Romance & Robot Archie - behind the scenes of this week's Beano

A fun three-part Bananaman story, written by me and drawn by Wayne Thompson, comes to its conclusion in this week's Beano. Appleman has been crushed to a pulp and is living in a glass, which gave rise to one of my two favourite gags in the episode, neither of which (as you can see above) made it into the printed comic. I'd even blogged a couple of months ago about how much I liked the "Pomegranate across town" line, now the poor Beano readers will be left with the impression that Kiwi Fruit Girl and Appleman live together. Explain that to their parents!

Wayne's art is at its peak in this story, with some cracking action shots, brilliant cartoon comic timing, and of course the return of Robot Archie* who I must get round to bringing back (I've written one more Kiwi Girl story, still to come, but in my imagined Banana-universe, Appleman's still sloshing round in a big red tin body). *For copyright reasons it is emphatically not Robot Archie, any resemblance is purely coincidental.

This week's Beano also sees my second Pansy Potter strip - with extra added credits. Oddly, but kindly, the Beano have superimposed my name "Kev F" in the bottom right hand corner whereas I'm pretty sure I'd left it off (certainly it's not there in my file copy) for a good reason - my name is actually hidden somewhere in the background. Can you spot it readers?

Next week Bananaman sees the return of Spa-Foon and the Squa-Trontians. And, if you're lucky, Orson Welles! Buy The Beano, how can you resist?





Kev F Sutherland runs Comic Art Masterclasses in schools, libraries and art centres - email for details, and follow him on Facebook and Twitter. He's been writing and drawing comics for 25 years, he must know something.

Reverse Psychology - more new comics by kids

More brand new comics by pupils in my Comic Art Masterclasses, this batch from Borehamwood, Taunton, Kings Lynn, Croydon and Guildford. (In a normal month that might seem like quite a bit of travelling, but since I've gone from Glasgow to Toulouse and all points inbetween in the last few weeks, these schools pretty well count as local.)

The celebrities they chose to tread on a worm (I'll explain later) were Jeremy Kyle, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift (twice), Joey Essex, and Matt Smith.



More comics from pupils in Cambridge, Croydon, Largs, Glasgow, and Henley, and in  Croydon, Richmond and Glasgow, in  Chorley, Newcastle Under Lyme, Borehamwood and Henley, in Hertfordshire and Weston Super Mare, in Cardiff, Falkirk, Birmingham and rural Devon. You'll find many more if you scour this blog.

Robot Archie in this week's Bananaman

Another fantastic piece of comics history here from Wayne Thompson in the Bananaman strip in the latest Beano. Hot on the heels of our inclusion of Miracle Man in a two-part story a few weeks back, this time we've shoe-horned in my childhood favourite character Robot Archie.

You do have to be particularly to remember Archie, which I am so I do. He started in Lion comic in the 1950s, ran through my childhood in the 70s and had disappeared before the 80s started. Being one of the IPC/Fleetway characters whose ownership has been the subject of doubt and argument for most of the last 25 years, he's very sadly been lost to popular culture, which is a great shame as his iconic design knocks spots of most subsequent action characters and is well ahead of its time.

I actually wrote a Return Of Robot Archie story way back in 1989 for a dummy comic (The Picture Story Paper, no I can't find a copy anywhere) largely ripped off from Ted Hughes' The Iron Man, in which Robot Archie had been buried under a housing estate and is found and repaired by a schoolkid, but it never saw the light of day (and the subsequent movie The Iron Giant did everything I had in mind, but way better).

Robot Archie, we may not see him in action again. Mind you, there's a new Beano out in a couple of days and, if you're lucky, he's in that too.



Kev F Sutherland runs Comic Art Masterclasses in schools, libraries and art centres - email for details, and follow him on Facebook and Twitter. He's been writing and drawing comics for 25 years, he must know something.

Socks at Edinburgh Fringe - on sale already

At a record-breakingly early date, some two months earlier than they've gone on sale in previous years, tickets for the Scottish Falsetto Socks' brand new show, ...And So Am I, are now available. How brilliant is that? (And how nifty is that ad in the bottom right hand corner?)

Would it be record-breakingly bad PR to say we haven't written the show yet? In contrast to last year, when we started working on Socks In Space in February and tried out heaps of ultimately-rejected material, this year we've been touring a 90 minute show featuring Socks In Space and a bunch of stuff from previous shows, and in June we'll start previewing a brand new set. It's good to have different ways of working, I remember 2010's highest-selling show ...On The Telly being written similarly late in the day. Exciting times.

