Dennis to Menace the Edinburgh Tattoo

© DC Thomson

The 220,000 people who are expected to attend this year’s Edinburgh Tattoo (3rd-25th August) on the Castle Esplanade will witness one of the most unusual performance pieces in the event’s 60 year history. Sporting his famous red and white hooped jumper, it will be provided by cartoon character and arch mischief-maker, Dennis the Menace in company with comic favourite Minnie the Minx and her unique brand of mayhem.

Dennis and Minnie will perform stunts on BMX bikes during each performance this August as part of a shake-up of the long-running event and artists behind The Beano, Oor Wullie and The Broons have also created a special commemorative poster of the Tattoo, which will be distributed with all programmes for the event.

© DC Thomson

The poster, which features Wullie and several members of The Broons paying a visit to the highly-popular tourist attraction is apparently one of the spreads from Whaur's Oor Wullie?, book, on sale now in bookshops.

Said Tattoo Chief Executive and producer, Brigadier David Allfrey: “These celebrated characters are a universal element in our national mix. We have grown up with comics and some of us even enjoy them into adulthood! Everyone relishes the prospect of a little menace!

"While the Tattoo seeks to entertain and inspire it is always good to not take ourselves too seriously. This year has seen so many extraordinary celebrations: Her Majesty the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics both to set the scale. These are all about joy and we all love a celebration.”

But, even with the prospect of a little ‘menace’, this year’s Tattoo opens with a scene from faraway times with a Pictish warrior seizing upon a shiny pebble and taking the audience to the start of a magical journey across the ages. The sound of an ancient horn – a Bronze Age carnyx – signals the appearance of the Massed Pipes and Drums and the heart stopping sight and sounds of the very essence of the event.

Bringing together the very best pipe bands from across the globe – 12 pipe bands in all – featuring the award-winning Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, The Royal Corps of Signals, The Royal Highland Fusiliers, 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland, The Black Watch, 3rd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland, The Highlanders, 4th Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland and Queen Victoria School, Dunblane. While from overseas, Melbourne’s Rats of Tobruk, the Australian Federal Police, the Manly Warringah and Scots College from Sydney, South Africa’s Cape Town Highlanders along with the Canadian Army complete the ranks of this prodigious massed pipe band.

With the 60th anniversary of Her Majesty the Queen’s accession to the throne as its principal theme, this year’s Tattoo also celebrates the ‘Year of Creative Scotland’ by spotlighting some of this country’s most enduring achievements.

Through dance, the audience will then be introduced to Scotland’s iconic textile – the spinning and weaving of Tweed as pipers, drummers and dancers from Queen Victoria School present an inspired dance piece with Sydney’s Scots College Pipes and Drums.A six-minute medley of music inspired by the Disney/Pixar film Brave, performed by the Bands of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines Scotland, The Queen’s Division, The King’s Division and The Royal Air Force, then carries the audience from medieval Scotland, through its agricultural age and towards the industrial era.

Thereafter, the Tattoo Highland Dancers and the Canadiana Celtic Association tell the story of Scotland’s most successful export, Scotch Whisky, from the sowing and reaping of barley, into the mash tun, on to the distilling, casking and drinking of “Uisge Beatha – The Water of Life.”

From Australia, the Band of the Australian Defence Force present a selection of traditional and contemporary music tracing the transition from colonial times to present day.
There follows a tribute to Scotland’s engineering pedigree with a piece of dance inspired by the work in a foundry from the OzScot Australia dance troupe and music by Tap Dogs’ Andrew Wilkie.

Comic-strip superheroes are then celebrated by the United States Naval Forces Europe Band highlighting the external battle between good and evil and including some iconic local talent.

The story of rapid growth in communications and computing technology, helped by development of microprocessors and the Internet, is told through the precision drumming of sure-fire international crowd-pleasers Top Secret Drum Corps from the Swiss city of Basel.

Brigadier Allfrey said: “I am thrilled with our international guests. As ever the Tattoo is proud to present some of the very best!”

Highlights of the 2012 event will also include an amazing display of precision drill by The Guard of His Majesty the King of Norway, whose skill with bayonet tipped rifles has thrilled spectators on eight previous occasions.

The climax of the evening is an orchestral re-enactment of Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation of 1953, concluded by an electrifying arrangement of Diamonds Are Forever and the audience joining hands for a rousing rendition of Auld Lang Syne – a brilliant spectacle of colour and sound that will leave spectators spellbound.

The Tattoo’s Chief Executive remarked: “Diamonds are forever and I would encourage everyone to dust off their tiaras, their bracelets and their earrings and… bring out a bit of bling! Edinburgh at festival time is a springboard into a splendid Scottish summer for our visitors. Let us all show them a good time.

“Of course, all of this would not be possible without the support of everyone who buys our tickets, the talented cast, our core team in Market Street, some expert contractors and our wonderful sponsors. And of course, Defence and our Armed Forces – in effect our principal sponsor,” he concluded.

• Some tickets for the 2012 Tattoo (3-25 August), priced £23 to £59, can still be obtained at www.edintattoo.co.uk/tickets or acquired by telephone on +44 (0)131 225 1188 or in person from the Tattoo Ticket Sales Office at 34 Market Street in Edinburgh.

Artist Monty Nero offers online digital art class

Monty Nero's cover for CLiNT
Volume 2 Issue 3

Ace artist Jim Montynero, whose credits include Death Sentence for CLiNT Magazine, is teaching two weeks of live online digital painting classes from 6th August 2012.

