Tamsin and the Deep

Starting next week in The Phoenix is Tamsin and the Deep, a new story written by me and drawn by the incomparable, the extraordinary, the really-quite-good-at-drawing-you-know, Kate Brown!

(Yes, I am quite excited about this, why do you ask?)

I loved the short story Kate and I got to do together a while back, Emilie's Turn, and am beyond thrilled to be working on something longer-form with her. The experience of coming up with ideas and characters and seeing them brought to life with such style, character and vitality and - crucially - without me even having to pick up a pencil... well, to me it is so amazing that it may as well be sorcery, frankly.

Anyway, I'm not going to say too much about Tamsin herself just yet. It's a story set in Cornwall, and it contains Mystery. What kinds of mystery? I TOLD YOU, IT IS A MYSTERY.

Find out next week! 

The Phoenix issue 118, on sale April 4th. Buy the Phoenix online, on iPad, or from any of these stockists.

Comics For 6-Year-Olds

I was asked on twitter recently for recommendations for comics for a 6-year-old-boy, and, well, as I spend quite a lot of time thinking about comics, and the rest of my time bringing up a 6-year-old boy, I was able to suggest a few. Please note that I am in no way qualified or knowledgeable enough to even attempt any kind of The Greatest Comics For Children list, so here instead is a completely subjective list representing The Favourite Comics Of One Particular 6-Year-Old Boy.

Although if I may brag for a moment, this kid has excellent taste in comics.

 

1: Good Dog, Bad Dog by Dave Shelton

I've lost count of the number of times I've been forced to read this. Fortunately, it is an absolute joy to read, particularly as I get to bust out my best Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre impressions when doing the voices. A very funny, action-packed noirish crime story, with dogs. Beautiful art, superlative storytelling.

Buy from: The Phoenix | Page 45 | Forbidden Planet | Amazon |

2: 'Fish Head Steve' by Jamie Smart.

The laughter-so-helpless-you-actually-stop-breathing-inducingly hilarious tale of a boy who wakes one day to discover his head has been replaced by a dead fish. And his best friend's head has been replaced by a live cow. And his Dad's head has been replaced by a toilet, which flushes when he gets stressed out. And so on. We took it on holiday, and the boy sat absorbed in it for hours. Genuinely, hours. Which means I love this book more than I can possibly express, because it gave me the single most precious gift a parent can receive: A Moment's Peace.

Buy from: The Phoenix | Page 45 | Forbidden Planet | Amazon | 

3: Super Animal Adventure Squad by James Turner

Another much-read, gloriously silly favourite. Pirates, spies, talking animals, TV chefs, and much hilarity involving the Jade Baboon of Rangoon (and it's secret Moon Spoon.)

Buy from: The Phoenix | Forbidden Planet | Amazon |

4: ASTRODOG by Paul Harrison-Davies

A new favourite; a wonderful, charming, wordless sci-fi adventure. Hugely recommended.

Buy: direct from it's creator's online store.

 

5: TINTIN by Herge.

This almost seems too obvious to list here, but hey. It's a classic for a reason. Particular love here for Secret of the Unicorn / Red Rackham's treasure, but I look forward greatly to working our way through the entire oeuvre over the years to come.

Buy from: oh come on, any bookshop in the land.  

6: Do I even have to say it?

The Phoenix, by Various

Of course the Phoenix. His very own comic that arrives every week, addressed to him, and packed full of glorious silliness, thrilling adventure and jokes about bums. I realise my objectivity may be slightly questionable here, but I really do think that is a rather wonderful thing for a child to receive. He particularly loves Laura Ellen Anderson's Evil Emperor Penguin, and Bunny VS Monkey by Jamie Smart (again. What can I say, that guy speaks the secret language of 6-year-olds VERY WELL.)

(He also loves Adam Murphy's historical interview strip Corpse Talk, but that's still very much one we have to read together.)

(...he ALSO also loves Pirates of Pangaea and Art Monkey, but I'll admit there may be possible bias there.)

Buy from: Waitrose, branches of Waterstones, these stockists.
Or: Buy Phoenix subscription packs and gift boxes online.

 

7: Terrible Tales of the Teenytinysaurs by Gary Northfield.

