the day and coloured when I got home.

Despite the obvious ecological theme, these two were in fact from Dyson Perrins school in Malvern and had nothing to do with the MK eco project. That's a character from Pokemon, apparently. Like I'd know. And, yes I agree, radishes do not lend themselves to a good cover design.

The comic on the left was made with the smallest group of the week, just 5 teenagers at the YMCA centre in Sutton Coldfield. I'll be going back to work with larger groups in the coming weeks. Then we see the comic from Hazeley school in Milton Keynes, where I was so keen to draw a local landmark, then got hamstrung by the fact that no MK landmark is really all that photogenic. That's a place called The Point, now you ask.

In Birkinhead I worked with the Whizz-Kids again, a group of kids with a variety of abilities, some on wheels and some not. They produced some cracking work. And to the right you can see the flipchart I did for the YMCA class. This is what you get when I arrive an hour before the class starts.

The celebrities these groups chose for my demonstration strip were Ariana Grande, Donald Trump, Paul Walker, Ant McPartlin, Lionel Messi and David Attenborough. (With the group in Hazeley I dispensed with the demo strip and, guess what, it made no difference to the quality of their work.)

Monday, 23 April 2018

Dandelion Experiment

Urgh, look away. Not for the squeamish. I have undergone, not for the first time, The Dandelion Experiment, by which I endeavour to rid myself of a wart, by application of Dandelion juice.

You can see from the grisly photos above that it is, to a degree, worked. But what a gruesome degree. The blistered and pussy stage you see in figure 5 was how my face looked for two days in schools. In all the process took about 7 days to clear.

fig 1 is before and fig 2 shows the application of dandelion juice, on Monday April 16th. By Tuesday it had darkened for fig 3, then by Wednesday it was starting to swell and blister. Fig 4 shows it as its worst, as it was around Thursday and Friday, and fig 5 shows it the following Monday, all cleared up. There is still a small wart there, but not quite as visible as it was to begin with. And the second smaller wart that was threatening to form above it has, I think receded.

I could apply a second treatment but, I fear, I have too few days when I can hide away from the public. (I applied it on a Monday, knowing I didn't have a school till Thursday and thinking it would be gone by then.)

So ends this month's medical experiment. I hope it adds to the greater weight of knowledge.

And, knowing nobody will be reading this...

PS - A cunning ruse of suspicious type includes clues

Lovely. Opportunities come my way frequently, but I don't always take them. Often I let them slip through my fingers. Knowing whether they're worth taking can be the problem. I, for example, have been invited to do Britain's Got Talent twice. Just imagine if I did it?

Ultimately I did one audition and failed it. Saying that, I then got asked about doing America's Got Talent. To be honest, it was only an exploratory phone call. Brutally honestly, they didn't want me. Retrospectively, I'm just guessing at that. Or, of course, they might have wanted me, but they needed me to prove that. Knowing that to be the case, I should have pressured them more. Except I didn't really want to do it. And it's not as if I'd have won.

Now another opportunity has come along, and I've said yes. Not that you'll know about it for months because it's top secret. Did you know that when you're involved with a project like this you have to sign something? A Non Disclosure Agreement. Forms sent by email that need printing and signing and scanning and resending. Right pains in the arse they are. Of course I signed them, and returned them, and then I learned what I was to be involved in. My oh my, this will be fun, I hope. The truth be told, though, you probably won't even see me on the screen. Highly likely all you'll see will be my hand and the back of my head, for a couple of seconds. Even then I most likely won't speak.

And, though I'll be using my comic drawing skills, you might not be impressed. Possibly you will be, I shall try to do my best. Pressure of time, though, will most likely work against that. Regretfully I'm not getting paid much.

Eventually I'll be able to talk about it, and it'll be a good anecdote to have. Not that that'll be happening till at least October, possibly November. Then the cat will be out of the bag, and you'll all go "was that it?" Is that your big secret, you'll say. Can no-one keep a secret these days? Evidently I can't.

Tuesday, 17 April 2018

Book Of Ruth all coloured

It's taken me a while, in between other work, but I've finally got The Book Of Esther's 12 pages coloured. Now I just need to colour Rahab and I've got a whole book good to go. I do hope it's going to go somewhere soon.

Sunday, 15 April 2018

Award coverage on Beyond The Joke

More nice coverage, this time on Bruce Dessau's Beyond The Joke.

News: Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre Wins Joke Award

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre has won the inaugural Lovehoney Innuendo Best Joke Award at the Bath Comedy Festival.

They are pictured here with their award - or maybe it's Donald Trump and the Queen? No, it's the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre.

Here is the joke that won it for them:

"Do you know what? I love nursery rhymes?" "Cock Robin?" "No, it's just the way I'm standing."

They are previewing their latest show Superheroes, which they will be taking to the Edinburgh Fringe, in London on April 27 at the Canvas Cafe in Hanbury Street, E1 after Juliette Burton's Happy Hour. More info here.

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre are Superheroes at The Gilded Balloon at the Edinburgh Fringe from August 1st to 26th - ON SALE NOW!

