Kev F comic art

Kev FBeckett King 's Comic Art Masterclasses - on sale now

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 15:43:15 +0000

Kev F's Comic Art Masterclasses, coming up soon - book fast!

Sat 17 Oct 10am - Papworth Library, Cambridgeshire. Book Tickets here.

Sat 17 Oct 2.30pm - Yaxley Library, Cambridgeshire. Book Tickets here.

Thurs 22 Oct 10.30 & 2pm - Cranleigh Arts, Surrey. Book Tickets here. and (for 2.30) here

Sat 24 Oct 10am & 2pm - Stamford Arts, Lincs. Book Tickets here.

Weds 28 Oct 10.30 & 2pm - Plough Arts, Torrington, Devon. Book Tickets here.

Thurs 29 Oct 10am & 2pm - Grantham Guildhall, Lincs. Book Tickets here.

Book Sales October

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 07:46:54 +0000

Me and my photo in the programme for the Lakes International Comic Festival where I started the month with what looked to me like the biggest single sales day of the year so far.

Live events / classes et al = x books, x comics (£x)

(Sept 102 + 4, £1322; August 136 + 32, £1665; July 98 + 20, £1141; June 111 books + 17 comics, £1313; May 72, £862.90; April 185, £2111.54; March 181, £2153.41)

D2D - x books ($x)

(Sept = 8, $8.78; Aug = 19, $23.13; July = 84*, $27.65; June = 4, $5.42; May = 7, $8.09; April = 12, $13.54; March = 54, $74.79)

Etsy - x books (£x)

(Sept = 5 books (£23.92), Aug = 4, £23.77; July = 7, £56.97; June = 1, £7.99; May 6, £50.95; April 2, £8.98; March 4, £32.96)

Lulu - x books (£x)

(Aug = 4, £5.03; July 2, £1.43; June 4, £7.79; May 6, £12, April 6, £6.91; March 7, £6.11)

Blurb - x book, £x

(Sept = 0, Aug = 1, £1.26; July = 0; June 1, $1.68; May 0, April 0, March 1, 61p)

Podcast downloads - x

(Sept = 236, Aug 205, July 188, June 259, May 278, April 164, March 96)

Blog views - x

(Sept 284k, Aug 201,519, July 293,000, June 497,446; May 365,397, April 340,000, March 300,000)

Youtube views - x, subs x

(Sept 6291, Aug 2032, subs 4982 ; July 3555, subs 4977; June 2070, subs 4973)

*******

LIVE SALES

Saturday Oct 3 - LICAF Kendal day one - 41 books, 4 comics (£435)

Okay, it turns out to be second to Hi Vis last month where I sold even more. But given that I spent two hours in the morning doing a class at the Library, this was a pretty impressive run, selling out of a couple of key books, embarrassingly.

8 x Romeo col

6 x Romeo bw

5 x Richard col (sold out)

3 x Richard bw

2 x FM

3 x PODS

3 x MNDT

2 x Omnibus (sold out)

2 x Elain

2 x Kids (Humpty, Pigs)

6 x Colouring

- 2 x Xmas, Doctors

- 1 x 2020s, Euro vol 2

4 x Shakes comic

Sunday Oct 4 - LICAF Kendal day two - 24 books (£236)

4 x Romeo col (sold out)

3 x Romeo bw

2 x Richard bw

3 x FM

1 x PODS

1 x MNDT

1 x Esther col

1 x Tales From Bible

2 x Elain (sold out)

2 x Socks Shakespeare

1 x Kids (Sausages) (sold out)

3 x Colouring

- 1 x 2020s, 90s, 80s

Memo for next time: make sure you are fully stocked with the popular books! Romeo & Juliet in colour, and Richard The Third in colour both sold out, as did the Shakespeare Omnibus and Space Elain. Admittedly I had ordered books and they all arrived back at home while I was away, too late (I hadn't left enough time for them to come after big sales at Hi Vis and Marlborough, so must remember: there is no harm in over-stocking. I sold 12 colour Romeos and 5 colour Richards and would have sold more if I'd had them, ditto Omnbusses.)

9 Oct - King Arthurs Wincanton - 1 book (£8)

1 x FM

(more orders to come, after the fact, I think)

(above: my new table cloth makes its debut at Bristol Creed. Did it attract a near-record number of people to my table, or was that down to the organisers who delivered another super-busy event, where the traffic and sales kept going right to the last minute?)

Sun 11 Oct - Bristol Creed - 40 books (£438)

5 x Romeo col

1 x Romeo bw

3 x Richard col

3 x FM

2 x PODS

2 x MNDT

4 x Omnibus (sold out)

4 x Elain col

2 x Kids Pigs

1 x Kids Poopy

1 x Kids Sausages

12 x Colouring:

- 7 Doctors

- 1 x 2020s, Xmas, 90s, Hollywood, Euro vol 1

tbc

Live book sales September 2026 (up to Bristol) = 106 books, 4 comics (£1117)

17 x Romeo col

10 x Romeo bw

8 x Richard col

5 x Richard bw

9 x FM

6 x PODS

6 x MNDT

6 x Omnibus

8 x Space Elain col

1 x Esther col

1 x Tales From Bible

1 x Kids: Poopy

1 x Kids: Sausages

2 x Kids: Pigs

1 x Kids: Humpty

2 x Socks Shakespeare

21 x Colouring books

4 x Shakes comic

My Books And Where To Find Them...


Romeo & Juliet (Colour)	Romeo & Juliet (bw)	Richard The Third (Colour)	Richard The Third (bw)

Shakespeare Omnibus	Findlay Macbeth	Prince of Denmark Street	Midsummer Night's Dream Team

Tales From Bible (Col)	Tales From Bible (bw)	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories	Space Elain

Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Shakespeare comic	Kids Comics Annual 2027

Kids Comics Annual 2026	Kids Comics Annual 2025	Socks Do Shakespeare	Colouring Books

Kev F's Comic Art Masterclasses - on sale now

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 15:49:53 +0000

Comic Cuts The Panel Show, your favourite podcast about comics, season two, episodes 17 - 21, the pictures. In every episode of Comic Cuts The Panel Show, my guests bring in a comic panel, we try and guess where it's from, and we have a nice chat. Here are the images from the episodes starring:

Wendy Wason & Alasdair Beckett-King

Meryl O'Rourke & Paul B Rainey

Neil Mullarkey & Dan Tetsell

Waen Shepherd & Tim Quinn

Guest tbc & Other Guest tbc

(below: Paul Rainey's panel came in two versions, as discussed on the show. Left is the version I took from one printing, right is the version Paul sent from another)

(below: Tim Quinn brought in, and we discussed, three panels. You may have fun identifying all three...)

Listen to Comic Cuts The Panel Show here on Amazon, or here on Spotify, or here on Buzzsprout, or here on Youtube - or wherever you get your pods cast.

My Books And Where To Find Them...


Romeo & Juliet (Colour)	Romeo & Juliet (bw)	Richard The Third (Colour)	Richard The Third (bw)

Shakespeare Omnibus	Findlay Macbeth	Prince of Denmark Street	Midsummer Night's Dream Team

Tales From Bible (Col)	Tales From Bible (bw)	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories	Space Elain

Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Shakespeare comic	Kids Comics Annual 2027

Kids Comics Annual 2026	Kids Comics Annual 2025	Socks Do Shakespeare	Colouring Books

Uncle Kev's Hotel Reviews

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 14:12:38 +0000

We've done a fair bit of travelling of late, Hev and me this summer, and me on my own most of the rest of the year. And I like to post a review to Booking.com if I can remember much about it. Here are some from this year.

September 2026

Holiday Inn Express Stoke On Trent

Obviously being an old fashioned hotel, you get a TV with an aerial (so live TV, which is smashing) but don't expect a Smart TV with apps or any of that nonsense.

We had an accessible room which was lovely, but had a green safety fire exit light above the door, which lights your whole room up like a fairy grotto through the night. I slung a black jumper over it myself. If you have thick black underwear, or a small towel that should do the trick. You could, alternatively, modify a more complete light-excluding device using a shoe box and some masking tape, but I couldn't be arsed.

West Bow Apartment, Edinburgh (above)

Great romantic location, at the foot of the "Harry Potter street". So there will be people outside, and a bagpiper. If you like bagpipes outside till 8 at night you'll be happy. You couldn't be more central.

Landlord very helpful, came and replaced toaster when we found it didn't work.

Working Smart TV, so if you're subscribed to apps (eg Iplayer, Youtube) you'll be fine. If not, it has no ariel so you will be telly-less. There are two wifi routers, both of which work fine.

The smell of oil and grease from the bistro below is all pervasive and makes you feel unclean. My wife washed some clothes and dried them in the lounge, then found when we got to our next destination that they smelled of chip fat so needed washing again. If you're sensitive to this, it might trouble you. Acrid is the word.

The noise from the flat above, and from people coming in downstairs, comes through quite a bit, and we had some people who would come in at 2 in the morning. It sounded for all the world like they'd come up our stairs into our flat, but they hadn't, then we could hear their feet and voices from above. Again, we may have been unlucky, but if you're a light sleeper, this could keep you awake.

And parking prices in Edinburgh have gone nut nut! Eight quid an hour? There's people working in these cafes can look out at a parking meter earning more per hour than them. The solution is what we call The Long Walk. Set your satnav for South Lauder Street, and you'll find that area is outside the controlled parking zone. Leave your car there for free, it's a half hour walk back.

Self contained apartment, Glasgow

A lovely little self contained apartment. Working Smart TV (no aerial though, so you need to have subscribed to apps, eg iPlayer, Youtube) to be able to watch anything. Great kitchen, very smart design all round. Free on street parking and good shops nearby. Had the weather been a tiny bit nicer, the garden looks amazing.

And I didn't hear the trains at all, so I wouldn't worry about that.

There was a smell, I'm afraid, throughout the flat, a bit like milk that had gone off. It was rather all pervasive. I'm sure it didn't last long (possibly a recent guest had left some milk that had gone off, or surfaces had been cleaned with a smelly cloth). But the smell slightly soured our time in the flat, which was otherwise excellent.

The Chambers, Leeds

A splendid apartment with an amazing view (we were on the top floor). I think we got a bargain price, because the quality was a lot higher than many other places we stay, and usually pay more. Good working Smart TV, great kitchen and shower etc. Complimentary bread and eggs were a very impressive extra. Parking and a friendly reception, in a convenient and quiet end of town, all made it perfect.

No complaints, I hope we manage to get as good a deal next time we're in town.

August 2026

Maze Apartment, Hull (5 nights, above)

A lovely, if stark, little apartment. The windows are set a bit high up, so don't go expecting a view. And it's a shared kitchen, if you hadn't noticed that in advance (I hadn't). Good working TV with trad channels through an aerial (which I love), and smart TV apps (if you subscribe to them obviously). So make sure you're already signed up to iPlayer, Youtube and the rest, and you've got it all on tap.

The shared kitchen was quiet when I was there, only ever saw two other people. And the parking was great and convenient.

I was there during that period in the summer when Hull smells. It doesn't last for long, and once the rains came it went away. But for a while, phwoarr!

Sevenstay Plus, Liverpool

Good location in quiet end of town, good parking just across the road. Helpful friendly staff at venue. Clean room.

They ask for a photo of your passport or driving licence. In advance, by email. All before they take a £150 deposit (which must have been mentioned in the small print but I hadn’t seen it).

We booked on Friday for a Saturday night stay. Then, as we’re driving up, we find we’ve got emails asking for photo ID - for both of us - before they’ll give us the key code. And they need our credit card details in order to take a £150 deposit, on top if the room charge that we’d already paid.

This was most stressful, hung over us all through the drive up, and felt unnecessarily intrusive.

The room itself:

Avoid Room 101. There is only one window, which opens onto the noisy aircon extractor from the building next door. Which means you have the choice of an airless night with the window closed, or the noise of that machine all night.

The room’s own aircon didn’t work

The TV is a WiFi-only telly, no aerial, which means you can’t get regular Tv channels, it relies entirely on apps which, if you don’t already pay for, you can’t use. IPlayer was installed on one tv (in the lounge) but not on the other (in the bedroom) and when the WiFi went down, as it did regularly, you were left staring at a buffering picture.

Also the shower control was broken meaning, at one point, we feared we’d not be able to turn it off )I found a way).

July 2026

Stable Yard Rooms, somewhere in the wilds of Yorkshire (above)

Lovely location, nicely decorated, smart wee apartment, in a delightful little village

There was rust in the kettle and the TV was unreliable.

The rust in the kettle I saw when I first rinsed it out, and it reappeared after each boiling. I don't know if it's in the water or the element, but make sure you fill the kettle up, so you don't end up pouring it into your cup.

The TV is one of those aerial-less set ups, so everything has to come though the wifi, which kept cutting out. I changed to all the various choices of wifi, and they kept cutting out in the middle of shows I was trying to watch on iplayer. There seemed to be a Live TV option, but it would never work. I tried to download Youtube onto the set, but it needed an Amazon Firestick password so I couldn't.

This is a small consideration, and most folks probably don't need a TV, but with unreliable wifi, a wifi-only TV is a nightmare.

Sutzus, Coleraine

A lovely greeting from my smashing host, despite how late I arrived. Followed by a lovely breakfast, couldn’t have been better.

(Negative comments?) Only that I couldn’t stay longer

Sperrin View, NI

A smashing self contained flat, with a working Smart TV which really suits me

No complaints. I mean, the lounge and kitchen takes up most of the space and the bedrooms a bit tiny, but unless you need to dance around the foot of your bed every morning you’ll be fine.

Ashwoods House, NI

Great room, working Smart TV, which suits me. Self catering facilities are shared and work fine, a bit like a shared apartment I guess. I ate out on the balcony, which is lovely.

No complaints. Prepare to book your time to use the kitchen for breakfast and you’ll be fine.

Manorview, NI

Great location - I went for a walk in Drum Manor Park and saw the old ruined house. Smashing. Also a working Smart TV which was great. Lovely host smashing breakfast - the best scrambled eggs

No complaints. Recommended.

June 2026

Ramada Coventry

On one of the hottest nights of the year, I was delighted to get upgraded to a Superior Room on the 13th floor - with amazing full working aircon. Couldn't have been cooler, and it really was hot out there in the middle of the heatwave. Oh, and I'd only paid £65 for the room, so a great result.

Sadly the telly is rubbish. One increasingly gets used to Smart TVs, so this rather old fashioned in-house system, with a restricted number of lo-res live channels and no way of putting Youtube or iPlayer on the screen*, is a bit of a shame. That said, it was on a brilliant swivelling stand which enabled you to see it from both ends of this lovely long Superior suite. So had there been anything on worth watching on live TV (which, for a non-football fan, in the middle of The World Cup, there really wasn't) I'd have had a great view. As it was, I watched stuff on my phone.

*There is some sort of in-house App on offer that you can download. But, just for the one night, I was wary of it and didn't explore it further.

The Lodge, Kings Lynn

Lovely couple running the place, splendid breakfast, but the star item was the telly. A Smart telly, that works and also has an aerial, so you can get proper live telly, plus I was able to watch iPlayer and Youtube. But even better, it's customised. It's been mounted onto an old, vintage, dressing table, in place of the mirror, giving you a stylish item to look at even when it's not on. Total Changing Places meets Grand Designs.

No complaints, highly recommended.

Kings Highway, Derby

Good location, great free parking. Also the block of rooms is a nice distance across the car park from the pub, so I couldn't hear the fun of the World Cup match, which went on late and I'm sure get very loud.

Through no fault of yours, it was the hottest night of the year so far, in the middle of a heatwave, and the windows only open an inch and a half. So, despite the fan that you'd laid on, it was impossible to get any cool air into the room. Hottest night I've spent in years, naked on top of the sheets and still baking.

This is not a problem that will recur for another 11 months, I should imagine.

Holiday Inn Express, Braintree

You know what you're getting with a HIEx, this didn't disappoint

The weirdest feature, which seems to occur at almost every HIEx*, is that the TV (Samsung) has BBC 1 HD (Channel 101) but it has no sound!

So you have to watch BBC1 in lo res, or hope it's showing a silent movie. All other channels are fine. Why does this keep happening? Only ever BBC 1 HD, only ever Samsung TVs, almost always at Holiday Inn Expresses?

*NB This has not happened at any subsequent HIEx! In fact there were four I stayed at after this date that I didn't even mention in this blog because the reviews were just "no complaints". Perhaps they got my notes?

The Blossoms, Liverpool

The location is quiet, though I could hear fellow residents a bit, and I could park for free on the street. Good shops nearby so I was able to forage for myself.

No real complaints, though the sound bleed from the other floor was noticeable, not too much. Let's just say it's a cosy little room, with everything squeezed in. The Tv works well, which suits me.

Staybridge Suites, Brighton

Better breakfast than I expected (they said continental, but as far as I could see it was a full buffet breakfast, just like a HIExpress) + a Smart TV that works (you don't get that at HIEx)

It's an aircon-based place, with windows that don't open (at least our room was), so on one of the hottest nights of the year we had the choice of the noise of the aircon, or getting really hot, when a window that opened would have been just right. (I don't know what we do if we have a pandemic again, but let's worry about that when it comes, eh?)

March 2026

Restored Circus Wagon, North Yorkshire (above)

This was the most novel place I've stayed (I'm usually a hotel, not a camping person). A tiny little wagon that blows around in the wind and is freezing overnight (it was one of the coldest nights of the year), with the toilet and shower block a walk across a field, with a little fan heater to warm it up, and fairy lights to light it, no TV, and I didn't get the wifi code.

Had the most enjoyable night. Honestly. It was a novelty, and who doesn't want to tell everyone they stayed in a circus wagon?

This would be a lot more bearable in warmer weather, and won't suit lovers of comfort and luxury. But for an anecdote-worthy change, at a brilliant price, it was well worth it.

The owners contacted me the next day apologising that they hadn't known I was staying (which is why they didn't give me the wifi code, and I imagine there would have been more fresh bedding had they known) and offering to give me a discount, but I declined. I got what I expected and enjoyed it.

You'll have to be prepared for it being cold in cold weather, and it is very small. Once the bed's folded out, it fills the cabin. And brace yourself for a freezing walk to the toilet, shower and kitchen. But if you're a regular camper you won't think twice about it and will love it

My Books And Where To Find Them...


Romeo & Juliet (Colour)	Romeo & Juliet (bw)	Richard The Third (Colour)	Richard The Third (bw)

Shakespeare Omnibus	Findlay Macbeth	Prince of Denmark Street	Midsummer Night's Dream Team

Tales From Bible (Col)	Tales From Bible (bw)	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories	Space Elain

Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Shakespeare comic	Kids Comics Annual 2027

Kids Comics Annual 2026	Kids Comics Annual 2025	Socks Do Shakespeare	Colouring Books

Comic Cuts Podcast Stats

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 10:39:27 +0000

Season Two of Comic Cuts The Panel Show continues to rumble on, with me managing to release a new episode every fortnight right through the summer and into the autumn. Whether it's setting the world alight listener-wise it's hard to tell. Well, actually, not that hard if I look at the statistics. Which we shall do together now. Here comes a table of the episodes of Comic Cuts The Panel Show, in Top Of The Pops reverse chart order, with stats for audio episodes, video episodes, and improvement since I last measured them on June 6th.

.	Guests	Series/ Episode	Audio downloads	Increase since Jun	Video views
1	Jeevani Charika & Alan Snow	1:18	308	+3	6
2	Alan Moore & Steve Moore 1982	2:07	295	+110	292
3	Emma Byrne & PJ Holden	1:17	257	+4	38
4	Juliette Burton & Gary Northfield	1:12	253	+4	44
5	Brian Bolland & Rianne Rowlands	1:10	247	+6	168
6	Adam Roche & Hannah Berry	1:13	243	+17	158
7	Doug Segal & Iszi Lawrence	1:01	205	+2	30
8	Louise Leigh & Ashley Storrie	1:04	202	+3	6
9	Sonia Leong & Nigel Parkinson	1:02	174	+3	73
10	Mike Collins & Ali Cook	2:06	166	+76	27
11	Peter Hogan & Bethany Black	1:03	161	+3	23
12	Nerine Skinner & Steve Noble	1:15	153	+3	326
13	Nigel Auchterlounie & Laura Howell	1:06	150	+2	159
14	Rachael Smith & Paul Kerensa	1:14	150	+3	1
15	Laura Watton & David Leach	1:08	149	+3	59
16	Jessica Martin & Wil Hodgson	1:05	143	+3	71
17	Dean Friedman & Juliet Myers	1:09	139	+3	61
18	Metaphrog	1:11	138	+5	29
19	Jaleela Galbraith & Okse	1:07	133	+4	109
20	Bennett Arron & Susan Murray	1:16	131	+4	31
21	Comic Cuts Trailer	1:00	128	+2	-
22	Steve Dillon Interview 1982	2:00	114	+3	35
23	Scott Agnew & Mitch Benn	2:01	80	+9	37
24	Davey Jones & Andre Vincent	2:09	76	+37	67
25	Liz Million & Rich Johnston	2:08	65	+14	23
26	Steve Otis Gunn & Andrew O'Neill	2:11	60	new	29
27	Louisa Gummer & Paulus	2:02	59	+2	17
28	Margaret Cabourn Smith & Ian Moore	2:10	56	new	38
29	Helen Quigley & Paul Savage	2:04	53	+4	29
30	Dan McDaid & Sapphira Olson	2:12	52	new	70
31	Alex Milway & Marc Jackson	2:03	51	+5	7
32	Shelly Bond & Davy Francis	2:13	49	new	31
33	Angie Belcher & Roland Moore	2:05	47	+4	10
34	Howard Read & Spring Day	2:14	39	new	56
35	Charmian Hughes & Pau Scorpi	2:15	31	new	40
36	Wendy Wason & Alasdair Beckett King	2:16	-	new	-
37	tbc	2:17	-	new	-
38	tbc	2:18	-	new	-
39	tbc	2:19	-	new	-
40	tbc	2:20	-	new	-

So some very interesting stats there. The big highlights being:

• The Alan Moore & Steve Moore interview from 1982 being far and away the most listened to episode of the new season, continuing to attract listeners all the time. And being the second most watched video, despite having no actual video content.

• Mike Collins & Ali Cook adding listeners all the time, while mostly episodes from the new season stop getting big numbers after their first week or so.

• Adam Roche and Hannah Berry being the biggest growing episode of season one, continuing to bump themselves up the chart.

• Those video stats, in particular Nerine Skinner & Steve Noble, whose unedited video version has outstripped even Alan Moore, with 326 views.

It's worth remembering that, with every episode getting at least an additional 3 downloads every couple of months, this explains why the Jeevani Charika/Alan Snow and Emma Byrne/PJ Holden eps are so high up the chart, because they were each, for a long time, the last episode released, and sat there attracting all our first-time listeners over the four or five years the podcast was inactive. Likewise almost all of season one has more listeners than season two. This will change over time.

Onwards and upwards, more episodes are in production, and show little sign of stopping quite yet.

My Books And Where To Find Them...


Romeo & Juliet (Colour)	Romeo & Juliet (bw)	Richard The Third (Colour)	Richard The Third (bw)

Shakespeare Omnibus	Findlay Macbeth	Prince of Denmark Street	Midsummer Night's Dream Team

Tales From Bible (Col)	Tales From Bible (bw)	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories	Space Elain

Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Shakespeare comic	Kids Comics Annual 2027

Kids Comics Annual 2026	Kids Comics Annual 2025	Socks Do Shakespeare	Colouring Books

Book Sales September

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 16:09:11 +0000

Just a few of the many faces I drew, out of just under 200 drawn across two days at the Cardiff Showmasters comicon. The deal is "you don't have to have it if you don't want it, let's see how it comes out..." and a minute later, when I've drawn it, "it'd be two quid, or free with anything on my table." The pile of pictures in the Couldn't Afford Two Quid club was reassuringly small.

Live events / classes et al = 102 books, 4 comics (£1322)

(August 136 + 32, £1665; July 98 + 20, £1141; June 111 books + 17 comics, £1313; May 72, £862.90; April 185, £2111.54; March 181, £2153.41)

D2D - 8 books ($8.78)

(Aug = 19, $23.13; July = 84*, $27.65; June = 4, $5.42; May = 7, $8.09; April = 12, $13.54; March = 54, $74.79)

Etsy - 5 books (£23.92)

(Aug = 4, £23.77; July = 7, £56.97; June = 1, £7.99; May 6, £50.95; April 2, £8.98; March 4, £32.96)

Lulu - 3 books (£1.40)

(Aug = 4, £5.03; July 2, £1.43; June 4, £7.79; May 6, £12, April 6, £6.91; March 7, £6.11)

Blurb - x book, £x

(Aug = 1, £1.26; July = 0; June 1, $1.68; May 0, April 0, March 1, 61p)

Podcast downloads - 236

(Aug 205, July 188, June 259, May 278, April 164, March 96)

Blog views - x

(Aug 201,519, July 293,000, June 497,446; May 365,397, April 340,000, March 300,000)

Youtube views - 6291, subs +10

(Aug 2032, subs 4982 ; July 3555, subs 4977; June 2070, subs 4973)

*******

LIVE SALES

Sat Sept 12 - Cardiff Showmasters - 25 books + carics (£335)

3 x Romeo col

1 x Richard col

3 x FM

2 x MNDT

1 x Omnibus

5 x Space Elain col

9 x Colouring books:

- 6 x Doctors (sold out)

- 2 x Cult TV

- 1 x Punk

Sun Sept 13 - Cardiff day 2 - 16 books, 2 comics + carics (£267)

1 x Romeo bw

1 x Richard col

1 x Richard bw

2 x PODS

1 x MNDT

1 x Tales From Bible col

8 x Colouring books:

- 3 x 2020s (sold out)

- 2 x Cult TV

- 2 x Bowie

- 1 x 80s Superstar

2 x Shakes comic

Sat Sept 19 - Hi Vis Kings Heath - 39 books, 2 comics (£468)

4 x Romeo col

4 x Richard col

3 x Richard bw

2 x FM (sold out)

2 x PODS

6 x MNDT

2 x Omnibus

2 x Elain col

2 x Kids: Pigs

2 x Kids: Sausages

3 x Kids: Poopy

7 x Colouring books:

- 2 x Bowie

- 1 x Cult TV (sold out), Punk (sold out), Euro vol 2, 70s, 80s Superstars

2 x Shakes comic

Thurs Sept 24 - Arts Depot Finchley - 2 books (£16)

1 x FM

1 x PODS

Sunday Sept 27 - Marlborough Literary Festival - 20 books (£236)

4 x Romeo col

6 x Richard col

3 x FM

1 x Esther col

3 x Elain col

2 x Tales From Bible col

1 x Kids Poopy

Live book sales September 2026 = 102 books, 4 comics (£1322)

11 x Romeo col

1 x Romeo bw

12 x Richard col

4 x Richard bw

9 x FM

5 x PODS

9 x MNDT

3 x Omnibus

10 x Space Elain col

1 x Esther col

3 x Tales From Bible

4 x Kids: Poopy

2 x Kids: Sausages

2 x Kids: Pigs

24 x Colouring books

4 x Shakes comic

Draft2Digital - 8 books ($8.78)

4 x Romeo bw

1 x PODS, MNDT, Richard bw, Punk

Etsy - 5 books (£23.92)

1 x Doctors, 80s

1 x Doctors, 80s, 70s (digital)

Lulu - 3 books (£1.40)

1 x Tales From Bible col, Joseph col, Esther col

My Books And Where To Find Them...


Romeo & Juliet (Colour)	Romeo & Juliet (bw)	Richard The Third (Colour)	Richard The Third (bw)

Shakespeare Omnibus	Findlay Macbeth	Prince of Denmark Street	Midsummer Night's Dream Team

Tales From Bible (Col)	Tales From Bible (bw)	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories	Space Elain

Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Shakespeare comic	Kids Comics Annual 2027

Kids Comics Annual 2026	Kids Comics Annual 2025	Socks Do Shakespeare	Colouring Books

AI at Yorkshire Sculpture Park furore

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 08:06:50 +0000

Hev & I enjoyed a fab day out at Yorkshire Sculpture Park at the weekend, seeing lots of marvellous art and enjoying summer weather (which we're constantly thinking will be the last day of the summer). As part of the day, I noticed there was AI art on show as a part of a show in one of the galleries. So I posted about it on Facebook. Oh dear.

I wrote:

I hate to be the person who claims there’s AI art on show at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, but there’s AI art on show at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Update: There’s been an instagram post from the artist, included below.

Update: Turning off comments now

These sculptures by Annie Montgomerie are pleasant and very clearly hand made, but they’re standing on plinths decorated with AI that (to my eye) screams AI. Check them out.

See the gibberish words on the mouse behind M for Monkey? The crazy ear on the rabbit behind A for Alpaca? Or the mutated dog behind D for Dog? If those aren’t generative AI art I’ll be amazed.

All works are on sale, for thousands of pounds, at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, a respected art establishment. Today in AI.

This got lots of responses. In fact, if I'm reading this chart below correctly, my post was viewed by 181,700 people and has, somehow, earned me $23.51, and I do not know how, or whether I'll actually receive that.

This was not, of course the reason I posted it. I posted it to draw attention to AI art in places where I, possibly self-righteously, don't think it should be appearing. I also hoped Yorkshire Sculpture Park would be made aware of it and perhaps mark it as AI art. This is I think my position: AI art is a tool people will use, and we should be told when they have. I don't like it, but I can't stem its tide.

What I didn't want was a pile-on onto the artist. It turns out it was the artist's daughter that supplied the AI plinth art, and the artist posted on Instagram in response:

Annie Montgomerie Art

There has been a lot of unkindness about the display blocks for my exhibition at YSP. When I was creating this exhibition I experienced some very hard situations and had a complete breakdown. I’m still recovering now with anxiety and depression. The comments about ai has snowballed this morning. My daughter kindly helped with the display and I wanted them to look like vintage picture blocks. I am so sorry if I have offended anyone with the ai used (this was used only for the blocks and not the posters or anything else). Please accept my apologies and please no more hate comments. I will not use ai in my displays in the future. My actual work takes days to make with every intricate detail coming from my hands and heart.

Some of the posts on my Facebook did become quite vitriolic, and as ever the views are polarised. You can see the whole post and comments here:

Hopefully the affair has blown over now. I am sorry that my post seems to have led to a spate of online bullying of an artist and her daughter, and I hope that this will stop.

Hopefully Yorkshire Sculpture Park will address the situation, label AI art accordingly, and perhaps comment on their position on the inclusion of AI art under their remit.

Meanwhile onwards and upwards. I'll keep spotting AI art, and peoples opinions on it will remain divided.

My Books And Where To Find Them...


Romeo & Juliet (Colour)	Romeo & Juliet (bw)	Richard The Third (Colour)	Richard The Third (bw)

Shakespeare Omnibus	Findlay Macbeth	Prince of Denmark Street	Midsummer Night's Dream Team

Tales From Bible (Col)	Tales From Bible (bw)	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories	Space Elain

Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Shakespeare comic	Kids Comics Annual 2027

Kids Comics Annual 2026	Kids Comics Annual 2025	Socks Do Shakespeare	Colouring Books

Kev F's Comic Art Masterclasses - Autumn dates 2026

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 13:18:21 +0000

Sunday Sept 27 - Marlborough Literary Festival. 11.30 and 1pm - BOOK NOW

October 3rd 2026 - 10am - 12 midday at Kendal Library, Lake District - a FREE CLASS! Part of The Lakes International Comic Festival. Spaces are strictly limited, so book fast.

