Thursday 27 March 2014

Glasgow Croydon Glasgow Croydon - travels with my art

Here we see a flipchart drawing I had time to produce at Histon & Impington Junior School in Cambridgeshire, just part of a solid few weeks of work involving not only Comic Art Masterclasses and Scottish Falsetto Socks gigs, and not only writing and drawing for The Beano, but also a whole heap of travelling including the rare novelty of breaking down on the M25.

Yes, I've been driving a hire car for the best part of the last week, while my own car has sat in the garage in Bristol waiting for me to pick up. It's been ready since Saturday, but they're not open on Saturday afternoons, or Sundays, so it's had to wait until I was free on a weekday to pick it up.

The fun began when, after a weekend away working in Glasgow and Largs, I set off ungodlily early on Monday morning to drive to a two day engagement at a school in Croydon. By 7.30 I was texting to warn them that I'd be late, the start-of-the-week traffic on the M4 already having added 45 minutes to my eta. But that was nothing to the phone call I had to make at 8.15 as I stood behind the protective barrier on the M25 waiting for the AA.

(I was about to paste in a photo of my car waiting beside the M25 at this point but, frankly, it's a very boring picture. I've also got one of an AA man under the bonnet of my car doing a temporary fix-up job on the clutch rachet - don't ask me, they're just some words I wrote down - but again it's hardly worth framing).

So since then it's been blah blah drop keys off at garage after hours after sweating the journey home expecting the clutch to fail at any second... blah blah... taxi to airport, flight to Glasgow then three days including a school and four Socks gigs and back to pick up a hire car... blah blah... Croydon again for Saturday's gig, to Cambridge with Hev for 2 days at Histon school then back to do a party gig in Weston and home.

And the best thing about this hire car, a Peugeot 207 from Budget, is the revelation that DAB Digital Radio works in cars! I'd been under the impression that the digital switchover was going to be delayed indefinitely because no-one could make DAB work well in cars. I can confirm that, with this model at least, you can listen to Radio 4 Extra without interruption from Bristol to Croydon to Cambridge and back. I want one. Rather than have to listen to the variable-to-poor stuff that Radios 2 and 4 have at pre and post-gig travel times (some of it is excellent, but you will occasionally find yourself in The Organist Entertains zone or tuning to Moneybox) I have heard John Wyndhams The Kraken Wakes (play from the 90s) Saturday Night Fry (80s), The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy (70s), I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again (60s), The Goon Show (50s), an excellent selection of programmes chosen by Grace Dent on the subject of Growing Up A Girl, and Neil Innes curating a three hour selection on the life of Viv Stanshall, English As Tuppence. All in the car.

I am getting me a DAB radio for my car, and I am listening to Radio 4 Extra in my car till I'm sick of it. In the meantime, here's a photo of the Socks set at the party gig in Weston on Tuesday night. Yes, it was an unusual setting, with the birthday crowd rattling round in a largely empty nightclub, but I think we got away with it. The act before it was a woman who performed with an angle grinder and made sparks to loud music. You had to be there.

Wednesday 26 March 2014

Under Pans - new comics by kids

These are the front covers of the comics produced by pupils in my Comic Art Masterclasses in Cambridgeshire, Glasgow, Croydon, Largs and Henley On Thames. As always, everyone in the class writes a title down on a piece of paper and we choose the best through a fast-moving knockout competition. So the above nine titles are the best from around 270 suggestions, every one a gem. I design the covers, they all add a drawing to it while I'm doing their individual caricatures, and then I run off an A5 comic containing every one of their comic strips inside. The nice orangey colouring has been added by me after the fact. I can work miracles, yes, but there are limits.

The celebrities they chose for the demonstration story were Simon Cowell (twice), Keith Lemon, Jonathan Ross, Rihanna, Harry Styles, Harrison Ford, Tom Daley, and most obscurely Justin Fletcher off CBBC (whose girlfriend was the class teacher. A class which included film director Paul Greengrass's daughter, now you're asking. And if you want obscure, a runner-up suggestion in one of these schools was cricketer Colin Cowdray, one of the pupils being his grandson). 