And if you want to catch Socks In Space, possibly my favourite of all our shows so far, you'd better get a move on... (and then book Edinburgh, if you know what's good for you)



The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre are on tour... NOW!
Apr 3 - Adam Smith Theatre Kirkcaldy
Apr 12 - Stroud Subscription Rooms
May 9 - Exeter Barnfield
May 14 - Camden Head, London
May 17 - Brighton Komedia
May 23 - Keighley Exchange
May 31 - Aylesbury Limelight
June 6 - Hazlitt Theatre, Maidstone
June 7 - Butlins, Bognor
June 11 - Camden Head, London
June 19 - Phoenix Arts, Bordon Hants
June 20 - Derby Assembly Rooms
June 21 - Halifax Square Chapel
June 22 - Derby (family show)
July 4 - Old Joint Stock Theatre, Birmingham
July 9 - Bedford Fringe
July 11 - Beverley Puppet Festival
July 13 - Sheffield New Barrack Tavern 2pm
July 17 - Larmer Tree Festival, Wilts
July 18 - Leeds Carriageworks
July 19 - Cradley Heath Comedy Festival
July 22 - Comedy Den Cardiff
July 23 - Taurus Manchester
July 30 - Aug 25 Gilded Balloon, 10.30pm - Edinburgh Fringe 2014

Hottest Hamster In Town - new comics by kids in Toulouse

I've just spent a week in Colomiers, a small town near Toulouse, teaching kids in the International School Toulouse, Ecole Paul Bert and Ecole Victor Hugo how to write and draw comics. Above you see the front covers of the comics each group took home with them.

You might think it's taking coals to Newcastle getting the man from the Beano to teach comics in the land of BD, but I was mostly teaching British pupils, or pupils from bilingual families, and their awareness of comics was about the same as the kids back home. Only a few had been to the magnificent BD collection in the Pavillon Blanc arts centre in Colomiers, but hopefully I've changed that.

Some interesting themes seem to keep re-appearing, including fast food and psycho bunnies, but these were merely the most popular suggestions from the hundreds they came up with between them.

When asked to suggest a celebrity to tread on a worm (in my famous demonstration exercise) they went for Michael Jackson (twice), Brad Pitt, Benedict Cumberbatch, Keith Lemon (twice), Roger Moore, and, beating Roger to the oddest suggestion of the week, George Washington.

Obviously distance is no object, so if you want me to come to your schools and teach your kids how to do what I've been doing for the last 25 years, do please get in touch.



More comics from pupils in Cambridge, Croydon, Largs, Glasgow, and Henley, and in  Croydon, Richmond and Glasgow, in  Chorley, Newcastle Under Lyme, Borehamwood and Henley, in Hertfordshire and Weston Super Mare, in Cardiff, Falkirk, Birmingham and rural Devon. You'll find many more if you scour this blog.

They've got an awful lot of comics in Colomiers

They've got an awful lot of comics in Colomiers. And, by extension, I can only assume all over France.

Here you see me in the Bandes Dessinees section of Pavillon Blanc Mediatheque Centre D'Art in Colomiers, which is a small town outside Toulouse where I'm spending the week teaching comics. In this photo I happen to be looking at shelves of mostly American comics, translated into French, but just out of shot are another ten bookcases like this - half a floor of the building in effect - crammed full of comic books, graphic novels, bandes dessinees and manga. Mostly French in origin, there is so much of it I really had not quite realised how much there is, and how much people obviously genuinely read.

It makes one sigh with disappointment that, back home, the constant conclusion people seem to come to is that comics have lost the battle against games, TV, ipads and books without pictures (the biggest comic publishing company in the UK now refers to one of its biggest selling comics as a "picture-book series" and has to seek out "new licensing partners" to create "fresh narratives" for their "brands", rather than publish actual comics). Well not in France they don't.

That said, today I've been teaching in the International School of Toulouse where, to be honest, nobody is actually French and therefore they're largely unaware of the comics culture that surrounds them. On the plus side, they are the only people in France who've heard of The Beano, which is good news for me, but not as big a cultural achievement as we might like.

So, comics are big in France, they give half a floor of a shiny new arts centre over to them, and it's another example of a success story we should always be trying to emulate back home if we possibly can. I'm doing my small bit. Here, look at me girning in front of a flipchart with Asterix and a bit of French on it. Allons, allez maintenant.

Kev F Sutherland runs Comic Art Masterclasses in schools, libraries and art centres - email for details, and follow him on Facebook and Twitter. He's been writing and drawing comics for 25 years, he must know something.

Socks in Fife - a wee review

Someone who doesn't like comedy came and saw the Socks and liked them....

Fife Comedy Festival: laugh your (Scottish Falsetto) socks off!

Posted on April 4, 2014 by PostcardfromFife

I don’t like people trying to make me laugh and have even been accused of having no sense of humour, but I like to think I’ve just inherited my dad’s unconventional sense of humour!

So, as you can imagine, I was unsure the Fife Comedy Festival would be for me when I was invited along this week…..

The festival kicked off on April Fools’ Day with stand up comedian Rich Hall and features lots of famous comedians even I recognise the names of, but I opted for a slightly more unusual show – The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre.

I was excited to head along to the Adam Smith Theatre in Kirkcaldy, as mum often took me to performances there when I was wee. The building is gorgeous! I was expecting to be in a large theatre space, but we were ushered upstairs into a small candle-lit room of tables and chairs.

Enter the socks! A comedy sock puppet duo that has toured internationally and appeared on BBC, MTV and Channel 4. There were no special effects or expensive sets, just a couple of sock puppets (one very talented man!) and some funny jokes. I wasn’t sure it was going to work, but  it did – their silly Scottish humour, chats with the audience and guitar playing really tickled me!

The stars of the show posing for a photo for Postcard from Fife!

So, if I can find something that makes me laugh at the festival I’m pretty sure anyone can…..let me know what you discover!

Sarah

[Main image source and credits: www.onfife.com/comedy]