It’s a Wonderful Life ……. Oh yes it is.

Today was a day of surprises, disasters, redemption through film and a shocking realisation…..

So, let me tell you a story…..
The day started out much like any other Sunday; slowly, tiredly and with a blistering headache. Our plan to head off to York to see some Christmas stuff and do a little shopping was altered slightly when I got the idea into my thick head to get the car washed today. Realising none of the car washes would be working due to the freezing weather but I figured we’d head out to the hand car wash on the A1079.

Off we went and joined the queue. The long queue. But my wonderful wife and child agreed that we’d stay in the queue as we might as well get it all done now. Time passes, we snake slowly forward in the queue as each car comes out glistening. It’s freezing cold, the heater’s on and the radio is keeping us company.

Can you see where this one’s going? All that electrical stuff on and the car stopped without the engine running?

Yes, I went to turn it on and got nothing. Just that sickening click, click, click of a dead battery. I’d love to say I handled it well. Love to be able to say that I kept completely cool. But I didn’t. I did the works, got upset, shouted about how unfair it all was and what a crappy day it was. Moaned about the money it was going to cost to get fixed, shouted a lot and upset Louise and Molly.

To skip to the end, we got a jump start, drove home and since then I’ve turned it over a few times during the night and all seems well. Whether it will be okay in the morning I have no idea; guess I’ll find out in the morning. Molly and Louise accepted my apologies for blowing my top and we settled down for the night.

Which is when it started to get slightly strange. Because tonight all three of us went to Pocklington Arts Centre to see It’s A Wonderful Life.

It’s A Wonderful Life is one of my favourite Christmas films. Along with Miracle On 34th Street and Love Actually it’s a film I will always end up watching at some point during the Christmas season. So to have it at the local cinema was something we just couldn’t pass up. We even convinced Molly to come along and she rather enjoyed it. Some things went over her head perhaps and it was rather a surprise for her to see both mummy and daddy wiping away tears. I always start blubbing when George is on the bridge and realises that he’s got his second chance and it gets much worse as he’s running back down Main St of Bedford Fall. But I start to really weep at the very end, as the townsfolk come in and give George money to rescue him and the Buildings and Loans firm. I controlled it somewhat with Molly there, but there were still plentiful tears to wipe away by the end.

So, what do these two things have in common? The battery and my moods and It’s A Wonderful Life? Well, as Louise pointed out to me afterwards – I am George Bailey. It’s me on screen. Okay, not the owning a bank, saving his brother’s life and generally being the lynchpin of his community, but the moods, the stresses, the feeling of confinement and that life is just bearing down on me – that’s all me.

Oh, dear god. She’s right as well.

I guess the start of December is as good a place as any to make a change then?

Finally, the Asus eeepc arrives……

Today I got my first Christmas and birthday present. After lusting after one for a long , long time, I’ve finally got my hands onto a lovely Asus eeepc. A little under a year since I first mentioned the damn thing, today I finally got one, spent a long time loading everything up and finally put the Libretto into the filing cabinet.

Poor, poor, lovely little Libretto. It served me incredibly well. Back when I picked it up, I needed it to be a small computer I could throw into a bag to make notes on. And it was wonderful. But that was two years ago nearly and things have moved spectacularly on by now. Which is why I’m typing this out on my brand new Eeepc and am just about to upload the post straight away when I’m finished.

New toys are very, very good indeed. And this is a cracking new toy.

DFC Christmas …..

Christmas is nearly here.
But not quite. Head over to the DFC website and click through to the Advent Calendar. From the start of December it promises all sorts of goodies, but not yet…..

But they do have one Christmas present already out with us subscribers. It’s a brilliant marketing ploy and a great Christmas card. Every subscriber gets four of thse beauties. Inside the card is a message that tell the recipient to head over to the website and claim their free DFC. Brilliant way for Molly to spread the DFC around and a great way for the DFC to get themselves seen by more and more children. Very clever.

DFC at six months – writers and artists have their say….

For the past few days, I’ve had my say and Molly’s had her say on the DFC Comic and how much we’re both enjoying it. But I thought it might be interesting to see what a few people who make the comic strips in the DFC thought when asked the question:

What do YOU think about the DFC?

(Links in the titles take you to the DFC creator pages)

Emma Vieceli (Violet)

I can’t speak highly enough of it. It’s one of the best things to hit the UK comic scene in years, but as to the readership – because of the young target age, we don’t actually get to hear much in way of feedback. the DFC offices quite often get really sweet letters from readers telling them which stories they like, but this isn’t the kind of age group to go discussing the stories online sadly.
I hope, hope, hope that word spreads and more people catch onto this amazing project. It’s an injection of life into the industry, and we’d be mad to let it go. ^_^

(Violet by Emma Vieceli – website)

Peadar O Guilin (Sneaky)

I am one of the contributors — I write Sneaky. As a result, I’ve been getting all the issues, reading them, and passing them on to an eight year old child I know. Just like you, I find that we have radically different preferences.

