Star Wars - Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre

New online from the Socks, their version of Stars Wars, recorded live at The Walnut Tree in Maidstone.



Tour dates http://bit.ly/8P0lxc
T shirts http://www.cafepress.co.uk/falsettosocks

htmlcomics, the debate continues

Delighted to have opened a can of worms over htmlcomics.com and it is indeed a contentious subject. It is, of course, a situation that music has been going through since Napster began, over a decade ago, and that TV and movies go through with torrents and YouTube.

They've both tried to fight against the piracy of their properties and have, in most cases, decided that if you can't beat them, join them. iTunes leads the market by having made the cheap but paid-for downloading of music easier and cooler than scouring the pirates, and have seen an upturn in their profits as a result. (Today EMI posted a technical loss because of outstanding debts, but underneath it was a profit on music sales for the first time in 15 months, mostly from the legal download market).

YouTube, of which I am a big fan and consumer, has thrived on providing material that can't be found elsewhere. A lot of it is copyright but if it wasn't on YouTube it would be unobtainable anywhere. Ever tried to buy a DVD of an Eastenders episode from 1993? Or any Top Of The Pops videos? Or early Tiswas? It's not available commercially cos, even on YouTube where you can see it for free, only 500 people have bothered to watch it. But one of them was me, and I'm grateful for that.

htmlcomics, which I learn today is run by a man who appears to be both a nasty bit of work and a douchebag, has allowed me to find and share comics that I either couldn't find or would have had to scan and put online myself if I wanted to share them, and I came across it after, literally, posting the question "where can I find the comics equivalent of YouTube?". But it raises the same concerns as YouTube & Napster before it, namely is allowing free access to comics a rip off that is going to kill comics?

Well, clearly in absolute terms, yes htmlcomics or any other such site is a rip-off. And it is its scale that makes it so much greater a threat than simply sharing comics with a friend. Just like Napster took the old "Home Taping Is Killing Music" principle and expanded it exponentially, so htmlcomics takes the idea of lending your mate a read of your old comics and gone global with it.

Mr Html defends himself by comparing it to a library, and it is a good argument. You get to browse a scan, but supposedly you can't download it (I couldn't, but someone posting here said they could, and I bet you can). And I would like to take a moment to defend that notion. With a library, you get one read of a book, for free, then you rarely if ever look at that again. Wouldn't we want, in an ideal world, every single comic that's ever existed to be available in a library? So, now that it is, why do we object?

The argument against that is, of course, that comics are a business, they are our livelihood, and by allowing people to read our comic for free you destroy our livelihood. This is a very good argument, and I can't refute it. I, for example, read the final issue of Watchmen on htmlcomics on Wednesday night. That's pretty damning considering that's Dave Gibbons' pension I'm eroding. And even though I already own three copies of Watchmen in various formats, that's only cos I'm over 40 years old and have worn copies out. There are punters out there who, given the choice of paying a tenner for the book or reading it for free will deny Dave & the publishers any income. That's a big problem.

Users of YouTube have tackled the problem in a number of ways. Some copyright owners (mostly music publishers) have gone down the banning route. So, for example, videos I bookmarked or favourited a couple of years ago (Abba & Andrew Gold are two examples that spring to mind) are now unavailable when I return to them, and film & TV clips appear with their soundtracks removed.

Others have gone with branding and links. So, for example, Michael Jackson's publishers have applied their ads to videos using their music (one of my own, where we put amusing pictures to an MJ track, is here: http://bit.ly/2q4X3 complete with official ad & link). This shows their understanding that the video they've branded attracts new potential buyers, and they suck up to the kids by showing their support to the makers of the new vid.

Others, especially broadcasters, have gone online themselves. Channel 4 and the BBC are major presences on YouTube. They put up so much content themselves that there's now point in bootleggers or pirates doing so. In the case of Dr Who the BBC put up a dozen or so Classic stories which aren't available on DVD, and turn a blind eye to anything that doesn't get too high quality.

Which brings us back to comics. Assuming htmlcomics is only the first of many, should we embrace it or try and stamp it out? As you can guess I'm in the embracing camp. I think we should look to how we can make money, as publishers and creators, from the online environment, and welcome the potential new audience.

Because, while some people talk of online free comics as "killing" the comic business, I find I live in a parallel universe. I work with kids teaching them the joy of comic art and, one day out of every three, I walk into a world where comics aren't threatened by online piracy. Because comics don't exist.

If the kids I teach have read a comic, it's the Beano. If they've heard of a Marvel superhero it's because they've seen the DVD. If they know Iron Man started life as a comic strip I give them a medal. A few of them read Manga, so there's some consolation there. For the Japanese who didn't let their business die by ignoring younger readers until it was too late.

But when my pupils, especially in primary school, see comics, they love them. And I come away from every class with a bag full of increasingly ragged and tattered comics, loved to within an inch of their staples. I need a cheap supply of comics that I can put into their hands to be sacrificially devoured in the cause of comics education, and I get it from the 5 for a quid box from FP, backed up with Doctor Who Adventures & Simpsons that I buy myself and donate to the cause. But am I going to let them paw and destroy my Cerebusses, my Watchmans, my Swamp Things, my 2000ADs? Am I buggery? Whereas if I can get a laptop and a whiteboard (and I now find, in most schools, I can) I now have an online database that allows me to pick up on whatever they've just said and direct them to a comic that they'll appreciate.

