Photo Review: Dundee Comics Expo 2013

Saturday 30 March saw the inaugural Dundee Comics Expo at the University of Dundee. The university had been running the event that is now known as the Dundee Comics Day since 2008, a day of creator talks normally tied into an artwork exhibition plus one or two sales tables for attendees to buy books relating to the guests. It crosses the divide between a comics convention and an academic conference and is often highly social with guests chatting to the attendees in the university foyer between talks.

The Dundee Comics Expo came out of an idea the university lecturers had to run a Dundee comic mart but, with the desire to have an education element of workshops or talks, coupled with their contacts within the industry, that comic mart idea soon grew into a small convention. The university Tower Building where the Dundee Comics Day takes place provided the lecture theatre for the guest talks and the Baxter Suite (above) for workshops and sales tables, indeed they even managed to squeeze extra sales tables into the suite, more than were shown on the event’s map, without it feeling crowded.

The university’s College Hall (above and below), a bright and airy hall that was very reminiscent of the Harland and Wolff drawing offices that the RMS Titanic was designed in, and just at the rear of the Tower Building, provided the rest of the sales table space. Indeed given that so many comics conventions have their sales tables in places with no windows, the College Hall with its high ceiling and large windows was a very people friendly space.

The guests included Costa Award winners Bryan and Mary Talbot, along with artists David Lloyd, Hannah Berry, and Nigel Dobbyn, all of whom gave talks and were happy to sign books. Local creators there included Gary Erskine, Alex Ronald, Team Girl Comic, Jim Alexander and Jim Stewart all selling their wares plus DC Thomson put on a Commando display including some of the merchandise that is normally only available directly from the DC Thomson shop. Needless to say, since it was a University of Dundee event, the students of the MLitt in Comic Studies and the DJCAD Comics and Animation courses were there promoting their UniVerse titles including the new Anthology Three which was launched on the day.

The Baxter Suite area also provided a small exhibition of original artwork although I wonder how many attendees actually realised that there was original artwork on display from adventure artists like Steve Yeowell and Colin MacNeil or humour artists like Ken Reid and Dudley D Watkins as they walked into the main suite area. Above is original artwork for Faceache from a 1972 issue of Buster by the master of the humour comic strip, Ken Reid, while below is the original artwork for Oor Wullie from the 19 November 1944 edition of The Sunday Post by Dudley D Watkins, one of the finest all round comics artists the UK has ever produced.

The day ended across the road from the university in the Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA) venue where the excellent Judge Minty was screened with two Judge Dredd art-droids in attendance, and was then followed by DeeCAP, a performance event for comic creators. The DCA bar also provided the main evening meeting place for those who did not rush off to see the new Doctor Who companion.

The Dundee Comics Expo had a constant stream of people throughout the day but never seemed that busy perhaps due to it being split over three areas. As the first event of its kind taking place on a cold Easter Saturday in Dundee outside of term-time it was perhaps understandable that it was not as busy as it could have been but with big name guests and completely free of charge, it deserved a bigger turn-out than it seemed to get. However that benefited those attendees that were there as no long queues for any given guest or sellers tables meant that there was time to chat to all and sundry and that it made it a laid back and friendly event.

Art-droid Alex Ronald and his new self-published title Outpost: Black Sun, a prequel to the second Outpost film, with sepia art by Alex and written by Rae Brunton and Steve Barker. There are more details of the title at Alex’s blog.

Team Girl Comic show off their latest issue, TGC 7, which is available from their website which also has the beginning of their new weekly web-comic.

Nigel Dobbyn sketches his latest creation, the children’s story book character Dave The Diver. There are more details of this and Nigel’s other work on his website.

David Lloyd promoted his on-line comic Aces Weekly with a special deal of a free sketch when people bought a subscription to volume 1 – it proved rather popular.

Jim Alexander shows off his latest title Planet Jimbot title, Amazing And Fantastic Tales, which he launched on the day. There are more details of this and his other titles on his blog.

In disguise on the Commando table, deputy editor Scott Montgomery and editor Calum Laird with some of the Commando merchandise available from the DC Thomson on-line shop.

There are more images from the Dundee Comics Expo 2013 courtesy of Joe Gordon on the Forbidden Planet International blog.

UniVerse Titles Available From UK On Display

UniVerse is the imprint set up by the University Of Dundee to publish the work of the students on both the university's MLitt in Comics Studies and the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD) Animation, Graphic Design and Illustration course's Comic Art and Graphic Novels module. It has also been used to feature the work of the winners and runners up in the annual Dundee Comics Day art competition.

The imprint's main title is Anthology, each issue of which is a full colour, US sized, soft cover, perfect bound book.

Anthology One features the work of the DJCAD students and is a 72 page book with a cover by DJCAD graduate Colin MacNeil.