I grew up on 2000AD and still gravitate towards those sorts of stories, particularly “Mezolith” with its amazing atmosphere. He’s more into “Animal Adventure Squad” etc.

Laura Howell (Sneaky, The Mighty M)

Sadly, there are absolutely no 8-13 year-olds in my acquaintance, so I’ve never once been able to speak to a genuine human child about their DFC reading experiences. But I’ve heard a lot of positive feedback from people like Jim Medway, who go into schools regularly.

For my own experience, I’ve grown more and more keen on the DFC over time – which is not to say I didn’t like it at the beginning, but for me it started hitting its stride in the teen issues, when things like the DFC Olympics and Mezolith appeared . I think it offers today’s kids the closest experience to the one that I grew up with and loved, reading serialised stories in comics such as Mandy and Bunty (and for the lads, in the equivalent boys’ comics). And contrary to popular opinion, I don’t for a second believe kids have lost interest in serialised stories – just look at how they buy endless volumes of Manga, or follow the soaps, and there’s those seven volumes of books about some wizard or
other… I could see it becoming such a big deal amongst both kids and older comics fans, it’s just the question of how the raise awareness. I’m being boringly evangelical about it to anyone who’ll listen these days, but I want to see it on billboards and buses, I want
to see kids at comics conventions cosplaying as DFC characters! Bring Molly along to Bristol next year in a Verne outfit, that’ll be a start ^_^

(Sneaky cover to DFC issue 10 by Laura Howell – website.)

Robin Etherington (Monkey Nuts, Strange Strange World of the Weird)

.hmmessage P { margin:0px; padding:0px } body.hmmessage { font-size: 10pt; font-family:Verdana } I’ve been lucky enough to spend a number of days hosting comic workshops with children ranging from 6-13, a surprisingly wider demographic than the target 8-12 that the DFC initially hoped to attract. The first, and most notable response from all the children who have read the comic (and this percentage has been steadily rising over the sessions, from 10% to around 50%) is one of sheer joy. The original intention was to create an anthology styled comic with ongoing, serialised adventures, but there was a concern that children might find this a difficult reading concept to grasp. What we have discovered is that they positively RELISH the bigger multi-episode adventures, and cannot wait for the next instalment. The range of storytelling and artistic styles is also gaining appreciative noises from the young readers, as boys and girls of different ages constantly nominate different strips as their ‘favourite’, often citing three or four tales as equally fun.

The importance of Language plays a major role in our sessions with the children. I’ve been a firm believer that a child will read AT LEAST two years above their intended age, if provided the material. Words they cannot understand, or pronounce, they will simply skip over, their enjoyment utterly unimpaired by the experience. This is an opinion I’ve found exemplified through our workshops as children read sections of the DFC to us (which they take immense pleasure in!) happily engaging with challenging concepts, language and jokes. Wonder and Imagination are the two watchwords that my brother Lorenzo and I actively instil in every page of our work, and the DFC is rapidly inspiring this sentiment in readers of all ages. Children are happily buying into fantastical lands and mythical worlds, as easily as the more accessible school child based strips. Parents have engaged equally well with the DFC reading experience. The quality standard is something that David Fickling and his editorial team go to great lengths to guarantee, challenging the various creators to produce consistently superior material. Thankfully, the results have resonated well among those parents whose children are subscribing, praising the variety and originality of the tales.

All in all the feedback is superb. As good as it could be at such an early moment in the life-span of this title. 24 issues old and going strong, the future looks bright for the children of the UK!

(Monkey Nuts cover by the Etherington Brothers – website)

Jim Medway (New At The Zoo, Crab Lane Crew)

I think David Fickling has compared it to a TV channel with loads of different shows on, and while that might be a good analogy for kids, Comics are a far more active and involving medium which is constantly asking the reader to fill the gaps and make mental connections. Other than that, he’s a real hero, and certainly very brave, and I think his risk has paid off. Every week you’ve got top quality adventure (such as the astonishing Mezolith) and humour (Little Cutie, Sausage & Carrots and Vern & Lettuce my personal ‘first reads’), beautifully produced AND the reader doesn’t have to put up with a single advert or commercial spin-off. for me that’s a really important plus, as it seems if kids do read other comics, more often than not it’s a TV or film tie-in. And while the Simpsons are excellent, it’s essential kids are shown that there is comic entertainment out there that is not instantly familiar. I ask in every school I work in, and it’s depressing how few recognise (let alone read) Tintin or Asterix. As far as I can make out, these are his models – use the comic to grow weekly strips into eventual published volumes.

