Giving the Flash a run for his money, producer of the Bristol Comics convention KEV SUTHERLAND not only organises the UK's premier funnybook festival but is also helping to get a new generation back into reading them. ALAN DONALD catches up to the man who has many talents, but finds standing still is not one of them!
Alan Donald: Mr Sutherland… where to start? Tell us a little about yourself.
Kev F Sutherland: Wrote and drew comics, to the exclusion of all else, for about 10 years. I'm still big, it's the comics that got small. After almost every comic and editor I'd ever worked for ceased to exist (from Sounds, Red Dwarf, Gladiators, UT, Gag, Kack, and Bloody Hell to Marvel's star Trek, Dr Strange and Werewolf By Night) I sidestepped into light entertainment, while trying to keep my hand in in comics. This year I've been in The Beano and illustrated Shakespeare for Harper Collins. More significantly, I created the National Comics Awards in 1997 and the Comic Festival in 1999 and have run them every year since.
AD: You have a reputation as being quite, well, what I mean is have you always been more hyperactive than a group of chimpanzees on speed?
KS: Yep. Shorter questions. Holding me up.
AD:: You're also a stand up comedian and TV star.
KS: The Sitcom Trials had its first series on ITV 1 in the West earlier this year, and we're working towards a second. My show runs most Mondays in London, and you can see me regularly on the comedy circuit.
RE: Most people know you from the UK Comicbook Festival. How on earth did you wind up organising that?
KS: Its predecessor, the UK Comic Art Convention, was running out of steam by 1997, so I created the National Comics Awards as a way of pepping it up. When UKCAC died in 1998, I took over the reins, and designed an event that would bring in new readers rather than, fatally, relying on the old ones.
AD: What do you feel have been your real successes with the Festivals?
KS: Getting kids and families in. The small press sector really flourishes in that environment, and the only people who do badly are the ones who I don't really want there in the first place, ie anybody who's not actually showing or selling comics. (This year's casualties included some guys selling teddy bears in bondage gear - what were they thinking?)
AD:: And of course, there must be horror stories?
KS: The money. I've set myself a mission to bring in new readers, which is why the door price is so low, and under 12s get in free. We now charge 6 quid for the two days, whereas the old UKCAC (7 years ago) was charging 15 quid. That kind of thing only works when you want to fleece gullible SF fans, it doesn't wash for a comic festival. But I do have a big problem in that everyone who's ever worked for a comic thinks they had a god given right for themselves, and their partner, to get into every event free. That sort of thing is just one of the reasons why I end up not earning much money from the Comic Festivals, and indeed for two out of the last four years I found myself heavily in debt.
AD: How's next years Festival coming along?
KS: Well, now there are two events - London in November, being tried for the first time, and the big Bristol show in May, so I'm on the case a lot more of the year than I ever was before. Luckily the bulk of Bristol is now done by Mike Allwood of Area 51 Comics, leaving me to concentrate on the publicity and creative side. The educational side has boomed. I now do my Comic art Masterclasses in schools one or two days every week, and am seriously trying to raise funding to enable more artists to do them in more schools more often. In the UK there is still virtually no-one who has heard of any comic other than The Beano. (I was asked on the radio the other day' "So, is Spider-Man a comic too?")
AD: You must be working yourself into the ground with all this. I know you're taking a back seat on a few of the responsibilities (stage managing the events and next year's UK Comicbook Awards for example) but I doubt that stops you worrying about them?
AD:: Why worry? If I were to stop running these comics events, I'm sure someone else would do them. Badly, obviously, but they'd do them.
AD: How on earth do you cope? Do you feel it's worth it?
KS: Whenever I see the change that comes over a small child of nine or ten when they go from being a lost, aimless, waif and stray, oblivious to the world of comicbooks, and I lead them by the hand into their local comic shop, where I let them be shunned and laughed at by the fat 42 year old virgin who lives with his mum, then I lead them to the vast shelves of shiny comicbooks that lie hidden behind the piles of boxes and the broken photocopier, and I say 'pick whatever you like - they're all for you', and the kid comes out, squealing with delight, clutching armfuls of Sin City, Fables ("mummy, it's like Harry Potter, but with sweary words!") and Garth Ennis's The Pro, my hearts swells with pride.
AD:: Independent small press comicbook companies seem to be throwing themselves into the Festivals more and more each year. Is this something you actively encourage?
KS: Definitely. They are the future (though I also like the big publishers, who pay more, and therefore are, in every sense of the word, the present).
AD:: What do you think of the Indy comic scene in the UK?
KS: Thriving and exciting. If only more people could be made aware of what's out there we'd be laughing spam fritters.
The UK Comicbook Festival is in Bristol on May 29 & 30 2004.
http://comicfestival.co.uk
by Kev F Sutherland
I'm doing two days a week in schools at time of writing, in the run up to end of term, and have done everyone from GNVQ to Primary Yr 3 in the past fortnight (check out pix at http://sitsvac.org/masterclass.html).
In all cases I break the ice, and prove I can draw, by doing a composite character on the board drawing from the pupils' faces. Always gets a laugh.
I have a few other fun demos, like getting a kid who thinks they can't draw to conjure up Homer Simpson on the flipchart just from a series of circles and brackets. Then I demo how, in cartoons, you can't do anything wrong, by drawing Dennis The Menace, who can only be drawn by getting everything wrong (one eye, mouth comes out of eyeball etc).
Then I get them to create and design characters, and I draw anything on the flipchart that they don't know how to (lots of hands, noses, feet, figures, animals, cars, guns etc) and constantly insist of=n them drawing from life and from reference. I always have lay figure and action man with me, and reference book of animals. One of my mantras is "you can't draw anything out of your head until you've put it in your head in the first place".
Then we tell a story. Either they write their own, or we brainstorm a group story which I rough out on the flipchart. Then I do my demonstration of the Boring Way of telling the story (three virtually identical panels with little characters at the bottom) which I then expand by looking at all the different ways we could make each shot more exciting.
So the flipchart is then covered with birds eye views, worms eye views, close ups, wide panels, perspective, ways of drawing voice bubbles and fx etc, and then they're ready to draw their own strips.
I then continue to respond to their questions or needs on the flipchart and, if we're lucky, by the end of the session they've each produced a strip or we've produced a comic together.
The school is then left with my flipchart pages, which are a learning resource in themselves, and I reward every kid by drawing a caricature of them (which can take up to an hour and has to be done as they're finishing off, usually spilling into lunchtime and hometime).
It's fun but knackering, a proper teacher couldn't keep it up for long. In a couple of weeks I'm doing 5 consecutive days in schools, and expect to be dead by the end of the week!