Kev F's Comic Art Masterclasses are a fun workshop for pupils aged 7 and up, drawing on my many years working for everyone from Beano and Marvel comics to Doctor Who and Red Dwarf to my current work adapting Shakespeare for kids. After two hours, everyone goes away with a comic containing a strip by every one of them, and a caricature by me.

More dates to be announced, watch this space!

My Books And Where To Find Them...


Romeo & Juliet (Colour)	Romeo & Juliet (bw)	Richard The Third (Colour)	Richard The Third (bw)

Shakespeare Omnibus	Findlay Macbeth	Prince of Denmark Street	Midsummer Night's Dream Team

Tales From Bible (Col)	Tales From Bible (bw)	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories	Space Elain

Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Shakespeare comic	Kids Comics Annual 2027

Kids Comics Annual 2026	Kids Comics Annual 2025	Socks Do Shakespeare	Colouring Books

Name These Comics - Comic Cuts Quiz No 1 & 2

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:43:09 +0000

10 comic strips - how many can you name?

Here come 10 comic strip panels, brought in by my guests on Comic Cuts The Panel Show, your favourite podcast about comics . In the show my fellow guest and I try and guess where these comic panels are from, now it’s your turn. Get ready to write down your ten guesses, tell me how well you do in the comments.

First two - in episode 1 of season 2 comedian Mitch Benn brought in this, easy peasy - and fellow comedian Scott Agnew brought in this. What’s it from? Any guesses? Write them down.

Numbers 3 & 4 on your Comic Cuts quiz card: when podcaster Margaret Cabourn Smith and crime writer Ian Moore came in, Margaret brought this panel. What’s that from and who’s it by? And Ian brought in this. Can you recognise the artist? And can you name the comic?

Here’s two more. When storyboard artist Mike Collins and magician Ali Cook came in, Mike brought in this - any ideas? I’ll give you extra points if you can name the artist. And Ali brought in this. You’re winning all the points if you can tell us where this is from and who it’s by.

Number 7 & 8 in today’s quiz: when Viz comics’ Davey Jones and stand up Andre Vincent came in, Davey brought us this. Can you recognise that artist? And what strip’s it from? And Andre brought in this. You might have a guess at the strip, I applaud anyone who knows the name of the writer and artist.

And finally numbers 9 & 10 for you to guess today - brought in by comedians Howard Read and Spring Day, Spring brought in this, probably one of the easier ones to guess, and Howard brought in this. You’ll kick yourself when you find out what it’s from.

So there you go, 10 comic strip panels. How many were you able to guess first time? Extra points if you get the artists and the writers. Anyone out there get 10 out of 10?

Oh you want to know the answers? Then you’ll need to listen to - or watch - Comic Cuts The Panel Show, your favourite podcast about comics. All the guests you’ve just seen were in season two, which is ongoing, you’ll find the links below or just type in Comic Cuts The Panel Show, wherever you get your pods cast

10 comic strips - how many can you name?

First two - in the very first episode we recorded for season one, comedians Iszi Lawrence and Doug Segal brought in these. This was Iszi’s panel, you might recognise the style, you might be able to name the writer and artist, can you name the book its from? And Doug brought in this. Turns out I knew the book quite well, but I didn’t recognise this early artist on the series. Can you guess them?

Numbers 3 & 4 on your Comic Cuts quiz card today: The Beano’s Nigel Parkinson and manga artist Sonia Leong brought in these gems. This was Nigels. Can you recognise this artist? Really famous amongst comic historians, what’s that strip? Extra points if you can tell us what comic it was in. And this was Sonia’s panel. This was very much if you know you know. Apparently it’s a legendary manga series, and this was me hearing about it for the first time.

Here’s two more, podcaster Adam Roche and former comics laureate Hannah Berry brought in two very different examples. This was Adam’s, quite possibly the funniest strip we’ve ever struggled to describe on the show, can you name the artist? I’ll give you a clue, he’s been a guest on the podcast himself. And can you name the strip? And Hannah brought in this. Another one I had never heard of, you get all the brownie points if you know this one.

Numbers 7 & 8 in today’s quiz: when cartoonist Marc Jackson and childrens author Alex Milway came in, Marc brought this panel in. You recognise the character, but have you any idea what comic it’s from and who wrote and drew it? And Alex brought in this. Yeah good luck with that one.

And finally, number 9 & 10, when Beano creators Nigel Auchterlounie and Laura Howell were on the show, Nigel brought in this strip, which you might be able to have a stab at. Fabulous. And Laura brought in this. A nice story came with it, but can you possibly name the comic it’s from? I’m not even sure we worked out who the artist was, maybe you know better.

So there you go, 10 comic strip panels. How many were you able to guess first time? Extra points if you get the artists and the writers. Anyone out there get 10 out of 10?

Oh you want to know the answers? Then you’ll need to listen to - or watch - Comic Cuts The Panel Show, your favourite podcast about comics. These guests came from seasons one and two of the show, you’ll find the links below or just type in Comic Cuts The Panel Show, wherever you get your pods cast

My Books And Where To Find Them...


Romeo & Juliet (Colour)	Romeo & Juliet (bw)	Richard The Third (Colour)	Richard The Third (bw)

Shakespeare Omnibus	Findlay Macbeth	Prince of Denmark Street	Midsummer Night's Dream Team

Tales From Bible (Col)	Tales From Bible (bw)	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories	Space Elain

Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Shakespeare comic	Kids Comics Annual 2027

Kids Comics Annual 2026	Kids Comics Annual 2025	Socks Do Shakespeare	Colouring Books

Massive Space Banana Invasion - a week of comics by kids in Hull

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 15:59:43 +0000

Ten different groups of kids across five days in ten different libraries? That's what I call a solid week's work. Thankyou to Hull Libraries for making it possible. Look at all of these comics. See, there's more...

I have definitely never worked in as so many different libraries in one city before. I don't know if I would have thought there were that many libraries in a city the size of Hull. But I am happy to confirm they are, and their kids make comics that look like these.

Greenwood and Gypsyville libraries on the Monday started off a worrying trend, whereby between 15 and 20 kids had put their names down for the class, but only 5 and 7 respectively turned up. They had fine classes between them and produced sterling comics, but it was a shame I wasn't working with a larger group.

The low attendance continued at The Freedom Centre and Bransholme Library, where I was realising how glad I was to be on a fixed fee rather than a doorsplit for this week's classes. They were, of course, free for the kids to attend. But as often happens when that's the arrangement, it costs the parents nothing to forget about it and take the kids somewhere else instead. So it was that, after two days, we were averaging 6 kids per class.

Waudby library stands in the middle of a wasteland, within sight of Hull Kingston Rovers' stadium. Hull can be a funny place to look at sometimes. It was, for a few days, also quite a smelly one. I'd arrived during the annual stinky period, which no-one can quite explain but seems to be a regular occurence whereby, as a possible result of farmers spreading muck in the surrounding areas, Hull smells like a mix of poo and BO. Most unpleasant, and exacerbated by us being at the end of the longest uninterrupted heatwave for fifty years. Anyway, smell notwithstanding, the classes at Waudby and East Park managed only half a dozen pupils apiece I'm afraid.

The classes at Fred Moores Library and Western Library managed to reach the two extremes of the week, bringing our biggest audience at Fred's, a dozen kids, and my smallest ever at Western, just three. This day, the Thursday, also saw the arrival of the long awaited rain which washed away the smell. So there was that.

I can confirm Hull has more libraries than the ten I worked at this week, because the one I was scheduled to be at on Friday morning, Avenue, suffered a fire so I did my class instead at Central Library, for the usual five kids. In the afternoon, at Lighthill library, there were 4 kids. Meaning that, across the week, I'd presented my Comic Art Masterclass to a total of 60 kids. Which is, of course, the amount I'll usually teach in a day in a school. The classes were of course marvellous fun for everyone involved, and I'm really pleased Hull had me in to do them. I just wish I'd been able to offer them more bang for their buck and sent a few hundred kids away happy.

The celebrities these ten groups chose to appear in my demonstration strip were Taylor Swift, Tom Holland (three times), Cristiano Ronaldo, Tony Hawk (not the Radio 4 one, the skateboarding one), old creepy evil Michael Jackson, Ariana Grande, Shakira, and I Show Speed.

My Books And Where To Find Them...


Romeo & Juliet (Colour)	Romeo & Juliet (bw)	Richard The Third (Colour)	Richard The Third (bw)

Shakespeare Omnibus	Findlay Macbeth	Prince of Denmark Street	Midsummer Night's Dream Team

Tales From Bible (Col)	Tales From Bible (bw)	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories	Space Elain

Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Shakespeare comic	Kids Comics Annual 2027

Kids Comics Annual 2026	Kids Comics Annual 2025	Socks Do Shakespeare	Colouring Books

Moaning about TV and other August Facebook waffle

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 15:47:00 +0000

Aug 5. I rarely buy comics, and can’t remember when I last sent off for any. But last week I bought three copies of Master Of Kung Fu (by Paul Gulacy and Doug Moench) on eBay to complete this run, from 1976 which I’d started rereading for the first time probably in fifty years, having seen me mention them in my teenage diary.

Turns out I never had the complete run of this story, so I’m reading it for the first time and it’s brilliant. So influential on me at the time. Yet I was never such a fan or completist that I bothered to get the three missing issues

Not that I could have at the time. In 1976 we had no comic shop, I wouldn’t see my first until later that year, and wouldn’t see my first fanzine with ads for back issues till the following year. By which time I’d moved on to something else, like you do at that age.

Anyway, should you be able to get your hands on them, highly recommended Master Of Kung Fu numbers 44 to 50.

****

Aug 6. This week in Ai: Well this is a rum do. I wanted to read this article in the Guardian about video director Tim Pope, but I had to drive to work, so I chose the Listen To This Article option

It’s read by Ai.

For the most part it sounds like a plummy voice over artist reading the words, but every now and again it puts the emphasis on the wrong word, and in some parts, eg a exchange of dialogue between two people, turns it into gibberish. It clearly is not checked or corrected. It’s given to Ai to read, and another nail is hammered in the lid of the voice over talking book industry. By The Guardian.

****

So sad to see Leicester Comedy Festival go. But isn’t it amazing how long it’s lasted? Has there been anything like it before or since it started?

Since I first put a show on at LCF in 2001 I’ve also performed at dozens of other “comedy festivals”, most of them a collection of Edfringe Previews desperate for a gig in the summer, and almost all of them winding up after two or three years at the most. Glasgow is the nearest rival to Leicester, for quality and longevity (Edinburgh doesn’t count, different kettle of fish)

I hope Leicester City Council manage to pull something together for next year. I’ll definitely be performing there if they do. Will you?

PS: Fringe Festivals are another whole story, and I’ve written screeds about them over the years. Starting with Edinburgh, they grew in the 60s, boomed in the 70s, and didn’t really get taken over by comedy till the 90s. But they remain, at heart, theatre and art festivals. Leicester was the first actual Comedy Festival, something we must never forget.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj4kqvdggg5o

Aug 2. I actually have a real fear of loss at the threat of them turning off Freeview. Having a TV that you can just turn on and instantly get a choice of hundreds of channels, starting with BBC1 and working up from there, is one of the simplest and greatest things we have.

And WiFi-only telly is a living hell!

I say this as I wake up in my second hotel this week that has a WiFi only telly. Your only choice is apps. Which, if you don’t already subscribe to them, you can’t use. And if you settle for nice reliable iPlayer, you are then a hostage to the WiFi. Which, if it’s dodgy, which of course it is, you’re buggered. You’re sat in silence

No Talking Pictures TV? No pressing “707” and listening to 6 Music? No BBC Breakfast with an actual clock reminding you what the time is? How do people live without these vital lifelines?

And don’t get me started on LG’s own channels! What is this hell on earth supply of Only Stuff You’d Never Want To Watch?

Is there an app you can put on a WiFi tv that gives you all the live Freeview channels to scroll through?

(above) What’s a good way of making my email look like it’s a) not spam and b) written by a human?

I know, I’ll begin with “Hey team (insert performers name)”

And I’ll be from a company called Capture Accounting. Cos the name Phishing Accounting was taken.

Happiness is: the library that makes special Evaluation Sheets with your picture on. Which all the kids then fill out with 5 stars all asking for the class to be longer. Sorry kids, I charge by the second.

***

Aug 3: on seeing poll from Clacton

I knew the pro-Binface commentary on my FB was a bit skewed, cos everyone comes from Camden and Brighton and no one from Clacton. But blimey I never realised how wide of the mark all the “Binface could win” posts actually were.

Well, we had fun while it lasted. Christ Clacton is a cesspool of racists.

Aug 11. A report from the chalkface of kids summer holiday art classes: they don’t do the “6-7” hands anymore. Apart from the occasional outlier, usually young or less hip, they’ve totally stopped doing the hands. I know cos I’d incorporated it into my routine. I’ve now dropped that bit.

This gives me hope that right wing radicalisation could go the same way. They’ve always struck me as similar, the knee-jerk reaction to “woke” (and all the nonsense that extends from that, from transphobia to stop the boats) is like 8 year olds doing the 6-7 hands. They don’t really know why they’re doing it, and their explanations never stand up to logic and reason, but they do it every time.

Watching the “Nigel” voters in Clacton, and Maga heads, it’s the same thing. They’ve got a head full of 6-7 hands, and they could forget it all, like waking from a dream

Imagine, it could go the same way as hating all Argentinians, or Libyans - remember when they were the bogeymen? Or anti-vaxxers, whatever happened to them? Gosh, it could even be like trying to find a nazi in 1950s Germany.

We can hope.

***

Aug 9. It was quite the week for comicons this weekend. Am I right that I just missed MCM in Birmingham, Caption in Oxford, and the Wales Comic Con all this same weekend?

Me, I was doing classes in Rickmansworth, Rochester and Chatham, after which I ended up selling just one fewer book than I'd sold last weekend at the Liverpool Book Fest, and I got paid for the classes too.

Still, it would have been good to get to those cons I missed. Remember when there was just one con a year? Three every weekend is giving me Lake Fomo

****

Aug 12. An eclipse, you say? I am reminded of the last one, glimpsed from Clevedon seafront. Ruined by some idiot who played Total Eclipse of the Heart from his car radio at full blast for the duration.

Also I tried to film it on a video camera with the exposure set on automatic. So as the sky darkened, it opened the aperture more. The result, a film where people stand on a seafront and then nothing happens.

To the sound of Bonnie Tyler

***

Top tip for wearers of Meta Pervert Specs: you can look directly at the eclipse right the way through.

***

Aug 14. Oh well done Welsh Government. This alert just came up in all our phones. In Welsh only. Cannot find an English translation. I assume if we don’t speak Welsh we just have to burn (or whatever its warning against)

That alarm made me drop my crepe suzette just as it was flambé-ing. Luckily it went over next door’s hedge, and they’re out. Phew.

***

Aug 15. I hate to share the Daily Hate, but because it’s free on BorrowBox I occasionally read it, to see how the other half think. (Usually evil things, about ‘woke’). Here’s a classic from yesterday’s edition: Ian Botham has an explanation for the wildfires. You’ll never guess what. Go on, have a guess.

Is it global warming? Of course not, remember where you’re reading this.

Is it lack of police? Lack of things for teenagers to do in rural areas? Pure bad luck and coincidence?

No. Ian Botham explains that the cause of the wildfires is… rewilding.

Yes, everything’s burning because we’ve made more stuff to burn. Why did no one else spot this genius solution?

Moron

***

On the death of Jason Arday: How the right behave. Just one right wing publication (out of many) hounding just one man, I believe the correct term would be “disproportionately”

A pile on. Bullying.

Try and excuse it how you will. Bring up “but what about the left and Ann Widdecombe” as much as you like. This is how bullies behave.

This is how bullies who would like to pretend they’re not in the slightest bit racist behave. Remember all of their names and be slow to forgive them.

Last night I found on YouTube and watched, for the first time in 51 years, episode one of Rock Follies. I loved it.

It’s very much of its time, but lots of the humour still works and it makes we want to keep watching the rest of the series.