My only problem with the comic is hopefully a temporary one, and that is distribution. Even if a kid has heard of The DFC, it’s a very small handful that have ever seen a copy. And if you’ve not ever seen it, you’re not going to know what you’re missing. And even if you’ve got the money, you still can’t buy a copy because you can’t spend coins online. The sooner it can be found in the shops the better, and I know they are working towards that, and doing a big push to get it into schools. Once kids can find out about it and access their own copies without relying on a parent subscribing, then the best British kids comic ever will truly gain the readership it deserves. I don’t know how many are subscribing, but I do know it’s building up slowly and steadily, which I think was always the plan.

(Crab Lane Crew cover by Jim Medway – website)

So there you have it, the thoughts of some of the people involved with the DFC each week. The thing that most jumps out from all of those different responses is the passion that everyone working for the DFC has about the DFC. Everyone seems to want it to do well, which of course means that they continue to do well from it, but I really get the impression that it goes deeper than that. There’s an evangelical tone to a lot of this. People really do believe in it!

But then again, so do I and so does Molly.Which is probably one of the reasons that what was meant to be a short couple of pieces about the DFC this week has turned into some sort of marathon! More tomorrow!

DFC Reviews: Vern & Lettuce, Sausage & Carrots

Vern & Lettuce

by Sarah McIntyre.

(Vern & Lettuce cover to issue 14 of the DFC. Art by Sarah McIntyre.)

Vern & Lettuce appears in the DFC comic each week and it’s definitely one of my daughter’s favourites. Molly loves this quiet, simple strip and it’s always one of the first she reads each week. Each week Vern (the sheep) and Lettuce (the rabbit) have their little adventures that have, so far, involved babysitting little Rabbits, learning the Tuba, a road trip into the city and much, much more. Molly thinks it’s funny and loves how cute the characters are.

(Vern & Lettuce strip from the DFC issue 1, by Sarah McIntyre)

It’s also my favourite strip in the DFC. There’s something quite lovely about it. The art is playful, the stories simple, each episode is self contained but has built up into quite a long story which is always great fun to read each week. But above all else I like the look of the strip. It’s the colours that Sarah McIntyre chooses to use that make it my favourite; it’s got quite a muted palette, but it’s subtly, beautifully effective.

Molly was going to add some words to this herself but in the end settled for drawing Vern & Lettuce instead. But she did say to tell you how much fun Vern & Lettuce is and how she thinks Sarah McIntyre’s great. That goes for us both.

(Sarah McIntyre’s Vern & Lettuce – artwork by Molly.)

Sarah McIntyre’s website is here, live journal is here, there’s an interview with her here and Vern and Lettuce have their own Facebook pages here.

Sausage & Carrots

by Simone Lia

I wanted to add something about Molly’s other favourite strip; Simone Lia’s Sausage & Carrots, but it’s very difficult to write that much about a strip that’s just 3 or 4 panels long. But each week Molly opens her DFC and, more often than not, flips it over to the back cover and reads Sausage & Carrots before she’s even got her shoes off. Now that’s a recommendation.

(Sausage & Carrots from the DFC preview website. Art by Simone Lia)

I get the feeling it’s a strip you either love or hate. It’s simple, silly, funny and drawn in Simone Lia’s clean style that she used oh so beautifully on one of my books of 2007; Fluffy. If you hadn’t guessed by now, for the Bruton household, Sausage & Carrots is much loved indeed.

(Simone Lia’s Sausage & Carrot. Art by Molly.)

Simone Lia’s Sausage & Carrots appears each week on the back cover of the DFC.

Simone Lia’s website.

The DFC is published weekly, subscriptions and back issues available online.

DFC # 27 – out now.

This weeks DFC arrived yesterday. Another very good issue, just like we’ve come to expect. Molly wouldn’t let it go until bedtime.

Underneath the great Laura Howell Mighty M cover there’s the usual wonderful mix of interesting strips. Laura’s Mighty M continues in the rich form it started in last week.

Favourites are still in there, so there’s more Vern & Lettuce, more Crab Lane Crew, more Sausage & Carrots. All of which kept Molly very quiet and happy. The new strip Peach De Punch also had her interest. It’s almost a mix of Violet and Crab Lane Crew in this first episode; manga stylings and a sedate, uneventful story. Looks like it may develop into a favourite for her.

My disappointment in the loss of Mezolith looks like it may be tempered by the forthcoming Mirabilis. Based on the one page ad in this issue, it looks like it’s going to be gorgeous. The artwork reminds me greatly of Bret Blevins and John Watkiss in it’s style. It’s starting in DFC 30, the double sized Christmas issue and may well be another strip, like Mezolith, that sits rather at odds with the rest of the comic, but gets in just on being beautiful and interesting.

Jim Medway meets Groening and Spiegelman

Following on from the review of Crab Lane Crews, I just had to post this great cartoon report on Comica by Jim Medway. It seems Jim got a little starstruck meeting Groening and Spiegelman!

