DANDY EXHIBITION LAUNCH AND DIGITAL DANDY EVENT - SATURDAY 8TH

On Saturday 8^th December at 2pm there will be an opening event for the University of Dundee’s latest comics exhibition which will celebrate the 75th birthday of the world’s third-longest running comic, The Dandy, created by Dundee publishers DC Thomson. The exhibition looks back over the Dandy’s past, but also towards its future as it moves on-line with the launch of the Digital Dandy this week.

The exhibition features original artwork from DC Thomson’s collections dating back to the earliest years of the comic, much of which has never been shown in public before. The launch event will also give an exclusive behind-the-scenes glimpse at the creation of the new Digital Dandy, with a discussion led by Dr Chris Murray, with contributions from Morris Heggie, former Dandy editor, new Digital Dandy editor Craig Ferguson, Digital Production manager Mark Hunter, writer Dan McGachey, long-time DCT artist David Sutherland, and one of the artists who is very closely involved in the direction of the Digital Dandy, Stephen White (Brassneck and Keyhole Kate).

The exhibition and launch have been created as part of an on-going partnership between DC Thomson & Co Ltd, the University of Dundee Museum Services and the newly established Scottish Centre for Comics Studies based at the University. Dr Chris Murray, director of the centre, said: “We are proud to be able to help The Dandy celebrate its 75th anniversary, which is a remarkable achievement. Of course, the comic is also in a process of transition, as the final print version goes to press and is replaced by a new digital Dandy. This promises to be an exciting and innovative step forward for comic and its beloved characters.”

All are welcome for what promises to be an informative and engaging series of talks about The Dandy’s history and its future.

The exhibition is open Monday-Saturday until 7th January (except when the University is closed for Christmas 23 December – 2 January). The launch will be on Saturday 8^th December at 2pm in the Tower Building, University of Dundee. Admission is free.

For further information email museum@dundee.ac.uk or c.murray@dundee.ac.uk

Available at Hi-Ex!: Anthology

Cover by Colin MacNeil (Ex DJCAD Graduate)

Coming soon, a new comics series, Anthology, published under the imprint UniVerse, will showcase the best creative work that emerges from the new comics courses at the University of Dundee and DJCAD.

Anthology One, is the first issue, and features work from the students on Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design’s (DJCAD) Comic Art and Graphic Novels Module. Module Leader Phillip Vaughan said, "We have created an imprint called UniVerse to promote and publish up and coming work from the next generation of comic creators! This is the best of the work from the first cohort of the module, which (staggeringly!) was run over 12 weeks for one day a week during Semester 1 of Communication Design Level 3 (encompassing Animation, Graphic Design and Illustration undergraduates). This year we plan to roll the module out to other undergraduate areas of the art college. We hope you will be as impressed with the diverse and professional results as we are!" 

Dr Chris Murray of the School of Humanities, course leader of the Comics Studies MLitt, and director of the newly formed Scottish Centre for Comics Studies, helped to deliver the course, and said, "It is an exciting time for Comics Studies at Dundee, and the DJCAD module has been even more successful than we'd hoped - the results are impressive, and the students clearly benefited from workshops with industry professionals such as Frank Quitely, Cam Kennedy, Colin MacNeil, and others". He added, "we are looking forward to Anthology Two, and further publications from UniVerse".

You lucky people will be able to buy this at Hi-Ex! Make sure to pick up a copy!

Superman iPhone game

We're still playing catch-up with some outstanding reviews here, thanks to the post-Christmas ennui!

So here goes with a couple that should have been up a long time ago!


Superman The Game

A while ago, your intrepid team Hi-Ex! attended the Dundee Comic Book Day, where one of the talks was about this game, which was developed by Dundee based Tiger Games.
Superman as a character has been very badly served in the past when it comes to computer games. I have played quite a few of them and the biggest problem has always been Superman himself. I have never been able to understand how or why they could give Superman an energy bar. He’s indestructible, after all! So having him die because of something that (to him) is relatively minor, like an asteroid falling on his head or something like that, never rang true.
Tiger Games have managed to solve this problem however. Instead of Superman having a health bar, Metropolis does.

The game, you see, concerns you, as Superman, defending the city against escalating attacks from a variety of fronts ranging from good old Lex Luthor to crashing planes or the aforementioned asteroids.
If you fail at any of these tasks then the city takes the damage, not the Man of Steel. So when the city dies, it is game over.
Gameplay is great, with the controls simple to master. The only bugbear is the virtual joystick, which is something that you either love or hate.
Graphic are, given the size of the game, very good indeed and there are some lovely touches, like Superman leaving a blue and red trail behind him as he accelerates in flight.
Some of the gameplay can be a little repetitive – just how many spaceships can fall on one city –but for the laughable price of 69 pence, this really represents superb value for money.

