Gooey Disease That Made Us Poop Rainbows - comics by kids

It's the summer holidays, so these classes have all had the extra unpredictability of not knowing who, if anyone, will turn up. Luckily for me they've rolled in for my classes and had the usual fab time. And, while they're at it, come up with some top titles for their comics. These, from the Cartoon Museum in London, are a couple of my favourites.

For the summer schools in Walthamstow, working in different schools in the morning and afternoon, we had fun even though the afternoon class boasted my smallest turnout of the year. Ironically the classes at the Cartoon Museum and Andover (below) were ticketed events and did well, while the Walthamstow classes were free and, in the case of the afternoon session, very nearly rained off. Another odd feature of these comics you see is that they remain 'virtual' comics. Usually I run off an A5 comic on the photocopier for everyone to take away, but in Walthamstow's case we had no access to the school copier, so the kids went home with their caricatures and their art - and they get to win the drawings from the flipchart too - but no comic. I add the colour to these covers when I get home.

And here are the comics by the kids at The Lights arts centre in Andover. Highest price ticket, highest turnout. What can I say?

The celebrities these 6 groups chose to appear in my demonstration strip were Donald Trump (twice), David Walliams, Will I Am, Usain Bolt and, most original of the bunch, Muhammed Ali.

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. 

This Week London - 3 to see

Check us out, all over This Week London

Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre Do Shakespeare | The Bill Murray | 16-17 Aug (pictured)
If you are in the mood to laugh your socks off, then spending a bit of time with the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre might well be in order. This act has been wowing our reviewers and their fellow audience members for years up at the old edfringe and if you haven’t ever seen them before it is totally time to put that right. See the venue website here for info.

Socks Do Shakespeare at The Camden Fringe, August 16 & 17 - Book now! 

Best Tour Ever update - even better than we thought

Having already written about how Socks Do Shakespeare was our best tour ever, I was delighted to get my settlement from Komedia Brighton today confirming that, not only did our shows there do better than last year, but the first of the two shows there was our biggest selling show of the tour.

This brings our average for the tour up above our guarantee across the board (average for turnover this is, I haven't calculated profit and loss, bearing in mind some gigs have higher travel and booking costs than others). Our top three shows, turnoverwise, were Brighton show 1, Rondo Bath, and Aberystwyth Arts Centre. Our poorest was The Bill Murray Pub in London (that's the dip you can see on the graph). And guess where we're playing two gigs next week? I am minded not to include them on this graph, cos everything looks so good as it is.

Happiness is writing the 88th invoice of the year, ending ..88, on the 8th of the 8th. Thankyou Komedia.

UPDATE Dec 19: As I retire the 2017 tour dates from the blog front page, here's what they looked like when they were in place.

Socks Do Shakespeare at The Camden Fringe, August 16 & 17 - Book now! 

Missing Edinburgh already

Here are the Socks closing a festival, namely the Comedy Festival in Neath last Saturday, where we were in the middle of a stonking bill at the Gwyn Hall and played a blinder. And now, with the Socks back in their bag for most of the rest of the month, I'm being reminded daily about the Edinburgh Fringe, and missing it something rotten.

Here I am reading another history of 70 years of the Festival, in this weekend's Guardian. And here's me looking back, with the help of Alistair Moffat's book Fringe, bought a couple of years ago.

Having rediscovered Richard Herring's excellent Warming Up blog, which is the best way of feeling you're in Edinburgh without actually being there, I'm now reading about his 2014 Fringe, which was the last time he went. Anyone feeling bad about their experience, and particularly anyone worried about the amount of money they might be losing if the audiences don't turn up, will find some comfort in these diary pages.



It's painful to read lines like "...maybe my last ten shows ever at the Edinburgh Fringe, so don’t miss the anti-climax at the end of a quarter of a century of laughter and disappointment" even when you know he's writing with a bitter sense of humour, and that three years later he has returned. But, blimey, he wasn't a happy bunny at the time. I am reminded of my own Edinburgh Fringe 2002 (Sitcom Trials and solo show, both losing money daily, but I ended up getting a TV show out of it. So every cloud...)