I loved it at the time, though I was a bit young to understand a lot of the adult content, and bought both of the albums, which I also still love.

I don’t know whether this is a legit upload, and whether the rights owners get paid. I know with a lot of YouTube these days that actually happens, so I’d like to hope that’s the case here. If not, I apologise. However I pay for YouTube, so I hope someone who deserves it (and is still alive) is getting their share.

Recommended.

How you know you need new pencils: when you start sharpening your own name off.

Aug 17. Just answered a question in a comics group, then discovered I wasn’t a member of that group! So my waffle is about to disappear into the ether. Before it does, here’s my answer to the question “why are comics taken more seriously in the US than the UK?”

I’d say culture. In the US their newspaper strips were always a bigger part of everyone’s life, while they were much more downplayed here. Similarly we had a very big snobbery about comics being for kids (ie nursery comics and The Beano) and an insistence on kids growing out of them, while the US (& Europe) was developing comic books for older readers in the 1960s.

In the 60s and 70s you get the first academic and high brow coverage of comics as culture, and this is much bigger in US and Europe, much smaller in UK.

Likewise underground comics which are at the heart of counter culture in the US, and much less here.

So by the 80s when you get Raw, Speigelman, Burns and the Miller and Moore graphic novel explosion, you have a generation of intelligent grown ups who accept comics as a part of literature and high culture, which is pretty much the opposite of the situation in the UK where any press coverage will still be from the standpoint of The Beano and “smash pow” sound effects.

Hence the 21st century, where comics had never become anything bigger than a minority interest in the UK but had long been a familiar staple in the US.

****

Aug 17 Anyone else make the mistake of trying to drive up the M6 this afternoon? My original eta in Wigan, from Chepstow, was 5:52.

After passing a nasty smash and a completely closed bit of motorway that took 4 hours to get off, I finally arrived at 9:55. A nearly nine hour drive, which satnav tells me I can do in three hours home if I set off now.

Worst thing about missing University Challenge and Only Connect is I’ve already seen a couple of spoilers. Eeh, is there no end to my #firstworldproblems?

****

Aug 19: What’s the difference between manga and comics?

I want to see these classes. I have a real problem defining the difference between manga and western comics. And remember I teach comics. A lot.

When kids and teachers ask me what’s the difference between manga and comics, what should I tell them?

How do you explain the difference, fellow comic makers?

(many comments follow, might need new thread)

****

Aug 21. The good news? I recently discovered reading papers on BorrowBox and just found the Washington Posts’s daily spread of all the latest newspapers strips!

The less good news? They are mostly shit.

But free. Get them while you still can, kids!

****

Watched an excellent movie last night, The Player. And good luck trying to do the same yourself.

Ever since loving The Studio last year, which is very much inspired by The Player, we’ve wanted to watch Robert Altman’s dark comedy classic again, having seen it in the cinema thirty years ago. But could we find it anywhere? No streamers have it, it’s not on YouTube, and when I looked online for DVDs they all had silly prices. For the last year I’ve been scouring the charity shop shelves hoping a copy would turn up.

Then last week I looked again on eBay and found a copy, pristine and still in its shrink wrap, for a fiver. Sometimes you just have to wait.

Coincidentally Marina Hyde mentioned it on this week’s The Rest Is Entertainment, and recommended it as an example of a movie with a certain plot feature (no spoilers, though if you listen to the episode, that whole item is spoiler central). Someone ought to tell her it’s nearly impossible to see.

Anyhow, if you can, watch the brilliant The Player*, it has stood the test of time. And the cameos! I had forgotten how many there were.

Afterwards we watched episode one of The Studio again. Also still great.

(* Has anyone found anywhere else you can watch The Player? I’d like to recommend it if there is)

***

Aug 26. Surprised to find myself welling up at the Dolly Parton tributes on BBC Breakfast. And I'm reminded that what makes me sentimental is not people dying, that's just what happens, but what people have done in their lives. And when someone does good things who, in a way, didn't have to, that's what always gets me. Dolly's altruistic work, for kids reading, for covid, as an LGBT ally - in her country musical environment which is very much not supportive in that way - that is just so impressive.

So many people get rich and start acting selfishly, entitled, mirroring the self-interested people who surround them. But despite the odds Dolly didn't do that.

There is an excellent podcast about her that I heard a couple of years ago (I forget its name) which told her story really well. She comes out of it better than stars usually come out of bio-podcasts.

So, well done Dolly. (Apart from, as James Cook has pointed out, her abysmal UK chart performance, which saw her having next to no hit singles on her own. 9 to 5 got to number 47 for godsake. Honestly, why did she have to have her musical heyday at the height of New Romanticism? For all her qualities, she was never going to beat Adam Ant and Haircut 100, was she?)

For someone who’s spent so long in Northern Ireland lately, the name of my hotel in Hull is a little unsettling.

Andy Burnham Goes To Greggs -- comics by kids

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 19:38:19 +0000

Three days worth of comics by kids in my Comic Art Masterclasses in Wigan, Belfast, and Limavady. Have I ever mentioned distance is no object?

Wigan & Leigh libraries came after the longest drive I can remember for many a year. When I set off on Monday lunchtime, satnav suggested my three hours would be nearer four. What it didn’t anticipate was a two car crash on the M6 that blocked it for a few hours, followed by a closed stretch of M6 which took four hours to escape from. Having thought I’d get to my hotel in time to eat and watch Only Connect and Uni Challenge, I finally got there at 9:50 after a journey of slightly over eight and a half hours! Anyway, the classes the next day were smashing.

Grand Opera House Belfast was quicker to get to than Wigan. Left the house at 4.30, caught a 7.05 flight, picked up my hire car, and was parked and loaded into the Opera House by just after 9, ready for a class starting at 10. Could I make this paragraph more prosaic and boring? Of course both classes were delightful

Roe Valley Arts Limavady was another treat and joy, though we only attracted four punters to the afternoon session, which is a shame. What do I care, I’m not on a doorsplit. Smiley face emoji.

The celebrities these six groups chose to appear in my demonstration strip were Mr Beast, Scary Evil Old Michael Jackson (twice), Damon Albarn, Taylor Swift, and David Attenborough.

My Books And Where To Find Them...


Romeo & Juliet (Colour)	Romeo & Juliet (bw)	Richard The Third (Colour)	Richard The Third (bw)

Shakespeare Omnibus	Findlay Macbeth	Prince of Denmark Street	Midsummer Night's Dream Team

Tales From Bible (Col)	Tales From Bible (bw)	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories	Space Elain

Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Shakespeare comic	Kids Comics Annual 2027

Kids Comics Annual 2026	Kids Comics Annual 2025	Socks Do Shakespeare	Colouring Books

Gunn & O'Neill to Hughes & Scorpi - 5 episodes of Comic Cuts The Panel Show

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 14:44:56 +0000

In every episode of Comic Cuts The Panel Show, my guests bring in a comic panel, we try and guess where it's from, and we have a nice chat. Here are the images from the episodes starring:

Steve Otis Gunn & Andrew O'Neill

Dan McDaid & Sapphira Olson

Shelly Bond & Davy Francis

Howard Read & Spring Day

Charmian Hughes and Pau Scorpi

Listen to Comic Cuts The Panel Show here on Amazon, or here on Spotify, or here on Buzzsprout, or here on Youtube - or wherever you get your pods cast.

My Books And Where To Find Them...


Romeo & Juliet (Colour)	Romeo & Juliet (bw)	Richard The Third (Colour)	Richard The Third (bw)

Shakespeare Omnibus	Findlay Macbeth	Prince of Denmark Street	Midsummer Night's Dream Team

Tales From Bible (Col)	Tales From Bible (bw)	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories	Space Elain

Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Shakespeare comic	Kids Comics Annual 2027

Kids Comics Annual 2026	Kids Comics Annual 2025	Socks Do Shakespeare	Colouring Books

Kids vs The Art Man - more comics by kids

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 18:27:14 +0000

A busy summer of Comic Art Masterclasses in libraries and art centres continues with these fine examples from Rickmansworth, Rochester, Chatham, Woolwich and Eltham. Seven groups squeezed into three days? How does he do it?

This marathon weekend of comic classes began on Friday at Watersmeet Arts in Rickmansworth, my second return visit, and the second time we've tried three classes in one day. This time we shuffled the timings, so they were at 10, 1, and 4, and that gave us quite a good turnout for all three sessions. Added to which they bought a very healthy number of books, for which many thanks.

Here's the comic by the third group of the day, and the flipchart to boot.

Then Saturday saw a class in Rochester in the morning and Chatham in the afternoon. One slightly fuller than the other, both delightful.

If it's Monday it must be a class at Woolwich library in the morning, and Eltham library in the afternoon. These were ones where I handled the ticket sales myself and fell foul of some QR codes that didn't work, followed by some amended artwork that I got wrong so they still had the dud codes on. Both venues had these posters proudly displayed on the walls, both showing the codes that didn't work. A major cock up on my part that saw only 7 kids in the morning class and 9 in the afternoon. Though this was very much brightened up by the nearly £150 worth of books the parents bought afterwards.

The celebrities these seven groups chose to appear in my demonstration strip were young Michael Jackson, old scary evil Michael Jackson (twice), Mr Beast, Professor Alan Grant out of Jurassic Park (as played by the recently departed Sam Neill), Andy Burnham, and most original suggestion of the week Henry The Third.

My Books And Where To Find Them...


Romeo & Juliet (Colour)	Romeo & Juliet (bw)	Richard The Third (Colour)	Richard The Third (bw)

Shakespeare Omnibus	Findlay Macbeth	Prince of Denmark Street	Midsummer Night's Dream Team

Tales From Bible (Col)	Tales From Bible (bw)	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories	Space Elain

Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Shakespeare comic	Kids Comics Annual 2027

Kids Comics Annual 2026	Kids Comics Annual 2025	Socks Do Shakespeare	Colouring Books

Why My Nan Exploded Her Toilet - the half-&-half comics by kids

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:52:10 +0000

Three days and six libraries in the various suburbs of Swansea produced these six smashing comics. And can you spot the unusual similarity in their compositions? Go on, have a closer look. Four out of five of them have an interesting layout, for a very specific reason.

Day one was Clydach and Gorseinon libraries. And it was at that very first library I discovered they only had a small copier, with just an A4 plate. Meaning I couldn't reduce the A3 cover artwork down as I would normally do. All I could do was treat it as two A4 pages and copy them two-up on a page, resulting in a gap between the top and bottom of the page. Here, on Psychopathic Murderer, I rather "hung a lampshade" on it, as they say in TV Tropes, and made a feature of the gap in the middle. But as the week progressed I tried to be more subtle about it. (Gorseinon Library had a full sized copier).

Can you spot which library, out of Llansamlet and Morriston, had the A4 copier and which had the A3? See, you can't even spot the join. Skill.

Third day of libraries, second day of Marvel classic cover homages, and first day where both copiers were only A4s, so they both needed a gap in the middle. I'm very pleased with how I disguised the join on the Dogman cover (the hat is just above the join, the buildings below go right up to it), though it does look a bit weird on the Hulk one. The fact is, in actual design, you almost always have something interesting smack bang in the centre of the page, and it's really quite odd to leave a gap there.

The celebrities these six groups of kids chose to appear in my demonstration strip were Michael Jackson (the scary old evil version, three times), Simon Cowell, Ronaldo, and I Show Speed (a Youtuber).

My Books And Where To Find Them...


Romeo & Juliet (Colour)	Romeo & Juliet (bw)	Richard The Third (Colour)	Richard The Third (bw)

Shakespeare Omnibus	Findlay Macbeth	Prince of Denmark Street	Midsummer Night's Dream Team

Tales From Bible (Col)	Tales From Bible (bw)	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories	Space Elain

Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Shakespeare comic	Kids Comics Annual 2027

Kids Comics Annual 2026	Kids Comics Annual 2025	Socks Do Shakespeare	Colouring Books

Book Sales August

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 14:39:29 +0000

Here's me starting the month in Liverpool with a good day's event

Live events / classes et al = 136 books + 32 comics (£1665)

(July 98 + 20, £1141; June 111 books + 17 comics, £1313; May 72, £862.90; April 185, £2111.54; March 181, £2153.41)

D2D - 19 books ($23.13)

(July = 84*, $27.65; June = 4, $5.42; May = 7, $8.09; April = 12, $13.54; March = 54, $74.79)

Etsy - 4 books (£23.77)

(July = 7, £56.97; June = 1, £7.99; May 6, £50.95; April 2, £8.98; March 4, £32.96)

Lulu - 4 books (£5.03)

(July 2, £1.43; June 4, £7.79; May 6, £12, April 6, £6.91; March 7, £6.11)

Blurb - 1 book, £1.26

(July = 0; June 1, $1.68; May 0, April 0, March 1, 61p)

Podcast downloads - 205

(July 188, June 259, May 278, April 164, March 96)

Blog views - 201,519

(July 293,000, June 497,446; May 365,397, April 340,000, March 300,000)

Youtube views - 2032, subs 4982

(July 3555, subs 4977; June 2070, subs 4973)

Live Sales August 2026 = 136 books + 32 comics (£1665)

2nd August - Liverpool Book fest - 25 books + 10 comics (£322)

7 x Romeo col

4 x Richard col

1x FM

1 x PODS

4 x MNDT (sold out)

2 x Elain col (sold out)

2 x Elain bw (sold out)

1 x Joseph col

1 x Tales From Bible (sold out)

1 x Doctors colouring

1 x Euro vol 2 colouring

10 x Shakes comic (sold out)

3rd August - Clydach & Gorseinon Libraries - 8 books (£98)

3 x Romeo col

1 x Richard col

1 x PODS

3 x Kids comics

4th August - Morriston & Llansmalet Libraries - 1 book, 1 comic (£18)

1 x Romeo col, 1 x Shakes comic

5th August - Brynhyfryd & Penlan Libraries - 1 book, 1 comic (£12)

1 x FM, 1 x Shakes comic

7th August - Watersmeet Rickmansworth

10am class - 8 books, 1 comic (£101)

1pm class - 10 books, 1 comic (£110)

4pm class - 1 book (£19)

2 x Romeo col

2 x Romeo bw

3 x Richard col

2 x Omnibus (sold out)

1 x Tales From Bible (sold out)

2 x Shakes comic

9 x Kids comics

- 3 x Humpty

- 3 x Sausages

- 2 x Pig

- 1 x Poopy

Once more the books of kids comics prove popular after classes. I’ll order more.

8th August - Rochester & Chatham Libraries - 5 books, 2 comics (£66)

2 x Romeo col

1 x Romeo bw

1 x Richard col

1 x Esther col

1 x Kids comic (Humpty)

2 x Shakes comic

10th August - Woolwich & Eltham libraries - 13 books, 3 comics (£148)

3 x Romeo col

1 x Romeo bw

1 x Richard col

2 x Richard bw

1 x PODS

2 x MNDT

1 x Omnibus

1 x Esther

1 x Kids comics*

(*Anime That took your Mom Away, only copy)

3 x Shakes comic

18th August - Wigan & Leigh libraries - 7 books, 3 comics (£100)

2 x Romeo col

1 x Richard col

1 x Elain col

1 x Kids (Poopy)

2 x Tales From Bible (sold out)

3 x Shakes comic

20th August - Grand Opera House Belfast - 12 books, 3 comics (£176)

3 x Romeo col

1 x Richard col

2 x FM

1 x MNDT

2 x Omnibus (sold out)

3 x Space Elain (sold out)

1 x Kids comics (Sausages)

3 x Shakes comic

As I did with Northern Ireland last month, I posted a box of books to my venue. This time, though, I'm only doing two days. The box contained 31 books and 6 comics, so I've sold a third of them in a day. Will I need to post a box back tomorrow afternoon, or will the remainder fit in my bag? I'll be able to tell you at close of play tomorrow. Limavady ahoy.