I do an awful lot of these classes, in schools all over the country and all over the world. Is it just that I can't say no? Well, if you want me to come and teach your kids how to do what I've been doing for the last 25 years, you'd better get in touch fast, just in case I learn how to use the 'n' word.*



More comics from pupils in Croydon, Richmond and Glasgow, in  Chorley, Newcastle Under Lyme, Borehamwood and Henley, in Hertfordshire and Weston Super Mare, in Cardiff, Falkirk, Birmingham and rural Devon. You'll find many more if you scour this blog.


* No! I meant the word "no"!! Please.

Pansy Notter - Boisterous

My Pansy Potter strips start appearing in this week's Beano. Quarter page gag strips starring the Strongman's Daughter, they're the first things I've written and drawn in the Beano for five years and are great fun to do. Of course, it's the strips The Beano rejects that makes the final comic so good, and above you can see another idea that didn't make the cut (hence it still being in biro-scribble form).

As well as not featuring the eponymous star (though eagle-eyed readers will have noticed this week's Bananaman story Creepy Pasta also doesn't feature its title character), it was considered too wordy or adult or sunnink. Enjoy, a blog-only lost gem.



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.

Bananaman Creepy Pasta in this week's Beano

This week's Beano features not only the debut of my Pansy Potter strips, but also a Bananaman story entitled Creepy Pasta, in which Spa-Foon and the Squa-Trontians continue their invasion attempts on the earth. Here's a tasty teaser of Wayne Thompson's stonking artwork, and the same panels as shown in my original biro-layout script.

Creepy Pasta came about as a title when I stumbled upon the concept of that name. Creepy Pasta, so TV Tropes tells me, is a genre of made-up stories that people are led to believe are true. A variation on the urban myth and the fireside ghost story, they include tales of TV episodes that once existed and were banned, like the Dead Bart Simpson episode and Sponge Bob's Squidward Suicide episode. Other famous Creepy Pasta examples are the marketing campaign for The Blair Witch Project where people were led to believe it was genuine found footage, and Paul McCartney Is Dead, which I first encountered on an old tape recording in the 1970s and believed for years.

Needless to say the Bananaman episode just takes the catchy name Creepy Pasta and turns it into something much sillier (my first draft did, indeed, revolve around a banned Bananaman story, but it was becoming way too un-Beano so it changed at an early stage).

Still, it does help to answer that frequently asked question "where do you get your ideas from". With me it would appear to be, either it's satire or I nick it off TV Tropes. Sometimes both.

Buy the Beano, and see if you can spot my name hidden on the Pansy Potter strip. It is there.

UPDATE: I've just discovered I'm not the only person writing Bananaman scripts right now, so it might be a case of enjoying mine while they last. Fingers crossed, eh readers?



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.

Sunday 23 March 2014

In praise of venues' own Socks design

Here we see the fabulous ticket design that the Exchange in Keighley have put together for our forthcoming show. Isn't that very much above and beyond the call of duty? Jym (I'm guessing) has taken the logo from the Socks 2008 comic book and adapted it into a very eye catching ticket, which is then on luggage labels with string. Nothing short of nifty. I'd call it shooglenifty if I had the faintest idea what shooglenifty means.

It's always a treat to see the Socks artwork tweaked, blown up, redesigned and popping up on posters and brochures in towns we visit. And I think it makes a difference, or certainly shows a correlation between promotional effort made by the venue itself on the ground and the eventual number of bums on seats. Here are some other venue-designed pieces I've found in my archives from the recent tour.

Canterbury Festival, where promotions across town like this ultimately delivered an entire Spiegeltent full for the Socks' first ever appearance in town.

Chorley Little Theatre, who have also blown us up and plastered us on the side of the building before now.
The Socks on the banner for Hull Comedy Festival.
The Spread Eagle in Croydon, whose handiwork and other efforts delivered us a full house for our first appearance in town.



The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre are on tour... NOW!

Mar 29 - Kings Lynn Arts Centre
Mar 31 - Bath Comedy Festival - Natural Theatre
Apr 3 - Adam Smith Theatre Kirkcaldy
Apr 12 - Stroud Subscription Rooms
May 9 - Exeter Barnfield
May 14 - Camden Head, London
May 17 - Brighton Komedia
May 23 - Keighley Exchange
May 31 - Aylesbury Limelight
June 6 - Hazlitt Theatre, Maidstone
June 7 - Butlins, Bognor
June 11 - Camden Head, London
June 19 - Phoenix Arts, Bordon Hants
June 20 - Derby Assembly Rooms
June 21 - Halifax Square Chapel
June 22 - Derby (family show)
July 4 - Old Joint Stock Theatre, Birmingham
July 9 - Bedford Fringe
July 11 - Beverley Puppet Festival
July 13 - Sheffield New Barrack Tavern 2pm
July 17 - Larmer Tree Festival, Wilts
July 18 - Leeds Carriageworks
July 19 - Cradley Heath Comedy Festival
July 22 - Comedy Den Cardiff

