Cartoonist Steve English wins first ‘Tartan Bucket’ prize

By John Freeman on November 3, 2011

Steve English with his
‘Tartan Bucket’

Steve English has just been awarded the first Tartan Bucket Prize (named in honour of famous Scottish comics character Oor Wullie) organised by Dundee University in conjunction with D C Thomson.

The aim of the competition was to design a cartoon character and story that would be suitable for the likes of weekly print comics Beano and Dandy.

Steve’s winning entry, Belle’s Magic Mobile, will feature in the Beano in January 2012.

“It’s about a girl with a magic mobile phone that she gets from her grandad who looks suspiciously like Alexander Graham Bell,” Steve tells us. “I’m hoping there’s lots of scope for follow up stories. I’m madly inking some new stories to show the Beano, but time will only tell if they see it that way too.

“They’re going to publish it in January,” he reveals. “Chris Murray, the guy who organised the Dundee Comic Day, has said he would probably put an exhibition together for that time too.”

Some readers may recall Steve also won the ROK Comics cartoon competition back in 2007, which had the then editor of The Beano as its external judge.

In addition to his competition success, Steve’s football humour strip Football Earth now features in two more publications, She Kicks published by Baltic Publications and Farnborough OBG matchday programme.

His crazy Madd Science is one of three creator-owned iPhone apps available from ROK Comics.

The tartan on that ‘Tartan Bucket’, by the way, is the officially registered Oor Wullie tartan . The Broons tartan, strangely enough, is more brown.

John Freeman

The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.

He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.