21st August - Roe Valley Limavady - 2 books 2 comics (£28)

1 x Richard bw

1 x Kids (Pigs)

2 x Shakes comic

24th Aug - Greenwood library Hull - 2 bks (£20)

1 x FM, Elain

25th Aug - Freedom Centre Hull - 2 bks 2 com (£36)

2 x Romeo col, Shakes comic

25th Aug - Bransholme Library Hull - 6 bks 2 com (£51)

1 x Romeo bw, Richard bw, FM

3 x PODS

2 x Shakes comic

(Not a typo, not a single book sold at either Hull library on Aug 26th)

27th Aug - Fred Moore’s Library Hull - 4 bks 5 comics (£68)

2 x Romeo col

1 x Rich col, PODS

5 x Shakes comic

27th Aug - Western Library Hull - 1 book (£12)

1 x Kids (Pig Attack)

30th Aug - Worcester Creed - 18 books + caricatures (£280)

5 x Romeo col

1 x Richard col

2 x FM

2 x MNDT

3 x Elain col

1 x Tales From Bible

1 x Kids (Poopy)

3 x Doctors Col (sold out)

3 x Col: 70s, 80s, Hollywood

Live book sales August = 136 books, 32 comics (£1665)

28 x Romeo col

4 x Romeo bw

13 x Richard col

3 x Richard bw

6 x FM

3 x PODS

9 x MNDT

5 x Omnibus

5 x Tales From Bible

9 x Elain col

2 x Elain bw

2 x Esther col

1 x Joseph col

18 x Kids comics (3 Poopy, 1 Anime, 4 Humpty, 4 Sausages, 3 Pig, 3 unknown)

8 x Colouring Books

27 x Shakes comic

Draft 2 Digital Sales August 2026 - 19 books* ($23.13)

5 x Romeo bw

3 x MNDT

2 x Space Elain bw

1 x FM, PODS, Punk, Richard bw

* Says 19 sales, only shows stats for 14

Etsy Sales August 2026 - 4 books (£23.77)

1 x Romeo col

1 x Euro vol 1

1 x Euro vol 1 digital

1 x Euro vol 2 digital

Lulu Sales August 2026 - 4 books (£5.03)

2 x Richard col

1 x FM, PODS

Blurb Sales August 2026 - 1 book £1.26

Unless Blurb starts taking a massive upturn, I may stop bothering to try and count these sales.

My Books And Where To Find Them...


Romeo & Juliet (Colour)	Romeo & Juliet (bw)	Richard The Third (Colour)	Richard The Third (bw)

Shakespeare Omnibus	Findlay Macbeth	Prince of Denmark Street	Midsummer Night's Dream Team

Tales From Bible (Col)	Tales From Bible (bw)	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories	Space Elain

Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Shakespeare comic	Kids Comics Annual 2027

Kids Comics Annual 2026	Kids Comics Annual 2025	Socks Do Shakespeare	Colouring Books

Middle Aged Men & other stories - a week of comics by kids

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 18:53:00 +0000

A week-full of comics by kids in Rhymney, The Hive Worcester, Cockerton and Darlington libraries, and Wollaton and Nottingham Central libraries.

Ysgol Y Lawnt summer school, Rhymney

The Hive in Worcester, morning and afternoon classes. And, gawd help me, I drew a new flipchart image each time, and gave them away to the kids. Because I was handing the tickets myself, I figured the venue was less invested in the classes so they wouldn't be bothered about keeping the flipchart image. Their systems were so Kafka-esque that getting photocopies done was a real headache. I had to open an account with Worcestershire libraries, then put money on my library card, then used that to bill the photocopies to. Singularly the most convoluted process I've had to go through to make the kids' comics.

Cockerton Library in the morning, Darlington Library in the afternoon. And as well as producing two sterling comics, they bought more books than any other place I've visited this month.

Wollaton Library in the morning, Nottingham Central Library in the afternoon. And Middle Aged Men must be one of the most unusual titles of the season.

The celebrities these seven groups chose to appear in my demonstration strip were Michael Jackson (scary evil old version), Michael Jackson (young version), Mr Beast, Harry Kane, David Attenborough, Ronaldo and Jackie Chan.

My Books And Where To Find Them...


Romeo & Juliet (Colour)	Romeo & Juliet (bw)	Richard The Third (Colour)	Richard The Third (bw)

Shakespeare Omnibus	Findlay Macbeth	Prince of Denmark Street	Midsummer Night's Dream Team

Tales From Bible (Col)	Tales From Bible (bw)	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories	Space Elain

Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Shakespeare comic	Kids Comics Annual 2027

Kids Comics Annual 2026	Kids Comics Annual 2025	Socks Do Shakespeare	Colouring Books

Movie reviews and AI views - July's Facebook waffle

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 15:19:00 +0000

How diversity works in Marvel movies today. Look at the line up on this official promo art. You have more chance of being in the movie if you have blue skin than black skin. #Avengers #sowhite #andblue

****

July 4 Is there any point in making superhero movies, when audiences keep telling you they prefer something else? This half term I’ve been valiantly drawing Supergirl on the flipcharts I do before my Comic Art Masterclasses in schools, and half the kids don’t even know who she is. Next to none of them knew or cared there was a movie out.

They do know there’s a Spider-Man movie due, and they are big on the new Toy Story and Minions movies. And, a year on, they’re still crazy about K Pop Demon Hunters. Which suggests primary school kids are the big movie audience, and making novelty movies, eg superheroes, that’s not aimed at them is a losing game.

When the hit movies come from original ideas, like Backrooms and Obsession, and the big IP movies like Mandalorian and Masters of the Universe are proving disappointing, is it worth spending more times on new ideas, and letting tired old IP rest for a while?

Who remembers Robot Archie? A favourite strip from many of our childhoods in the 70s. Grant Morrison slipped him into 2000AD, he was revived in Albion, and I smuggled him into The Beano’s Bananaman (here you see my rough script and Wayne Thomson’s brilliant art)

But I only recently remembered I plotted a Return of Robot Archie strip years ago (circa 1989). It went like this: kid finds something buried deep under the shed in this farmhouse the family’s moved into. It’s the big red robot, Archie. Looks like he crashed there fifty years ago.

While he secretly tinkers with repairing it (genius kid? I dunno) he researches and finds this was the famous Robot Archie who was big in the 60s then disappeared and everyone seemingly forgot.

Only they didn’t. Cos when the lad gets the Robot switched on again it triggers an alert at some secret government base, and out of the woodwork comes evil looking old guy who’s been waiting his life for this moment and now commences the hunt for Archie

There’s then a chase-and-hide adventure with the kid and a robot that’s waking up and remembering more about what happened all those years ago.

Turns out Archie was taken over in the 70s by the government and turned into a weapon. Rather than be used to kill people, Archie deactivated and crash-buried himself. Now those same forces want to pick up where they left off, only now, if they retrieve his special secrets, they have the technology to make a million of him

When bad guy catches up with kid and robot we learn bad guy is Archie’s original owner from those old Lion strips. There’d been two owners (Ted Richie and Ken Dale). One wanted to keep Archie good, one wanted Archie to sell out. Bad guy had Archie kill good guy. This has hung on Archie’s conscience

In final confrontation, once we’ve established that our new child hero has learned all the science from Archie, and Archie has learned humanity from the kid, Archie flies up into the sky and blows himself up so no one can have his secrets.

I mean, essentially, I’d written The Iron Giant, but about ten years early. I don’t know if I even ended up pitching it, I think Grant Morrison’s version appeared when I was thinking of mine, so the point was moot.

Anyhoo. If anyone fancies a Return of Robot Archie graphic novel writing, I’ve got an old plot for you. One careful owner. (That was a chapter title, I recall).

*****

July 5 What a good year it’s been for movies, wouldn’t you say? Last night we enjoyed Project Hail Mary , which is on telly already (remember when proper big screen movies would take three-to-five years to come to the small screen, try and tell the kids etc) and is excellent.

Having enjoyed a string of mid budget movie hits this year - including Sheep Detectives, Send Help, and Weapons - and now this big budget success, it really is a marked contrast from last year which was swamped with rubbish sequels (anyone remember the final Indiana Jones and Missions Impossible?) and dead end superhero dross (I had to google to be reminded that Thunderbolts existed, never mind the Captain America thing I didn’t even watch), the state of the cinema this year is rivalled only by the state of tv drama, which is a whole nother story.

Looks like I picked a good year to be not going out and gigging so much, and vegetating in front of the telly like an old man. Come on tv and movies, start being rubbish again so I have to get out of the house more.

Bizarrest photo, circa 2002. From the left it’s my Dad, Gez Foster, me, Dan Clegg, and Miranda Hart, outside Mum and Dad’s house in Kibworth, having stayed overnight after our Leicester Comedy Festival Sitcom Trials touring show gig.

The bizarre thing is the posterised effect that has happened, probably thanks to Mum’s printer. She took this photo and sent us it as a printout. That’s how we did it back in the day. Obviously she’s taking the photo, and by the look of it I’m videoing her, for the behind the scenes Sitcom Trials tour video that has yet to see the light of YouTube. It lives on VHS somewhere in the house, near where Hev just dug this photo out.

****

July 5 Excellent movie, Mile End Kicks. And another fine example of Uncle Kev’s mistaken identity syndrome.

Watching the lead, Barbie Ferreira, I kept thinking “doesn’t she look like her mum?”

Cos I assumed Barbie Ferreira was the daughter of America Ferrera, from Ugly Betty and Superstore.

They are no relation.

Also the guy who plays Archie isn’t George Fouracres, but I might do a separate post about that.

***

Ever been on a date with someone who starts singing different words to the song Oh Tannenbaum? That's a Red Flag.

July 8 Is Count Binface the new Martin Bell?

In French his name is Count Poubelle. Pou- Belle! Coincidence?

****

July 8 Oh. Unfortunately I’ve heard Count Binface (aka Martin Poubelle) talk for the first time and sadly I now think he won’t beat Nigel Farage.

July 10

Of course I have liked, shared, and voted in this poll. But I am aware of its futility because I, and I'm sure you, are aware of the concept of Sampling Bias and the legendary example of The Literary Digest and their poll for the Presidential Election of 1936. You don't know the story? Read on..

In 1936 the US Presidential Election was looking close, and the art of polling was becoming established. And one thing pollsters had learned was that you got an inaccurate results if you polled too small a number. So The Literary Digest were determined to do better. They ran the biggest poll there had ever been. They got nearly 2.8 million responses! There was no way they could be wrong.

Meanwhile George Gallup's company surveyed fewer than 30,000 people, so their result was bound to be less accurate than The Literary Digest's. It stood to reason.

The Literary Digest's 2.8 million strong poll predicted confidently that Governor Alfred Landon would win the Presidency, with over 57% of the popular vote.

What happened is that his opponent, Franklin Delano Roosevelt actually won, in an unprecedented landslide, taking all but two states.

George Gallup, with his smaller sample size, had predicted this result, and was much closer, getting within 1.4% of the actual total.

How had The Literary Digest got it so wrong, after asking 2.8 million people (actually they asked way more, that's how many responded), and Gallup had got it so right by asking such a tiny fraction as many people? The answer, as is the case with the Count Binface example above, is a matter of who you ask.

Gallup made a point of ensuring they questioned the widest range of American voters possible, from all social groups.

The Literary Digest built their massive polling list from two major sources: the register of Drivers Licences, and the Telephone Directory. A pretty reliable cross section of American society, you might think. But not in 1936.

In 1936, having a phone in your home and owning a car was still much much more common among the middle class and the well to do. The vast majority of Americans didn't have their own phone, or even access to a car. A small percentage of people had both. So the poll was skewed towards quizzing people who were already more likely to vote for the Republican candidate, Landon, and greatly overlooking the people who were likely to vote for the Democrat FDR.

So let us learn the lesson of Sampling Bias, and enjoy our pro-Binface polls for the light entertainment that they are. Do please remember those of us who voted in it are primarily people who wanted to make a "Doesn't Reform Look Silly?" point, and 99.99% of us Do Not Live In Clacton!

Look away now if the existence of this stuff offends you (I know this upsets some of my friends worse than photos from an abattoir)

This week in Ai: these postcards bought at the antiques centre in Topsham at the weekend. Yes I forked out a whole pound for four postcards. These were just four out of literally hundreds of cards on show drawn, to my eye, using Ai. No manufacturers or printers details on any of them so no way of tracing where they’ve come from.

I didn’t talk to the staff about them, it’s a multi tenanted centre where the person on the desk is taking payments for dozens of non- present exhibitors, so I doubt I’d have learned anything.

Here we see hideous caricature drinkers with gibberish on their shirts; Jesus and some nonsense Latin; an alien drawing which looks flawless and, I have to say, rather impressive; and what looks like an Edwardian painting but has, on closer examination, hallucinated wording on the posters

The debate over what Ai art represents, why publishers and vendors use it (it’s free and copyright free, obviously, that bit’s easy), how it affects real art by living artists, and how we all feel about it continues.

Whether you are Team AI Is Great, Team AI Is Dangerous, Team AI Is Inevitable, or Team Head In The Sand (other teams are available) this is a situation that’s developing fast and I cannot begin to predict where it’s going to go next.

***

July 16. I’ve read less about Ai music than Ai art, and it seems an even wider and more immediate threat. Because, most simply, you can’t tell.

Whereas we can spot Ai art, for the moment, and can mostly tell Ai deepfake videos, who turns up in a dance tent or a club and thinks “I’ve never heard this bit of music before, so just before I start dancing to it I’d like to see a certificate of authenticity”?

For forty years now most dance music has been made from samples. To such an extent that you’d be surprised is a track wasn’t made from half a dozen earlier tracks. (It was only this year that I heard the track that White Lines Don’t Do It by Grandmaster Flash is sung over the top of, for example, and that’s 45 years ago).

So if Ai music avoids actual samples, which would I assume still be copyright, you have total copyright free music flooding the dance realm, the next question is how does it affect other genres?

I’m a 6 Music listener, and a pop fan of long standing, so I’m very aware of the “personality” of my music. I don’t need to necessarily hear long interviews with the people who make it, but I get their character from their music, from their lyrics, from their vibe.

But. And it’s a big but. But there is “The 6 Music Hole”. This is a syndrome whereby a piece of music will come on and Hev and I will exchange a look and ask “is it from now or is it from then?”

For years we have had acts sounding like acts and genres from the past. In the last year there have been a lot of new acts sounding like they’re from the 80s, sounding for all the world like Duran Duran, the B52s - this very second I can hear a record that could be New Order from 1986 and I’ve just been told is a new act. (Last week I had the niggle of trying to work out what Beaches by Beabadoobee sounded like, I concluded it was Kiss Me by Sixpence None The Richer). The point is, a lot of new music has sounded like it might be rehashed old music for a long time now.

Now the 6 Music Hole will have “or is it Ai?” added to the mix

Anyone have an experience of Ai music? I don’t randomly stream music, so my music comes curated. Have you had it sprung on you by Spotify or YouTube, or doesn’t that happen? Yet.

*****

July 17. I love a good prediction. Cos all I know is that most people get these predictions wrong most of the time. So I’m bookmarking this to see if Cory Doctorow turns out to be right. Will the AI “bubble burst”? Or will something else, more surprising and unpredictable, actually happen? Watch this space.

*****

Happiness is leaving an "Authors and Illustrators" group, which has just turned into a twice-daily AI slop fest. The latest thing is books about dogs, or books about kids. Identical, yet all different, no doubt unreadable. Yech.

I have no doubt there are posts on the thread where I stormed off, telling me not to tell the door hit me on the ass on the way out. Good. Enjoy your slop.

****

July 9. Am I the only person who keeps getting every single Subway Take on their Facebook feed all the time. How many are there? I’ve never seen the same one twice, but I’ve never asked to see them. They’re just always there.

My take? Subway Takes should not keep being in my phone all the bloody time.

100% agree

***

July 10. I’ve had calls a couple of times from a number which leaves no message and, when I google it, tells me it’s ICE agents in Milwaukee!

