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!

Comics and Tom Harris

We posted yesterday about the story of the new course in comics at Dundee University, and also reported the ignorant comments by the Labour politician Tom Harris.


Well, last night we posted a link to the blog on Twitter, and this started an interesting exchange with Mr Harris which started with this (rather cheeky it must be said!) suggestion from us:


Wonder if @TomHarrisMP has read V for Vendetta? It doesn't defend tax evasion, but there might be a message in there for a politician


(Yes, by the way, Mr Harris spoke out if favour of companies like Vodaphone who are blatantly avoiding paying tax in the UK)


He replied with:


@HiExComicCon Not only have I read it - I read it when it was first published in Warrior. And I still have the issues.


And we said:


@TomHarrisMP good for you. If you like, we could ask David Lloyd to respond to your opinions on comics as education?


And his bizarre reply was:


@HiExComicCon You do realise I was talking about comics, not advocating child slavery?


The exchange finished with our tweet:


@TomHarrisMP yes, & I know a strawman when I see one. I thought you were dismissing education in the subject as a joke-perhaps I am wrong...


Mr Harris did not reply to this to either confirm or deny his opinions on the educational power of comics.


Now... there are a few things very wrong with Mr Harris's responses.
Firstly- 'child slavery'? Where exactly did this come from? It's almost like, I dunno, he was throwing something ridiculous into the mix in an attempt to derail the subject... but surely he would not do something as crass and obvious as that, would he?
Certainly, when we ignored this and asked him about education he came back with a full and proper answer... oh wait- he didn't. Sorry, my mistake. He didn't respond to the question at all.


The other is the V for Vendetta thing- now I'm sure most of you have read it or watched the movie, so you'll know the politics of it- and it seems that, when watching the behaviour of Mr Harris and the arrogance he displays in his 'answers' that old V was not too far of being correct in his opinions...
And apart from that, the supreme irony is, of course, that V co-creator David Lloyd is a passionate advocate of comics in education- check out Cartoon Classroom to see what we mean.


All in all it is amazingly disappointing to see someone who is supposed to be a public servant - a Scottish public servant-denigrating the study of something that has made Scotland, and Dundee in particular, world famous.


We'd like to take this opportunity  to invite Mr Harris to the next Hi-Ex convention in Inverness, and perhaps he can sit in on a few classes and see just how educational comics can be.