There has been a major change to the line up for this year’s Dundee Comics Day which we first reported on back in August, with events running on both 25th and 26th October as part of the Dundee Literary Festival.
Headlining this year’s event will now be Pat Mills, who first worked in the comics industry for Dundee-based DC Thomson, before going freelance and soon being asked to develop a new war comic, Battle Picture Weekly, for IPC. Pat went on to become the creator and first editor of 2000AD.
He’s a champion of girls’ and political comics, the writer of Requiem Vampire Knight, Marshal Law, Accident Man, “Nemesis the Warlock”, “Charley’s War” and many much-praised strips and who recently released the Toxic! classic PSYCHOKILLER on the digital platform Comixology through his fast-developing Millsverse e-imprint.
Dundee Comics Day aims to explore the diversity of the comics medium, and its relationship with other media and will take place in Dundee University’s Bonar Hall and Tower Building, events at the Festival also include a workshop on creating comics for under fifteens on Saturday 25th October, as well as a talk by the creators of Saltire.
The events on Sunday 26th October will start with the opening of the Ex Libris Book Fair in the Bonar Hall in the morning, which will involve a series of talks and workshops alongside stalls featuring comics, zines and small press.
The Comics Day talks will start at 1.00pm in the Tower Building (beside the Bonar Hall) and close with the announcement of the winner of this year’s Dundee Comics Prize, which aims to nurture talent in comics and to help new creators gain recognition.
Here’s the published schedule:
Saturday 25th October 2014
- 11.00am – 12.45pm – Creating Comics – Workshop for under 15s, DCA Activity Room £5
- 3.00 – 4.30pm Film: Antboy (Dir.Ask Hasselbalch 2013) Screening at DCA. (Tickets booked via DCA)
- 6.00pm Creating Saltire Q&A – The Making of a Scottish Superhero, Baxter 1.36 Tower Building (this will include the announcement of the winner of this year’s Dundee Comic Prize)
Sunday 26th October 2014
- 10.00am Opening of Ex Libris Book Fair, Bonar Hall
- 1.00pm Opening of Comics Day talks, Tower Building
- 1.10pm Woodrow Phoenix
- 1.50pm Questions
Woodrow Phoenix is a British comics artist and writer who also works in the fields of editorial illustration, graphic design, font design and children’s books. He is known for his experimentation with illustrative and graphic styles, offering up an incongruous mix of the cute and the sinister.
His graphic story “End of the Line” first appeared to much praise in The Brighton Book, a mixed media anthology in association with The Brighton Festival. Woodrow is the author of the much-acclaimed Rumble Strip, published by Myriad Editions, pushing the construction and narrative possibilities of the comic strip in an entirely new direction while exploring the complicated psychology of the relationship between people and cars.
He was also co-editor of Nelson, a collective graphic novel with 54 creators, published by Blank Slate, for whom he is also Art Director.
The team behind SelfMadeHero’s adaptation of The Master and Margarita, one of the company’s first titles back in 2008. Andrzej Klimowski is a graphic artist and a designer of theatre, opera and film posters, and Professor of Illustration at the Royal College of Art, London. He is an international illustrator of book covers and press and magazine illustrations and an author of graphic novels whose research interests are in narrative, investigating new relationships between text and image.
He has exhibited internationally, with work collected by museums in Europe and the United States. His acclaimed career has seen him designing film and theatre posters as well as directing short animated films in Warsaw plus designing covers for Penguin, Faber & Faber, Everyman Library and Oberon Books, as well as contributing drawings to The Guardian. His graphic novels The Depository and The Secret were published by Faber, who also published his book Horace Dorlan in 2007.
Danusia Schejbal has exhibited her critically acclaimed paintings in exhibitions across Europe. Born in London, she was awarded a British Council Scholarship to study Stage Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland. From 1976 to 1981, she designed sets and costumes for various theatres in Poland. Her career has subsequently seen her as a designer for the Cherub Theatre Company and in 1981 she won the Sunday Telegraph Award for best production at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for Macbeth.
- 3.00pm Break and Signings
4.00 pm Will Simpson
4.40 pm Questions
Will Simpson grew up in Prehen, near Derry, and his earliest work was for the Belfast anthology Ximoc in the early 1980s. This led to professional work in the UK, drawing Big Ben in Warrior in 1984, and a run on Transformers for Marvel UK in 1985-1987.
His first work for 2000AD, a Future Shock, came in 1985, and he was a regular on the magazine from 1987 to 1991, drawing Universal Soldier (1987), Judge Dredd, including episodes of the epic Oz (1987-88), Tale of the Dead Man, and Tyranny Rex (1988). He provided painted art for several Judge Dredd stories, as well as the Rogue Trooper reboot The War Machine in 1989-90. In 1991 he created Sex Warrior with writers Pat Mills and Tony Skinner for Toxic!
In recent years he has developed his work in the film industry providing conceptual art and storyboards for a variety of feature films, such as: Reign of Fire, directed by Rob Bowman, Freeze Frame, directed by John Simpson, Neil Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto, and most recently, Game of Thrones for HBO, David Gordon Green and Danny McBride’s Your Highness for Universal, Lord Richard Attenborough’s 2006 production, Closing The Ring and the Tom Hanks produced City Of Ember.
- 5.00pm Pat Mills
- 6.00pm Roundtable discussion
- 6.30pm End
Please note that previously-announced guests John Reppion and Leah Moore will no longer be in attendance.
• Tickets are £15. For more information about the Comics Day and the whole Festival visit www.dundee.ac.uk/literarydundee
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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.
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