Back in 2001, 65 of the world’s leading comic book artists illustrated a deck of playing cards to raise money for the British charity, Childline. In 2018, we ran a feature on the project on downthetubes, only by accident discovering this weekend that the post had vanished from the site. So here’s a new version of the previous item, with some new imagery and additional links…
The project was the brainchild of comics creator Kev F. Sutherland, best known today for his work promoting comics in classrooms and children’s workshops through his Comic Art Masterclasses, the Scottish Falsetto Puppet Theatre, and his adaptations of Shakespeare into comics.
Back then, Kev was working with Mike Allwood to bring comic fans the Bristol-based Comics Festival – the only major British comic events of the time. The annual Festival launched in 1999, promoted as the country’s first comics festival, although, of course, there had been several major comic events before it, such as London’s UK Comic Art Convention, among others.
The Festivals included presentation of the National Comics Awards, co-founded by Kev and artist Mark Buckingham, a regular feature of Comic Festival from 1999 to 2003, except for the year 2000, when the Eagle Awards were presented there.
Charity auctions were held every year, initially for Comic Relief. In 2001, Kev came up with the idea of creating a Charity Deck of Cards, utilising donated art from comic creators, to raise money for the children’s charity, Childline.
The project was sponsored by a variety of organisations and individuals (including me!) to pay for the printing, and a host of major comic artists contributed artworks, including Alan Davis, Carlos Ezquerra, Dave Gibbons, Roger Langridge, Mike Perkins, Sean Phillips, Bryan Talbot, Ben Wilsher, and many more. The limited edition card packs are now much sought after…
The playing card deck was followed by two similar releases in 2003, one at the Bristol Comic Art Festival, and the next at the Winter Comic Art Festival, which took place in London.
The 2003 sets were simply presented as trading cards. If I recall correctly, Kev received art from different artists for the same playing card for the 2001 release and wanted to avoid “overlap”. (As you can see from the detailed images above, there are a number of cards that are “duplicates”, and tracking down every variant now isn’t easy!)
Here are the full sets for the 2003 “Trading Card” style releases…
downthetubes contributor Richard Sheaf has plenty of information on each deck and the 2003 Winter Festival over on his Boys Adventure Comic blog, including images of some of the original art used to create some of the cards, donated by artists such as Alan Davis, Simon Coleby and Frazer Irving here.
Boys Adventure Comics Blog Links…
2001 Set: Clubs | | Diamonds | Hearts | Spades
2003 – ‘Summer’ Festival: Part One | Part Two | Part Three
2003 – ‘Winter’ Festival (held in London) – Background
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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.
Categories: 2000AD, Art and Illustration, British Comics, Comic Art, Comics, Events, Features, Other Worlds
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