Kev F comic art: Nun That Killed Your Mum - first kids comics of the year

The return to schools in 2022 has been slightly slower than last year, and I've not done a big email shout out to schools, which I often do at this time. So January was quiet, but February in my diary is chocker. Let's see how it builds. We've got off, creatively at least, to a good start, with front covers produced by kids in Reading and Wythall near Birmingham.

Abbey Juniors in Reading is one of many that had had me in, in real life, before the pandemic, and had me on Zoom this time last year. It was good to mark a return to normality by teaching Year 6 in person. They come up with a pair of perfectly random titles. Bananna is so spelled because it was based on a kid called Anna, and I never got to the foot of quite what a £2 Mum might be.

Woodrush High was a first time school, who found me, I think, as a result of those emails I send out at the start of the year. Reminds me, I should get round to doing those again. I'd just been colouring the Enigma Variations strip when I produced these, which meant the colouring I added to them when I came home was quicker and more confident than it sometimes is. I often find I get out of the swing of doing any one of my various skills, be it writing or colouring, or coming up with ideas for the Socks. And then when I start, I don't want to do anything else. So, when I came home from this school I was still enjoying colouring. That mood will fade I'm sure.

For the second of my two days at Woodrush, working with years 7 & 8, it looked like it was turning into a domestic violence-themed week of comics, after we'd smacked someone's nan and then killed their mum! I was pleased with the Nun cover.

Woodrush year 8s had been doing work on the history of comics, they all had scrapbook pages they'd produced. And, unfortunately, they'd been working from a Youtube video which was, of course, just the history of American comics, mostly superheroes but including EC. So, when it came to drawing my flipchart page to leave them with, I threw in as many of the strips they'd missed out as I had time for: Asterix, Tintin, Maus, Snoopy, Naruto, Judge Dredd and The Beano. I really ought to produce a concise history of comics for schools.

The celebrities these six groups chose to appear in my demonstration strip, which I do every time, are I think pretty representative of the names that will end up at the top of the list, if I get round to compiling it at the end of the year: Simon Cowell (twice. He was most popular choice 2013-2015, and 2nd since), Donald Trump (most popular choice 2016 - 2020), Snoop Dogg, Kim Kardashian, and Dwayne The Rock Johnson.