Comics produced by pupils in my Comic Art Masterclasses here, from primary schools in Newham and Bradford and a birthday party near Marlborough, with some caricatures of their faces thrown in for good measure.
My Comic Art Masterclass draws on my 25 years working for everyone from The Beano to Doctor Who & Marvel comics and teaches everyone in the class, of whatever ability, how easy it is to write and draw comic strips. I can work with two groups in a day, maximum 30 in each group, and I need a minimum of two hours for each. Age 7/8 (yr3) or older only. By the end of each session they'll have produced a comic with a strip in by each of them, which I run off on the photocopier and they each take a copy home, along with a caricature I'll have drawn of every one of them.
When asked to name a celebrity for me to draw in a demonstration strip on the flipchart, these groups ended up choosing Zayn Malik, The Queen, Michael Jackson, Mr Bean and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing and drawing Pansy Potter 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.
With the dust well and truly settled after this year's Edinburgh Fringe, and the Socks about to do their first live show in a month, I've had a chance to look back at this summer's show, ...And So Am I, and see what I think of it in retrospect. It's been interesting, in the intervening time, to re-read Stewart Lee's How I Escaped My Certain Fate, in which he dissects three of his stand up shows, with footnotes that take up far more space than the routines themselves. I don't propose to do that, but for my future reference it will be interesting to look at this, our most topically-based show, and see what was in it.
Intro - Mass Debate. Good start, we greet the audience with a gag stolen from Radio Active, making it a good 30 years old. So they know what they're going to get. This three-gag routine does, actually, set the tone very successfully for the rest of the night and, plagiarism aside, I'm rather happy with it. It's also three short lines, which gave me the confidence to then launch into audience interaction and improv before the opening song, which is a good thing to do, as long as you've delivered some good punchliney material to begin with. A bad move is going off at a tangent before you've set the actual course of the show.
I'm A Sock - I've tried in past years to replace our theme tune. But disastrous preview shows where that was attempted (Brighton, Bristol and Leicester have suffered these over the years) hammer home the fact that we can't do it. Again, it sets the tone for the show, and also gives me a chance to assess the audience. If they laugh at certain points, ("...not on your cock", guitar solo, and "do you want a fight?" are the three key ones) I know they're newbies, or particularly easily-entertained regulars. If they don't, they've heard it many times before, or they're going to be harder work then usual.
Ignoranus - This very good routine asking how the audience are going to vote in the Scottish Indenpence referendum is sadly redundant now. Again, continued the theme of the show nicely.
Clegg/Milliband/Cameron - Shamefully I use the c word to get the first big laugh of the night (actually often the openings have done that, with their scope for audience interaction and improv).
Pros - The first thing I wrote for the show, this is a very old-fashioned and tenuous wordplay routine that I was worried wasn't going to work. So many points of reference that not everybody would get - Heidi Fleiss, Cynthia Payne, Billie Piper in Diary Of A Call GIrl and a list of golfers - but the structure and momentum made this work. It was written hurriedly one morning, literally on the back of an envelope. Here is that envelope.
The Adele/Peter Benchley joke - My Stewart Lee moment. A joke that only I got (and so did David Quantick when I originally tweeted it, which is frankly why I kept it in). It's a good gag, but only if you are au fait with the works of both Peter Benchley and Adele which, I can confirm, is about 3 people in every 90.
Intro to Mumford & Son - rubbish, never made that make any sense, changed it every night, will happily never try it again.
Mumford & Son - jolly good fun. It's more Crackerjack than Mitch Benn, if I'm honest, but I like it and so did every single audience.
Baby In The Corner - the running joke. This was a shamelessly reverse-engineered callback, which saw me starting with the punchline which comes towards the end of the show, and inserting set-ups through the preceding hour like a comedy-writing automata. Worked every time. I shall be using this piss-easy comedy-whore writing-by-numbers method again.
Europe / MP passing a motion - Some more set-of-three good comedy gags, which are fun to write and a treat to deliver. And topical, so their shelf-life is coming to an end.