Anyone else getting these? Anyone know why anyone in the UK would?

****

July 12. An excellent movie, Crime 101, with some of the best car chase set pieces since Baby Driver, and a splendid script well directed. I can’t understand why it’s not widely spoken of, raved about, and talked of as an Oscar contender. The casting certainly suggests that’s what they were going for (it stars Thor, the Hulk and Catwoman, with the Hulk’s dad, and an almost Joker)

They hang a lampshade on the movie’s influences, with an amusing conversation about Bullitt and The Thomas Crown Affair. Recommended

PS: When people have been slagging off the title, why I don’t know, I’ve responded below by referencing the ‘learning’ part of the 101 bit. Totally forgetting that the 101 is the road the crimes take place on. It’s not a spoiler, the opening shot is the road and it’s referred to throughout (and on the poster). I just forgot the double meaning whenever I was replying to the Title Critics this fine film has attracted, for some reason.

Bugger - updating this bit of diary at the start of September, I find I have just spent half the day virtually remaking this video for Youtube. I totally forgot I had already made it! It added no views to the bloody podcast when I made it in July, I imagine it will do the same two months later.

****

July 12 My antique shop finds from yesterday: five Buster comics from 1969/70 for three quid, plus a bundle of Beano’s containing strips by me, in bargain bags of 5 for a quid!

Yes, keeping hold of your old Beanos really is a long term investment kids

***

July 13. Looks like those of us owed money by Leicester Comedy Festival / stroke / Big Difference are getting nowt

Now we have to work out which one owed us money. The company that just got closed down or the charity that closed it down.

Comedy, eh?

****

July 13 I can report, anecdotally, that Netflix is slipping in our viewing too. It’s totally lost it for movies, not having had a Saturday Night Movie for us to watch for ages. That battle is won every time by either Now TV (which has Sky Movies) or Amazon Prime (which has recently taken to having sponsors who don’t interrupt the movie with ads).

The only place worse for movies than Netflix is Apple TV which only has its own movies, none of which has ever been that great.

When Disney has a movie it’s a big one, but they’re few and far between, and if you don’t like Star Wars, Marvel or Pixar you can whistle.

As for TV series, this article nails the big problems: the cancellations and the wait between series. That and variable quality and the result for us is, best TV comes from:

1) BBC iPlayer (Inc Channel 4 & other broadcast)

2) Now TV (which has HBO and Sky Atlantic)

3) Apple TV (they don’t come often but when they do they’re great)

4) Netflix (it still has enough good to outweigh the bad)

5) Disney (which has Hulu)

6) Amazon Prime (those ads are the kiss of death. We refuse to start new series because of them)

Do we watch too much TV by any chance?

****

July 15. It's the 90s all over again. Not only are we between Doctors Who, but Radio 1 is having one of its do-overs. Anyone else remember 1993, when Roger Bannister [citation needed]* took over and fired the old guard?

Tragically we were on holiday in Greece so we missed hearing Dave Lee Travis's legendary resignation speech ("There are things going on at this radio station that I just don't agree with...") but it was great to live through the Cool Britannia makeover of Radio 1. Out went the naff and cheesy DJs in nylon bomber jackets, like Bruno Brookes, DLT, Simon Bates, Adrian Juste, Garry Davies, and in came the cool kids: Danny Baker, Nicky Campbell, anyone remember Emma Freud on daytime? Mark Radcliffe, Zoe Ball paired with Kevin Greening? Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley's Evening Session? Comedy shows by the likes of Chris Morris and Lee & Herring?

It didn't last, and within a couple of years Chris Moyles came along, calling himself "the saviour of Radio 1". Bannister called him "the new DLT". Plus ca change.

* I know it was Matthew Bannister! That was a joke.

This is the sort of graph I love to wake up to. History, stats, class warrior chippiness, what could appeal to me more? It’s a breakdown of every PM’s first cabinet showing how many of them went to a private secondary school.

Look at the contrast between Attlee’s 25% posh and Eden’s 100%. We’ve always been a funnily class divided country haven’t we?

Eeh, I love me a good bar chart.

***

July 15. Happiness is discovering all the money you're owed. The chore is spending half the morning chasing it all up - including two schools that owe me from October last year!

The embarrassing part is coming to that school who you accuse of not paying you and they did (oops). And the annoying part is the schools whose email comes back and tells you they've broken up and won't be back in the office till September.

Oh the life of the itinerant visiting author / stroke / artist.

****

July 17. Marvel comics is apparently moving from its lifelong home of New York to LA, following in the footsteps of DC comics. Very much the end of an era, especially for those of us who grew up reading Marvel comics and very much romanticised that Manhattan location.

Spider-Man in particular portrayed those valleys of skyscrapers as the very heart of the drama. That topography, and those incredible buildings drawn by the likes of Gil Kane and John Romita, coupled with knowledge that the Marvel Bullpen itself was right there, just round the corner from J Jonah Jameson’s office, filled my mind with wonder. Frank Miller’s Daredevil just added to this, managing to romanticise those roof-mounted water towers and the notion of people living in the subways.

Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Santorum was in Greenwich Village, the only image I had of that fabled location. The Avengers had their offices there, and the Fantastic Four of course had the Baxter Building. The number of times I saw Manhattan swung round, flown through, and smashed to bits by superheroes defies description and beggars belief.

So when I got to work for Marvel, and every week would send off artwork in a Fed Ex box to that Manhattan address, the romantic dream scenario was complete. Sadly I never got to visit their offices which, I’m told, weren’t all that.

Now the comic biz, which is a fraction of a shadow of what it once was, has left the city where it was all born. Where the great newspaper strips used to come from too, back when that was a thing. (Will Eisner’s New York studio is another dream location from the distant past that lives, exorbitant NY rent free, in my head). All gone now, but we’ll always have the comics, meaning many of us will remember the cartoon version of the city way clearer than the real thing ever was.

***

Re: Marina Hyde article: A tiny niggle, but I get bugged by Marina’s regular use of the phrase “we’ll get to that”. She does it on the Entertainment podcast and she does it in this article.

And the trouble is, because of my short attention span, I am never sure whether, when she says “and we’ll come back to that” that she does actually come back to it.

I mean I’m pretty sure she does get to all the things she says she’s going to get to, there’s just something about the delay and suspense that puts me on alert every time. Cos of course when we do get back to the thing she said we were going to get back to, I’m mentally trying to tick it off on my list of thing we were going to… I’m overthinking this aren’t I?

****

July 18: Well this was a stunning film, caught on telly yesterday. So many images full of so much information going so fast, it’s an astonishing feast for the brain. You could watch it again and again and spot different details every time.

I had seen the first of these, in a cinema, about eight years ago, but hadn’t seen this yet, largely cos Hev can’t bear the frenetic visuals. (She’s not epileptic, but I’m betting anyone who is has a problem with it too).

Of course I didn’t realise it was going to end with a “to be continued” card, which is immensely frustrating and something I’m famously not a fan of. And the final part doesn’t come out for a year yet. Which means, if you were in primary school when you saw the first instalment in 2018, you’ll be seeing part 3 just as you go off to university. (For comparison, matching to my childhood, episode 1 comes out when Jon Pertwee is Doctor Who, episode 3 comes out in the Peter Davison era. Yes, that tells us nothing, good comparison Kev)

Anyhoo, Spider-Man across the Spider-Verse recommended. Naff title ( had to double google, was it Into or Across or Something Equally Forgettable?) notwithstanding.

***

July 19. Another good movie last night, The Housemaid. Another one on Amazon (who are now beating Now/Sky in the Saturday night movie battle, and another month passes without Netflix having a movie worth watching). And this one came with a new mystery twist…

No adverts. At all. None before the movie, none during. On Amazon, who have been notorious for spoiling their movies and shows with unwanted ads.

It was so spooky, when we realised, that both of us have been scouring our accounts to ensure we didn’t buy anything on Amazon which led to us accidentally upgrading to the ad-free version of Prime. (We didn’t).

Has anyone else noticed ads not appearing on Prime movies all of a sudden?

Oh anyway, The Housemaid, recommended.

****

July 19 Re Article about Netflix

Very good and informative article. I hadn’t realised how ubiquitous the Audience Capture model is (you build your audience with lots of expensive content, then reduce the content while raising the prices).

I noted last week that Netflix had fallen down our watch list (no movies for ages and, last week we noticed, only two shows in Continue Watching, both of which we’d given up on)

I could conceivably cancel Netflix and not miss it. What a liberating thought.

The Scottish Falsetto Socks doing a fleetingly rare gig last weekend at Nottingham’s Splendour Festival. They’ve been in hibernation I’m afraid but I hope to drag them back out soon.

****

July 24. Today's dilemma with AI: when it looks better than the alternative. Look at these ads from a local pub in my town, don't they look a million dollars? They produce an ad like this for every event, every week, and I simply can't imagine how they could get something looking so good any other way. Could they commission an airbrush artist who, not long ago, would've been charging a grand an image for something this polished? I don't think so.

This is a big quandry for those of us opposed to AI, when it really looks amazing. You might quibble with the typography, but seriously who other than a design professional cares that they have a different logo every time? There are no typos, no kerning faults, and most importantly no glitches or hallucinations in the images.

Yes it's free now but it'll cost them money in six months, we all know that. But right now, how and indeed why should I say anything to them about it? What would you say?

Yours, ready to be accused of being both an Enabler and a Spoilsport.

****

July 29 I just watched one of the best bits of TV sci fi ever, Turn Left, an episode of Doctor Who from 2008 that I’ve not watched since then I don’t think.

Everything, from the whole premise, through the brilliant writing, to the incredible acting. Just perfect. And the way it fitted into that TV series, which I guess it only makes sense if you’ve watched all of up till then (actually you’d get by if you watch just seasons three and four) is genius.

Maybe you had to be there. But for me this is about as good as telly gets.

My Books And Where To Find Them...


Romeo & Juliet (Colour)	Romeo & Juliet (bw)	Richard The Third (Colour)	Richard The Third (bw)

Shakespeare Omnibus	Findlay Macbeth	Prince of Denmark Street	Midsummer Night's Dream Team

Tales From Bible (Col)	Tales From Bible (bw)	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories	Space Elain

Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Shakespeare comic	Kids Comics Annual 2027

Kids Comics Annual 2026	Kids Comics Annual 2025	Socks Do Shakespeare	Colouring Books

A week of comics from Northern Ireland

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 19:53:38 +0000

A week of classes in Northern Ireland. It’s become an annual tour of four or five days in a row. As you’ll see on another page of the blog, I was hoping to sell lots of books, and came well prepared. Then, for whatever reason, the parents ended up buying half as many books as last year. Sometimes you just can’t prepare for these things.

These are the fruits of classes at Flowerfield Arts Portstewart, Strule Arts Omagh, Ardhowen Theatre Enniskillen, Burnavon Arts Cookstown, and Ards Arts Newtownards

The celebrities these ten groups chose to appear in my demonstration strip were scary old Michael Jackson (twice), Mr Beast, Cristiano Ronaldo, Cillian Mbappe, Ariana Grande, John Cena, Rowan Atkinson, Tom Holland, and Bob Ross.

My Books And Where To Find Them...


Romeo & Juliet (Colour)	Romeo & Juliet (bw)	Richard The Third (Colour)	Richard The Third (bw)

Shakespeare Omnibus	Findlay Macbeth	Prince of Denmark Street	Midsummer Night's Dream Team

Tales From Bible (Col)	Tales From Bible (bw)	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories	Space Elain

Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Shakespeare comic	Kids Comics Annual 2027

Kids Comics Annual 2026	Kids Comics Annual 2025	Socks Do Shakespeare	Colouring Books

Comic Artist Opportunity - paid gig

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 14:52:22 +0000

Attention New Comic Talent - Comic Artist Opportunity

I’ve been offered a comic art commission, and I’ve suggested I’d rather pass it on to you, the new young comic artist of the future. (And, no, I won’t be taking a cut)

The organiser of a Comic Con asked me if I’d draw the promo art for them, to be used on online ads and flyers. This Comic Con is not one of the ones that you might have heard of that is exclusively about comic art, it’s one that features TV guests, toy exhibitors, market traders, cosplay, props & cars, and also has guest comic creators.

And they wanted to avoid using AI art, which has been done by many such events and, they felt, doesn’t sit well for an event that’s about promoting artists and creative folk.

There’s a budget for this art, so you’ll get paid. And the artwork will be widely seen, and of course credited. And the fact that the organiser of this event - which I reiterate is not one of those ones run by a major international company, or one that’s been running for twenty years, or one that gets Arts Council grants - wants to make a point of commissioning original art from an up-and-coming artist might hopefully encourage other similar events to do the same.

All you have to do is post a link to your portfolio, ideally including some art that fits the description of comic art illustration, and the organiser can choose the artist they will then contact direct.

Does that sound good? I hope it helps in some small way. Down with AI art, and up with the opportunities for new comic creators.

Post portfolio links to This Facebook thread https://fb.watch/IkIVSC0Bmf/

AI Art Everywhere - But The Most Shocking Example is...

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 11:05:00 +0000

Here's a video I've just made showing shocking examples of Ai art I've spotted in the wild. The problem still continues that most people don't care. There are further examples from my recent travels below.

Today in Ai, a plaque on sale at the antiques centre in Topsham. Yeah, looks legit

The label on the beer I was drinking while uploading Ai images that I'd spotted in the wild

Poster in Ross On Wye

Possibly the worst of the week, a bit of old school really bad Ai art. It doesn't make mistakes like these so much any more (the cop's arms, the lettering). Yeuch.

Factology Magazine, on sale in TG Jones (former WH Smith, soon to become former TG Jones)

My Books And Where To Find Them...


Romeo & Juliet (Colour)	Romeo & Juliet (bw)	Richard The Third (Colour)	Richard The Third (bw)

Shakespeare Omnibus	Findlay Macbeth	Prince of Denmark Street	Midsummer Night's Dream Team

Tales From Bible (Col)	Tales From Bible (bw)	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories	Space Elain

Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Doctors Who? Colouring	Sweet Smell Of Sockcess

Kids Comics Annual 2026	Kids Comics Annual 2025	Socks Do Shakespeare	Colouring Books

Why AI can't draw comics, yet - an experiment

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 09:37:41 +0000

Now I have to confess that, in order to try this out I had to use Chat GPT, and I asked it to draw comic strips. I realise that is precisely the thing all of us in the business are fighting against. However what I have demonstrated, I hope, is how badly AI does comic drawing, and how hopefully we can continue to stand out in our battle against it, as original comic creators. Above is a page drawn by Chat GPT. Below is the script I gave it to work from...

I hadn't given it much to work with, but its end result is very much not what I was looking for. And I'm delighted to say it's not as good as I can do myself. So there's something. You see I have this character, called Sinnerhound, a highway robber, who I invented the best part of forty years ago. She appeared in a five page strip in a comic I produced called Bloody Hell back in 1992, and she was then in a self-published one off comic sometime around 2008. And what I remembered is that I had an unused script of hers, from way back in 1989, when I put her into a Role Playing Game.

Inspired by Dice Man, a comic from the mid 80s, I'd done a couple of these multiple-choice RPG strips, the most memorable being a satirical page in Fantasy Advertiser. The Sinnerhound RPG was in a dummy comic I produced called The Picture Story Paper, my brilliant pitch for kids comic that I thought would rock the market in the 1990s. Nobody agreed with me and nothing came of it. But a script for a Sinnerhound RPG script, laid out in biro by me, still existed and wasn't half bad. So I thought I'd use it as an experiment to see if Chat GPT could draw a comic.

I wanted ChatGPT to emulate my style. So I showed it this, a spread from the 2008 self-published Sinnerhound comic, and asked it to draw my script, from my biro layout, in my style. Here first is the 2008 strip by me...

Now here is the first page of script I asked it to draw in that style, followed by ChatGPT's attempt...

