June 2009 Archives

THE ASSOCIATION of Educational Publishers in America has awarded Classical Comics' Frankenstein the award for Distinguished Achievement in Grades 9 - 12.

Publisher Clive Bryant said "Every notable educational publisher enters these awards, so to win on our first attempt is a great accomplishment; and is a demonstration that what we're doing is worthwhile."

As readers will note from an earlier review at Speech Balloon, Frankenstein is probably my least favourite of Classical Comics' titles. For it to have won an award so soon shows everyone has their own tastes, and whatever they are Classical look to be serving up a tasty dish that appeals to them.

For more information visit: http://www.classicalcomics.com/news.html and
http://www.aepweb.org/awards/curricwin.htm

Breeze International Youth Festival, Thought Bubble and Travelling Man are presenting a special free two day manga events.

On Sunday 28th June at the Travellingman Coffee Bar in Leeds there will be a How to Draw Manga Creatures Workshop with Yishan Li, alongside anime screenings. The art produced at the workshop will be exhibited at Hyde Park on Monday 29th June with a prize winner chosen.

The timetable for Sunday's events is as follows:

1 2.10pm Anime screening FLCL
1.00pm How to Draw Manga workshop
3.00pm Anime screenings Samurai 7/Slayers

Places are limited so you are advised to sign up now by calling 0113 2436461 or emailing thoughtbubble@hotmail.co.uk. The full address for this event is: Travellingman Coffee Bar, 32 Central Rd, Leeds LS1 6DE (behind the House of Fraser).

The timetable for Monday's events is as follows:

5.00pm Cosplay Competition/artwork display
6.00pm Surprise anime screening
8.00pm Winners announced and prize ceremony

The full address for this event is Hyde Park, Picture House, Leeds. The event is free to Breeze card holders, otherwise a £1 for adults.

VETERAN ARTIST Ron Smith has been found not guilty of all charges accusing him of sexual abuse against a minor during the 1980s.

The accusations were made only recently (by a woman now aged 39). It has been suggested there had been other unrelated disagreements and this lead to her story against Smith. A weeklong trial concluded on Friday 12th June, with the jury finding Smith innocent on all counts.

Now in his 80s, Smith had served in the RAF, and after becoming demobbed worked in the British animation industry before entering the comics field. He worked on many adventure strips for D.C. Thomson in comics such as The Hotspur and then worked for worked for Fleetway on comics like 2000AD during its heyday, he was also the Judge Dredd newspaper strip artist published in The Daily Star.

FOR THE first time since it started five years ago, Hi8us will deliver its internationally successful and innovative Comic Art talent scheme in Telford.

Comix Telford is a talent finding competition for budding young comic artists, in fact it will prioritise 16 to 19 year olds living or studying in Telford. The aim is to discover and nurture talented artists and support them to get into the comics industry with the help of world-class comic professionals such as Hunt Emerson (The Beano) and John McCrea (The Hulk) who commented: "I think this is a wonderful opportunity. When I was breaking into the industry I would have loved the chance to be on this project".

Hi8us Midlands is part of an established charity with a long history of utilising the skills of experts to guide aspiring artists and media producers, with professional results. "We run a range of arts and media projects in a range of communities up and down the country; we come across a great deal of untapped talent and this scheme is just one way of meeting the needs of the gifted individuals we know are out there." Said Kulwant Dhaliwal, Hi8us's Midlands Director.

The scheme is entirely free thanks to Telford & Wrekin's Find Your Talent programme. Julie Jones, its Creative Arts Manager said "Our aim is to support and nurture talented young people, we know they're out there!"

The only thing applicants need to do to be considered is send in copies of their most recent comic strips and complete a short application form. The deadline for postal submissions is Friday 17th July 2009, while for email submissions it is Sunday 19th.
There will be an informal recruitment session taking place at the Telford College of Arts and Technology from 4.30 pm to 6.30 pm on Wednesday 8th July for those who want to know more.

From July through to October, 20 finalists will get the opportunity to train with the aforementioned John McCrea and Hunt Emerson, plus Laura Howell, Andi Watson and Asia Alfasi. The scheme will culminate in the trainees having their first comic book published and launched at the British International Comics Show in Birmingham this October.

