Rough Cut Comics gets 'Utopian' promotion

Scottish comic publisher Rough Cut Comics made its TV debut in the new Channel Four thriller, Utopia.

Kudos TV, the company known for hit-series Life on Mars and Spooks, chose the company’s titles to be used in the drama which follows a group of people who uncover the manuscript for a cult graphic novel whose author has signed a deal with the devil.

The producers contacted Rough Cut Comics during the shooting to use their comics and books as backdrop material in the series, and publisher Ed Murphy, who has been running the label for 12 years, says he is overwhelmed by the coverage of his comic-book titles in the drama.

“Our first Rose Black book has been featured prominently in the trailers promoting the show on Channel Four over the last few weeks,” he notes.

“We feature in the opening scene with a character reading our Rose Black title. We’ve got posters in the background of the comic-book shop. I know our other titles feature throughout the series.

“It’s a great acknowledgement of all the hard-work the writers and artists have been putting in over the last few years," he adds. "I think we’ve built up a strong following and it’s great TV producers of this scale are aware of Rough Cut Comics.

“The adverts for the series have been screened in the cinemas and there was the Rose Black front cover six feet high on the screen. I’ve received calls from customers from all over the country congratulating us.

“It looks like ‘product placement’, but we haven’t paid a penny for this. I think the producers were ‘aware’ of us because they phoned us up at the beginning of the year and asked us for specific titles. When I heard it was Kudos, a company whose work I follow avidly, I was very excited to be part of it.”

The Rose Black books, a horror series which has “re-imagined” vampire mythology, are being re-released through Amazon on the back on the Channel Four screenings over the next six weeks.

The company is currently working with artists Dave Golding, Dave Alexander and Dom Regan on a new volume of Freedom Collective strips, which will be unveiled at the first Edinburgh Mart on 20th April.

Rough Cut Comics will also be making an appearance at The Big Glasgow Comic Mart being held in Bacchus, Glassford Street on 3rd February.

• You can find out more about Rough Cut Comics at www.roughcut-comics.com or on their Facebook page

Atomic Diner prep lauch of 'Noe the Savage Boy'

Atomic Diner will be hosting a launch of their new book Noe The Savage Boy #1 in Forbidden Planet Belfast on Saturday February 9th from 1.00 to 3.00pm.

On hand will be the title's creators - Rob Curley (plot) Malachy Coney (script) and Stephen Downey (art) - and copies of the comic on sale will feature a Forbidden Planet Belfast Exclusive Cover.

Noe’s story begins in the village of Baltimore, Cork in 1631 in which the entire community is kidnaped by Barbary pirates and brought to Africa as slaves. Noe’s faith lies in the hands a group of clandestine monks who help train him to become a true warrior and overcome is dark faith.

Noe The Savage Boy is Coney’s first work for Atomic Diner after a career in comics that featured work at Top Cow/Image Comics The Darkness book and titles at Harris Comics and Fantagraphics, among many others.

Atomic Diner was set up in 2004 by Robert Curley, primarily to produce and publish a line of cross genre titles from horror to detective and of course good time super heroes. The company is 100% independent and prides itself on good story telling from Ireland's top creators. Over the past six years they have helped launch the careers of artists such as Stephen Mooney, Declan Shalvey, Will Sliney, Stephen Thompson and Bob Byrne and are proud to continue this tradition by working with people such as Terry Kenny, Maura McHugh, Stephen Daly and Gareth Gowran.

• Atomic Diner web site: www.atomicdiner.com

• Malachy Coney's Blog

Diggle and Jock signing 'Snapshot' at Forbidden Planet London

Writer Andy Diggle and artist Jock will be signing copies of the Forbidden Planet variant edition of their new comic published by Image, Snapshot, at 4.00pm on Saturday 9th February at the Forbidden Planet London Megastore.

Jake Dobson is your typical nerd; works at the Near-Mint Rhino comic-book store in San Francisco. But when he finds a lost cell phone, he's horrified to discover it's full of snapshots of a murder victim.

Suddenly he finds himself hunted by a vengeful hitman who wants his phone back. and Jake in a body bag! And then things start to get really complicated...

Andy Diggle and Jock have both worked separately for 2000AD, Marvel and DC but are best known for their collaborations - including Green Arrow: Year One and The Losers.

Please note that, due to time constraints, FP advise they may have to limit the number of items signed - and there may not be time for artist sketches.

The variant edition will be available at the signing - or by Mail Order.

• More info here on the Forbidden Planet web site

 

Creator Spotlight: Oliver Passingham and 'Tobruk'

Over on Australian comics blog Pikitia Press, which occasionally diverges to cover British comics creators with some Antipodean connection, Matt Emery reports on an intriguing example of 1960s comics taking full advantage of popular mainstream media that might help boost sales.

In this case, it's the publication of a strip adapting the war film, Tobruk, in a Lion Summer Spectacular, drawn by Oliver Passingham, whose credits in a long career began with newspaper strips such as Lesley Shane, Rick Martin (working under a pseudonym, John Diamond), Jane Fortune and Sally Marsh during the 1950s.

Reprints of his Lesley Shane newspaper strips, by Amalgamated Press, which appear influenced by the work of Alex Raymond, led to work on Rick Random, School Friend and other Amalgamated titles.

Rubbing shoulders with comic and prose adaptions of films such as Batman, James Bond: You Only Live Twice and Thunderbirds, Passingham's Tobruk went through changes in production, revealed by close examination of the original art boards Matt has access to.

"The original board of the first page of Passingham's Tobruk is comprised of a photostat reproduction of the Tobruk movie poster as a header, a moody night scene depicted in inky washes, and two panels showing frogmen sabotaging a french freighter, depicted with ink line drawings and white paint highlights," he reveals.

"Upon examining the art-board I found Passingham had originally depicted the entire scene in washes... with the bottom two panels still visible under the pasted on replacement.

 

"My presumption for the redrawn panels is that Passingham may have been compelled by editorial to redraw the characters to resemble their movie counterparts," Matt feels. "He certainly nails the likeness of star George Peppard in the bottom panel close up. In those days of no video or internet reference Passingham did a fine job of capturing the scale of the movie and compressing it into the limits of a comic anthology."

You can view more art here on the Pikitia Press blog.

An example of Passingham's Lesley Shane strip, published in 1954 in, which was syndicated worldwide

 

Born in 1925, Oliver Passingham's credits include work with DC Thomson for over 33 years. In the 1970s he began to travel the world, living in the Canaries, on the French Riviera, Monte Carlo and a year in Sydney, Australia during 1980, eventually returning to London in 1990, retiring in 1993. He died in 2003.

His work has been the subject of exhibitions, including one at Arundel in 2009.

• Pikitia Press - English Comic Diversions

• More about Lesley Shane on Yesterday's Papers