Gross, hilarious, beautiful, sweet. And it's about dinosaurs. Honestly, as Comics For 6-Year-Olds Go, basically perfect.

Buy from: The Phoenix | Page 45 | Amazon |

 

9: WELCOME TO YOUR AWESOME ROBOT by Viviane Schwarz

Funny, imaginative, creativity-inspiringly wonderful. He loved this one so much it pretty much took over our lives for a month. SO much fun, reading and re-reading it and then putting it all into practise constructing our own (awesome) robots.

Buy from: Flying Eye Books | Amazon |  

Okay, that's it! Eminently sensible Christmas presents all, frankly.

I talk a lot (literally; I have given talks lately, a lot) on the subject of comics for children and all the benefits reading comics brings to kids. But to ignore all the stuff about literacy and visual literacy and whatnot for a moment, the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT benefit that comics bring to children is, simply, fun, and I think the comics on this list are all great examples of that. Comics are hugely fun. For kids to read on their own, or for grown-ups to read with them, they're a wonderful thing. A good comic can bring excitement and laughter and joy into their readers' worlds, and heaven knows we could all use a bit of that.

A couple of points to note:

1) Obviously, all of the comics mentioned here are eminently suitable for people who, whether by age or gender, are NOT 6-year-old boys.

2) Conversely, there are many other fine children's comics - and many that I myself love deeply - that are not on this list. I'm just sharing the entirely subjective favourite comics of my own kid.

FURTHER READING SUGGESTIONS:

You can find a few more of MY favourite children's comics listed here:  http://neillcameron.blogspot.co.uk

 

You can find a great list of children's comics that I, to my shame, have mostly never read or even heard of, compiled by Zainab Akhtar, here: http://comicsandcola.blogspot.co.uk/p/ive-been-meaning-to-put-together-list.html

And Louie Stowell has a great and ever-expanding 'master list' of children's comics recommendations here:  http://loustow.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/a-bird-on-fire-and-other-comics-for-kids/

And a bunch of other fine suggestions were made when I originally tweeted this list under the #comicsFo6YearOlds hashtag, which I've Storified here: http://storify.com/neillcameron/comics-for-6-year-olds

Happy reading, and I guess I'll see you back here next year for a list of recommended Comics For 7-Year-Olds!

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A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSORS

You'll notice how I was TOO CLASSY to mention it in the list above, but the boy is also quite keen on my own book, Mo-bot High, which you can find out all about here:  www.mobot-high.com
 /2012/07/comics-in-classroom.html

The Best Comics of 2012! A DEFINITIVE LIST.

Bunny VS Monkey (c) 2012 by Jamie Smart

I meant to write one of these ‘Best-of-the-year’ posts for the Forbidden Planet International blog but completely failed to get it together in time to do so. Anyway, it is still 2012 (just) so I thought I’d post mine here: sticking to the same format as the FPI posts (which you can read here): my 3 favourite comics from the last 12 months...

1: TIE! BUNNY VS MONKEY by Jamie Smart / GARY’S GARDEN by Gary Northfield

 

Gary's Garden (c) 2012 by Gary Northfield

Having spent many weeks attempting to decide which of these was my favourite, I eventually decided I couldn’t, so we have a tie. I love both of these strips for similar reasons – that they are very, very funny, and wildly imaginative, and that my son loves them and I love reading them to him. Each also has a special claim in its favour that kind of balance each other out: BvM has achieved the highly admirable feat of being amazing every single week in 2012. And in the other corner, Gary’s Garden produced amongst its many riches the single best  page of comics I saw all year.* So that is why it’s a tie!

*I don't have it to hand, sorry. It was the one with the pond and the tadpoles. If you saw it, you know which one I mean.

2: CORPSE TALK by Adam Murphy

Corpse Talk (c) 2012 by Adam Murphy

Yeah, yeah, another Phoenix strip, I know. But if you can show me another comic out there that is – week in, week out - as funny, clever, inventive, silly, gross, imaginative, fascinating, and beautiful as Adam’s work on Corpse Talk... well then I will be very grateful to you for introducing me to such a wonder.

