Bananaman Supermarket in this week's Beano - see how it's done

Here we see the frabjuous Wayne Thompson effortlessly and deftly sneaking my name into the background of the Bananaman story Supermarket in this week's Beano, while still defiantly leaving his own name off the strip, leading posterity to allow me to take credit for it (I shall strive to correct posterity at every opportunity). And another fine strip it is, this week continuing the trend of alluding to silver-age comic superheroes by including a Plastic Man lookey likey (for which I have to credit Wayne, who's clearly as big a fan of the classics as I am - did you spot his Billy Batson last week?)

But how does a comic strip classic like this begin life? Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to present for you an exclusive glimpse behind the scenes. A look inside the mind of one of the leading creative minds of our age. I have here in my hands a piece of paper... that I was about to throw in the bin before I realised it was the rough first draft for what became the typescript for this week's Bananaman story. Check. This. Out.

What did you expect? Leonardo? Also starting life this way was this week's Little Plum story, Totem Pole drawn by Hunt Emerson, and Pansy Potter The Strongman's Daughter - Notebook, which I've also drawn. And, yes, my name is hidden in the Pansy strip, but fiendishly subtly this week. Can you spot it? Can you? *

Update: Here's the original dialogue (unused) from the final panel of Bananaman Supermarket:

16               Final panel. BANANAMAN flies away from BEANCOS, carrying the 6 armed ARMED ROBBER  under his arm. Down on the ground outside the store, WOMAN from behind till shouts up angrily, while WOMAN 2 talks into her phone.

BANANA         I MADE A CLEAN SUPERMARKET SWEEP OF IT, WHEN I BAGGED HIM, EH READERS?

ROBBER          OH PLEASE, NOT THE AWFUL JOKES!

BANANA 2      AISLE BET HE DIDN’T DIS-COUNT ON THIS! NOW HE’S SHOPPING MAD!

ROBBER 2      GROAN – SIX HANDS, AND NONE OF THEM OVER MY EARS!

WOMAN 1      HOY, YOU NEVER PAID FOR THAT BANANA!

WOMAN 2      CHEEK! HELLO, POLICE? I’D LIKE TO REPORT A BANANA THEFT!

END

PPS: On Facebook, Barth Hulley posts:

I want you to know that my six year old son has been running around the playground shoving his cycle helmet in his friends faces yelling "Unexpected item in your face!"
— feeling proud.

 

As well as writing Bananaman and drawing Pansy Potter in The Beano, Kev F Sutherland has worked for everyone from Marvel to Doctor Who & most points inbetween, and 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.

* PS: I'm not claiming to be the first person to use that Pansy Potter idea. Readers of my vintage will remember Prohias doing the very same thing every month in his Spy Vs Spy strip.

Heroin Curate's Egg cartoon

"Adulterated heroin? Oh no, my lord, I assure you parts of it are excellent."

My attempt at a heroin-based cartoon which I sent off to Private Eye this week. Sadly it hasn't made it into print, so let's enjoy it here. (And, no, I'm sure no-one's done the gag before. Unless you know otherwise?)




As well as writing Bananaman and drawing Pansy Potter in The Beano, Kev F Sutherland has worked for everyone from Marvel to Doctor Who & most points inbetween, and 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.

Birth of an unoriginal original gag

Ever since I posted a blog about a cartoon in Private Eye and how the gag in it had appeared before, I've been thinking about jokes and their originality, a subject I've looked at in the past. And then an opportunity to investigate the phenomenon presented itself this morning when I dreamt up, as I do on a regular basis, a joke.

Now I'm not saying it's a good joke. I'd go as far as to say it's a cringeworthily awful joke, being a pun, and nobody likes puns. But here it is:

I keep all my notes written on sheets of flakey pastry. I call it a Filo Fax.

I thank you. Takes imaginary bow to rapturous applause. So, that's the joke the leapt into my head (as I walked back from the bank, past a shop doing a sale on Filofaxes). And my immediate thought after coining the gag was, I bet that's been done before. Was I right?

My betting, before having a look on Google and Twitter, was that the gag would have been done by a famous pun merchant like Tim Vine, and that it could have happened any time right back to the mid 1980s (my memory told me Filofaxes first appeared around 1983. In fact - first research point of the day - Filofaxes were first made by Norman & Hill in 1921!)

So, who's thought of that joke before me, and when?

