The Edinburgh Outlook newspaper ran this article about our comic workshop at Kirkliston library on October 23rd. Online version here.
STV’s The Hour, featuring Liz Lochhead talking about our comic adaptation of Edwin Morgan’s poem The First Men on Mercury.
For the full National Poetry Day feature version please follow this link.
STV’s The Hour featured our comic adaptation of THE FIRST MEN ON MERCURY on National Poetry Day, as a way of interesting children in poetry visually. Liz Lochhead, Glasgow’s Poet Lauteate, made an appearance on the show reading and talking about poetry.
A while back we mentioned on this blog that we were working on a comic adaptation of Edwin Morgan‘s poem The First Men on Mercury for release on National Poetry Day.
Today, the Metro newspaper is running a full page feature on the project.
To mark National Poetry Day – 8 October 2009 – the Association for Scottish Literary Studies will be distributing over 30,000 copies of the comic-strip adaptation to every secondary school pupil in the poet’s home city of Glasgow. The comic will also be available to read online at http://metaphrog.com/mercury
“The First Men on Mercury is one of Edwin Morgan’s science fiction poems – fizzing with ideas and bubbling with invention. It’s simultaneously fascinating, funny and just a little bit disconcerting, as we witness first contact between the brave explorers from Earth and the native inhabitants of the planet Mercury.” Duncan Jones, ASLS.
The form of the poem, largely dialogue based, makes it ideal for adaptation into comic-strip. It was a privilige to be asked to work on this and also highly enjoyable. We realised that by adding visuals you are also taking away from the inner images the poem in its pure text form might generate for a reader so we tried to treat it sensitively.
The good people at The Guardian newspaper have kindly informed us that they will be giving away a classic comic every day next week from Saturday 12th of September. Details below!
Remember how you were with seven classic comics for grown up boys and girls. We are printing an original issue of Jackie, The Beano, Roy of the Rovers, Bunty, The Dandy, Tammy and Whizzer And Chips every day in the Guardian and the Observer from Saturday 12 September.
It all starts on Saturday with the 1975 Valentine’s Day special of Jackie, featuring David Essex, Slade, the Cathy and Claire problem page and a Donny Osmond strip story!
The Beano’s back on Sunday with the 2000th issue from 1980, featuring a Dennis the Menace front cover and all your favourites: Lord Snooty, Minnie the Minx and the Bash Street Kids.
On Monday it’s the one where Roy Race is shot in Roy of the Rovers from 1981, followed by the Bunty 1972 Summer Special on Tuesday. The Dandy, with the last Korky the Cat cover from 1984 is your comic for Wednesday, while Thursday sees the return of the very first Tammy from 1971. And finally, on Friday, catch up with Sid, Slippy and Shiner in Whizzer and Chips, two comics in one!
They don’t make them like this anymore….
Full running order for comics giveaway:
Sat 12 September – Jackie
Sun – Beano
Mon – Roy of the Rovers
Tues – Bunty
Wed – The Dandy
Thu – Tammy
Fri – Whizzer and Chips
The Guardian gave us a wee plug in The Guide on Saturday (August 15th), mentioning our forthcoming comic workshop in a preview of The Edinburgh International Book Festival.
It’s always great to get a good review, and even more so when a book has been out for a while. Louis – Dreams Never Die, the graphic novel with music and animation we released in 2004 has just been reviewed here (you have to scroll down a bit).
On Friday 15th we’re doing another two workshops, this time for “Booked” West Dunbartonshire Festival of Words, at Alexandria Library at 10.30am and Duntocher Library at 1.30pm.
We’ll shortly be posting an entry on our workshops in Cardiff and on the Bristol Comic Festival.
Papers from the conference have now been published in the International Journal of Comic Art. We’ve posted a pdf of an edited version of our own talk here: http://metaphrog.com/metaphrog_dundee_talk.pdf