Applicants need to submit examples of their best and most recent work. Never send in original art, but ensure you send in good photocopies, and Hi8us is looking for 2-4 pages of original comic pages featuring continuity, and preferably without lettering.

Submission guidelines can be downloaded from www.hi8us.co.uk. To book a place at the recruitment session and/or get an application pack, contact: Kulwant Dhaliwal on 0121 753 7700 or kulwant@hi8us.co.uk

MEL SMITH is the publisher of Wildcard Ink who produce the Eisner award-winning Gumby Comics. He is also an artist and writer himself.

Born in Evensville, Indiana, Smith broke into the comics business in 1985, at the ripe age of 16, pencilling and writing for Pinnacle Comics, then progressing onto others.

As his craft developed he began taking art assignments for Innovation, Marvel Comics and Malibu, notably its Rock-It imprint.

Work with the Rock-It imprint developed into a sideways career move with Smith producing artwork for various bands and record labels, itself leading into other illustration assignments including clothing design. Seeking security during a period where he sought to re-establish his career in comics, he took on responsibility at a prestigious local Arts & Posters shop.

This lead to Smith co-founding Wild Card Ink with the intent of producing a charity comic from which profits would go towards feeding the homeless. The resulting publication was Feed America's Children featuring Major Impact, including pages by numerous famous comic book artists who drew for DC Comics, Dark Horse, Image and Marvel among others. Smith himself co-wrote the story and also contributed art.

Wild Card Ink then did the most unexpected of things to happen in comics for a long time and brought back American children's television favourite Gumby to the printed page.

To this end the editor/publisher brought in top talents in the form of Bob Burden and Rick Geary to produce Gumby Comics. The resulting series found favour with critics and fans alike, receiving several Eisner nominations and winning the 2007 Best Publication for a Younger Audience.

Aside from Gumby Comics itself, spin-off titles have been published or are in development, some featuring materia by Smith.

Mel Smith has taken on many roles within the comics business. He is a publisher, editor, designer, artist and writer, and because he is also a fan of the medium his enthusiasm does not wane.

Concurrent with producing Gumby Comics, the man continues to develop his career from his Walnut Creek, California base, taking on other assignments such as illustrating Godzilla trading cards, and developing stories of his own, including Dead Ahead published by Image Comics, and The Seven Lives of Dr Phibes due from Blue Water.

CLASSICAL COMICS has published another great adaptation of Charles Dickens' work, in the hefty shape and form of Great Expectations.

Great Expectations is the tale of Pip, orphaned as a child and brought up under her sufferance by his elder sister, and her hard-pressed husband Joe Gargery.

Two seemingly unrelated events happen to young Pip that affect his future.

First, by default the way I've always read it, he saves Abel Magwitch, an escaped convict.

Then, secondly, he is told to make regular visits to the eccentric old spinster that is Miss Havisham, and there entertain her adopted daughter, the considerably cruel Estella.

As Pip matures he finds he has a mysterious benefactor who will fund him to make something of himself.

He believes this to be Miss Havisham, under the pretext that he will become worthy of one day marrying Estella, whom despite her rudeness to him he became besotted with.

This is proved to be a falsehood, and from my earlier comments I'm sure you've realised, or already knew, that Magwitch is behind Pips good fortune. I'm hardly giving the game away here. If you've not read the book already, you've surely seen the excellent old black and white film adaptation starring a young Sir John Mills, or will end up watching a new serial version on TV someday.

It doesn't really matter because it's pretty well sign-posted that that's going to be the case. It's the connivances in between that make this turn into a humdinger of a plot that needs unravelling, plus a bunch of characters so well defined, mostly unlikely for one reason or another, though usually snobbery, that make this an engrossing read. Dickens, the master of words literally makes them leap off the page.

So when a story is so well defined in one medium, why convert it to another? To reach a different audience. To sit back in watch a film can be purely visual, your mind taking more of a back seat, than the hardier task of reading an thinking the words out in one's mind too. Now with the comics medium, one still has to read (albeit that Classical Comics have gone to the expense of putting out two version of this, one the full transcript of the book, another shortened for a modern faster-paced read) the eyes can also take in the visuals supplied to carry, convey and illuminate the story.

That's a pretty basic rough and ready explanation I know, and there are several reasons why, and possibly quite a few why one might not want to bother, but the fact remains that this is another great Dickens adaptation from this award-winning British company.

With a script adaptation by Jen Green, one can appreciate the editing work required by her when comparing the full version to the shorter one. Whether or not the pacing of the book is down to her is hard to gauge, as this may have been John Stokes' doing.

I have to admit a great and embarrassing fact in that I know far too little about John Stokes' work as an artist.

Jon Haward who's done a few books for Classical Comics himself has been raving about the man for years, and I think recommended him for this book. An awful lot of the work Jon (without the H) pencilled for Panini UK and the likes has been inked by John (the one with the H) but you can only see so much of a man's style over an 11 page Spider-Man story.

Stokes' art is thought highly of by British superhero fans for him working on a version of The Black Knight in Marvel UK anthologies, but he'd been drawing strips for many Fleetway/IPC weeklies way before that. Last year I was sat in the Briar Rose pub up Bennetts Hill when someone got out a stack of a short-lived seventies comic called Vulcan. It reprinted adventure strips from the sixties, mostly in colour. People were talking about how rare some of the issues were, something to do with certain issues being only distributed in Scotland, then numbering changes, and how the reprints had pages added... It was all quite beyond me, but I remember thinking "I am so impressed by you right now" about cartoonist Lew Stringer as he pointed out pages that the likes of John Stokes had added anonymously, ghosting others' styles to fit the stories.

So I had pretty much got the impression that John Stokes was a hard-working industry type, always there, filling in and helping meet deadlines for publishers, rather than an industry heavyweight. Actually, that's the kind of person I generally prefer. But while he may never have been a big name compared to the like of your Dan Dare artists, he certainly more than delivered the goods in his own right over the years.

As I leafed through, then delighted in the many pages of Great Expectations, my mind was flooded with countless comic strips that I had read, enjoyed, and presumed to have forgotten about in a lot of cases, as a child that had so obviously been drawn by the diligent hand of John Stokes.

Stokes is an comic book artist of the British old school sort. He doesn't cheat. All that you need to establish a setting is present; then he focuses on the lead players. Characteristically his figures tend to be on the slim side, which adds to the whimsy of their movements: few people are shaped ideally and there is a certain degree of clumsiness in our mannerisms that he captures to good effect adding to the emotional range of the story.

Thus far, I love what Classical Comics are doing with their Dickens adaptations more so than their Shakespeare books, though that's possibly down to my preference of author over playwright. That the company is putting out books drawn by senior master craftsmen of the comics form like John Stokes and John M Burns is also a privileged delight.

Old school does not have to mean old fashioned, it more often means that they've learnt their skills properly, over time, and as evidenced by these kinds of books are still up to the challenge of the modern world. Comic book artists, and indeed writers, take note. Bank directors and currently elected politicians, it would be nice if you too looked to the great and the good of the past to influence your modern practices to help get this country back on its feet... But of course, that's just a personal view!

The important thing is you can purchase Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Jen Green and John Stokes at all good bookshops and comics speciality stores, and direct from Classical Comics by visiting: www.classicalcomics.com

MIKE MIGNOLA is the creator of Hellboy, the star of two hit live-action movies and animation features, plus of course a plethora of great comic books.

Ironically, Mignola began his career drawing adaptations of British sci-fi and fantasy author Michael Moorcock's Prince Corum books for First Comics.

He subsequently worked for the two major US companies, Marvel and DC Comics.

Among the books he pencilled for Marvel were the Canadian superhero group series Alpha Flight and, for its Epic imprint, Fritz Leiber's sword and sorcery novel favourites Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser (a collection now back in print from Dark Horse).

Work for DC included an eerie mini-series featuring The Phantom Stranger and Batman: Gotham by Gaslight the company's debut Elseworlds Prestige book.

In 1993 things began to hot up for Mignola when he created Hellboy for Dark Horse's creator-owned Legend imprint. A devil of a character, Hellboy has been described as the "world's greatest paranormal investigator".

Enthusing B-movie aplomb, pulp pastiche and a dash of American comic book icon Jack Kirby's visual dynamics to Mignola's own unique stylised approach, together with the spirit of adventure he imbued in the series, proved to be a strong sales incentive and swiftly found favour with fans and critics alike.

