ISOLATED COMIC PANELS

I've started a fun new project. I've always been interested in finding single panels that are effective when isolated from the complete narrative. Maybe they convey a story on their own, make you intrigued about the bigger story, have great composition, or are funny. Maybe all of those, maybe none. Whatever it may be, I look for something that makes them worth considering alone. I'm going to choose and scan a selection of these and thought I'd start with Star Wars comics. 

Have a look here.

ADVENTURES IN COMICS 5

I have a two page story in the new issue of Adventures in Comics, which is out now. It's a very nice 64 page glossy booklet with comics based on the theme of "The Waltzer".

For information on how to get yourself a copy, please e-mail admin@marinestudios.co.uk

DUMP #3 at OPTICAL SLOTH

Kevin Bramer has reviewed my comic over at Optical Sloth.

Have a look here.

"RIP to Dump, as David says in the afterward that this is the last issue. But he is starting off another comics series and is going to put out the collected Berserkotron, so if you’re a fan you have nothing to fear. If you’re not a fan, why hello there, allow me to try to convince you that you’re missing out! This is a collection of stories, all written by David, with roughly 2/3 of them illustrated by David too and the other 1/3 illustrated by other artists. The final chapter of Dump and the experimental story “November” take up about half of this hefty comic, but I’ll get to those in a minute. Subjects of other stories include whether or not you give a fuck, the consequences of spying on people at 3am, an excellent closed loop of a nostalgic time travel story, running into the former most popular kid in high school many years after the fact, an orb, whether or not it is good to feel pain, that thing you sense in your room while you’re sleeping, being attracted to a random stranger on tv, the Bum Monster, dreaming of teeth, making a wish, playing the music festivals, the decline of sales of televisions and wishing to be enveloped by another human. That’s all suitably vague and enticing, right? Nothing to alarm anyone with possible spoilers. I thought the Dump story had a damned fine ending to the overall story, but my memory of continuing stories in comics that only come out every few years can be hazy, so who knows? It worked just fine on its own regardless. Finally there’s November, which is a collection of strips from November (duh) that I really wanted to like more than I did. Oh, I liked the content of them just fine; the one about his old cat, the Garfield parodies, being trapped in a car with a farter, how Do The Right Thing is just as relevant now as when it was released, etc. The problem is that all the strips were done in pencil (undoubtedly to make it easier to meet the requirements of a strip a day), which is just plain old uglier in collected form, especially compared against the other stories in the comic. Still, some slight aesthetic problem I have with it is no reason to scare anyone else away, as if you can get past that the actual strips in that section were thoroughly engaging. It’s a fine end to a fine series, and David really might want to consider giving this series the collected treatment too in a few years. In the meantime, enjoy the finale! $5"

COPY THIS! #23

I have a one page comic in the latest issue of Copy This! - #23.

It’s the latest "All Art!" issue, featuring R.C. Harvey, Davida Gypsy Breier and many other cartoonists. The cover above is by Billy McKay.

Copy This! is available from D.Blake Werts for $2 each in the US, $3 in the UK. Contact him at bwerts@vnet.net for details.

BOWIE BREAKS FREE

In the week after David Bowie died, Chris Evans on his BBC Radio 2 show decided to play two Bowie tracks each day. Consecutive shows would feature songs from each decade from the 60s onwards. When it came to Thursday, he played two more from the 60s instead of the 90s, because (paraphrasing) 'it's better'. This bugged me as I can immediately recall great songs he did in the 90s. Jump They Say; Strangers When We Meet and Little Wonder all come to mind with no effort.

When I decided to do a drawing to honour Bowie, this thought was still in the back of my head and as I searched my mind for an image I wanted to draw, I remembered him teetering on top of a building in the Jump They Say video from 1993. A quick reviewing on YouTube crystallised the image that had stuck with me.

My piece is now up here at the Spindle website. I hope you like it.

BELL TIME page 5

Redbird Review is serialising my comic called Bell Time.

Page 5 is up now. Have a read here.

You can read from the beginning here.

BELL TIME page 4

Redbird Review is serialising my comic called Bell Time.

Page 4 is up now. Have a read here.

You can read from the beginning here.

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.