How's that for a comic by a schoolkid? Not only hand made, not only brilliant, but starring me!
12 year old Leo was one of the pupils in my Comic Art Masterclass today in Walsall, and he's such a budding comic artist and Beano fan that he'd researched me in advance, drawn me and some of my characters in the strip inside (there's my Baby Face Finlayson on the cover), and gave me that comic to keep. That's what I call teacher's pet.
I got to talk to Leo and his Dad and hopefully gave them good tips and advice. It's always inspiring to see someone not unlike oneself at the same age who's really focussed on what they want to do. The comics business of the future has got plenty of talent on the way.
Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing Bananaman in The Beano, 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.
On Youtube at last, it's David Bowie's cosmic revelation, (click to play) as seen in Socks In Space, the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre's last Edinburgh show, which has pretty much finished touring the country after a year on the raod (it'll keep popping up from time to time). Do enjoy, this song has been a popular one.
The new Edinburgh show, ...And So Am I, opens in a month. Book now to avoid disappointment.
This week's Beano features another favourite Pansy Potter strip - Breath (you can have fun looking for my name hidden in the background, it's on sale till Tuesday). Above is an unpublished rough script, Back.
I say favourite as if it's an old classic that's appeared before. It hasn't, it's brand new. It's just that when I produced all these Pansy Potter strips earlier in the year, there were some that I thought were just okay and some that actually made me laugh when I wrote them. This week's Breath was in the latter camp. Whereas, above, you can see a script that didn't really make me laugh, and didn't make the editor laugh either, which is why it remains in rough form and was never finished and published. Seemed a good idea at the time.
Disturbingly the credits box has disappeared from
this week's Beano so, apart from those of us who've signed our work, all
the other creators are anonymous. I quite liked this week's Little
Plum, for example, and have no way of knowing who wrote it. Maybe it's
only a temporary move for "guest editor" Andy Murray and will return
next week. A very good Dennis meets Andy lead strip this week, which I
shall credit to Nigel Auchterlounie, but who really wrote it we may
never know.
Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing Bananaman in The Beano, 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.
A new song from the Socks, Bye Bye Facebook. Intended as part of the music that'll play as the audience come into the new Edinburgh show And So Am I, we've made a wee video to go with it. Do please enjoy it (and try and ignore the two paedophiles you might glimpse briefly in the background).
The new Edinburgh show, ...And So Am I, opens in a month. Book now to avoid disappointment.
Here's the latest batch of comics by pupils in my Comic Art Masterclasses, in schools in Malvern, Swindon and Bristol. And having gone quite a while without doing an EC horror comics-styled header, two come along at once, and one of them's about a bus. Eerie, eh?
The celebrities these year 3, 4, 5, and 6 pupils chose for the "treading on a worm" routine were Simon Cowell (twice), Elvis Presley, Cristiano Ronaldo, Bob Marley, and Kim Kardashian.
Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing Bananaman in The Beano, 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.
Attention Socks fans - the brand new 2014 Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre t-shirt is now available and it's already a classic.
UPDATE - Socks t-shirts are available in Edinburgh during the Fringe directly from me, just £15, handed to you in person. Text me on 07931 810858 with your size and we can arrange a rendezvous.
This year's shirt design (above) is our "classic" pose which appears on the posters for this year's Edinburgh show "And So Am I", and which you may recognise from our 2009 show "Goes To Hollywood" (and 2012's kids show Chunky Woollen Nits) but which has not been available on a t-shirt until now.
And this year's shirt is back to top quality (some of last year's Socks In Space shirts suffered a small problem with the logo on the front, which won't be happening again!).
A satisfied customer, yesterday.
The shirts cost £15 (UK pounds) or $25 (US dollars) each.
Postage is £3 to the UK, $10 to the US.
(So that's £18 total from UK, $35 total from US)
To be sure of getting the size you want, order your shirt now, paying by PayPal to sockpuppets@sitcomtrials.co.uk and telling us the following:
1) Size shirt you want (see sizes below), and quantity. (Only add one lot of postage per order).
2) Your full mailing address
Include the above details with your payment.
Sizes available are:
MALE S (36/38"), M (40"), L (42"), XL (46"), XXL
(50"), XXXL (54")
LADYFIT S (UK size 10), M (UK size 12), L (UK
size 14/16)
CHILDRENS Age 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, 9-1, 12-13, 14+
All shirts are black with the full colour Socks logo on the chest. The printed full colour image is approx 8" round. Any queries, email sockpuppets@sitcomtrials.co.uk
Shirts will also be on sale in Edinburgh (without postage costs) though to be sure of getting your size it's best to order now (ie before we do the print run).
The new Edinburgh show, ...And So Am I, is looming. Book now to avoid disappointment.
I'm chuffed to bits to see the cameo appearance by Ken Reid's legendary character Jonah in this week's Bananaman - and I wrote this week's Bananaman! Wayne has done it so well, getting the old-school colouring spot on and the character lookalikes so brilliantly, there is no comic fan whose heart won't have warmer cockles after seeing the strip. And I chuckled with delight in Tescos on spotting where my name had been snuck into the background. Wayne, consider yourself saluted.
Also in this week's Beano is what I think is the very first Pansy Potter strip I wrote (with my name hidden in a predictable place, you should spot it in seconds) and some excellent strips, including a witty Gruffalo-parodying Little Plum by Stu Munro & Hunt Emerson, and an eye catching (and laugh-out-loud-if-you're-nine-years-old) Tricky Dicky strip by Laura Howell. And let's be thankful we live in a country which still produces a weekly comic that includes the line "Is it just me or is the Prime Minister a potato?" Buy The Beano.
Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing Bananaman in The Beano, 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.
A lovely new batch of comics by pupils in my Comic Art Masterclasses, from schools in Stratford On Avon, Hertfordshire and Swindon. Delightful and imaginative as always, this selection from the past week includes a novel twist - a variant edition.
Stinky Bottle Man was the product of a mega-class of 60 pupils (I can usually only work with a maximum class size of 30). One group (Oxford class) got a comic containing their strips, and the other (Middlesex class) got one containing their strips. It's hard work, and I've never done a group comic in that way before (they get commensurately less individual attention from me and half don't get their caricatures drawn) but it's quite satisfying to see I can pull off such a feat.
The celebrities they chose for the "treading on a worm" routine were Miley Cyrus, Gary Barlow, Simon Cowell (twice), Niall Horan, and Katy Perry.
Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing Bananaman in The Beano, 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.
Online for the first time, here's the Green Screen song, as you'll have seen if you've seen Socks In Space live at any time since July of last year. Now it's about to get its last few live outings, so here it is for posterity (well, until we make the big screen version, obviously).
The new Edinburgh show, ...And So Am I, is looming. Book now to avoid disappointment.
More brand new comics by kids, this time from Weston Super Mare and Richmond, another batch of stupendously high quality. As always I drew a caricature of every one of them, so that would be 180 caricatures rattled off here. (And remind me to tell you about last weekend in Leeds when I drew that many in a day as part of the JHS Event, representing Dennis The Menace ukeleles).
The celebrities they chose for the "treading on a worm" routine were Katie Price, David Attenborough, Matt Smith, The Queen, Joey Essex and Boris Johnson.
Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing Bananaman in The Beano, 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.
Bananaman in this week's Beano is a veritable menagerie of bear puns, written by me and drawn by Wayne Thompson who, for the first time since he was asked to drop his own distinctive character designs in favour of the 1980s John Geering style, looks like he's really enjoyed drawing this one. And the editorial team have had fun too, adding some nifty gags that I hadn't thought of myself (the Care Bears one is theirs, for example).
A couple of mine hit the cutting room floor, including the Yogi Bear gag you can see above, which on reflection was possibly a bit too obscure. Also missing is the visual gag when Bananaman crashes into a packing crate. He still hits the crate in the artwork, but in the published strip the crate is blank, whereas it originally bore the words "This side up use no hooks". I'm betting I'm the only person who remembers the obscure bear that's being referenced there. Anyone?
Also in this week's Beano is my Pansy Potter - Locked In The Lavatory, and some excelent strips, my favourite being Dennis The Menace by Nigels Auchterlounie and Parkinson which really does get some great gags and references in their (Walter is a transvestite wicked with, Gnasher pees on him, it's all good).
Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing Bananaman in The Beano, 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.
More brand new comics by kids here, and one by some grown ups. Five were produced by the pupils in schools in North Somerset, Swindon, and Hampshire, and one by Newly Qualified Teachers at a training day in Birmingham. And that might be the least I've ever written in a blog about a bunch of comics. They are great though, aren't they?
The celebrities they chose for the "treading on a worm" routine were Stan Lee, Christina Aguilera, David Walliams, Nigel Kennedy, Lionel Messi and Simon Cowell (who was suggested in half the classes).
Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing Bananaman in The Beano, 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.
Here's a first, my Comic Art Masterclass being signed for sign-language readers by Tracey at Medstead primary school in Hampshire. She admitted it was the fastest talking she'd ever had to interpret, and she managed it magnificently. It was great fun, for the kids and for me, to see how she handled some of the phrases that come up in the class. I don't think I'd realised how many mentions of bottoms and toilets there were, until I'd seen her signing such immortal phrases as "The Hulk on the toilet", "Bart Simpson scratching his bum" and "The Old Man Whose Trousers Fell Down" (when I realised she was translating everything, I chose particular titles from recent kids comics to read out, to hilarious effect).
This day in rural Medstead was part of a week of travels which saw me in Wincanton on Monday (there's the flipchart I produced, below), Worle Tuesday, Swindon Wednesday, then for Friday I zoomed to Medstead (2hrs 10mins) then to Maidstone (2hrs in Friday traffic) for the Socks to perform a cracking 90 minute show at the Hazlitt Theatre the same night. Following an overnight in Maidstone (I've got a four poster bed, yes be jealous), it's off to Bognor for the Socks to perform at the Comedy Festival in Butlins, then it's straight off to a hotel off the motorway near Northampton (2hrs 30) in order that I can get to Leeds for 9.30 Sunday morning to start caricaturing all day at a DC Thomson event (my second such event of the month).
That is one hell of a lot of miles and, given that I then have 5 days of schools lined up starting Monday, it would appear I've forgotten to have a weekend. Again. The things I do in the name of... whatever it is I do. (Is it comedy, is it education, is it paid self-flagellation, who can tell?). Onwards and upwards.
Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing Bananaman in The Beano, 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.
"I'm Bananaman!" "No, I'm Bananaman!" Yes, I've done the I'm Spartacus gag in this week's Bananaman story - Bananaman The Movie (and, as you can see, Calamity James is almost delivering the punchline. His original line "No I'm... in the wrong film" hit the cutting room floor but the picture survives.)
But who exactly is Bananaman? Is it really the 1980's styleJohn Geering version that Wayne's drawing for the third week running, having been asked to abandon his own dynamic style? Or is it Wayne's own Bananaman, with the big chin, the giant barrel chest and the tiny legs, of which I, at least, had become fond? The answer lies in the opening panel of this week's Roger The Dodger, also drawn by Wayne. Which design is it that we see on the football Roger's bouncing in the face of Robert Nixon's version of Roger's Dad? (And for the triple-whammy of Wayne ghosting late, great Beano artists, you can check out his Ken Reid tribute a little later in the same strip. And see also the box of Fragile Old Nutty Comics in Roger's attic, whose significance we can only guess at).
And in case you were wondering, no, Pansy Potter (who in this week's strip learns the correct use of a harp) wasn't that fat when she left my drawing board (above).
All sarky criticisms aside, it's another cracking Beano, with a smashing Jonathan Ross guest appearance in Dennis The Menace, super surreal Numskulls & Pie Face strips, and an excellently designed classic Gwyneth's Book Of Records. Buy the Beano, it's well worth it.
Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing Bananaman in The Beano, 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.
Here are the latest comics created by pupils in my Comic Art Masterclasses, in Horley, Oxted, Worle, and Wincanton. Four lots of year fives in this lot, for whom you can blame the grans, old men, twerking and trousers falling down. A funny lot, year fives.
The day at Wincanton was organised (and paid for) by The Beano themselves, which is the first time they've taken me into schools. I do hope they were impressed, it would be nice to do more.
The celebrities they chose for the "treading on a worm" routine were Declan Donnelly, Miley Cyrus, Nelson Mandela, Benedict Cumberbatch, David Walliams and Katy Perry (with Simon Cowell being suggested but not finally chosen in 4 out of 6 classes).
Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing Bananaman in The Beano, 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.
The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre's 2014 calendar is on the theme of modern art and June's page sees the boys taking on Bristol's Banksy.
The calendar is on sale through Lulu.com at a devilishly reasonable price and is a joy to see and a marvel to treasure. (Also someone had me sign one after the gigs in Brighton last month which reminded me how incredibly valuable they're going to be someday.)