More dates to be announced
July 30 - Aug 25 Gilded Balloon, 10.30pm - Edinburgh Fringe 2014







"Funniest thing I have ever seen" - love a venue with a comments book

You've got to love a venue with a comments book, don't cha? What a smashing page of comments, and indeed drawings, from the audience at last night's Socks In Space show at The Spread Eagle in Croydon. A cracking venue that we sold out and that I would love to go back to again (run by the same people who run the Old Joint Stock in Birmingham, to which we'll be returning soon, and which very much has its comedy promotion act together).

Those quotes in full:
"Absolutely hilarious - thought I may die laughing. Thankyou"
"I am sure she (above) nearly stopped breathing from the laughter. Fantastic."
"Great show! Many thanks. We brought a group of 15, half kids. They all loved it. Please keep up all the great theatre at the Spead Eagle. Cheers!!!"
"Possibly the funniest thing I have ever seen! I will be recommending this show to my friends."
"People either need kegels (?) of steel or a good supply of Tena Lady. Absolutely brilliant."

Thankyou Croydon. We'll be back. 


You can see the Socks in the coming months at:
Mar 22 - Spread Eagle, Croydon
Mar 29 - Kings Lynn Arts Centre
Mar 31 - Bath Comedy Festival - Natural Theatre
Apr 3 - Adam Smith Theatre Kirkcaldy
Apr 12 - Stroud Subscription Rooms
May 9 - Exeter Barnfield
May 14 - Camden Head, London
May 17 - Brighton Komedia
May 23 - Keighley Exchange
May 31 - Aylesbury Limelight
June 6 - Hazlitt Theatre, Maidstone
June 7 - Butlins, Bognor
June 11 - Camden Head, London
June 19 - Phoenix Arts, Bordon Hants
June 20 - Derby Assembly Rooms
June 21 - Halifax Square Chapel
June 22 - Derby (family show)
July 4 - Old Joint Stock Theatre, Birmingham
July 9 - Bedford Fringe
July 11 - Beverley Puppet Festival
July 13 - Sheffield New Barrack Tavern 2pm
July 17 - Larmer Tree Festival, Wilts
July 18 - Leeds Carriageworks
July 19 - Cradley Heath Comedy Festival
July 22 - Comedy Den Cardiff
July 30 - Aug 24, Gilded Balloon Edinburgh Fringe



Saturday 22 March 2014

Bananaman vs Stephen Hawking - the comic strip

A few weeks ago a fantastic photo appeared in the news, of a stag party taking a group photo with Stephen Hawking. I thought this was too good an opportunity to miss and promptly turned it into a Bananaman script for The Beano. Our much wiser editor decided it wasn't right for the comic, so it won't be seeing print. Here's my script, in its original biro layout form.



It is a bit too complicated, and not funny enough (indeed it's a rare script where I can't find a gag I could re-use somewhere else but this, I fear, has no hidden gems). Plus it hinges on a photo which the readers wouldn't have seen, and which the Beano probably couldn't get the rights to run. So it's one for the blog and for posterity. And here's that photo again if you missed it.







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.


Friday 21 March 2014

The Socks are back - tour dates galore

Here, courtesy of Craig at Wild Cabaret, we see the Socks making a return to the stage with their second gig of the night in Glasgow last night. They're doing two nights of Socks In Space at Dram! in the West End of Glasgow, followed by appearances at Wild Cabaret - a gorgeous and plush venue on Candleriggs slap bang in the middle of the city.

It's been a month since they performed at all, which is a very unusual hiatus for the boys, their last outing being on Feb 22nd in Aberystwyth, and now they're back to get stuck into a busy schedule of gigs. And, I mustn't forget, the frantic writing of their new show. Why, I've been dedicating so much time to writing Bananaman, Little Plum and Pansy Potter, that the Socks have had an unnecessarily long gap between bouts of new material writing. I hope they've got lots of ideas stored up.

