In Review: Raising Amy

Stref', who is also known as Stephen White, has a diverse amount of work to his credit with strips in The Beano and The Dandy, his hardback anthology Milk and the violent X. Raising Amy, published by Markosia, is a collection of humorous newspaper strip cartoons featuring an out-of-control youngster.

Amy strains the nerves of her long suffering mother and father who only get a rest when they can persuade, cajole or over-pay baby-sitter Flower to give them the night off, while Flower in turn has to cope with the unwanted attentions of Dick who wants to be her boyfriend but, in reality, is effectively her stalker. As for what happens in the house, well Amy's toys aren't safe from her attentions, she manages to bring zoo animals home as pets, nothing seems to prevent her accessing her father's tool box for all sorts of nefarious schemes and, perhaps worst of all, she has developed a taste for earth worms - live earth worms.


Stref's previous work, X, definitely put the graphic into graphic novel and Raising Amy couldn't be more different - unless you happen to love cuddly toys which, as the cover suggests, take a lot of abuse from this precocious child.

There are 250 colour cartoon strips in the book which begin by breaking the reader in gently to what is going on in Amy's home with single strips telling each incident before moving on to themed sets telling of longer on-going events. Stref' also manages to show his taste in cinema with strips featuring references to films such as The Shining, The Godfather, The Wicker Man and Psycho.

Perhaps though my favourite strips are those in which Amy talks to her artist, telling him off and even threatening him enough for him to take his revenge. Indeed some of these strips even have the artist's hand and pen included Beano-style and, inevitably, even he has problems controlling her. These hypertextual moments raise the book beyond the norm as Stref' plays with the format of Amy's world for his, and our, entertainment.

With Raising Amy Stref' has created a glossy, colourful and delightfully enjoyable Minnie The Minx for the 21st century.

• There are more details, preview strips and ordering information on Raising Amy on the Markosia website.

• There are more details of the book on the Raising Amy Facebook page.

• Stref'/Stephen White will be at the Glasgow Comic Con on Saturday 30 June and Sunday 1 July where he will have copies of Raising Amy, along with X and Milk+, for sale.

Peter Pan Crowdfunding Project Announced

Artist and writer Stephen White, also known as Stref', has announced a crowd funding initiative to get his latest project, a full colour 96 page graphic novel of JM Barrie's Peter Pan, off the ground.

"To me, Peter Pan is the greatest story in the world, and one I have been hooked on (no pun intended!) since I was a small boy," says Stephen. "I intend the adaptation to be as faithful as possible to the original vision of the author, which is darker in tone than the Disney version that the majority of the world is familiar with. It will also contain scenes from the book that were not included in Disney's version! Adapting this book is my greatest ambition, and something I have been working towards for many, many years. This character is loved by people all over the world, and I understand the responsibility I would have to do this book properly."

Stephen White has been a producing work professionally for over 25 years, including 7 years on The Dandy and The Beano. He has also created the graphic anthology Milk+, originally published in hardback by Insomnia and now available as a softcover, Raising Amy, a collection of newspaper style cartoon strip published by Markosia, and the mature readers graphic novel X, which is just about to be released independently. Peter Pan is the next project that he plans to work on.

JM Barrie left all the rights for Peter Pan to London's Great Ormond Street Hospital For Children (GOSH) and, having already approached GOSH, Stephen intends the hospital to benefit from a percentage of sales of the book. Stephen says, "I intend a classic visual style for the book, that will make it timeless. The adapted script is already written and has been read by several other professionals, including Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity, and former editor of The Dandy, Morris Heggie, who has over forty years' experience. I have many professional colleagues at hand for expert advice and support with all aspects of, and through all stages of, this project."

Stephen is looking to raise $32000 via Indiegogo crowd funding to fund the creation of the book over the course of one year and is offering a variety of incentives for backers from signed art prints and signed books via original artwork from the book up to opportunities for "walk-on" parts in the artwork as pirates or lost boys and even one "speaking" part.

There are more details of Stephen White's plans for his Peter Pan graphic novel on the Indiegogo website and on the project's Facebook page including a selection of character designs, concept art and dummy covers.

The Facebook pages for Stephen White's previous books are below:
Milk+
Raising Amy
X

Stephen White organises Reekie Roundup, the Edinburgh comic creators group. Meetings take place on the last Thursday of each month in Mathers Bar in Edinburgh's Broughton Street. There are more details about Reekie Roundup and the date and time of the next meeting on the group's Facebook page.

Raising Amy Signing Event In Edinburgh

"She’s armed, she’s dangerous, and she’s a proper Scottish ginger nutcase! Just be thankful she’s not yours!" is how Markosia describe Stref's child character Amy who is about to appear in her first book Raising Amy: Born To Be Wild!