3: THE NAO OF BROWN by Glyn Dillon

The Nao of Brown (c) 2012 by Glyn Dillon

I don’t feel like I need to say much about this one, as I assume it is on everyone else in the universe and their dog’s Best Of 2012 lists already. An absolutely glorious achievement, one of my favourite comics I’ve read in ages, by probably my favourite comics artist in the world. Yeah, it’s a bit good.

HONOURABLE MENTION: pretty much everything else in the Phoenix. I utterly love that comic. Not sure if I mentioned that.

I think if this was an FPI post I’d have to come up with lists of my favourite movies, and TV shows, and books and such, too. But really, who has time to watch movies or TV or read books? We went to see Looper, that was quite enjoyable. Ooh, Catfish, I liked that. Um... Doctor Who? Cheers? I watched quite a lot of Masterchef?

I would also then be called upon to give you a quick plug for what you can expect to see from me in 2013 but hey, this is my blog, I talk about that stuff all the time. More Pirates of Pangaea! Coming Soon! Coming, in fact, NEXT WEEK!

And that right there is why I have had so little time to write these sort of blog posts. But while I am here and in a ‘reflecting on the Best of 2012’ mood, let me just say how delighted I was to see Pirates of Pangaea and the Phoenix pop up on just such a list – and from no less august a journal than the mighty Comics Alliance! Given what an undertaking it is for a reader outside the UK to even get hold of the Phoenix, it really is appreciated. And hey! We are mere weeks - no, days - away from international access to the Phoenix getting a whole, whole lot easier. Brace yourselves, 2013 is going to be fun...

Comics in the Classroom

Me, teaching comics, in a classroom. A classroom at the brilliant Teddington School, to be specific. I look a bit confused, don't I? Don't worry, I totally knew what I was talking about. Probably.

 I did a Q&A interview with Dr Matt Finch recently which ended up turning into a guest post over on his excellent blog Books and Adventures, where he's been recently running a series of great posts on Comics and Education. (I particularly enjoyed a couple of recent posts on engaging female students with comics.) I talk a bit about some what I see as the fantastic and diverse benefits of using comics in schools; both as a powerful way of getting kids reading but also as a spur to creativity, and visual literacy, and all kinds of fun things. (And it's not just me, by any means: other posts today on the potential of using comics in schools from such luminaries as Michael Rosen and comics artist and educator par excellence Kev F Sutherland!) 

Anyway, you can read my thoughts over here.

I'll reproduce here for posterity one bit, which was a brief recommended reading list I came up with of Graphic Novels For Children:

The DFC Library is a great collection of new original graphic novels for children (and discerning grown-ups)

• MeZolith by Ben Haggarty and Adam Brockbank
• Good Dog, Bad Dog by Dave Shelton
• The Spider Moon by Kate Brown
• Monkey Nuts by The Etherington Brothers
• Vern & Lettuce by Sarah McIntyre
• Super Animal Adventure Squad by James Turner
• The Boss by John & Patrice Aggs
• Baggage by The Etherington Brothers

and of course, last but not least…

• Mo-Bot High by Neill Cameron

Beyond that, here a few further suggestions: this is a subjective list of both obvious, all-time classic series and a few personal favourites:

• Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson
• Asterix by René Goscinny & Albert Uderzo
• Tintin by Hergé
• Bone by Jeff Smith
• The Rainbow Orchid by Garen Ewing
• Gum Girl by Andi Watson

And for the slightly older kids…

• Spider-Man (hearts) Mary Jane by Sean McKeever & Takeshi Miyazawa
• Runaways by Brian K. Vaughan & Adrian Alphona
• Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O’Malley

Get those in, and there's any school library off to a great start. I'm aware how partial and incomplete that list is, of course, and I'd really welcome any further suggestions - it's something I get asked about a lot by teachers and librarians, and I'd like to have a good comprehensive reading list I can pass on to people in future. Please pass on your own suggestion for things I've missed, either in comments here or fire 'em at me on twitter - I'm @neillcameron.