First version I found on Twitter was by @ScottHoad: "Just bought a Filofax. Now I can send thin sheets of pastry down a telephone line!" From June 2013. But there must be earlier.

Here's Tiernan Douieb's version from Oct 13; "Swap your Filofax with Filo Pastry. It gives the perfect excuse for being flakey with appointments."

Here's @fishisthedish making the gag by accident in June 2013 "We just noticed we had 'Filofax' instead of filo pastry in one of our recipes! Ooops... What's your biggest digital faux pas?"

In fact Autocorrect seems to have a fondness for this, as these reviewers on Tripadvisor have, I think, not noticed: "...I ordered a goats cheese and caramelised onion Filofax pastry tart."

And here's the earliest version on Twitter, by comedy writer Andy Riley @AndyRileyish from June 2010: "my Filofax keeps falling apart, but then it is made of many thin sheets of pastry"

Here's someone throwing away the two connected words, but not making them into a gag, on a Filofax thread in a Woman & Home forum in 2008 "I have tried every style size and colour of filo thingy (isn't that pastry?)"

But that's the earliest I can find. Does anyone know better? Have I almost created an original gag, despite the fact that I'm sure it's not really? Let me know if you find Time Vine doing it on a TV show from 1998. I won't be surprised.



The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre ...And So Am I runs from July 30 - August 22 2014 at 10.30pm in The Gilded Balloon at The Edinburgh Fringe. Tickets are on sale already.  

OMG It's A Unicorn - new comics by school kids

Here we see a new selection of comics created by pupils in my Comic Art Masterclasses in schools in Newbury and King's Heath. All of them Year 5s, as it happens. And there are glimpses of just some of their faces. I draw a caricature of everyone in the class, which they take home along with the photocopied comic containing a strip by every single one of them.

If you'd like me to come to your school, library or art centre to share some of the wisdom I've gleaned from my 25 years writing and drawing comics, don't hesitate to get in touch.

The celebrities they chose for the whole "treads on a worm" demonstration (about which I'll tell you more some day) were Miley Cyrus, Matt Smith, Keith Lemon, Will I Am and Taylor Swift. (Simon Cowell was suggested in 3 out of 5 classes, as per usual).



As well as writing Bananaman and drawing Pansy Potter in The Beano, Kev F Sutherland has worked for everyone from Marvel to Doctor Who & most points inbetween, and 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.

To see ourselves as others see us - me drawn by kids

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!

That's Burns' exclamation mark, not mine, by the way. Here we see me, as drawn by a class of Year 5s at Colmore Junior School in Kings Heath near Birmingham, and who wouldn't be shocked by discovering they're actually that gorgoeous in real life. Shut up.



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.
 

Cole Porter, Miracle Banana & more in this week's Beano

This week's Bananaman in The Beano is another of my favourite scripts - Cafe Hero. Stuffed full of juicy puns it not only features the return of Miracle Banana but also includes the revelation of his secret identity (a reference which comic fans will get, I hope). There's also the return of another of the recurring guest characters I've been using through the series, plus a variation on the Cheers theme, and a nifty plot twist I'm quite pleased with.

On top of all that there's a tribute to Cole Porter, with a snippet of Well Did You Evah (above) which appears, spooky coincidentally, just a day after I posted the Socks singing their version of the song on Youtube.

As well as Bananaman, I've written this week's Little Plum, Damon The Shaman (written as Damon's debut, it's appeared a week after last week's Mind Reading story which was originally the Return Of Damon The Shaman. These titles, by the way, only exist in my head). Also in this week is Pansy Potter 'Handshake' which was, I think, the first Pansy I wrote.

 And is it my imagination, or is the brilliant Laura Howell paying homage to Joe and Petunia from the old public information film Coastguard in this week's Tricky Dicky? I do hope so.

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.

Well Did You Evah - new clip from the Socks

Small but perfectly formed, here's a clip of the Socks singing Well Did You Evah, from their classic Romeo & Juliet routine (which you can see, live and in full, here), which hasn't been in the live show for years but really deserves a revival.

We shot this as part of a showreel, working towards a TV project, and thought it deserved a wider airing. Enjoy.



The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre ...And So Am I runs from July 30 - August 22 2014 at 10.30pm in The Gilded Balloon at The Edinburgh Fringe. Tickets are on sale already.