Art from Jim Medway’s blog. (c) Jim Medway.

DFC Reviews: Crab Lane Crew by Jim Medway

As part of the extended look at the DFC going on this week here on the blog, I thought it would be nice to look at some of mine and (more importantly) Molly’s favourites. Obviously, this is a quick sampler, as favourites come and go, but overall, here’s what really gets first look each week. Molly decided she was far too busy to take part in this, but spent a long time drawing her favourites for your enjoyment. So without further ado, the first DFC review:

Crab Lane Crew

by Jim Medway

Crab Lane Crew has been mentioned a few times in my talking to various people about the DFC. And rarely in a kind way. People just didn’t like it, didn’t get it, thought it was just two pages of nothing going on. And I initially thought exactly the same thing.

Like I said to Molly when I interviewed her, I didn’t get it at first either. Because essentially it’s just a group of kids standing around and talking. I just couldn’t get past the fact that nothing really happened each week.

But the thing is, Molly absolutely loves it, adores it. It’s one of the first things she reads in the comic. And that’s pretty much the problem with every bit of writing I’ve ever read so far about The DFC. You see, we just don’t really get it. None of us do. We’re too old. It’s not our comic.

(Crab Lane Crew (c) Jim Medway. The Crew doing what they do; talking, laughing, hanging out and being friends).

So I talked to Molly about it and she basically explained it with a shrug and a nonchalant “it’s just nice to see them talk and have fun”. After that I got it. Like she said, Crab Lane Crew is not some hilariously funny thing, no great adventures are had.

But it does have something children value above all else; friendship. Molly sees something in Crab Lane Crew that she sees in her own school and her own friendships. Jim Medway has just tapped quite brilliantly into that. He’s a great educator as well from what I can gather and runs extremely successful workshops for children across Manchester and many of his ideas get road-tested for children on children. Artistically, Crab Lane Crew is deceptively simple as well. But it’s simply wonderful. Molly can recognise every single character and can talk for hours about them all. In fact, when we started talking about this idea to review the strips she decided she was actually far too busy, but would gladly draw the ones she really, really liked.With Crab Lane Crew she just kept going , and going, and going….

But this sort of dedication to a comic, this much love for it’s characters – that’s the thing that will keep the DFC going from strength to strength for hopefully many years to come. Crab Lane Crew is a perfect example of just how tuned into it’s readership this comic is. Don’t listen to us 30 and 40 somethings. Talk to the children who love it.

Molly growing up. Too late to stop it now…..

Molly. 9 years old. Wonderful, marvellous child of mine.

Tonight she headed off with a friend to the pictures for the first time without grown ups around. It was off to see High School Musical 3 as a treat. Definitely one of her films of the year and more than likely one of mine as well. Just complete and utter simple fun.

But it does mean that, despite all our best attempts, she’s growing up. Not fair. Really not fair. It will be teenager before I know it. Something to really look forward to there.

And whilst speaking of Molly, did we all see her interview last night? I interviewed her about the DFC as part of the series of articles I’m doing about thi sgreat comic. It’s here at the FPI blog and cross posted here at Fictions.

Nicest quote so far is from Tom Spurgeon:
“over at Forbidden Planet International’s always must-read blog Richard Bruton interviews Molly Bruton, age 9, about The DFC kids’ comic. I dare you not to smile at some point during that interview.”

Because Molly makes everyone smile. It’s her superpower. I hope it’s always the same. No matter how grown up she may get.

Another learning platform training day, another all day headache…..

Today was Learning Platform training day 2.

Oh it was such fun. Or maybe not. We at least got to have a play this time and discovered what we had thought all along. It may be functionally quite easy to use, but the sheer scale of administering the Learning Platform and all of the users on it is massive. Cue headache.

Not made any better by being in a room almost guaranteed to make me ill. Small, cramped, full of noisy computers. Too hot with the windows closed. Freezing with fans on and windows open. Hot, cold, tired, bored, hot, cold, bored, tired, headache, headache, headache, headache……

The only good thing about it was realising I don’t actually have to even think about it until January again now. Have lots and lots and lots of other things to be getting on with. The funniest thing is that I know I haven’t got a hope in hell of getting it sorted properly given the amount of time I would need to spend on it. But I also know that I’m much better off for available time than any of the teachers who were there at the meeting today.

The Learning Platform. It may or may not be a good idea. But it’s most certainly not been thought out properly. We get told that it’s at least 3-4 hours administration work a week and they wonder why we’re all slightly reluctant to play along. Oh, wait. Hold on. I’ve just realised, I actually loaf off at work for 3 hours each week. I just pretend to be busy. Of course I’ll have the time spare to do the LP admin.

No, no, no, no, no, no.
Headache, headache, headache…..