I don't have a diary for those early years, probably just as well, but this blog records my Edinburghs since 2009, and I'm indulging myself in a reread of some of them. This wave of nostalgia was probably helped along by a spring clean I did in the office this week, which uncovered a load of cuttings I'd forgotten existed.

I am already looking forward to making a new show for 2018, with not the faintest idea what it'll be about. I've hardly written a word of Socks material this year, apart from a couple of videos that have been popular, but the Socks Do Shakespeare tour has been so satisfying it's been a reward in itself.

I've also, in the evenings, been "slurping" my 2015 blog into a Blurb book (for posterity, which I perversely think that paper offers more than the ephemeral internet) and rereading the run up to Edinburgh 2015. Hev remembers me as being quite down that year, and I confess I was disappointed with the show itself (Minging Detectives), but nothing compared to poor Richard Herring the previous year.

Of course he was getting broody cos he'd been going up every year since 1987. Hah. We first went to Edinburgh, admittedly as punters, back in 1984. We loved it so much we came back in 85 and 86, then pretty well every other year for the next 15 years until, as if to ruin our favourite holiday, in 2001 I came up and put on a show. Since when we've hardly stayed away

2001 - put on The Sitcom Trials, with Miranda. Made money. Thought I'd cracked Edinburgh.
2002 - put on The Sitcom Trials again, and a solo show. Lost money. Result misery (and a TV show).
2004 - Sitcom Trials again, probably broke even, honestly can't remember.
2007 - Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre. Genius. A show that's funny, it sells well, and I don't have to divide the money between 5 people. Result joy.
2008 - 2010, three more Scottish Falsetto Sock shows (Return, Hollywood & On The Telly), each more successful than the last (even won an award one year).
2012 - 2016, five more Scottish Falsetto Sock shows (Boo Lingerie, In Space, And So Am I, Minging Detectives and Shakespeare) all doing almost exactly as well as each other. Result more joy. (And two more Sitcom Trials, in 2013 and 2016, both great fun, both lost money).

But you've got to take a year off sometime. 2011 we took off because someone who owed us money for our 2010 show didn't pay us till the following Spring, so we had little choice. But this year I'd decided to take off a year in advance, and luckily Shakespeare was such a good show that we had our best tour ever and I'm having a deserved break. You do realise most people don't go up to Edinburgh every blooming year! It's probably only Herring and us that are so mad we forgot it's not compulsory.

Socks Do Shakespeare at The Camden Fringe, August 16 & 17 - Book now! 

Trump's Wall Of Fame - 6 months of comics by kids

By the end of last year, the pupils in my Comic Art Masterclasses had come up with 19 Trump-themed comic book covers, out of the hundreds we produced together. This year already, at the halfway mark, they've already come up with a dozen.

Once a Trump title comes up, in the pile of up to 30 titles we chose from (each pupil having written a title on a piece of paper, from which we do a head-to-head knockout contest to find the best, while revelling in their mutual creativity), nothing trumps a Trump. Primary school pupils in particular find him hilarious.



He comes up just as often in my demonstration strip, where I ask them to name a celebrity who I then draw in a simple strip, taking them through the basic techniques of comic strip storytelling. I have developed a nifty and amusing way of drawing Trump's face that gets a laugh every time. I'll show it to you sometime.

These twelve examples come from, left to right, Greenock, Backwell in North Somerset, Woodbridge in Suffolk, Longfleet in Dorset, Ashington in Northumberland, Kings Heath in Birmingham, Southport in Cheshire, Swindon, Swansea, Darlington, Barking and Guernsey. That's pretty well all points of the compass, wouldn't you say?

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

Flipcharts aplenty - travels with my art

Did I mention I've been doing a good job of turning up early for schools? This is what happens when I turn up far too early (arrived at 8.30, class didn't start till 10). I get a lot of time to indulge myself with a flipchart doodle. Can you spot every character I squeezed in? To put you out of your misery, they are: Minnie The Minx (and some Bash St Kids), Harley Quinn, a badly drawn random Manga character (with Watchmen badge behind), Lisa Simpson, Thor, Desperate Dan, Mike Doonesbury (& Captain America's shield), Asterix The Gaul, Oor Wullie, Princess Bubblegum, Maus, Snoopy, Snowy, Garen Ewing's Rainbow Orchid, Little Nemo In Slumberland, me, Krazy Kat & Ignatz Mouse, Judge Dredd, Jamie Smart's Looshkin, and Garfield. You're welcome.