Noah - What was this doing in the show? Doesn't fit the theme of the show whatsoever, but kept getting laughs from the start, had so much scope for audience interaction it got better every time, and best of all it's not topical so it has life in the touring show. Best laugh from a rubbish punchline in years.
Downton Abbey - One of those scripts that starts promisingly, starts to look less funny as you go through the previews, then finally comes together during the Edinburgh run. I chopped a good third of the lines out, keeping only the funniest bits, then mercifully found a way of giving it a punchline by segueing it into the next song.
The Franz Ferdinand gag - Wrote this about 3 days into Edinburgh, thus linking Downton to...
Oh What A Lovely War On Terror - I'm proud of this. I don't care if you think it's Crackerjack-y, and I'm not too worried at those people who were laughing at "My old man is in the Taliban" for the wrong reasons. This is a satirical tour de force in my books, and the fact that it's not been seen by million on national TV is their loss.
Stereotypes - A classic Socks word-association routine, and their best for years. Well done them.
Street Where You Live - A new addition to the "three songs" the Socks have been doing for years. I like it.
Song For UKIP - My favourite three minutes in the show, about which I can only reiterate my remark about the millions on national TV and their loss. All going well this will last till next year's election, possibly with lyrical updates. Also not a problem that the "Jews" line doesn't get a laugh. Satire's not all ha-ha hee-hee, you know.
Send It Back gag - Can't fathom why this never got the laugh I wanted, it's another of my favourite gags.
St Andrew - Early on, in previews, someone remarked that the show was all good except for this routine, and I started to agree with them. Then it got whittled down until only the funny was left, and I made it segue into the pre-finale break-up routine, and suddenly it was perfect. For about a week it ended a bit messily though.
Always A... - Revived from 2010's show, On The Telly, this fitted perfectly. Big Sock fans hadn't seen it for at least 2 years, and for newbies it was as good as ever. Fitted the mood of the moment perfectly. Followed by..
The Break Up - On early nights of the run, we had the Batman/Tennis routine, which thankfully was squeezed out once the laughter made earlier parts of the show last longer. Now we went straight from the song to the break-up, including the Snot Talking, which was an ad-lib that stayed in.
Baby In The Corner punchline song - This wasn't so much stolen as inspired. I mean, obviously it comes from Dirty Dancing. But breaking into this particular song at this part of the show came from seeing a series of French double acts on TV in Toulouse back in April, all of whom ended their routines with a choreographed musical bit, and one of which used this. To say I thought "I'm having that" would be libellous. But I did end up having it. Coincidentally, in one of our last preview shows, in Birmingham in July, the new double act Crumpkiss ended their routine with exactly the same song. So it's a meme, clearly.
Macbeth - The bin is welcome to this. I was so glad on the nights when there wasn't time to do this finale, which had gone from being well-written but unfunny, to re-written but still not funny enough, to its final state of "done in 90 seconds and get to the punchline quick". When it was good it was very very good, and very short. And it did round up the theme of the show, which is something the Socks have failed to do many a time.
Sweary Poppins - Finally we ended with a song, often by sacrificing Macbeth, and it's the perfect ending. It's been in our touring show for years, but Edinburgh has only ever seen it in 2009's show Goes To Hollywood, so a perfect note to go out on.
In all I thought And So Am I was our best structured show, with some of my favourite songs (however long they stay topical) and the most consistent level throughout, and the audiences seemed as happy as ever, but I don't think ultimately it gave us any timeless routines quite as strong as Socks In Space (Avengers, Star Trek, David Bowie), Boo Lingerie (Horror Cliche Song), Hollywood (Star Wars, the 3 Songs, Word Association, Sweary Poppins) or On The Telly (Missing Off TV, Ship In A Bottle, Walk On Wild Side, Always A.., Sawing A Sock In Half).
Seven shows later, we still got it. Now, what shall we write next?
The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre are on tour... NOW!
The Socks return to the stage after a month long gap tomorrow, at the Belfast Comedy Festival. But which show should we do?
We only have a 60 minute slot, so we have the choice of doing the recent Edinburgh show And So Am I - with its Scottish Independence material all removed now that it's out of date, but keeping the killer songs. But then how relevant is the UKIP song in Northern Ireland? Or we can do Socks In Space, which we haven't done since June or July time (seems so long ago).