Previews:
April 27 - The Canvas, London E1
May 26 3.45pm & May 27 5pm Komedia Brighton

June 16 - Zion, Bristol

June 20 - Ludlow Fringe

July 11 - Neath
July 19 - Bedford Fringe
July 29 - Derby Bar One

- with more preview dates to be announced

Cracking pair win innuendo prize - Chortle

Lovely coverage of our award win on Chortle.

Cracking pair win innuendo prize

Socks clean up

Two sock puppets have won an award for the best innuendo at the Bath comedy festival.

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre – the creation of comic Kev Sutherland – won the accolade for the exchange: ‘Ooh, I do love a nursery rhyme’ ‘Cock Robin?’ ‘No, it’s just the way I’m standing’.

Their award was presented by Lovehoney, the online sex toy shop that sponsors the festival.

Here’s a video of the joke:

Published: 15 Apr 2018

June 16 - Zion, Bristol

June 20 - Ludlow Fringe

July 11 - Neath
July 19 - Bedford Fringe
July 29 - Derby Bar One

- with more preview dates to be announced

Socks Win Best Joke Award!

Wow! Well here's a pleasant surprise. The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Thetre just won Bath Comedy Festival's inaugural Lovehoney Innuendo Best Joke Award. Here's us, with special guests Donald Trump and The Queen, and our award which is shaped like... well, it looks like the Christmas trees from The Louvre to us. (Thanks to Louisa Gummer for the photo)

Lovehoney have been the major sponsors of this year's Bath Comedy Festival, and the Socks' got some great laughs by managing to keep them going as a running gag during their Edinburgh Preview last week. Which is probably what impressed them enough to make our gag the winner. They wanted a gag with innuendo in and, let's be honest, it's not our greatest joke ever. But it gets a laugh and, much more importantly, it just won us a flipping prize! Shaped like a butt plug.

I say shaped like. I'm reliably informed that it is in fact an actual butt plug from Lovehoney's factory, painted gold. Blimey. All I can say is, if you've got the trots that bad, you're going to be better off with Immodium. (Which is just the sort of gag I wish I'd thought of on the podium when I picked up the trophy at the end of Saturday night's Gala show, rather than just delivering my winning gag very badly, as myself rather than as a Sock).

Donald Trump, in the photo above, is played by the brilliant Lewis Macleod, who I found myself working with for the first time since 1998 when he was part of the cast of my BBC Radio Theatre studio audience pilot Meanwhile, co-starring Ronnie Ancona and Geoff McGivern. There, names succesfully dropped. The Queen is played by one of the theatre company Rare Species, who seem to do sterling work all over the country.

So, what was this joke of ours? Brace yourselves...

"I love nursery rhymes"
"Cock Robin?"
"No, it's just the way I'm standing"

The winner, ladies and gentlemen, of the inaugural Bath Comedy Festival Lovehoney Innuendo Joke Award.

The runners up came from a pretty illustrious list of contenders: Nick Doody, Christian Talbot, Drew Taylor, David Luck, Konstantin Kisin, Iona Fortune and Drew Taylor. Here are my two favourite runners up...

Thanks again Bath Comedy Festival and Lovehoney, the award takes pride of place in our trophy cabinet alongside... the sides of our trophy cabinet. Next stop the Edinburgh Fringe's Best Joke Award (unless, of course, that's already been decided).

June 16 - Zion, Bristol

June 20 - Ludlow Fringe

July 11 - Neath
July 19 - Bedford Fringe
July 29 - Derby Bar One

- with more preview dates to be announced

Saturday, 14 April 2018

Devil Who Farted Rainbows - new comics by kids

We haven't had Donald Trump title suggested by the kids in my Comic Art Masterclasses for a while, so this one from the library in Potters Bar was a treat to draw. It's the second week of the Easter hols, so these classes were once more extra-scholasticular (if it's not a word, it should be).

My second day of holiday classes in Walthamstow and Chingford was fun, made all the more entertaining by me having, first, to pick up a flipchart pad in the town centre before the first class. Then I had to zoom from a school in Walthamstow to a school in Chingford. Not a long journey but, as I realised when I punched it into satnav, one that was going to take me all of lunchtime. I had, you see, pre-programmed the postcodes for my destination into satnav in advance, to save time. So when it came to heading for Chingford, I simply hit the pre-installed postcode (which appears in "history" as a pre-visited address) and off I went. Don't worry I didn't get caught out by accidentally going back to the town centre where I'd been earlier to buy a flipchart, I skipped that.

It was only when I was a good few miles up the Chingford Road and starting to turn into the M25 that I realised I'd skipped an address too far. Instead of going to Chingford, I was going back to Potters Bar, where I'd been two days earlier. Long story short, I arrived 20 minutes late, but the class was excellent. Phew.

I'm doing a series of classes with CLAPA - the Cleft Lip and Palate Association - and couldn't avoid the obvious pun, on the flipchart above. Sue me.

The celebrities these five groups chose to appear in my demonstration strip were Kim Jong Un, Roald Dahl, Michael Jackson, Donald Trump and, most original suggestion for a while, Gilbert O'Sullivan (chosen because one of the kids' Dads is a friend of Gilbert, or Ray as they know him, and stay with him in his house in Jersey).