Friday, 17 January 2025

How A Baked Bean Stole France - first kids comics of the year


My year of Comic Art Masterclasses begins with three days of return visits to Chester Colleges and a return to a primary school in Northamptonshire.


Cheshire College in Ellesmere Port have had me in three times now, working with 16 to 18 year olds. The sobering thing is those students who can draw better than me.


Croughton All Saints primary in Northants was, I thought, a prime opportunity for me to flog some copies of Richard The Third. I'd sent them my flyer in advance, so that the parents could pay by Parent Pay and I could sign books on the day. It started to look even more promising when it transpired that the school panto was on after school, and the parents would all be coming in. So, although there had been no advance orders, I set up my little stall at reception and thought i might sell some as they came in. At which point I discovered the parents weren't coming in that way, so I missed them all. Ended up selling one book to one member of staff. Massive fail.


Chester College had me back in for two days of classes, every one a treat. Being older students, they're not really able to buy my books, so that wasn't a factor for any of these groups. One of these groups was students who all have English as a second language, many of whom must have been really struggling to understand what the hell I was on about. And yet they managed.


Two more groups at Chester College, including games design and IT students, full of great ideas and including more artists who can draw better than me. All good stuff.

The celebrities these eight groups chose to appear in my demonstration strip (fresh from 2024's totting up, where we found that last year's most popular choices were Michael Jackson and Taylor Swift) were King Charles, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Mr Tumble, Neymar, Keanu Reeves, Ryan Gosling, and Freddie Mercury.

Wednesday, 1 January 2025

My 1970s Diary - fifty years on


It's New Year's Day, a day for doing nothing serious and something you won't make time for once the busy days begin. So I've had idle fun updating the My 1970s Diary blog, with twelve new entries incorporating the dozen spreads I've made into (which is on sale, but hardly leaping off the virtual shelves, it must be said).

The New Years Day 1975 entry is here, and there's one for every other month, to trickle out in regular doses. Do we lern much from them? Probably not a lot. We see me reading a lot of comics, and talking a bit about the ones I'm writing and drawing myself. We see even more of the telly of the day. By god there's a lot of telly consumed by the thirteen year old me. And my Records For The Day are a nice glimpse into whatever Radio 1 was playing at the time, much of which I haven't heard of since.

Tomorrow the working year resumes and I hope I'll be able to turn my efforts into profit. Let's see if I can live up to the promise young prodigy Kev showed back in the day.

My Books And Where To Find Them...
Richard 
The Third
Findlay 
Macbeth
Prince of 
Denmark Street
Midsummer Night's 
Dream Team
Shakespeare
Omnibus

Comic Tales
From The Bible

Joseph, Ruth
& Other Stories

Space
Elain


Tuesday, 31 December 2024

My Predictions for 2025 (and how badly I did last time)

 Every year I try, every year I get it wildly wrong. Actually last year it turns out the predictions I'd made in at the start of 2023 had proved right a record number of times, cos I guess the bleeding obvious. So to 2025, what do I predict..?


Kev F's Confident Predictions for 2025

Strictly won by Rosie Jones

Cancelled: next big inappropriate-behaviour star to get cancelled is female, from ITV daytime

Musk dropped by Trump before the summer, is the easy prediction. Everyone’s got this in their list for the year. So the bolder prediction would be WHEN Musk gets dumped. I say April 28th

Neil Gaiman makes triumphant return and nothing more is said on the matter.

No Doctor Who Christmas episode, and show's future in limbo into 2026

Youtube Drama - Someone makes a well written drama that, despite its low production values, becomes bigger than anything on the streamers or broadcast TV. Like self publishers have done with books, someone does with proper storytelling but on Youtube. This leads to an acceptance of lower production values across the board and helps rescue public service TV in the UK.

BBC goes subscription. The Corporation moves to an NPR model. Because people realise how much they're already spending on streaming services, and because the BBC already makes so much from other sources, with a bit of Government support the transition works and saves national TV and radio for a generation. 
 