Or a mixture of the two? Or some of the best-of stuff? And what about debuting the brand new ISIS Song, is that worth risking?
Ee, it's fun to be thinking live Socks again, after what must be the longest break in the last year, maybe since Christmas? Here, in case I haven't blogged them, are some recent gig listings that looked pretty nifty.
The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre are on tour... NOW!
Christmas may come earlier every year, but that's nothing compared to the deadline for planning your personalised Christmas card. And, in my role as comics writer and artist for everyone from The Beano to Marvel to Doctor Who, this is the time of year when I also offer my services to produce unique and bespoke comic-strip styled Christmas cards for clients far and wide. If you want me to consult, please email me (see below) and we'll take it from there. Here are some works produced for previous happy clients...
Contact Kev F Sutherland, comic genius, for a quote at by email
or on 01275 872111 / 07931810858. And, as always, my services as a
comic strip creator, historian, consultant and teacher remain at your
disposal.
For the first time in a few years, I have a number of stories in this year's Beano annual, the 2015 edition. Unfortunately, because I didn't draw them and because we hadn't discussed sneaking credits into them, my name doesn't appear on any of them. But almost all of the Bananaman and Biffo The Bear strips in the book are written by me. Here's a sneak exclusive behind-the-scenes look at a bit of the script for the Bananaman 4 pager Vom-Monster, drawn in the book by the brilliant Wayne Thompson.
This is how I prefer to deliver my scripts, in biro layout form. It's quicker to send a type-script, but I don't think it gets the humour across nearly as well, especially if another artist is going to draw the finished item. Don't forget to buy The Beano annual as the perfect Christmas gift this year, and if you want me to sign my stories at any time, just so posterity will know who wrote them, bring them along to one of my classes.
Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing and drawing Pansy Potter 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.
Brand new from the Socks, a satirical song that we're quite proud of, we do hope you like it.
This is has already gone through a few rewrites before getting it right, under the working title Hello Muddah, Intifadah. Some lovely rhymes that have hit the bin include "que pasa / madrassa", "hit home / Iron Dome" (the first draft was set in Gaza, hence the intifada mention, which is still a valid term for any uprising, though admittedly mostly used to refer to Gaza), and "great big Satan / these bombs did not keep raining". Here are the words that we wound up going with:
Hello muddah hello fadda
I am fighing an intifada
I am being a jihadi
Though I'm worried it might turn out I'm a baddie
I'm a rebel, here with ISIS
It turns out they're not as nice as
You would think, you saw that video?
They do all that stuff and more I do not kid you
We kill folks in every nation
Without much discrimination
Are they Shias are they Sunnis?
We don't care which per-su-asion anyone is
It's as hot as volcanic lava
Yet they make me wear a balaclava
Why'd you ever let me do this?
Could be worse, I haven't told them yet I'm Jewish
Take me back, I don't want to go to Iraq
I don't want to be with ISIS
Or are we called ISIL or IS no-one knows which one it is
Take me home, oh mudda fada
It's bad here, worse than in Gaza
I don't like being a terrorist
And worse you can't even get pissed
I thought we'd be liberating
We do more decapitating
Those 70 virgins I was promised
Don't seem worth the effort if I'm being honest
Wait a minute, there's incoming
US drones are doing bombing
I'm about to be a martyr
Kindly disregard this email mum & fada
The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre are on tour... NOW!
You start googling yourself and suddenly you find another newspaper photo you hadn't spotted. Here's me in the Weston Mercury back in June (which, if it appeared in the printed edition, went into the recycling before I'd even looked inside. You can lay the demise of local newspapers squarely at my door. Beside the recycling.)
CARTOONS came to life when a comic book artist paid a visit to a North Somerset school.
Youngsters at Locking Primary School saw their favourite superheroes and children’s characters recreated in front of their eyes. Beano
cartoonist Kev Sutherland visited the school in Meadow Drive as part of
literacy week, to show how pictures can illustrate a narrative. Kev has taught comic art master classes for more than a decade in schools, colleges and at festivals.
Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing and drawing Pansy Potter 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.