Given that I'd not told it any character descriptions for the other person in this scene, it's understandable that it's made something up. And Sinnerhound's mask looks like an indistinct scribble in my script, so what it draws is forgiveable. It mistakes words, for example "That's Highway-Woman!" becomes "That's Highwayman!" rather defeating the point of the line. But otherwise I think this is passable. I then asked it for the next page of the strip. Here is my script followed by ChatGpt's drawing...

At this point it becomes clear that, without character descriptions, the AI can only make characters up, and has no idea that the person featured in the previous page is supposed to be the same character here. It once again mistakes words - "sirrah" becoming "stream" - and once again that mask is an oddity. But if I'd asked for things more clearly, maybe I'd have got them. So I give the machine clearer instructions, that they are inside a 19th century stage coach, and that the man is a city gent. Here's what I get...

We now have a top hatted character, in an American styled stagecoach, but that style of drawing is stopping resembling mine, if it ever did, and starting to look distinctly like the AI cartoon style we've all seen on a hundred posters and adverts drawn by ChatGPT. Also panel 2 has gone from being a fair recreation of my original visual - Sinnerhound snatches a flintlock from the guy's hand - to being a virtual repeat of panel 1, with no snatching happening. And sirrah is steam again.

I asked it to have another stab at the previous page and got this...

No, this is very much not what we wanted. It's taken the words from the original Page 5, including the "Highwayman" that's supposed to be a "Highwaywoman" but has given us pictures from the other page, none of which match up to the story they're telling, and more and more start looking in someone else's style, not mine.

What would happen if I asked it for an earlier page from the script? This is Page 4 where Sinnerhound is outside the coach and robs the driver...

Well no this isn't working at all. ChatGPT is just drawing variations of the scene inside the coach and fitting my words on the top. And it can't tell which voice bubble is supposed to point to which person.

After this I asked it to draw the picture you see at the top of the page, the splash image, which it makes a fair stab at, but can't resist putting the figure inside the coach, which shouldn't be any part of it. At which point I thought let's go back to square one. Literally square one, the very first panel of the strip. And to avoid confusion I'd remind it of my art style, tell it to avoid all greys and shading, and just draw what I'd drawn, but in my finished style. Here's my original script panel followed by ChatGPT's attempt...

No. I designed that picture from a certain angle, in close up, to convey a certain mood and action. Redrawing it to make it basic, and in clothes my character would never wear is, I guess, a mistake a human could also make, given too little information, but still something that's not got us where we wanted to be.

If you can't draw at all, this AI system could turn your script into something that could be read. But you'll need to give it far more detailed instructions that I have. And for someone who actually enjoys the drawing part, as I do, it's nothing short of frustrating. Chat GPT has its own ideas, and they're not what I wanted.

Thus ended the experiment in asking ChatGPT to draw a strip from my script. I shall stick to doing it by hand, thanks.

My Books And Where To Find Them...


Romeo & Juliet (Colour)	Romeo & Juliet (bw)	Richard The Third (Colour)	Richard The Third (bw)

Shakespeare Omnibus	Findlay Macbeth	Prince of Denmark Street	Midsummer Night's Dream Team

Tales From Bible (Col)	Tales From Bible (bw)	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories	Space Elain

Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Doctors Who? Colouring	Sweet Smell Of Sockcess

Kids Comics Annual 2026	Kids Comics Annual 2025	Socks Do Shakespeare	Colouring Books

The Chicken Fighting Nan - comics by kids (No Trump, no brainrot*)

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 07:41:12 +0000

Three days, two schools, six comics, splendid stuff from Maple Hayes in Lichfield and Malmesbury.

*I mention the Trump and brainrot purely because, while most of my posts are getting 15 to 50 views, the one mentioning Trump comics got 98 views and the combination of Trump and Brainrot got 330. While you're here - buy my books)

Maple Hayes Hall in Lichfield is, I kept reminding myself, a dyslexia specialist school. Having forgotten that detail at a dyslexia specialising school earlier this year, particularly during the choosing of the comic title (done by a knockout process involving titles written on bits of paper by everyone in the class), I avoided that pitfall today. I needn't have worried, their titles were all perfectly legible and understandable. Both of their winning titles involving cyber-bullying of teachers, it would appear.

A return booking to Malmesbury Primary was a treat as it was one of the earliest schools that started having me in regularly when I began my Comic Art Masterclasses many years ago. However the last time I was there appears to have been 2013! I can't find the comics from that last visit (blog posts from those days stored the images in a format that didn't last) but I'm sure these are better.

Another couple of nifty titles, produced with the Year 4s today and the Year 3s yesterday. I do hope they have me back sometime, it was good to be back.

The celebrities these six groups chose, to appear in my demonstration strip, were Donald Trump, Billie Eilish, Sabrina Carpenter, Lucy Bronze, Mr Beast and (old scary) Michael Jackson (I now regularly ask them whether they want young or old MJ, their choice often being made on ethnic grounds, ie BAME kids choose young, majority white kids choose old & creepy).

My Books And Where To Find Them...


Romeo & Juliet (Colour)	Romeo & Juliet (bw)	Richard The Third (Colour)	Richard The Third (bw)

Shakespeare Omnibus	Findlay Macbeth	Prince of Denmark Street	Midsummer Night's Dream Team

Tales From Bible (Col)	Tales From Bible (bw)	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories	Space Elain

Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Doctors Who? Colouring	Sweet Smell Of Sockcess

Kids Comics Annual 2026	Kids Comics Annual 2025	Socks Do Shakespeare	Colouring Books

Book Sales July

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 07:14:11 +0000

Here we see me outside Malmesbury Primary School, with a table of my wares set up ready to sell to parents. To my surprise I did rather well, as you will see below, and was kicking myself that my supplies of books were low, through mostly no fault of my own (Lulu were later than usual with one batch.)

Live events / classes et al = 98 books + 20 comics (£1141)

(June 111 books + 17 comics, £1313; May 72, £862.90; April 185, £2111.54; March 181, £2153.41)

D2D - 82* books ($18.57)

(June = 4, $5.42; May = 7, $8.09; April = 12, $13.54; March = 54, $74.79)

Etsy - 7 books (£56.97)

(June = 1, £7.99; May 6, £50.95; April 2, £8.98; March 4, £32.96)

Lulu - 2 books (£1.43) (June 4, £7.79; May 6, £12; April 6, £6.91; March 7, £6.11)

Blurb - x book, $x (June = 1, $1.68; May 0, April 0, March 1, 61p)

Podcast downloads - 188 (June 259, May 278, April 164, March 96)

Blog views - 293,000 (June 497,446; May 365,397, April 340,000, March 300,000)

Youtube views - 3555, subs 4977 (June 2070, subs 4973)

Live Sales July 2026 = 98 books + 20 comics (£1141)

July 1 - Maple Hayes - 6 books, 1 comic (£51)

1 x FM

1 x PODS

4 x MNDT

1 x Shakes comic

July 2 - Malmesbury - 13 books, 1 comic (£137)

5 x Romeo col (sold out)

2 x Romeo bw

6 x Richard bw

1 x Shakes comic

July 3 - Malmesbury - 19 books, 6 comics (£158)

4 x Romeo bw (sold out)

2 x Richard bw

5 x FM

4 x PODS

4 x MNDT

6 x Shakes comic

NB re NI: Posting books - a memo for future note. Last year in Northern Ireland I had too few books (50), as this post attests, selling £400 worth in four days but knowing I could have sold more. In July 2024 I had even fewer (40), and sold out of £310 worth across five days. In 2023 I paid £45 for an extra hold bag, into which I was able to squeeze just 30 books, which of course sold out.

Mon July 13 - I posted a box of 48 books to Flowerfield Arts Centre in Portstewart, hoping they'll be there in time for next Monday's classes. The box cost £15.45 to post. If I'd have kept the weight below 10k (ie used the regular sized box, not the slightly taller box) it would have been £11. So, books cost 32p each to post.

Weds July 15 - 38 books + 6 comics posted to Strule Arts, Omagh. £10.65 (24p per item, a lot better than 2023's £1.50 per book for sticking them in the hold!)

July 20 - Flowerfield Portstewart - 5 books (£58)

Last year: 16 books, £147; 2024: 8 books, £56

Oh. Best laid plans and all that. I’ve sent way too many books to Northern Ireland. These classes were well attended but the parents didn’t see them, so only a few books sold in the morning and literally none in the afternoon! (The money taken this week sometimes looks good, but that's because the pesky colour books cost twice what the black and white books cost that I was selling two years ago. So profit is less, and it's the number of books sold that matters.)

1 x Romeo col, PODS, Elain col

2 x Kids comics

July 21 - Strule Omagh - 4 books, 2 comics (£54)

Last year: 4 books, £27; 2024: 4 books, £28

Only 3 punters in the morning, 7 in the afternoon. Bought almost as many books as yesterday’s near sellout. I brought so too many books! (Last year was also poor turnout)

1 x Romeo col, Elain col

2 x Kids comics (as noted last year, these are popular)

2 x Shakes comic

July 22 - Ardhowen Enniskillen - 8 books (£100)

Last year: 14 books, £111; 2024: 11 books, £92

All sold in the morning none in pm

4 x Romeo col

1 x Richard col, Elain col, kids comics (sold out)

1 x FM

July 23 - Burnavon Cookstown - 6 books, 2 comics (£84)

2024: 12 books, £91

Oh my god this week is a nightmare for selling books. Unlike last time I was here, when the parents watched the show, this time they weren’t allowed in on health and safety grounds. So none knew about the books until it was too late and sales were decimated.

2 x Romeo col

3 x Elain col

1 x Joseph col

2 x Shakes comic

July 24 - Ards Arts, Newtownards - 5 books (£46)

Last year: 13 books, £120; 2024: 8 books, £55

1 x Romeo col

2 x PODS

2 x MNDT

So in conclusion, the Northern Ireland week was good for classes but overly hubristic for book sales. I posted a stupid 78 books in two boxes, and posted two boxes back, lighter but far from empty.

2024: 5 days, 43 books

2025: 4 days, 47 books

2026: 5 days, 28 books

Next time: Space Elain and the books of Kids Comics are the best sellers. If, of course, there is a next time.

Tues July 28 - Hive Worcester - 8 books + 4 comics (£101)

2 x Romeo col

1 x Richard col

1 x PODS

2 x MNDT

1 x Elain col

1 x Esther col

4 x Shakes comic

Thurs July 30 - Cockerton library am - 11 books + 1 comic (£148)

Best after-class sales of the month, kind of puts everywhere else to shame. Just goes to show you can’t predict these things

6 x Romeo col

4 x Richard col

1 x Elain col

1 x Shakes comic

Thurs July 30 - Darlington library pm - 5 books + 4 comics (£76)

Yes, this is the afternoon of that same day, and my book sales from the two classes are as good as some days at a comicon, £224

2 x Romeo col

1 x Richard col

1 x FM

1 x Elain col

4 x Shakes comic

Fri July 31 - Wollaton library - 4 books + 2 comics (£67)

2 x Romeo col

1 x Richard col

1 x Omnibus

2 x Shakes comic

Fri July 32 - Notts Central library - 6 books + 1 comic (£61)

1 x Romeo col

2 x Richard col

1 x FM, PODS, MNDT

1 x Shakes comic

Live Sales July 2026 = 98 books + 20 comics (£1141)

27 x Romeo col

6 x Romeo bw

10 x Richard col

8 x Richard bw

9 x FM

10 x PODS

13 x MNDT

1 x Omnibus

9 x Elain col

1 x Esther col

1 x Joseph col

5 x Kids comics

24 x Shakes comic

******

D2D Sales July 2026 - 82 books* ($18.57)

*Most of these are freebies, through the Smashwords sale. The actual paid-for copies look like this:

Romeo & Juliet bw $6.45

Punk Illustrated History $2.52

MNDT $2.52

Omnibus $2.54

PODS $1.36

FM $1.30

Richard bw $0.95

Who Notes $0.93

(Though as you can see, from the chart above, the most popular books, as a mix of free & paid for, are..)

1 - MNDT (14 sales)

2 = FM & PODS (11 sales each)

4 - Tales From The Bible (10)

5 - Romeo & Juliet (7)

6 - Joseph & Ruth (6)

7 = Punk & Socks Shakespeare (5 each)

9 - Who Notes (4)

10 = Esther, Sweet Smell of Sockcess (3)

12 = Richard, Omnibus, Elain (1)

Etsy Sales July 2026 - 7 books (£56.97)

4 x FM

1 x Hollywood, Doctors, Euro Vol 2

Lulu Sales July 2026 - 2 books (£1.43)

1 x FM

1 x Tales From Bible

Blurb Sales July 2026 - x books ($x)

A video with 25 thousand views, and other June nonsense

kevf.sutherland@virgin.net (Kev F Sutherland) — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 03:00:00 +0000

I made a video, that you can see above, that got over 25,000 views. Of course the very next one was down to next to none. It just goes to show you, all you have to do is rant about Doctor Who and they're all over you. What else have I been dribbling on about this month, mostly on Facebook to an audience of none? Let's have a look...

Found in a drawer while having a clear out : the best selling t shirt of Christmas 1993, as designed by me.

This would be my complimentary copy. Which, apart from the fifty quid I got paid for that day’s designs, is all I ever earned from this shirt. Still on sale today, I see it regularly at cons.

****

May 31: Watched Man With Two Brains. Ever watch an old favourite film for the first time in ages, only to find it’s not as good as you remembered? Last night we watched The Man With Two Brains. Oh dear, not good.

We saw it back in 1984, on video cos it never got a cinema release here, and loved its silliness. We still quote its catchphrases in every day conversation, “into the mud scum queen” being in regular use forty years on. (You’ll also find us quoting Pointy Birds, and laughing at the thought of the “azaleas” and “is that her” gags).

But seeing the whole film for the first time in, I guess, twenty years, was sobering and disappointing. From the start the sexism, objectifying, and “blokey” tone was jarring. The sort of gags that seemed really original, because of their silliness (“get that cat out of here!”) now just seemed like the sort of random stuff an inexperienced writer might throw in for lack of better material.

Steve Martin’s clowning, which was novel and endearing at the time, now just reads like mugging. When we first saw it, we’d only just discovered Steve Martin, and had heard his legendary live album for the first time. (We use the phrase “get a photo of me with it anyway” at pretty well every attraction we visit). At the same time we’d loved Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (the movie we were looking for last night but couldn’t find) and All Of Me, so The Man With Two Brains was part of Steve Martin being on a roll.

But it rolls to a halt and comes across as a dated, disjointed mess. I like the surrealism, eg the tiny apartment that opens into a castle interior, but it’s the sort of novelty that was refreshing at the time and now just feels like something you’ve seen done better.

I never thought I’d be longing for Steve Martin’s later serious acting, but TMWTB has made it happen.

Ironically I sprang to the defence of this movie just a few weeks ago here on FB, bringing my nostalgia to the party. I’ll find it a harder film to stand up for now.

***

June 1: Started watching Tip Toe. Enjoyed Tip Toe last night on Channel 4, but I feel a bit like I’m living that “Dr Manhattan on the moon” meme.

It’s 2026 and in Tip Toe Russell T Davies is asking “what’s it like to be a 60 year old gay man on Canal Street?”

It’s 2015 and in Cucumber Russell T Davies is asking “what’s it like to be a 50 year old gay man on Canal Street?”

It’s 1999 and in Queer As Folk Russell T Davies is asking “what’s it like to be a 35 year old gay man on Canal Street?”

He did buck the trend with It’s A Sin, cos it was 2021 and he was asking “what was it like to be a gay man on Canal Street in 1984?”

Someone has to do it, and no one does it better than RTD. It’s an artist revisiting the same painting again and again, and I champion it. He’s earned it.

What were you doing thirty years ago? I can tell you what Iain Morris was doing, years before he co created The Inbetweeners and became a big movie director. He was appearing in Situations Vacant, my comedy sketch show at The Bristol Flyer. Yes kids, he is in character.