Dundee Comic Day

Dundee Comics day is organised by Dr Chris Murray ( and team ) who runs the Mlitt in comics at Dundee University. Its a fantastic event, great friendly atmosphere, great guests and interesting talks.

Paul Gravett gave a shortened version of a fascinating talk about the history of comics and '1001 Comic Books you must read before you die' a brand new gorgeous book that he has edited. There is an incredible variety of comics out there internationally much much more than people popularly think, some really inspiring and beautiful work. 

Martin Conaghan and Will Pickering talk about the re-release of their and acclaimed historically accurate Burke and Hare Graphic novel, explaining how they built up the information and story.

Monty Nero the fantastic artist and writer talks about his current work on a brilliant comic called 'Death Sentence'

John Wagner had spent the day touring Dundee with friend and journalist Mike Donachie, they'd found the house with the shed that it had all started in with Pat Mills, where they used to sit and write! John talked about the need for wannabe writers to get themselves recognised in the massive pile of unsolicited submissions. How strong characters were the key to good storytelling. He also talked about the pros and cons of writing partnerships and took lots of questions about the Dredd film, why Button Man hasn't been filmed yet and about the aging Dredd issue.

Robbie Morrison - Comics taught him how to tell stories. He'd read of how a spider bite gave super spider powers, nuclear exposure turns you big and green and soon realised that reality isn't like that. He wanted to tell stories that reflected more reality, the human and emotional content. Dante was conceived to create a different type of character for 2000ad, 11 books and 16 years later we are drawing to the story's conclusion that Robbie always knew would happen, he didn't want a character to go on and on past the point where the writer no longer remembered or cared about the story. He feels guilty about how much Dante has suffered, and warned of more suffering to come. 

Colin McNeil ( a regular Hi-Ex guest ) started his talk by explaining how uncomfortable as an artist he is at talking in public and how much better he'd be with a blackboard showing things visually. However his passion for subjects he cares for is always apparent. He talked about the influence of boys war comics on him as a child, this was the generation that didn't talk about the war, these stories showed him what had happened to the previous generation and members of his family. He dislikes the word 'hero' as it is generally a propoganda term. Colin feels he is not really a comic artist but an artist who just happens to draw comics. His main early comic art influences are Carlos Ezquerra, Cam Kennedy and Mike MacMahon. He also enthused about how as a small child he'd had the opportunity to see Rembrandt's Night Watch painting close up behind the ropes and how the colours and brush work had stayed with him. 

The Commando editorial and writer team explained what makes a good solid story ( characters and the interaction between characters ) and discussed why Commando is still going after 50 years. There has been some great artists work on it over the years. It was however pointed out that only 2% of the readership is female.

Cam Kennedy ( another Hi-Ex guest ) was a very entertaining speaker, regaling us with tales of his early years drawing in France and subsequent move to Orkney. He talked about the Scottishness and humour in the comics he's worked on. Cam also loved drawing machines, spaceships and tanks, coming from generations of engineers. While the Star Wars comics were a fan favorite, Cam was never a fan, he got sick of "drawing a big rug and a dust bin", though he pitched the Bobba Fett series which was witter by Wagner as he enjoyed that character. He also told the audience the famous Kenny Who? story.

Frank Quitely ( another previous Hi-Ex guest )- gave a personal and inspiring talk about his work and the influences on him. He never made any distinction as a young person between comic art, album art, poster art and fine art, he was surrounded by books and art books and drew from all of them. He'd always doodled sequential breakdowns of motion like football or fight scenes without realising how it connected to comics. He explained that for him, when we hear a story it is in moving pictures in our heads, the artists job is to select the correct freeze frame to put the story on paper. His first published work was of course on Scottish 'scatological slapstick' comic Electric Soup, where Frank satirised the much loved Broons with 'the Greens' . This is when he first adopted his pseudonym, which had "seemed really clever when 19 or 20", and had also been to hide what he was doing from parents etc. He'd worked for years in comics before an editor at DC questioned his storytelling layouts, what had previously been intuitive them became an obsession as the drawing took second place to the storytelling and he learnt everything he could from Scott McLeod and many others. While convalescing recently from back problems which stopped his working he has dreamed up some wonderful sounding personal projects.

Basically all these folks are brilliant, and many of them will be coming along to Hi-Ex 2012. Many thanks to the Dundee comic day team for organising this great event and having us along.