One thing that list brings me onto is this great point, raised by Richard Bruton on the Forbidden Planet blog. US Publisher Scholastic have a fantastic line of children's graphic novels, including the colour collections of the aforementioned Bone by Jeff Smith and the hugely-acclaimed Smile by Raina Telgemeier, which for some reason Scholastic UK seem to have no intention of publishing UK editions for. In their response to Richard's enquiry they mention that at present there is not a huge market for children's graphic novels in the UK. Whilst I'm not about to dispute that - believe me, I'm not about to dispute that - I'd argue that there is an enormous potential market, and it's exactly by publishing brilliant works like Bone and Smile that you go about converting that potential market into an actual one. If like Richard (and me) you'd love to see these great books launched in the UK, why not drop Scolastic a line - enquiries@scholastic.co.uk, or on twitter at @Scholasticuk using the hashtag #GraphixForScholasticUK?

While I'm on the subject, another thing that I think would go rather nicely in any school library would be a school subscription (or two or three) to the Beano, the Dandy and of course The Phoenix! 

(I just renewed my son's subscription to the Phoenix for another six months. Admittedly I may be slightly biased here but I really do think it's just an absolutely brilliant comic. The latest issue (cover prictured above) - which I'm barely in, so feel I'm morally okay to enthuse about here - really was just a fantastic read all round; I mean, it's always good, but this issue I felt was stand-out fantastic; in part due to the return of James Turner's hilarious Star Cat, in part due to a very funny and genuinely beautiful instalment of Gary's Garden from Gary Northfield, and in part because Adam Murphy's Corpse Talk this week featured the reanimated corpse of Jane Austen, one of my favourite humans to have ever walked the planet.)

Kids need great comics! That is all.

Racist Goldfish

I was doing a school event at St. Christopher's primary in Hove last week (blogged about here), and was getting the kids in the audience to shout out ideas for villains, and amongst the general hubbub one voice cried out... "Racist Goldfish!"

Which was pretty much the best thing I've ever heard.

And that is the story of this comic.

Nigel Dobbyn: Is Awesome

Not sure if this takes place in regular Marvel Earth-616 continuity. Lovely work by Rik Hoskin and Nigel Dobbyn on Spider-Man & Friends

As I mentioned the other day, one of the really nice things about attending BICS 2010 was getting the chance to chat for a bit to Nigel Dobbyn, a wonderful artist with a wide range of credits to his name, including a couple in particular that I'd like to ramble on for a bit about here.

A vintage Medivac 318 Cover by Mr Dobbyn - courtesy of The Internet. Now them's some fine aliens and spaceships right there.

The first of these was Medivac 318, a war-hospital-in-space strip that Nigel drew back in the heyday of my 2000AD-reading days. I absolutely loved the strip; it flipped the rather standard 2000AD 'space war' setting on it's head really nicely by focussing not on the warfare itself but on the medical staff who had to clean up the mess. It had a much more thoughtful, interesting quality than a lot of the strips I've seen in 2000AD, and made for a really refreshing change of pace, I thought. Whilst still having cool things like aliens and spaceships, obviously. And of course, it was all illustrated in Nigel's beautiful clear, emotive artwork. It really was one of my all-time favourite strips in 2000AD. (Along with Time Flies, Hap Hazzard, Hewligan's Haircut and Zippy Couriers. And that list right there pretty much tells you all you need to know about why I will almost certainly never be offered work by 2000AD).

I'm sorry to say I stopped seeing Nigel's work for a long while after that - I think he was drawing Sonic the Comic to much acclaim for a long time, but I guess by that point I was off at university discovering girls, existentialism and Tennants Extra, and kind of lost touch with comics in general. However, I've recently had the pleasure of encountering it again, on the Panini licensed title Spider-Man and Friends, which is a big favourite of my 3-year-old son Logan. I always snap it up whenever I see it in the shops, because compared to a lot of the other licensed comics aimed at pre-school children, it's - well, it's just so much better. A lot of these titles barely have any actual comic content at all, and what there is will just be a one or two-page photo-strip made up of stills from a TV show that you've probably already been forced to watch a thousand times. (The various BBC Worldwide titles for this age-range - Bob the Builder etc - are probably no more crappy in this regard than any others, but they are somehow particularly disappointing. One expects better from the BBC.)