You can see the Socks in the coming months at:
Mar 22 - Spread Eagle, Croydon
Mar 29 - Kings Lynn Arts Centre
Mar 31 - Bath Comedy Festival - Natural Theatre
Apr 3 - Adam Smith Theatre Kirkcaldy
Apr 12 - Stroud Subscription Rooms
May 9 - Exeter Barnfield
May 14 - Camden Head, London
May 17 - Brighton Komedia
May 23 - Keighley Exchange
May 31 - Aylesbury Limelight
June 6 - Hazlitt Theatre, Maidstone
June 7 - Butlins, Bognor
June 11 - Camden Head, London
June 19 - Phoenix Arts, Bordon Hants
June 20 - Derby Assembly Rooms
June 21 - Halifax Square Chapel
June 22 - Derby (family show)
July 4 - Old Join Stock Theatre, Birmingham
July 9 - Bedford Fringe
July 11 - Beverley Puppet Festival
July 13 - Sheffield New Barrack Tavern 2pm
July 17 - Larmer Tree Festival, Wilts
July 18 - Leeds Carriageworks
July 19 - Cradley Heath Comedy Festival
July 22 - Comedy Den Cardiff

And from July 30th to August 24th they're on every night at 10.30pm at The Gilded Balloon as part of the Edinburgh Fringe with their brand new show ...And So Am I. Tickets go on sale very soon.



Still got it - me posing by flipcharts


Good to see I've not lost it. My ability to pose cheesily beside a flipchart drawing that is. Here we see flipchart pages, doodled on by me in the run up to my Comic Art Masterclasses in Croydon, Eastbank in Glasgow, and Largs. I like to leave everywhere I visit with a nifty memento to stick on the walls somewhere, and since I'm drawing this as the kids comes in, it demonstrates to them how easy it all is.


I do hope flipcharts and paper aren't totally on the way out. Increasingly schools rely on interactive white boards, which are all well and good but I do worry about their intangibility. I'm teaching kids how to draw things, with a pencil and a pen on a piece of paper, so I use a pencil and a pen on a piece of paper myself. And they are left with lots of lovely pieces of paper with pencil and pen on for them to treasure. Do some pixels floating in the air and stored on a memory stick have the same impact? I don't know, and I'm not in a hurry to find out.

Also, the number of primary schools I go to where, because they use the whiteboard so much, they have the blinds permanently drawn! Kids will be getting rickets and coming out like pasty troglodytes, just so the teacher can see a projection screen. Madness.


If you want me to come to your school, library, or art centre to teach comics, do please get in touch. Cheesy smiles come free.



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.




Papa Big Lips - more comics by kids

These smashing comic book covers come from pupils in quite the most diverse range of places you can imagine. From Croydon (the girls school that Susanna Reid and Anneka Rice went to, don't cha know), Richmond (the boys school Zac Goldsmith, Lawrence Dallaglio and Nigel Planer went to by the way), Glasgow (a primary school in The Gorbals, which has changed a bit in recent years), and Largs (the birthplace of Nardini's ice cream, and John Sessions). As I always find in schools, kids have more in common than they have dividing them, though if one were to generalise I would say that posh schools' teachers are a bit pushier than normal schools.

Celebs chosen by the above pupils for the demonstration strip were Harry Styles, Beyonce, Vladimir Putin, Miley Cyrus, Michael Jackson and Will I Am.

If you would like me to come to your school and share my expertise from 25 years writing and drawing comics for everyone from The Beano to Marvel comics, then do please get in touch.



More comics from pupils in Chorley, Newcastle Under Lyme, Borehamwood and Henley, in Hertfordshire and Weston Super Mare, in Cardiff, Falkirk, Birmingham and rural Devon. You'll find many more if you scour this blog.

Wednesday 19 March 2014

Captain Banana vs Miracle Banana in this week's Beano


Continuing last week's Miracle Banana storyline, this week's Beano sees a classic battle between Bananaman and two parodies of characters from comics history that panelologists will recognise (see last week's blog if you really don't know).

But who turns out to be the character behind it all? You'll have to buy this week's Beano to find out. And they said satire was dead. (It's written by me, and drawn in cracking style by Wayne Thompson).

UPDATE: Breaking News, I have just learned there is a Bananaman movie planned for 2015. No, I'm not involved, but how exciting is that news? I look forward to finding out more.