Anthology Two features the work of the MLitt students and is a 100 page book with a cover by DJCAD lecturer Phillip Vaughan.

Anthology Three again features the work of the DJCAD students and is a 120 page book with a cover by DJCAD guest lecturer Dave Gibbons.

Also featured in Anthology One are the winner and runners-up in the Tartan Bucket comics prize competition from the 2011 Dundee Comics Day and includes the winning strip, Belle's Magic Mobile by Steve English, which was published in The Beano.

The winner and runners up in the 2012 Dundee Comics Day art competition are featured in a separate publication, The Amazing Mr X. In 1944 The Dandy introduced the first home-grown British superhero and the competition brought the character of Mr X back to life, re-interpreted for the 21st century prior to his appearance in the Digital Dandy strip Retro Active. The 76 page book reprints three of the original 1940s Dandy adventures of Mr X along with the winning strip by Steve Marchant and thirteen other modern takes on the character plus a history and appreciation of the character by University Of Dundee lecturer Dr Chris Murray.

UniVerse titles are now available via mail order from UK On Display:

Anthology One (downthetubes review here)
Anthology Two
The Amazing Mr X (downthetubes review here)

All four UniVerse titles will be available at the Dundee Comics Expo on Saturday 30 March 2013. Anthology Three will be launched there and will be available via mail order after the Expo.

New Comics Expo At Dundee University in March

Despite the sad cancellation of Hi-Ex in Inverness, there are an increasing number of Scottish comics events in 2013. 

The Glasgow Charity Comic Mart returns to the Panopticon Music Hall on the Saturdays of 2 March, 1 June, 7 September and 30 November, the Glasgow Film Festival continues its comics strand courtesy of Mark Millar in late February, the Glasgow Comic Con returns for its third year at a date and location that have yet to be announced, the Edinburgh International Book Festival from 10-26 August has turned up some very interesting comics events in previous years, Collectormania will be at Glasgow's Hillhead Arena again on the weekend of 24-25 August and, while it is too far ahead to be announced yet, we would be disappointed if the Dundee Comics Day didn't run again at the end of October as part of Dundee University's Literary Festival.

 

In addition to these old favourites, the Dundee University manga/anime convention this year is Doj-Con, following the D-Cons and Dee-Con of previous years, which is on Saturday 13 April, the Scottish capital gains the Edinburgh Toy And Comic Mart at the RAF Club on Saturday 20 April, while MCM Expo comes to the Glasgow SECC for the long-winded Memorabilia And Scottish Comic Con on Saturday 31 August.

 

The University Of Dundee has been a consistent part of the Scottish comics scene for some years now hosting the Dundee Comics Day and the name changing D-/Dee-/Doj-Cons and they have just announced a new comics event - the Dundee Comics Expo. 

This free Expo will take place in the University's Tower Building, where the annual Comics Day is held, on Saturday 30 March 2013 from 11am to 4pm. The Tower Building is a short 10 minute walk from Dundee's train and bus stations, and not that far from the imposing statue of Desperate Dan, Dawg and Minnie The Minx in the city centre.

In addition to signing tables for artists including Gary Erskine and Alex Ronald, and sales tables for dealers including Plan B and small pressers including Team Girl Comic, the event will be welcoming artist/writers David Lloyd and Karrie Fransman to Dundee for the day, both of whom will be giving free talks. 

More guests are planned and will be announced on the event's Facebook page.

In Review: The Amazing Mr X - Special Edition

In 2011 the University of Dundee ran a comic art competition as part of the annual Dundee Comics Day to create a new Beano-style comic strip of one or two pages. The competition was won by Steve English's Belle's Magic Mobile which was printed in The Beano in February 2012 as well as in the University's Anthology One publication.

In 2012 the competition was for a three page strip and a cover image based on The Dandy's 1940s superhero The Amazing Mr X. Entrants were allowed to update the character in any form they wanted and the competition was won by Steve Marchant with a tongue-in-cheek take on an elderly Mr X still attempting his heroics. Rather than running the winner and runners up as part of Anthology Two, the University imprint UniVerse have put out a separate title entitled The Amazing Mr X and labelled it as a Special Edition.

Yet despite that description, this is more than just a publication of the competition winners as it reprints original pages from The Dandy as well as including a feature on the background and history of the character.

Dundee Comics Day organiser, and director of the Scottish Centre For Comics Studies, Dr Chris Murray writes about the background to Mr X in The Dandy where he first appeared in issue 272 in 1944 as what Chris describes as "Britain's first home-grown superhero". While the superhero grew to dominate the American comics scene, Britain never really  succumbed to the idea with most superhero characters that appeared in British comics over the years being reprints of American stories or British stories using US characters. Indeed The Amazing Mr X only lasted 14 issues (plus a single appearance in the 1962 Dandy annual courtesy of Dudley D Watkins) and Chris postulates why the character failed to gain a following with The Dandy's readership. The book reprints 3 of those 14 stories which were in the 'picture and paragraph' format that we now tend to associate with Rupert Bear. These are certainly interesting as an historical document but seventy years after they were originally published they are now more of a curiosity piece than actually being entertaining.
 