If you ever wondered why Neil’s gay dad in The Inbetweeners is called Kevin Sutherland, it’s probably cos I took photos like this back in the day.

Photo just turned up in a spring clean

****

June 2: Watched first episode of Spider-Noir and, I’m afraid, didn’t quite get it. It’s a pastiche of a film noir, but it’s not comedy. Nick Cage does a silly cartoon voice and there’s lots of noir shadows and Dutch angles, but it’s not a parody. He’s a private dick with super powers the same as Spider-Man, and he’s put the mask away following a tragic accident, but this doesn’t make him compelling or interesting.

The villains are cliches without anything extra to make them stand out. One guy seems to be based on the Human Torch, but he’s dead already. One is based on the Marvel Sandman but, unbelievably, they make him even more boring than the version in the films.

I just don’t quite get it. There’s not a story that makes you want to see what happens next, or a cop show set up that makes you want to see how they’ll solve the next crime (in contrast we’ve just started watching Ponies, which sets up a buddy crime caper from the start, and I was reminded of Poker Face which set up the amateur detective with novelty powers from the off and is centred around a character you want to see more of).

Not having read the comics, I’m lost as to quite what the elevator pitch for Spider-Noir is. It’s film noir and it’s Spider-Man, except it’s missing the best bits of both of those genres.

Just me?

****

Nap Comix: People ask me what new comics I’m reading. I’ll be honest, this is the only comic I read for true pleasure these days

It’s filling a hole which once contained Doonesbury, Posy Simmonds and Giles. Stories that reflect the real world and make it funny and charming and touching. Genius.

Anyone who thinks this “just write about what happens to you” is as easy as Rachael makes it look should try it. It isn’t. I know, cos that is exactly what I did with my teenage diary fifty years ago. Turns out, for most of us, nothing actually happens, or every day is the same as the last. Also, of course, you have to be able to tell the story as good as this. I think I’ll stick to making stuff up.

Looks like Leicester and Comedy are having a bad year.

As someone who’s played Leicester Comedy Festival every single year since (gasp) 2001, and who used to run a comedy club (with the late great Alan Seaman) at The Magazine on Newarke Street in the 80s (don’t look for it, it’s not there any more), I feel for Leicester and hope it gets its act together soon.

Well, gets its acts together.

****

June 6: Two TV series stuck the landing this week. It is the hardest thing, it seems, to get to the end of these 6,8,10 episode series, with the highest quality writing, and make the ending as satisfying as the the build up. These two - Legends and Beef 2 - managed it, I think.

Beef season one got a bit lost and ended up confused, I thought, but season 2 kept the tension up. The final episode gets a bit messy with a maguffin about a memory card, that smacks of padding, but it has an absolutely brilliant scene right in the middle (Park’s husband’s speech and its aftermath) that makes the whole episode worth waiting for. Though if anyone can explain the last shot to me, I’d welcome that.

Legends was perfect. Based as it was on true events, we sort of knew the resolution that was coming, and I love Neil Forsyth’s writing. So, aside from an odd sidebar scene in a dinghy that I think we could have lived without, this pulled off its ending, making an anticlimax climactic.

Both are highly recommended. Both, also, had to contend with the Sony Bravia/ Netflix colour temperature problem which dogged a couple of episodes. I don’t know if that was just our telly, but it was resolved in time for both finales. Hooray.

The first in a series of "What Were You Doing 50 Years Ago?" videos on Tiktok and Instagram. They get some views but not many.

9th June 1976 video

In case it disappears, quick, everyone from Scotland witness that time the QI Elves got something wrong.

A clype or to clype does not mean this. In fact it means what I just did.

****

June 9: Kids, thinking of a career as a comic artist? Then come to my Comic Art Masterclasses and enjoy yourself. However, if you’d like a sobering cautionary tale, read this 1979 interview with Dan Adkins, an artist for Marvel whose name I knew well, who explains how, over the previous decade, he’d hardly been earning enough to live on.

Since 1979 the situation got better for some (some became millionaires) but not for all (hands up all my comic friends, still on FB, who are millionaires. Yeah, thought so).

I’ve managed to survive as a full time comic creator for 35 years, though that has been helped by doing a lot of teaching and a lot of comedy (boy, I really know where the money is, don’t I?). But, as Dan Adkins was telling us 47 years ago, “freelance” is just another way of spellling “zero hours contract”.

I remember trying to describe my freelance career to a friend who worked in a factory.

“So,” he said, “you do Piece Work.”

Yes. I suppose we do.

*****

June 9: Watched the final episode of Half Man. No spoilers, but did anyone else feel as puzzled by the ending as me?

Given the twists and cliffhangers that characterise most of the endings of the other episodes, this was such an odd ending that it had us searching to see if there was, perhaps, a 7th episode still to come.

Just us?

(I’ve since googled. Turns out it’s very much not just us!)

***

June 11: Ant AI posts.

In my local Tesco I walked past the notice board by the exit and saw five AI-generated flyers. The local am-dram show, an Elvis impersonator show, a social group, a summer fete, and a charity barbecue.

The trouble was, by ordinary person standards, they look great. This time last year they would have been a mess of clip art and twenty typefaces. If you were lucky they’d have used some school kids art or a poorly taken photo of the cast. Now they’re showing something that looks a million dollars.

I have given up arguing with ‘normals’ who, overwhelmingly, do not realise there’s a problem and think we’re weird for trying to stop their fun.

*****

If ever a show lived up to its title! Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen has, easily, the worst closing episode of any show we’ve finished watching this year.

Early on it was clearly an exercise in style over content, the first episode being all gripping atmosphere and jump scares, which might have made a great 90 minute movie. But it could not sustain a whole miniseries and was shark-jumping almost immediately after that pilot.

I stuck with it, hoping someone had a great twist planned for the end. It is no great spoiler to reveal that this doesn’t happen. It was almost as if they’d concluded that, surely by the end, nobody was left watching so they needn’t bother finishing the script properly.

The winner of the Let’s Just Get It Over With And Pretend It Never Happened prize for 2026.

****

What’s the fastest you’ve given up on a new TV series? We gave Cape Fear 14 minutes.

This season of TV writing has been soooo good (Legends, The Cage, Beef 2, Widows Bay, Half Man, Two Weeks in August, Ponies, Tip Toe) that if something comes along with such corny dialogue, uninspiring characters, and cliched set up as this Cape Fear remake, which isn’t helped by the jarring use of the old movie’s music, which just sounds hackneyed, it doesn’t cut the mustard.

I confess we have been spoiled by good TV this year and have a low tolerance for the naff and basic. What a good First World problem to have, eh?

****

Is everyone who works in a hairdressers a member of a grooming gang?

Is Doctor Who cancelled? Video inc Doctor Who

*****

June 13: Eagle cutting. Remembering David Hockney, in the way only comics enthusiasts can. Schoolboy Hockney entered a drawing competition in The Eagle comic, as you see here.

He lost, to schoolboy Gerald Scarfe

***

June 13: Am I the first to start referring to the new Doctor Who Wilderness as the Ncuti Gap Years?

****

WUTHERING HEIGHTS REVIEW

Well what the bloody hell was this? Watched Wuthering Heights all the way through, but my god it was hard going. Why? How? So many questions.

Why did Emerald Fennell make a cartoony fantasy surreal version of this story, which thrives on drama and realism and has all of it taken away by the silliness of the style?

The art director seems to have binged on a mix of coffee tables books on surrealism (particularly Georgio DeChirico) and Warner Bros cartoon backgrounds (see Duck Dodgers and What’s Opera Doc) and the costume designer has gone similarly off piste, dressing Cathy as an alpine goat herd crossed with a Valkyrie.

The color saturated settings and the 1980s pop video direction clashes with the dialogue which, occasionally, comes close to being gripping and dramatic, but can never convince or communicate any actual emotions. At every turn you’re reminded this is some people with Hollywood faces (via Australia obviously) posing in improbable light against impossible backdrops, and whatever they do next is likely to be inexplicable and fantastic.

Following the brilliant and original storytelling of Fennell’s first two films, Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, this movie is unfathomable and a hard-to-watch missed opportunity.

I champion her being given the chance to realise her vision on the screen. Sadly it seems to be the vision of a teenager who’s had too many sweeties and probably just drunk cider for the first time.

It’s 1994, all over again. Who else is old enough to remember…?

No James Bond - there hadn’t been one for five years

No Doctor Who - there hadn’t been any for five years

No Star Wars - there hadn’t been any for over a decade

No superhero movies. There’d been a Batman movie three years ago, and it was 8 years since Howard The Duck

Harry Potter hadn’t been written, nor Game of Thrones.

Toy Story hadn’t happened, let alone Shrek or Despicable Me.

There was a Star Trek movie, which rates low on IMDb, and a TV series watched by a small number of devotees.

And nobody had the internet.

Can I just say I’m quite nostalgic for 1994, and enjoying it the second time around.

(NB I just found this t shirt advertised on Etsy, it’s not my ad. I think I have a copy of the t shirt in a drawer somewhere)

****

June 16: Social Media Ban

I’m not sure how banning kids from YouTube is going to work. I work in primary schools, the kids live on YouTube. Ask them their favourite celebrity and they’ll say Mr Beast. (My poll of most popular celebrity suggested by kids in my classes bears this out).

I can’t imagine an equivalent when I was 12 or 13. It would be like banning me from watching Top of the Pops or listening to Radio 1. It would be like stopping me watching tv shows on after 9pm, like Monty Python or Play For Today (which is where I learn most sweary words) or staying up to watch Hammer films.

I fear a baby-and-bathwater scenario. Most kids get good things from social media, I believe, and it is a minority of the realm that leads to bullying, death and the other bad stuff.

Yes, the bad stuff is very bad. But surely the pressure has to be put on the companies who control the algorithms and who police the safeguards to put those things right, not to punish innocent kids by taking away such a central part of their worlds.

My hope is that this move is being made as a threat to the social media companies to sort themselves out and take responsibility, and not just cutting off kids fun across the board.

****

June 18: Want an entitled rant that's a bit niche? Got one for you. I visit schools, as a guest author, and do my Comic Art Masterclasses. I get paid for the classes, which is brilliant and perfect. I also like, if I can, to give the kids the chance to buy my books, so I tell the school about them in advance, and even have a wee flyer they can send to parents. No pressure, and I know lots of pupils are in areas and from back grounds where this would be a big ask. But usually, in a primary school, I'll sell a dozen books (having worked with about 60 kids). This week I've had schools that really show how differently schools handle this request.

One school, an independent girls school, has an "opt out" scheme, where the kids get the choice of a book from the visiting author, and opt out if they don't want one. The parents get the bill, and frankly are already paying so much they don't notice. I did very well at that school, and shall not grumble. Only taught 30 kids, sold 31 books (library bought one).

Then there was another school, a regular primary, where I'm teaching 90 kids over two days, and they too had the flyer to send to parents. But they didn't send it. Then, after my first day, it's obvious the kids will be wanting my books, so I make sure they send it before my second visit.

They send it, but. But, because they're a "cashless school" and because they can't process payments from parents, they're just telling the parents to go to my website. So no kids will get their books signed on the day, which they love, and if they do buy them from the website they'll cost more cos I have to post them.

Oh and, of course, no parents has ever bought the books from the website after a class, ever. (I can count the instances on less than one hand, after including an advert for my website in the comics they take home at the end of every class, over the course of about 200 classes a year, for the last decade).

There you go, entitled "world owes me a living" self published author rant for today. Any other visiting authors get frustrated by this sort of thing?

Was I wrong to point out that this was AI Slop, in my local community group (which has a lot of AI slop in it)?

Look at that building to the bottom right, and the shop names. Also, if you know Chepstow, you'll know the shop that's trying to draw attention to itself is UPHILL from the Town Gate, not downhill as this AI drawing shows. None of the other buildings are right either, naturally.

****

June 20: Quite possibly, I would say, the best director in television comedy ever. Taxi, Cheers, Friends, Frasier, Mary Tyler Moore. Brilliant.

James Burrows, will be sadly missed.

I aim to be at this show next year. I can predict a number of my friends, here on FB, telling me I should boycott. I imagine you can guess why.

Fascinating fun find, that I’ve managed to live 47 years without seeing, The Cambridge Footlights in 1979. The year before Stephen Fry and Tony Slattery joined, so you get a very young Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, Simon McBurney, and Robert Bathurst, and rather a lot of Martin Bergman, who went on to be a producer not an onscreen talent.

***

June 25: I hate to make anyone jealous, but guess whose Ramada hotel room just got upgraded to “superior”, on the 13th floor, with ice cool silent air con..,

… oh, and only cost me £65.

Welcome to Coventry. The life of the itinerant comic class presenter.

Unboxing Video - new Shakespeare Comic

Where Am I Today? video - Macc Pow

*****

SHEEP DETECTIVES REVIEW

What an excellent film. First film to have me in tears at the end and laughing with delight throughout. Highly recommended. That’ll do, The Sheep Detectives, that’ll do.

Extra brownie points to Hyundai whose ad at the start says “this film is brought to you without ad breaks thanks to Hyundai”. The movie is on Amazon Prime, which we actively avoid because its ads ruin every show. In this case I literally said out loud “thankyou Hyundai”, which is pretty successful advertising, wouldn’t you say?

The next question would be: is the punter overwhelmed by choice?

Here’s my table at Macc Pow this weekend. A brilliant festival, thanks so much to Marc and Jane for having me there again. Sorry I hardly got to see anyone, I was so busy with the constant flow of kids. And yes they bought more books than last year, again. It gets better every time.

Update: thanks for feedback. Re the busy table: The thing is, I talk to the punters direct. Hardly anybody comes to my table and buys based on the display alone, they buy because I hook them, find their interest, then can point to the book they’ll like.

Unlike more well known artists, who sell to adults, no kid has heard of me before they come to my table. They have, however, possibly heard of Beano and Marvel, which I name check, and Dogman and Bunny vs Monkey, which are my “comp” titles. Their parents, meanwhile, have heard of Shakespeare. So they buy the books.

Like I say, busy does seem to be working. But I appreciate the notes, and may be losing the tablecloth and the colouring books.

****

Missed the Oink film, which I still can’t remember if I did an interview for. Bet I didn’t. (The interviews took place at last years Macc Pow and I was so flustered running about doing other stuff that I couldn’t make my slot, I fear. Really regretting missing out, if I’m remembering it correctly)

he exhibitors of Macc-Pow en masse (or on a staircase). A smashing day, loads of kids with parents, my kind of crowd. I sold loads of books and comics, which is what it's all about.

Go home, Youtube AI, you're drunk.

Has anyone dabbled with asking the AI assistant on Youtube for suggestions for your next video?

Following the phenomenal success of Comic Cuts Panel Show (he says, jokingly), it suggests I should get Robin Ince, Mark Gattiss and Phill Jupitus as my guests, which you never know could happen. Or more bizarrely it suggests I should interview myself, as The Socks, and proceeds to depict them, looking like nothing on God's good earth.

This AI nonsense is what it is. Whatever that is.

(You now, I am tempted to try asking these stellar names to be on the podcast. What's the worst that could happen?)

Fifty Years Ago Today - July 2 1976

Good news for all my readers! The A2 pullout posters have arrived, to go inside the brand new Shakespeare Comic. With all the sponsors caricatures on it, and every single Shakespeare play. Whoopee.

The less good news? Didn’t arrive till it was too late to get them all in the post and I’m at schools with an early start for the rest of the week.

I’ll get them posted to you as soon as I can! Promise

My Books And Where To Find Them...


Romeo & Juliet (Colour)	Romeo & Juliet (bw)	Richard The Third (Colour)	Richard The Third (bw)

Shakespeare Omnibus	Findlay Macbeth	Prince of Denmark Street	Midsummer Night's Dream Team

Tales From Bible (Col)	Tales From Bible (bw)	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories	Space Elain

Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Doctors Who? Colouring	Sweet Smell Of Sockcess

Kids Comics Annual 2026	Kids Comics Annual 2025	Socks Do Shakespeare	Colouring Books