A busy week with lots of travel sees me making comics with kids from just outside Chieveley Services to North Yorkshire to somewhere on the border between Suffolk and Norfolk, and at time of writing I'm still not sure where.
Mary Hare School, near Chieveley, and by that I mean hardly any distance from the familiar service station but blimey doesn't it feel far out in the countryside, has the special distinction of being a school for children with deafness or hearing difficulties. And, to be honest, you wouldn't have known. The cochlear implant has revolutionised hearing in recent years, and most of the kids were able to hear me to as good a degree, as far as I could tell, as any kids I ever teach. And they were a darn sight better at listening. Pig Attack, with its step and repeat design, was one of my favourite cover drawings in ages. I draw these comic covers in just a few minutes, while the kids are doing their initial character designs, and quite often they come out a bit rubbish and there's nothing I can do about it. So when I nail something simple, quick, and effective, I'm chuffed.
Freebrough Academy near Saltburn-By-The-Sea is so far in North Yorkshire it's very nearly in Northumberland, and entailed a five hour drive and a novel overnight stay in a refurbished circus wagon (which you might read about elsewhere in this blog). And you know what I said in the paragraph above about some comic covers coming out a bit rubbish? I'm afraid that's how I feel about the Grandma's Adventure Down The Stairs cover. I though shaping the letters like a staircase would give me a nice design, but it needed more time and thought, so this ended up not working. But there you go, stuck with it.
St Botolphs Primary is near Diss, which is in South Norfolk, but they've got a Suffolk postcode, and I stayed overnight in Thetford, which is definitely in Norfolk, but its postcode still begins with an IP, which is definitely Ipswich, which is definitely in Suffolk. All very confusing. Two of the best comic titles, don't you think?
A second day at St Botolphs, which means I've taught years 3, 4, 5 and 6 and I'll have to wait years till they've grown a whole new school full before I can go back again. Another couple of great titles, giving me a chance to throw in a reference to the Spanish Civil War (tenuous, but I felt inspired), and draw Batman and Mr Bean, which is always fun.
The celebrities these 8 groups chose to appear in my demonstration strip were Mr Beast (twice), Cristiano Ronaldo, Gordon Ramsey, Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, Dwayne The Rock Johnson, and Bruno Mars. And the flipchart above features Peggy Carter as Captain Britain, a character no one in any of the classes recognised, and that I only drew because a girl in the first class of the visit had been named Peggy after her. How many kids are named after obscure Marvel characters I don't know, but here was one.
I've taken to asking them "who reads..? / who's never heard of..?" various comic book characters. And this year I can say Bunny Vs Monkey has 75% familiarity, Dogman has nearly 100% familiarity, but poor old Beano can often dip as low as 25% familiarity. It's got a lot worse in the last couple of years, where Bunny Vs Monkey has exploded in the kids consciousness, while Beano readership has suffered from the continuing demise of newsagents. Sigh, c'est la vie. I now finding myself holding up my original art pages from Beano and Dr Strange to find an increasing lack of impressededness, if that's the word, which let's say it is.
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