Anyway, Spider-Man and Friends may only have four pages of comics in each issue, but they are four pages of engaging, funny, and lovingly crafted comics that are clearly created by people who know how to make comics and enjoy doing so. Call me sentimental, but I feel that's rather a fine thing. The strips are by Rik Hoskin and the aforementioned Nigel Dobbyn, and - well, Logan loves them, and considering how many thousands of times I end up having to read them to him, the truly remarkable thing is that I actually still like them too. The characters are illustrated with a lovely chunky line, and the backgrounds in particular have a level of care and detail that is above and beyond what one might expect from this kind of a younger-readers licensed title, and often border on being rather beautiful.

And come on, how could I ever get sick of panels like this:

That's right, Cap. It does.

So, yeah, it was nice to get to meet Nigel and gush at him about how much I love these little strips for a bit. And for no reason other than that he is a lovely chap, Nigel was kind enough to draw a quick sketch for Logan, of the web-headed one himself.


Logan was quite pleased with it.

Thay, Don't Get Thor, Thee?

Hey, here are a few pages of the Thor strip I drew for Panini's Marvel Heroes a while back. It came out last month or so, so I thought I'd post a few pages here now. Enjoy!

Script by rising comics superstar Kieron Gillen, art by me. Weirdly, I had this post lined up for today already, and then woke up to the news on Twitter that Kieron has landed the job of new writer on Marvel's (as in Marvel US, Proper Marvel) THOR series. Huge congratulations to the guy, fantastic news.

I have kind of mixed feelings about how my work turned out here - it was my first go drawing superheroes since I was like 16, and it turns out it's actually prettty hard. Who knew? Anyway, I've done the A-Z of Awesomeness since then, which gave me a bit more practice, so I'm slightly more confident with the whole massive-biceps-and-implausible-poses thing now.

Bonus art! Here's one of my warm-up /practise sketches of the big guy.

Colours:

Inks:

Doing It For the Kids (part 2)

Here's some more pages of my traffic safety comic for Sandwell District Council. Enjoy!









See that? That's some unsafe traffic behaviour, right there.

This job was sooo much more fun than perhaps it sounds on paper - it was a great chance to loosen up and have fun and try a few new tricks, process-wise. And they were only mildly annoyed at me for filling it with subliminal product placement ads for Thumpculture...

...ayway, that's probably about enough of that. REMEMBER: look both ways when crossing the street.

My work here is done.

Collect the set!

I'm just gonna cross-post these here from my DFC blog:

Mo-bot High Trading Cards!









...it's just for my own amusement, really.

Doing It For The Kids

Here is a look at the first 3 pages of my recently-completed comic strip about road safety!



What's that I hear you ask? What on earth does any of that have to do with road safety?

Hush, you!

Artwork reproduced with the kind permission of Sandwell District Council - an awesomer District Council I defy you to find.

Garen's (Awesome) Mo-Bot!

There I was having to work late on a Friday night and feeling all sorry for myself, when what should pop into my inbox but a notification of this...
Garen Ewing draws a Mo-Bot. That's pretty much made my week, right there.

Seriously, how great is that?

Why not have a go yourself?

Digital Paint Test

As I mentioned, a recent comics project was half set in a videogame-type world , which gave me an opportunity to try something I'd been wondering about for a while - "digital painting". Here is my first attempt, a quick test run on one of the character designs.


...look, it was a first effort.

Character Designage

Here are some character designs I did as prep-work for a recent comics assignment. The story was about a bunch of regular normal kids who spend a lot of time playing in an online sci-fi videogame, so there are two versions of each character - the 'real world' one and their online avatar kinda thing...

It was a fun project, as I got to use a very different style on the 'videogame' sections, and got to have a stab at doing a bit of digital painting, which is a new thing for me.


Maybe I'll post some of the comic pages up here in a bit!

How To Draw a Mo-Bot

Here's how!



It's kind of the abbreviated version, I left out all the stuff about gradient overlays and clipping masks and using about 1,000 layers in Photoshop, as I wouldn't want to scare the kids.

This is available as a download on the DFC website. If anyone has a go, by all means send me your efforts!

Thanks to everyone who's gotten in touch to say nice things about Mo-Bot High, my story which finished its initial nine-week run in The DFC last week. I'm enormously glad that people seem to have enjoyed it, and don't worry, there's plenty more to come. I'm hard at work one Season 2 as I type... actually, I'm not hard at work, I'm pootling about writing this blog. Obviously.

I should get back to work.