Bad Enoch saves the Tories. Despite Reform winning a byelection, Kemi Badenoch succeeds in uniting her party and by the end of the year she's more popular than Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage.

Syria: Freedom Fighter who's not a terrorist turns out was a terrorist all along. Newspapers stop bigging him up. 

Ukraine: war ends, nobody's happy with the solution. 

Israel manages a ceasefire in more than half the countries it's firing at.

Electric cars work out a way of actually being feasible. Whether it's replaceable batteries, solar power, fuel cells or something surprising, the industry finds a better way of doing it than the current mish mash.

New TV: PG Wodehouse Universe, Young James Bond; first successful British studio audience sitcom in years is made for Youtube and is big hit; Netflix buys one of US TV's biggest broadcasters (NBC, ABC, CBS).

Weather: White Christmas, hot dry summer, no major flooding.

Grand National won by horse named after a meme (eg Deez Nuts, or My Name Is Jeff)

I'd love to be more imaginative, but let's face it, whatever I guess, something else happens. Here's to another unpredictable one.

Now let's see how well I did twelve months ago.


Kev F's Confident Predictions for 2024

1 - A General Election, and it'll be won by Labour. 

CORRECT - You didn't need to be Nostradamus

2 - New Tory Leader by Christmas and it'll be Penny Mordaunt

HALF RIGHT - It's Kemi the Bad Enoch

3 - US Presidential Election won by Trump for Republicans (NB: I'll be glad to be wrong)

CORRECT - Sadly

4 - House prices up slightly (2%)

CORRECT - Up 1.9% in fact

5 - Petrol prices remain very similar (currently £1.35 to £1.45)

CORRECT - At a three year low, according to the Guardian, but still £1.35 according to the tank full I bought today

6 - Eurovision won by Australia

WOEFULLY WRONG - Australia didn't even make the final, Switzerland won.


7 - Disney drops or downgrades one of its properties, Marvel or Star Wars

NOPE - Not that I saw.

8 - Comics that get made into TV or movies: Robot Archie, Lucky Luke, the old gasmask Sandman, Challengers Of The Unknown, Metal Men.

WIPEOUT - Apparently a Metal Men movie had been mooted in 2021, but it's been forgotten

9 - TV revivals: I Claudius, a show by the children or grandchildren of Monty Pythons, Call My Bluff, Jeux Sans Frontieres, Not The Nine O'Clock News

CLOSE - Call My Bluff has been repeated on BBC 4, we've been enjoying them.

10 - Biopic subjects: Ned Sherrin, Paul Daniels, Noel Coward, Marti Caine, Victoria Wood

NOPE - TV biopics have been thin on the ground this year, can't think of one

11 - Tribute bands get their own TV talent show 

NOT QUITE - This had already been done, by the BBC in 2017, and I didn't notice. Another version also runs on Dutch TV since 2022.

12 - Surprise technology hit: Walking talking AI toy kids have conversations with

NOPE - Though we watched a nice film this Christmas calls Ron Goes Wrong, on this very subject.


13 - There'll be a White Christmas

THERE WON'T

14 - Hot summer or wet summer? I say... hot.

SUMMER SAID WET

15 - Things that I predict cos I don't want them to happen:

- Widespread flooding - SADLY YES, in parts of Europe

- War in Ukraine continues right through year - SADLY YES

- War in Israel and Gaza continues right through year - SADLY YES

- Lots of celebrity deaths, inc acts who were on Top Of The Pops 83/84 and Live Aid  - NO. The nearest death to Live Aid was Liam Payne, whose voice was used on the 40th anniversary Band Aid release. Which itself died a death.

So you see, I knew nothing then and I know nothing now. Here's to 2025, whatever it holds.



My Books And Where To Find Them...
Richard 
The Third
Findlay 
Macbeth
Prince of 
Denmark Street
Midsummer Night's 
Dream Team
Shakespeare
Omnibus

Comic Tales
From The Bible

Joseph, Ruth
& Other Stories

Space
Elain





Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...