These courses, organised by the Computer Training Academy, who have been running a variety of teaching since March, use video conference and desktop sharing software to link up your computer to a professional artist working in the industry today. In this way you can see the screen and talk live to the artist as they demonstrate techniques and take you through each step of their job. You spend every minute learning and being encouraged by a real pro. 

Getting set up takes minutes and is as simple as clicking on the link the Computer Training Academy send you.

All the tutors on these courses have over 10 year's experience as professional concept artists for computer games. Monty Nero tells us technical streaming quality is excellent, with the same one-to-one student attention and tutor interaction as a face-to-face class.

• Contact: info@computertrainingacademy.co.uk for more details.

• The Computer Training Academy homepage:
http://computertrainingacademy.co.uk/#/splash/

• A summary of the Concept Art class:
http://computertrainingacademy.co.uk/#/concepts/

• What you will need for remote courses through the CTA:
http://computertrainingacademy.co.uk/#/remote-courses/

• Pricing and class dates:
http://computertrainingacademy.co.uk/#/pricing/

In Review: Antares - Episode 2

Brazilian artist and writer Leo (Luiz Eduardo de Oliveira) continues his Worlds of Aldebaran saga with Antares Episode 2, the second part of the third series of his incredibly alien tales of 22nd century interplanetary settlers and the beasts and plants they find on the worlds that they settle.

Having survived her experiences on Aldebaran 4 and Betelgeuse 6, Kim Keller is more than experienced enough to be the obvious candidate to help the team that is being sent to Antares, but with her young and not entirely human daughter to protect, Kim has to be effectively blackmailed into the job. On the colony ship with her daughter Lynn and friends Mark Sorenson and Mai Lan, Kim soon discovers that many of the colonists are from a religious sect with some uncomfortable beliefs as she has a run in with both them and the ship's Subcommander.

However the difficulties on the ship fade into the background when they arrive at Antares and, during the disembarkation, one of the shuttles develops a fault and crashes in a forest far from the designated landing site. Kim and a small team mount a rescue whilst, back at the main landing site, all is not as safe as it might seem.

Leo never gives his main characters an easy time of it on his alien worlds and Antares is proving to be no different. The previous two series, on Aldebaran and Betelgeuse, gave them military dictatorships to deal with in addition to the difficulties posed by the planets, and the first section of this book gives the impression that this time the problem will be religious fanaticism.

However once on the planet other problems soon pile one on top of the other as the arguments between the humans are overtaken by the need to rescue the people from the crashed shuttle while the planet throws up all manner of weird and wonderful plants and creatures. Indeed what to the characters is one very minor incident on the very last page of the book shows the reader something totally unlike anything seen in the preceding eleven books and gives the impression that the story has so far barely scraped the surface of what is living on this planet.




Leo's artistic imagination for alien flora and fauna is always a highlight of the Worlds Of Aldebaran books and Antares is no different with a mixture of flying, amphibious, carnivorous and just plain odd looking beasts that stalk, observe, frighten and attack the colonists once on the planet. While his designs for the future technology can feel somewhat basic, his alien beasts always make up for it.

Antares - Episode 2 builds on the background of the initial episode as well as reintroducing the sort of story that made both the Aldebaran and Betelgeuse series so intriguing and riveting to read and so, while Episode 2 cannot be read as a standalone book, it suggests that this Antares sequence of books will join its predecessors as being an impressive series.

There are more details of Antares (and Aldebaran and Betelgeuse) on the Cinebook website.

The downthetubes review of Antares - Episode 1 is here.

There are more details of all Leo's books on The Worlds Of Aldebaran website (in French).

 

Marshall Law Deluxe edition set for March 2013 release

The Marshal Law: Deluxe Edition, collecting all the character’s solo stories, has been confirmed for release next March from US publisher DC Comics.

Marshal Law was one of the first major creator-owned characters for a major American publisher, first published under Marvel's Epic Comics banner in 1987, with other appearances courtesy of publishers such as Dark Horse and Image.

The series is a satire on the superhero genre, characterised by its extreme graphic violence and nudity, and Mills' skewering of superhero conventions and US government policy and society.

Co-creator Pat Mills announced last year that he and Kevin O'Neill had signed Marshal Law to DC Comics.

Speaking on Facebook, Pat said at the time that the American publisher of Superman and Batman would be reprinting the existing material featuring their acclaimed law-enforcing anti hero, in formats and on a schedule to be determined.

"It's great to see Law being published by DC," Pat said. "It means our character is finally going to be seen by an entirely new generation of readers. A character who was the original and remains the strongest of all the critiques of super heroes.

"I think this is l because I really mean it - that is to say, I share Law's perspective and his angry desire to find a hero in a world that is supposedly littered with them. And of course that's doubly true for Kevin; so we encourage each other in our various visual and story excesses.

"DC's enthusiasm for such a hard core and uncompromising character who really lifts the lid on the world of costumed heroes is an encouraging sign of the changing publishing times we live in."

So, if the collection sells well, will we see a Superman or Batman crossover with Mills and Neill's savage law enforcer?

"Whether Law ever gets a chance to later "interact" with the heroes of the DC Universe remains to be seen, but I can always dream."

Other early 2013 DC Comics collections with work from British publishers include Grant Morrison's Batman Incorporated in January. The full advance list is here on the DC Comics web site