The book then goes on to publish the strip by the Dundee Comics Prize winner, Steve Marchant, which Chris says "undercuts the tome of the usual superhero story with a playful satire on the mythology of the superhero". Personally I prefer the Darren O'Toole written and A Kaviraj illustrated runner-up strip (above) which sets the scene for a potential ongoing series that the actual winner did not, while the other runner-up, Gavin Boyle, presents an amusing Scottish themed tongue-in-cheek version of the character. A further 11 stories from the competition cover a multitude of styles and ideas, some rather more interesting than others, giving a total of 14 new strips with the character, echoing the original number of 1940s episodes. 

The Amazing Mr X: Special Edition is not at all what I was expecting to see from UniVerse given their previous two Anthology titles. A very well produced, 76 page US comic sized book, it will be of interest to devoted Dandy fans as well as no doubt proving to be something of a curiosity to students of old British comics. 

The Amazing Mr X: Special Edition has a cover price of £8 and is available, as the other UniVerse titles are, by sending an e-mail requesting details to - universecomic@gmail.com

In Review: Anthology One

Anthology One is the first publication to come from the new UniVerse imprint set up as part of the various comics related courses run by the University of Dundee. Co-edited by Dr Chris Murray of the university's School of Humanities and Phillip Vaughan of the university's Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD), it presents the work of the students of the 2011-2012 DJCAD Comics Art and Graphic Novels module as well as the winner and runners-up of the 2011 Tartan Bucket Prize that was run as part of last year's Dundee Comics Day.

A 72 page, US comic size book with an excellent cover by DJCAD graduate Colin MacNeil, Anthology One does exactly what is says on the tin and presents a series of short stories from each of the contributors: Nest by Stephanie Scott; Hubert and Remington by Charlie Parsons; Treasure Hunt by Rebecca Rolland; Mob Mentality by Calum Sutherland; Asylum by Louise Cadger; Code of Love by Samantha-Jo Ross; Subject Nine by Claire Roe; and finally Calvin The Dog by Jamie Buchanan.

The Tartan Bucket Prize section at the back features the winning strip, Belle's Magic Mobile by Stephen English, that was also published in The Beano, plus the four runners-up, The Ape Prentice by Stephen Baskerville, Holly Unlikely by Adam Smith, Elly's Evil Teddy by Jamie Huxtable and Jack The Robot by Paul Rainey.

Any anthology title can be a hit or miss experience depending on the reader's interest but it has to be said that the standard achieved throughout the book by the DJCAD students is uniformly high. Their strips range from complete short stories to issue zero style intros to what could become a longer story and each strip also has a page or two of design sketches. Since I enjoy 'police procedural' TV series Samantha-Jo Ross' different take on the arrest of a suspect in Code of Love (left) is perhaps the highlight for me, helped by being complete in itself, but Stephanie Scott's moodily talky Nest and Jamie Buchanan's silently comedic Calvin the Dog, despite being worlds apart both story and art-wise, are also both interesting while Hubert and Remington by Charlie Parsons with its robot and human lead characters is perhaps the most 2000AD or Megazine-like strip in the collection. It would have been nice to read a paragraph or two by the creators explaining their work as part of their sketchbook pages but that is a minor gripe.

With the main section of the book being the DJCAD students producing artwork formatted for US size publication, the Tartan Bucket Prize pages formatted for DC Thomson's Beano and Dandy are a considerable change of pace. The introduction at the very beginning of the book by Chris Murray gives a little of the background to the competition but it would have been nice to read more details on the competition and its creators while a separate introduction to this section would have lessened the culture shock between the two different sections of the book. Of these stories Adam Smith's Holly Unlikely (right) is perhaps the most interesting with its girl character puzzled by being able to see herself in other panels on the same page, although it is also probably the least likely of the Tartan Bucket strips to work as a series.

Anthology One is an interesting snapshot of the comics work that has been gradually building up over the last five years or so at the University of Dundee and shows off a wide range of styles and genres. It will be interesting to see if Anthology Two, which is scheduled to contain work by the students of the MLitt in Comics Studies, can keep up the high standard of this first issue.

Anthology One will be formally launched and available to buy at the Hi-Ex Comics Convention in Inverness this weekend, Saturday 31 March and Sunday 1 April 2012. The cover price is £5.95.

Details of ordering Anthology One by post are available by e-mailing : universecomic@gmail.com

Anthology co-editors Dr Chris Murray and Phillip Vaughan are interviewed on downthetubes here and here.