Councils Of The Galaxy Visit Scottish Schools

By John Freeman on May 28, 2010

After last year’s comic adaptation of The First Men On Mercury, created by Metaphrog for the Association for Scottish Literary Studies, was given away free on National Poetry Day to Strathclyde’s school children, this year the charity Children in Scotland have gone one better.

This month they have been sending out 25,000 copies of a free comic to all Scottish schools, both primary and secondary, to encourage the pupils to take part in their school councils. The comic, entitled Councils Of The Galaxy, was illustrated and co-written by Edinburgh based artist Tobias Cook.

In Councils Of The Galaxy, Captain Captigan heads the alien crew of the star cruiser Anastas who are intrigued by the idea of Earth schoolchildren being able to contribute their views via their school councils since they come from a planet where head teachers spit acid and pupils don’t have any say in the running of their schools.

Children In Scotland, in partnership with the University of Edinburgh, conducted a comprehensive study of school pupil councils throughout Scotland between 2007 and 2009 and as well as making their results, entitled Having A Say At School, public through the normal channels of reports and the internet, they chose to present their findings to the school children themselves in the form of a full colour comic. Their director of research, Jonathan Sher, said, “Too often, the results of research done about students is not shared with them. And when it is, it tends to be boring and therefore ignored. We created this comic book because we are keen for students to enjoy the experience of learning the lessons from HASAS.”

There are more details of the report on the Having A Say At School website.

There are more details and sample pages of the comic on Tobias Cook’s website.

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John Freeman

John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.

He’s the writer of comics such as 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.