Also in this week is my first Little Plum script, though to be honest it's been so heavily rewritten you wouldn't recognise it from the original script (that said the rewrite includes some nice gags, and the artwork by Hunt Emerson is gorgeous, the first time he and I have worked together I think).

Next week, Bananaman meets the Creepy Pasta. Order your Beano now, you don't want to miss out.
Here, a snippet from the original script of this week's Bananaman.



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.

Monday 17 March 2014

Pansy Notter - Seeds

There used to be an old TV advert that said "it's the fish John West reject that make John West salmon the best". Well, the same goes for strips in The Beano. Starting shortly are some Pansy Potter strips written and drawn by me, for which I'm currently drawing a second batch of ten. But not every script has made the cut, above is one that didn't.

I deliver the scripts looking like you see above, laid out with the type already set and a rough version of the line work scribbled in. If it gets the thumbs up, I then go back and draw it larger and colour it. It's been an interesting discipline to write three-panel gag strips for the first time since Russ Carvell and I did Timeshack and the original UT strip 25 years ago (no, I don't think they are online anywhere. Yes I did just look). When they start appearing the Beano I hope you like my efforts.



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.


Sunday 16 March 2014

Comedians on TV, idle thoughts


When was the last time you saw a great new comedian on telly?

This isn't meant to be a loaded or snide question, I'm genuinely asking because I'm actually trying to remember when I last saw a comedian on TV for the first time and was able to say "I've never seen anyone like this before."

Because of my vintage, I'm able to cast my mind back to seeing my first ever comedians in the 1970s. I missed Billy Connolly's TV debut on Parkinson cos I wasn't old enough to stay up for it, and there were plenty who seemed to always been around like Morecambe and Wise, The Goodies, Monty Python, The Two Ronnies and Dave Allen. So the first comedian I remember making an impact on his TV debut was Paul Daniels. Shut up.

Trite and old hat as he might seem now, when he made his debut on the Wheeltappers and Shunter Club (you had to be there) I had simply never seen a comedy magician before and this was probably the first time I'd seen someone doing adult-oriented jokes on TV (a memorable gag was "See my initials on my bag, PD? Val Doonican can't do that". There is probably no part of that joke that makes sense 40 years on).

NB I had seen Tommy Cooper, but by the late 70s he wasn't funny. Neither were Max Wall, Billy Dainty, Charlie Drake or any of the 50s and 60s comics ITV was still showcasing. Les Dawson, Spike Milligan and Benny Hill were about to suffer the same fate, being dismissed by a new generation who found them outdated.

Then came Jasper Carrott, Mike Harding and Max Boyce, who were to all intents and purpose the first stand up comedians I'd seen on the telly. There had been Granada TV's The Comedians where men in bowties smoked fags and told gags, but with the exception of Tom O'Connor and Charlie Williams, they mostly told the same jokes as each other, and even to my young eyes seemed neither big nor clever. When I realised later just how racist some of them were, I shudder to think how many of those gags the 11 year old me must have repeated in the playground.

Victoria Wood and Pam Ayres - again, shut up - were two of the most impressive debuts of their time. No-one was doing what they did, they were laugh out loud funny every time. And guess what, they're still doing it 40 years on while most of their contemporaries have chickened out to become mere actors, authors or dead people, which says a lot.

Not The 9 O'Clock News and Alternative Comedy revolutionised TV comedy, bringing about a paradigm shift in the comedy consciousness whereby we suddenly realised that sexism and racism not only existed but were bad things and that people would suddenly not laugh at them any more. Thus dozens of old school talents disappeared to be replaced by a new wave who, I only subsequently realised, were largely from public school and Oxbridge. (Did you know that, in The Young Ones University Challenge spoof, that more of the Oiks team came from public schools than the Poshos team?)

Class prejudice notwithstanding, I can remember the devastating impact of the first TV appearances of Rik Mayall (Stomping On The Cat), Ben Elton (Oxford Road Show) and The Comic Strip (Channel 4's first night). I also remember seeing comics for the first time who I didn't think were that funny (French & Saunders, Alexei Sayle, Keith Allen) but they got better as time went by (except Keith Allen).

The comedy boom that started in the 80s brought some of the greatest of the greats. Do you remember when you first saw Steven Wright or Emo Phillips? Now that, quite literally, is what I'm talking about.