To help promote the release of the book by Markosia in December 2011, Stref (or Stephen White to his friends) will be signing and sketching at the book's launch in the Blackwell's book shop on Edinburgh's South Bridge, just up from the Forbidden Planet International shop, on Tuesday 6 December 2011 beginning at 6pm and running for 1.5 hours.

Having previously worked on the Dandy and Beano, in Amy Stref has created a Minnie The Minx for the 21st century in a three panel format. The new book has 250 Raising Amy strips in its 100 pages featuring Amy, her long suffering Mum and Dad plus her babysitter Flower and her suitor/stalker (Love Sick) Dick. With Amy holding a chainsaw and the head of a decapitated teddy bear on the front cover this is definitely a book for the older readers of humour comics.
There are more details of Raising Amy: Born To Be Wild! on the Markosia website.

There are more details of the book launch on the events's Facebook page.

There are more details of the shop and its location on the Blackwell's Edinburgh South Bridge shop's website.

In Review: Milk by Stref

Reviewed by David Hailwood

Milk is a brand new anthology from Insomnia Publications, containing the works of Stref. It consists of darkly humoured horror and sci-fi oddities, three panel strip cartoons, abstract art, and a whole host of ‘bonus features’.

Inside, you will encounter interplanetary aliens running a mafia style protection racket, a cereal company that hires hit men to deal with the ‘lucky’ winners of their competition, an astronaut werewolf on a trip to the moon, zombies, vampires, and a whole lot more.

Although the anthology is aimed at an adult audience, it also contains samples from Stref’s five years working for D.C.Thomson, featuring popular characters like Winker Watson and Dreadlock Holmes.

Stref’s art style shifts seamlessly from the bright and colourful cartoon style of the children’s comic strips, to a more gritty, angular style used on the adult strips that’s at times reminiscent of Kevin O’Neill’s work.

On occasion the artwork gets a bit too abstract in places; in the case of a vampire strip titled ‘The Need’ (which Stref has also adapted into a thirteen minute short film) the fractured art complements the stories subject matter perfectly, but on several of the other strips it makes it difficult to work out what’s going on.

For the most part however, the artwork remains clear, dynamic and oozes emotion from every pore. The strips are confidently written, often containing a Futureshock-style twist at the end.

A hefty bonus section at the rear of the anthology contains a wealth of extra features, showing Stref’s progression as an artist over the years. These date right back to his thoroughly amusing teacher progress reports from maths class in the 80’s, one of which states: ‘Stephen has undoubted ability as a cartoonist, but this is of no benefit to his maths.

At any spare moment when he is not being closely supervised he is sketching; this has led to his poor grade.’

This is a feeling that I’m sure most comic artists can easily relate to, and serves to further highlight Stref’s dedication to the comic art world.

Hopefully this anthology will bring Stref to the attention of a wider fan base that lies beyond the child friendly pages of the Beano and Dandy.

• Milk is 128 pages, contains both colour and black and white strips, and is priced at £19.99 for the hardback gallery edition, or £14.99 on Amazon.

Web Links:


• There is currently an exhibition of original art from the book which runs to the end of September; details are here on the Insomnia Publications web site

• A write up of the launch party can be found here on the Insomnia blog

Original Artwork Competition from Stref

Stephen 'Stref' White, creator of the upcoming graphic novel Milk is offering his fans the chance to own an original piece of signed artwork from the book. Join the Milk fan group on Facebook then follow the links there to answer the ten questions (all the answers can be found within the samples posted on the Milk group page on Facebook).

The competition is open until 1st July 2009, when all the correct entries will be put into a draw, with one lucky winner will be chosen.

Milk is Stephen's first published graphic novel and will soon be available from Insomnia Publications. Highly praised by comics writer Alan Grant, it's a collection of short stories, but unlike most anthology strip titles they're all the work of one man - 'Stref', each piece is masterfully executed in a completely different style.

The book will be about 100 pages long, and consists of at least 14 short stories, a gallery of artwork, and plenty of "back matter" covering Stref's extraordinary style, the history of the project, and his creative techniques and inspirations.

"Milk contains as many styles of storytelling as it does styles of artwork," Stephen revealed in an interview for online popular culture 'zine RKYV last year (Issue 18 - PDF version). "Some stories are simple and straight forward, while others are more cryptic and metaphorical.

"Sometimes when I work I let the pen do its own thing, almost like free association
writing. Often I am left with a picture that I myself do not understand and only after a bit of time can I look back at these pictures and figure them out. I have had something on my mind that needed out, it’s kind of like a process of cleaning out my brain!"