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.