I'm told the comics that I have been browsing and showing to kids are available "at a price". Even my Star Trek strips from 1996? And my one-off Werewolf strip from Marvel's Midnight Sons Unlimited? And my Beano serials? If so, I've not noticed the royalties rolling in. And as for facsimile pages of colour Jack Kirby FFs and Barry Smith Conans and original Will Eisner Spirit newspaper sections, if they are available I'm betting they'll cost more than their creators ever dreamt anyone would ever spend on them, and those creators (or their living counterparts) won't see a penny of the money anyway.

Still thinking this through, but I feel comics archived online must come about, through some officially sanctioned means, otherwise we can forget ever building a new audience of comic readers.

Kev F

Comics by me, inc Star Trek & Marvel, now online

Thanks to a website I've only just discovered called htmlcomics.com, I've found not only a plethora of classic comics that I can direct my school pupils towards (every Spirit newspaper strip, every silver age Marvel comic, every issue of 2000AD etc etc, all archived to read onscreen - it's like YouTube but for comics) but also some comics featuring my own work, some of which I've not seen for ten years.

My favourite find was the only story I've written for Marvel, a Werewolf strip that I both scripted and inked. It's here: Moon Jack (starts on page 40).

And here's my first ever ever ever published comic strip, Captain Klep from 2000AD. They didn't put my writers credit on it at the time, but eventually listed me here.

Talking of uncredited work, while sharing a studio with Mark Buckingham I inked some Ghost Rider backgrounds uncredited, and snuck my name into the graffitti, rather as I do in my Beano stories. See if you can find my name on page two of this Ghost Rider 2099

I went on to work with Mark on Doctor Strange. This is a nice issue from our run, and this one I actually got to pencil parts of rather than just inking. And this Star Trek cover I even managed to get my name on the cover. Browse around htmlcomic.com in these areas and you'll find a lot of my Marvel work over my years there, mostly inking.

And here's the one bit of my Beano work I could find, the start of the serial Fundos, one of my early Beano classics (starts page 17).

Hits from the pits. I heartily recommend this website.

Comics by kids, a selection

Here is just the tiniest selection of the covers of comic produced in recent months by kids in my Comic Art Masterclass, including today's creations. The covers, if you click and examine closely enough, should tell you what school and which age group produced them. Enjoy. (Kev F's Comic Art Masterclass is available to schools, libraries and art centres nationwide, email kevf@sitcomtrials.co.uk) more details at comicfestival.co.uk

Falling birth rate, surely a good thing?

An article in today's Guardian by Fred Pearce explains how the birth rate all over the world, particularly in Western Europe but he also includes an example story from Bangladesh, is in decline. http://bit.ly/9PDeSm

What it doesn't explain is why this is a bad thing. There is talk of a "baby famine" and not being able to maintain the population, and an example of a town in East Germany where empty buildings are being demolished and wolves are returning from the forests.

But surely this is a good thing isn't it? Isn't overpopulation the great evil that's brought us to our knees? Doesn't everyone decry our overcrowded cities with their crime and social decay? Aren't there too many people chasing too few jobs? Don't we have a problem that we're living so long we can't afford our pensions and the more people who come along the worse that problem will get? Isn't climate change a result of too many consumers consuming too much stuff and travelling too far to get it? Isn't too many people what the racists and xenophobes hate (although they probably hate their "coming here and stealing our jobs" regardless of how few we all are in total, and it's probably not in direct ratio to jobs taken in the first place, thinking it through)? And if sea levels rise, won't there be less space to live in the first place? And what was that I read about a water shortage?

Isn't it self-evidently the case that the world has dwindling resources which were finite to begin with, so for the population to expand was always a road to self-destruction? So surely a dwindling population is the road to solving all our problems?

With fewer people chasing fewer resources and sharing a proportionately greater space in which to enjoy them, won't life be theoretically better for all concerned? And given that it seems to be happening benignly, through people choosing not to breed, rather than the previous causes of such decline, ie war, plague, famine and whatever that other horseman's called, surely this is the best of all possible situations?

Can someone explain to me how, in my naivety, I've missed something?

Kev F

BBC Comedy Shuffle HD - Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre

The first chance to see the Socks very early appearance in BBC Three's Comedy Shuffle, in widescreen and (relatively) high definition. The version on the BBC's Youtube is squarescreen, and our early version is squished and low res. Do please enjoy, bearing in mind we realise how ropey we look. What shape is that right sock? Where are the costumes? And just how much sense do the song and the routine make, trimmed down to 10 seconds and 2 minutes respectively?



Buy the t shirt: cafepress.co.uk/falsettosocks
Join the fan club

How to buy the t-shirt - Scottish Falsetto Socks

Wondered where you can get Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre t shirts, badges, mugs and other stuff from? Wonder no more, the answer is here...