Mini-series have been collected into popular trade paperbacks, and a regular line of spin-off mini-series and their subsequent collections under the BPRD title heading come about, all before Hollywood came a calling wanting to turn Hellboy into movie magic.

Directed by Guillermo del Tora the 2004 Hellboy feature film proved a box office success and Hellboy 2: The Golden Army hit the silver screen in 2008. Keeping the franchise alive in between were the animated films Sword of Storms and Blood and Iron, available on DVD.

Mike Mignola himself has also produced design, illustration and storyboard work for animation and live-action films.

These include Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (subsequently drawing the comic series for Topps), an adaptation of his own comic The Amazing Screw-On Head for the Sci-Fi channel, Blade II, Batman: the Animated Series and Batman Beyond and has been heavily involved himself with the production of the actual Hellboy movies.

The Hellboy related comic book series remain in constant demand by fans. John Byrne dialogued the very first Hellboy mini-series and with Mignola's time at a premium these days he has branched out, allowing more co-creators to share in and empower his vision further, with Britain's own Duncan Fegredo as regular artist of recent series for the character.

Mike Mignola was a star guest at the UK's Birmingham International Comic Show in 2007 with fans coming from far and wide to see him.

The photo to the left is from that show and features Mike Mignola on the left, with Comics International publisher Mike Conroy holding Hellboy art. The photo, along with others from that year's show that you can still find featured on Speech Balloons were taken and (c) Jordan X.

Additional Information:

To order advance BICS 2009 tickets visit: www.thecomicsshow.co.uk

For more information on Hellboy visit: www.Hellboy.com

Former Marvel Comics editor Tim Quinn is hosting a Cartoon workshop in Tamworth next month.

He will delve into the techniques of visual storytelling and deal with figure drawing, emotion, character and story creation.

The afternoon workshop is followed by a talk on his wide and varied career which includes The Beano, Sparky, Bunty, Playhour, Jack & Jill, Buster, The Topper, the Daily Mirror's Jane and Garth, and America's finest, Marvel Comics, to running his own comic book company.

Audience members are strongly urged to come in capes, costumes and masks.

The workshop is at Tamworth Assembly Rooms from 2pm on Satruday, July 11. Tickets cost £5.

The Ups and Downs of Life as a Comic Book Creator starts at 7pm and tickets cost £9 or £7 concessions.

There is a £2 discount for booking both at the same time.

BILL SIENKIEWICZ remains one of the premier stylists working in the American comic book field.

Bill Sienkiewicz began working for Marvel Comics back in the early 80s, and became a fan favourite drawing Moon Knight, scripted by Doug Moench.

His early work feartured the stylisations of Neal Adams, but he became increasingly influenced by modern illustrators such as Bob Peak and Ralph Steadman, developing his own idiosyncratic style combining illustrative, advertising and traditional comic book storytelling tools to become his own man; invoking horror, humour and excitement, not infrequently on the same page.

Major works thereafter included Elektra: Assassin scripted by Frank Miller, New Mutants with Chris Claremont, and his own mini-series, Stray Toasters. He also collaborated with writer Alan Moore on Brought to Light and two issues of Big Numbers.

Sienkiewicz turned his hand increasingly towards the advertising world and illustration, producing material for a diverse range of clients, from business to electronics, with the rock and roll world thrown in for good measure.

Not only has he produced album cover art but collaborated on art for a video featured during former Pink Floyd member Roger Water's live tours.

In recent years he has returned to comics on an infrequent basis, initially mainly inking, then as finishing artist on books such as Black Widow but also drawing Steve Niles' 30 Days of Night: Beyond Barrow.

The Joker sketch featured here by Sienkiewicz is currently a Speech Balloons featured exclusive.

For more about Bill Sienkiewicz visit: www.billsienkiewiczart.com

THE SEVEN Lives of Dr Phibes continues the macabre story first established by Vincent Price in two classic horror movies.

This two-issue mini-series finds the infamous Dr. Phibes returning to wreck havoc and bid goodbye to the twentieth century in his own fiendishly special ways.

To be published by Blue Water in America, the featured cover presented here is by Mel Smith (Child's Play 2) and Ken Hooper (Indiana Jones).

The series is plotted by Smith with Clark Castillo (Dead Ahead), and co-scripted with yours truly, Paul H Birch.

For more about Blue Water Comics visit: www.bluewaterprod.com