So the 80s saw a steady flow of talent that was exciting and original, and not all posh. Fry & Laurie, Hunter & Docherty, Norman Lovett, Jeremy Hardy, Whose Line Is It Anyway's Paul Merton, Clive Anderson and Tony Slattery, The Joan Collins Fan Club aka Julian Clary, and then the world of comedy changed for me because I started going to live comedy clubs and seeing them on stage first.

Thus many comics made their first impression on me in the live environment before making it onto TV and some, quite a few indeed, turned out to be way less funny on the box. Jo Brand being the best example of that. She was the funniest comedian by far that we'd had on in The Monkhouse club in Leicester that year (was it 1988), with Patrick Marber and Mark Lamarr being voted the runners up. But Jo's TV showcases were usually much less successful affairs, especially when it was decided to put her into sketches. She may now be a national treasure, but it took the power of actual live work to do that, to which her TV work has never matched up.

The greatest 90s TV debut that comes to mind, of someone I'd never seen live, is Vic Reeves, back in 1990, when the NME had him on the cover and declared "this is Britain's funniest man" and for a short time he was. Other impressive debuts were the Mary Whitehouse Experience and Lee & Herring, though I suppose by now my jaded mind was starting to compare them more to their predecessors than given them enough credit for their originality. (Though I will admit, comparisons to David Frost, the Pythons & Mike Yarwood aside, Mary Whitehouse was brilliant).

The 90s brings us to the start of our current era where comedians gained a ubiquity on TV, and even taking control of it through companies like Hat Trick and Talkback, and we started getting a slew of comedians who, while all original and different from each other, struggled to be that different purely because there were so many of them. Most of the 90s/00s wave of comics I saw live long before they hit TV, and most were at their best in the small room. It was obvious, for example, that Peter Kay was a star from the off, and it's one of the biggest privileges to have compered for him then see him entertain a room of 150 people. Comedy's equivalent of seeing the Sex Pistols debut I'd say.

Likewise I've seen truly legendary comics like Ross Noble and Eddie Izzard play small rooms, ahead of them becoming stadium fillers. I worked with Miranda Hart in the Sitcom Trials from 2000-02 and it was obvious she was destined for greatness, something that was also clear when I first saw Sarah Millican play in a tiny downstairs room at the Leicester Comedy Festival. TV seems determined to make you sick of both of them through over exposure, but I think they're managing.

Comedy writers are probably the subject of different train of thought. The 90s & 00s suddenly saw Armando Iannucci, Graham Linehan, Bain & Armstrong rise to greatness, but behind the scenes. Indeed sitcom, or the not-stand-up arena, may be the place where the biggest debuts have happened in the last two decades, from Steve Coogan and the League of Gentlemen, via Little Britain & The Mighty Boosh, to Ricky Gervais and Sacha Baron Cohen.

Since the start of this century, when you can't move for comedy panel games, and where an entire generation think the Edinburgh Fringe is just a comedy festival, there has often been the feeling of comedy having a conveyor belt delivering the next homogenised soundalike comedian that fits the slot TV is looking for. I know there's a big difference between the men-only racist bowtie wearers of Granada's The Comedians and the men-only it's-not-racist-it's-ironic sharp-elbowed dicks-on-the-table competitors of Mock The Week, but sometimes it's hard not to feel that some comedians are less original than others. Did I mention I was the first person to say "ladies and gentlemen Russell Howard", at the Comedy Box in Bristol back in 1998? See also Stephen Merchant, Marcus Brigstocke, Alun Cochrane and the first comedy club headline slot by Graham Norton. I hear they've done alright.

Originality abounds on stage, of course, and the Edinburgh Fringe and the comedy clubs of the country is still a good place to find them, though I have seen precious few truly eclectic comedians in the regional comedy clubs I've played in recent years. There was even a story of a venue recently asking a promoter to change the bill because there were too many women on it, suggesting that conservatism in comedy may be just as bad as it was forty years ago.

So, who was the last great new comedian who I saw on telly? Well, I was impressed by discovering Andy Samberg's SNL skits online a couple of years ago, does he count? And sitcom is seeing some very good writer performers like Tim Key and Tom Basden. And I'm looking forward to the proper TV debut of Jon Finniemore. And there I go, listing three public school Cambridge Footlighters in a row, does nothing ever change?