With the Socks Do Shakespeare tour finished, July was a month of Comic Art Masterclasses. And I can be rather proud of my preparation and timekeeping, as I wasn't late for a single class, be it school, library or art centre, and got to most of them in time to get a nice drawing done on the flipchart, a selection of which you can see here. Above from Woodbridge Library in Suffolk has a fair proportion drawn "live", that is to say drawn while I'm talking to the kids rather than at leisure before they arrive. You'll recognise these "quickie" daubs on a few flipcharts. The Superman in the bottom left hand corner, which begins as circles that the kids can't decipher, then grows into a rudimentary flying figure (sometimes it'll end up as Iron Man). Similarly the Batman figure to the top right begins as "baked beans" floating on the page, before being fleshed out to become Batman or Spider-Man.

The Marge Simpson, which you see here again from The Lights arts centre in Andover, is a fun routine where I've drawn the face and hands and get the kids to say who it is I've drawn. They start by guessing Bart or Homer, then I add eyelashes and a necklace and they guess either Marge or Lisa, and I turn it into whichever the fewest people are guessing. Oh the power to impress children.

Here at St Sidwells Primary in Exeter was where I got my first ever chance to draw Jodie Whittaker as Doctor Who. After a week and a half I'd been asked to draw her more often than I think I've ever been asked to draw Peter Capaldi. He just never seemed to be the schoolkids' favourite, I'm afraid. But there's been lots of excitement about the new female Doctor, especially amongst younger kids, which bodes well.

The Comic Art Masterclass tour, June through July, took me to Guildford, Burgess Hill, Manchester, Broadchalke in Wilts, Ludlow, Berkhamsted, Cheltenham, Romsey in Hants, Fordingbridge in Hants, Muswell Hill, Baldock in North Herts, Swindon, Barking, Norwich, Poole, Pill, Burton On Trent, The Latitude Festival in Suffolk, Exeter, Woodbridge in Suffolk, Port Glasgow and Greenock, Backwell, Andover in Hants and Walthamstow. Not a bad bit of travel for two months.

You might think it's a bit repetitive having either Harley Quinn or Wonder Woman in the middle of the flipchart every time, but this is a result of my endeavouring to have strong female role models on the page every time. Name me a female superhero. See? Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Harley Quinn... and then you're struggling. Name a female Marvel superhero? Aha, Scarlett Johanssen doesn't count, she's from the films not the comics, and no kid would recognise the Black Widow from the comics. So, the same few leads on the cover it is.

There you go. For a bit of variety, it's Supergirl. And beside her you see Captain America has shoehorned in the hashtag #MakeMineMilkshake. This is an online thing that came about when trolls started abusing the female editorial staff of Marvel comics for posting a selfie of themselves getting milkshakes. Why this was a thing I don't know, all I've seen is the supportive backlash by which right minded folk have posted pics of themselves, or their characters, with the #MakeMineMilkshake hashtag (a play on the Mike Mine Marvel slogan of old). I tried to explain it to the kids, but since I couldn't get as far as explaining what an editor was, and I didn't need to embark an explanation of what sexist online trolling is, it didn't get far.

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

Socks Do Shakespeare t shirts on Redbubble

Thanks to a new online printer I've started using called Redbubble, you can now get the Socks Do Shakespeare t shirt design on shirts and tops of all sizes and designs, including a big-image version that looks like this:

I know, cool ain't it? They start at just under £15. And you can also get the logo on everything from duvets and phone cases, to mugs and clocks. Check out the whole lot here, happy shopping (it's never too early for Christmas).

If you're more of a fan of the Classic Socks logo, that's available on a similar range of products, over on Cafepress. Where, I'm delighted to find, we've sold three shirts this year. A total of $69 worth of products, for which I'm owed a massive $5.59. I am the merchandise mogul.

Socks Do Shakespeare at The Camden Fringe, August 16 & 17 - Book now!