Anthology One Due From Dundee's UniVerse(ity)

Due out later this month is the first issue of a new comics series, Anthology, published under the new UniVerse imprint, which will showcase the best creative work that is emerging from the new comics courses at the University of Dundee and Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design.

Dundee has long been a haven for comics creation due largely to the city being home to DC Thomson. However in recent years the University of Dundee and its related colleges, specifically Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD), have been taking more of an interest in comics creation due in no small part to Dr Chris Murray of the University's School of Humanities. This has lead to various comic art exhibitions, often in association with DC Thomson, and the annual Dundee Comics Day, a full day of talks from a wide variety of British comics creators, as part of the Dundee Literary Festival.

With a cover by DJCAD alumnus Colin MacNeil, Anthology One, is the first issue and features work from the students on DJCAD's Comic Art and Graphic Novels Module. Module Leader and co-organiser of the Dundee Comics Day Phillip Vaughan said, "We have created an imprint called UniVerse to promote and publish up and coming work from the next generation of comic creators. This is the best of the work from the first cohort of the module, which (staggeringly) was run over 12 weeks for one day a week during Semester 1 of Communication Design Level 3 (encompassing Animation, Graphic Design and Illustration undergraduates). This year we plan to roll the module out to other undergraduate areas of the art college."

Chris Murray (far left, with Phillip Vaughan, centre, and Cam Kennedy, right) is course leader of the Comics Studies MLitt at the university and director of the newly formed Scottish Centre for Comics Studies and helped to deliver the course. Chris said, "It is an exciting time for Comics Studies at Dundee, and the DJCAD module has been even more successful than we'd hoped - the results are impressive, and the students clearly benefited from workshops with industry professionals such as Frank Quitely, Cam Kennedy, Colin MacNeil and others".

Anthology One will be available at the Hi-Ex comics convention in Inverness on Saturday 31 March and Sunday 1 April.

The downthetubes review of the 2011 Dundee Comics Day is here.

Links to the various comic art exhibitions that have taken place at the University Of Dundee since 2007 are here.

downthetubes interviewed Dr Chris Murray about his comics work here.