I began this blog with a genuine question and I'm no closer to an answer. I'd be interested in hearing other peoples thoughts. The last time you saw a great new comedian on TV anyone?

Wednesday 12 March 2014

Miracle Banana pt 1 in this week's Beano

My favourite Bananaman story so far is in this week's Beano, and it's definitely one for the comics fans out there. Miracle Banana is a lightly satirical strip in which Bananaman meets a character who he thinks has ripped him off.

Miracle Banana is, as any comics fan will recognise, based on Miracle Man, formerly known as Marvel Man, who was created in Britain in the 1960s to replace the reprints of US strip Captain Marvel and who closely followed that strip's characters (Billy Batson/Micky Moran says the word Shazam / "Atomic" backwards and becomes a superhero). Captain Marvel himself had been sued by the publishers of Superman who considered him to be rip-off of their character in the first place.

And who appears at the end of this week's Bananaman episode? Well, I won't spoil the surprise, but I can tell you its the first part of a two-parter and next week's strip is a three way battle between Miracle Banana, Bananaman and a character created in the 1940s who's brought a team of lawyers with him.


Bananaman is written by me and drawn by the marvellous Wayne Thompson who brings a TV animation dynamic to my stories. I hope the kids are enjoying them cos they're great fun to write.



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.

Tuesday 11 March 2014

My blog in a book

I don't know if this is meta, or infinite regression, or just incestuous, but above you can see a photo of this blog, in a book. Thanks to Blurb and BookSmart I've been able to slurp the contents of my 2013 blog posts into a 270 page colour book. And, if I do it again next year, there'll be a book containing a blog containing this photo of the book of the previous year's blog.

I've included most of my blog posts, excluding any that were just listings for forthcoming shows (indeed the most time-consuming part of the editing was cutting out all the gig-listings at the foot of every Socks post, and the html hyperlinks that came with them), plus I've included the posts from My 1970s Diary which I uploaded for a few months last year then lost interest in.

It looks great, and I did it because of an inherent fear that anything on the internet could just disappear overnight and I'd never know where it went - as happened last year with my Mr Site website, which had a vast proportion of its capacity arbitrarily slashed by Mr Site with no warning, ooh I'm still angry about it. So a book seems more tangible, and not something that can be remotely wiped out. Obviously I can still leave it on a train or get it nicked, but even then there's the chance of reprinting it as it's all on file.

Indeed if anyone out there should want a copy (and why anyone would want a copy of anyone else's diary I can't imagine, but you try telling that to Bridget Jones and Adrian Mole) it costs £24 and you can buy it (and see the first 15 pages) here. (Though eagle-eyed readers will have spotted that you could just look at the whole year's blog here on the blog, for free). I foresee a roaring trade.





Sunday 9 March 2014

What the flip - flipcharts from my classes

Given the chance to set up before on of my Comic Art Masterclasses, I like to get a drawing done on the flipchart. It's fun when the kids watch me drawing, especially primary school pupils in whose eyes you attain godlike status just by being able to copy a picture of Batman from a comic.  Though of course I get a lot more done if I arrive before the kids do and can get an uninterrupted 15 minutes. As you can see above, I use reference from lots of comics because, frankly, they'll only be so impressed by a version of Wolverine, Wonder Woman et al in my style alone. Best of all they're left with something to stick on the wall. Did I mention one such flipchart page raised over £500 for charity last month?








More comics from pupils in Chorley, Newcastle Under Lyme, Borehamwood and Henley, in Dartford and Henley, in Cardiff, Falkirk, Birmingham and rural Devon. You'll find many more if you scour this blog.

Saturday 8 March 2014

Bob & Dave's Adventures - new comics by kids


 More new comics by pupils and students in my Comic Art Masterclasses, with groups ranging from year 3s in Norley in Cheshire to 16 year olds in Borehamwood Library, via year 8s in Newcastle Under Lyme, and primary school kids of various ages in Henley on Thames. The colours, by the way, are added after the fact. They all go home with a black and white photocopied comic containing a strip by every single one of them, and an individual caricature by me. Above you can see their covers, the titles of which they come up with between them, and the caricatures of some of their delightful little faces.

Asked to suggest a celebrity for my demonstration strip, they suggested Miley Cyrus, Nicky Minaj, Declan Donnelly, Michelle Keegan, Harry Hill, Joey Essex, and Beyonce.

The psychology of kids and how it changes as they grow is a fascinating thing to observe. On these covers I keep a record of which school they're in, and you can probably tell at a glance which titles were dreamt up by primary school kids (for Bob & Dave's Adventures I even used a couple of year 4 girls' logo and character designs) and which is by the older ones. Margareth, from Margareth's Laugh Of Horror, was the youth worker in charge of a group if 16 year olds in Borehamwood, and it is most common for older students titles to be reality based and less fanciful (I have my work cut out eliminating titles with real-sounding names in that are, in effect, cyber-bullying).

And the group who ended up with the title I Hate Everyone, ran the gamut of Year 8 cliche titles, with one suggesting "I Don't Know", another coming up with "?". The only Year 8 cliche title missing was "Your Mum".

Would you like me to come to your school, library, art centre or wherever to teach my far-famed Comic Art Masterclass? Then do please get in touch. I'm on Facebook, Twitter, email, and at the link below. Glad to be of service.



More comics from pupils in Dartford & Henley, in Hertfordshire & Weston Super Mare, in Cardiff, Falkirk, Birmingham and rural Devon. You'll find many more if you scour this blog.

Thursday 6 March 2014

Bananaman Annihilation in this week's Beano

This week's Bananaman strip is another stonker, written by me and drawn by Wayne Thompson, here's a tiny glimpse.

Sadly, just as the scripts are starting to get good, my credit has disappeared from it, though it does appear in the credit box at the front of the comic (which makes it a little harder to impress schoolkids with, but by golly I shall continue to try).

This was an interesting Bananaman script as it was originally rejected, until I went through and changed every word but none of the story. Below you can see how it was originally going to read. Thinking it through, Genocide is maybe not a very Beano word.

 
Spa-Foon, nebbish of the Squa-Trontians has been appearing in a few of my Bananaman stories and I hope to develop him further. Sadly the latest Spa-Foon story, set on the moon, got spiked. For what it's worth the big gag was that on the moon no-one can hear any sound, so everyone was fighting everyone else and no-one knew they were there. Trust me it was hilarious (and will probably wind up as a self-published Hot Rod Cow story one day. Nothing goes to waste if I can help it).

Scottish Falsetto Socks fans might recognise the format of this 'mistaken words' routine, which the boys have done a variation of in every show since 2008. Here's the original.

Bananaman meets Stephen Hawking

You couldn't make it up. Though, paradoxically, I am paid to do exactly that. I may have to write this story later today...
Thanks to my Mum for spotting this one in the local paper.

Nine men dressed as Bananaman grabbed a unique memento from a stag do - a photo with Prof Stephen Hawking.
The group were on a night out in Cambridge on Saturday ahead of the wedding of Chris Hallam, 29, from Lingwood in Norfolk, and his fiancee Kizzy Davis, 34.
Mr Hallam said Prof Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time, was happy to join in with the "random" photo.
"It was the cleverest man on the planet with nine men dressed as Bananaman."
Mr Hallam said Prof Hawking had a "really big smile on his face" when the group asked him if he wanted to join them for a drink, but they went their separate ways.
He said each of the group had dressed as Bananaman, a character who appeared in comics and on television in the 1980s, for "no real reason, just to stand out".

Monday 3 March 2014

Curse of the Singing Go Compare Man - new comics by kids

More comics here, produced by kids in my Comic Art Masterclasses in Dartford in Kent and a pair of primary schools near Henley. Their ages raneg from 6th formers to year 3, and every one a work of genius.

Their Celebs On The Worm suggestions (which I must explain in more detail some time) were David Tennant, James Franco, Harry Styles, Jim Carrey, Joey Essex and Stan Lee. The David Tennant suggestion gave rise to an impromptu impersonation by me that so impressed a lad out of year 8 that he asked me to do it again into his iPhone and now has a recording of me saying "Hello, I'm David Tennant, Jacob is the best at everything, signed me." Ask me anytime, my David Tennant is yours.

If you want me to come to your school and work my Comic Art Masterclass magic, do please get in touch. And if you're voting in the Beano's poll for the favourite strip, the name you're looking for is Bananaman.



More comics from pupils in Chorley, Newcastle Under Lyme, Borehamwood and Henley, in Hertfordshire and Weston Super Mare, in Cardiff, Falkirk, Birmingham and rural Devon. You'll find many more if you scour this blog.
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