FRED EGG COMICS END OF YEAR REVIEW 2015

On this last day of the year, I thought I'd take stock of what I've been up to comics wise throughout 2015.

In January, I had a story published in D.Blake Werts' US zine Copy This! #11 called 'Why it's Good to Feel Pain'.

I took part in an interesting series of articles that ran over at Broken Frontier in January, February, June and July. This was Andy Oliver's State of the Small Press Nation.

March saw the release of Treehouse #5 and featured two of my comics; 'The Martians: To Them and Not to Us, Perhaps, is the Future Ordained...' and 'I Don't Give a Fuck' (the former drawn by Neil Paterson). I did a reading of both stories at the Scottish Comics Unconference in Glasgow, arranged by Damon Herd and Hattie Kennedy.

Photo: Damon Herd

Then a week later, I did a talk on the topic 'My Favourite Comics Page' at Chris Murray and Phillip Vaughan's 'Comics, So What?' event at the University of Dundee.

In the wee small hours of the 19^th April, I finished inking the last page of my story 'Dump'. A notable event for me as I'd been working on the comic for many years.

In May, I had a story called 'Visitor' published in Keara Stewart's A Bit of Undigested Potato.  

On the last day of the month, I released the third and final issue of Dump.

In June, Treehouse #6 was published, containing three stories by me; 'Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds: an Introduction', 'Bruce the Rat in One Adventure Too Many', and 'Junior Scrabbl'.

I also put together the Fred Egg Comics website.

My story “Why, Waltzer Man?' went online over at Adventures in Comics.

I had a comic named 'The Ascent of Man' on display at the Tin Roof Summer Exhibition in Dundee.

Redbird Review ran a Treehouse Comics interview that I took part in, and a solo interview with myself too.

In July, my review of Gary Hoppenstand's 'Critical Insights: The Graphic Novel' was published in Reference Reviews Vol.29 #5, and The International Journal of  Comic Art Vol.17 #1 published my review of Dundee Comics Day.  

I did a colour comic called 'No Greater Love' for the Guardian #opencomics.

In August, Gary Clap and Kirk Campbell's Dirty Rotten Comics #5 included my story entitled 'Tiddlywinks'.

The first issue of Emily White's Jack Sprat Magazine was released in September. In it was a comic I did called 'Silently Falling', inspired by the title of a song by Chris Squire, who sadly died this year.

In October, I did a talk at the Make/Share event at the MakerSpace in the Vision building, Dundee about my comics, focussing on the four most recent ones I'd done; 'No Greater Love', 'Tiddlywinks', 'Silently Falling' and 'A Book with Death in the Title'.

This last story was included in Treehouse #7. along with another called 'Marriage Statistics', and a cover by me too.

Redbird Review ran the first part of my new 56 page story called Bell Time. I'll complete a new page every 3 weeks.

I curated a Treehouse Comics exhibition that ran for a month and a half at Arbroath Library. I also gave a talk on Super-Hero comics to a book group for 8-11 year olds there.

In November, I did a comic called 'Frankensteins', and read it at the Frankenstein Begins comic launch event at the McManus Galleries in Dundee.

It's been a good and busy year for me in comics. I have every intention for 2016 to be the same. Some plans are in motion right now. I'll be continuing Bell Time. I've been working on a comics project with my two sons, which has been great fun. I'm putting together my next comic Zero Sum Bubblegum (which will include guest artists – some returning, some new – all great!) I want to do a collected edition of Berserkotron, too. My involvement with Treehouse Comics is always a pleasure, and the next edition's comics by me are in the can. I'm also appearing in the next issue of Copy This!

Get yourself involved in things you want to do. It's worth the effort and hard work.

Have a great new year. 

SUPER-HEROES TALK PPT

An enjoyable job I decided to do recently was give a talk to a book group of 8-11 year olds on the subject of super-heroes. I like to use the wider interest in the movies to lead them back to the comics.

I thought I'd post the powerpoint I used. It might be helpful to anyone out there wanting to do a similar thing.

They're in alphabetical order. The text was also cut back to bullet words when I gave the talk.

Fortuitously, the first one up - Ant-Man - was also the most recent. The kids were on board right away. The format is comic image on the left; movie image on the right.

The Avengers covered a lot of the Marvel heroes they had heard of. Another thing I wanted to get across to them was how old these characters are. Between 50 - 80 odd years. Long enough for adults; an unthinkable eternity for these youngsters.

Why 'Batman: Year One'? The comics images were chosen by the criteria that they were titles that were available to loan in the library.

The movie images were chosen in the main to be the most recent iteration of the characters. I told the group I hadn't seen the most recent Fantastic Four movie. 'It's not good' opined one kid. Oh dear.

I like the similarity between the Flash comic and TV show images here. And I couldn't resist putting that groan-worthy comment at the end.

I made sure to point out the distinction of The Incredibles not being from a comic.
One of the children at this point put his hand up to tell me that he had a DVD of The Incredibles and the first disc was very good but the second was boring. It just has people talking on it. I enjoyed that interjection.

During discussion of Spider-Man, the laptop shut down altogether for an update. Thank you, Microsoft.
It allowed me to steal more time with the group and answer their questions though.

Always got to reference the mountains of cash a few comics like the first Superman appearance sell for. It gets an 'oo' and an 'ah' from the adults too.

The photo above (chosen for its dramatic qualities) caused some immediate intrigue, and the question 'Wait, has Wonder Woman been in a movie?'
I mentioned the possible connection between the lie detector machine and Wonder Woman's lasso of truth.

X-Men were the last characters chosen by me, then I wanted to give the kids a chance to mention their favourites with this:

Many suggestions followed, including Firestorm, Doctor Who and Jedi Knights. Some lateral thinking there. Why not? They have super-powers.

An enjoyable talk for me, and the group were very engaged and appeared to like it.

CHRISTMAS COMICS: Star Wars

Here's a Christmas classic from 1983.

It's painted by Bob Wakelin, who also gave us Spider-Man and Santa here.

BELL TIME page 3

Redbird Review is serialising my comic called Bell Time.

Page 3 is up now. Have a read here.

You can read from the beginning here.

SCOTLAND IN COMICS 15: AMERICAN SPLENDOR

In 2003, a movie based on Harvey Pekar's American Splendor was released. Pekar visited the UK in order to publicise the film.

A year later, the DVD contained an American Splendor mini-comic with a story of his travels.

Here then, is Harvey Pekar in Scotland: