Panel Borders: The DFC Library
From May 2008 – March 2009 Children’s book publisher David Fickling launched a bold experiment in creating a new kids comic – The DFC – for the British market, which on a weekly basis featured new stories in a variety of genres from some of Britain’s best up and coming comics creators, not to mention a lead strip written by Philip Pullman. Unfortunately the comic folded after 43 issues, but now a year on, the first three volumes of The DFC Library have been released, reprinting collections of material in European Graphic Album format.
Alex Fitch talks to Kate Brown, the award winning creator of Spider Moon, Dave Shelton, the creator of Good Dog, Bad Dog and Ben Haggarty, the writer of MeZolith, who with artist Adam Brockbank has created a book that one critic has already called “the most important British graphic novel of the last twenty years”.
Excerpts from The Spider Moon by Kate Brown, MeZolith by Ben Haggarty and Adam Brockbank, and Good Dog, Bad Dog by Dave Shelton
For more info about this podcast and a variety of formats you can stream or download, please visit the home of this episode at www.archive.org
Links: More info about The DFC Library
Read extracts from The DFC Library at www.randomhouse.co.uk
DFC creators blog – Super Comics Adventure Squad
Good Dog, Bad Dog – Dave Shelton’s blog and website
Review of Good Dog, Bad Dog on the Forbidden Planet International blog
Good Dog, Bad Dog fan art on the S.C.A.S. blog
MeZolith – Info about Ben Haggarty’s Oral Storytelling group – Crick Crack Club
Adam Brockbank’s website
Review of MeZolith at the Mirablilis blog
Spider Moon – Kate Brown’s blog and website
Info about Kate winning the Arts Foundation Graphic Novelist prize
Info about the Spider Moon stage production
Previous DFC podcasts: Alex talks to Philip Pullman, John Aggs, Patrice Aggs and Jim Medway at The DFC launch in Spring 2008, to Kate Brown at the 2008 Bristol Comics Expo and to Sarah McIntyre at her studio in Deptford, Autumn 2009
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Tags: Panel Borders
Pédilüv : une émission de création sonore au pouvoir isolant et désinfectant
Pédilüv – Radiophonic experimentation from Paris produced by Coraline Janvier and Julia Drouhin. This series was originally broadcast on Radio Campus.
C’est la première de Pédilüv, un bain de pied pour vos oreilles délicates, et pour cette première nous vous présentons les 2 productrices de cette émission : Julia Drouhin et Coraline Janvier, ainsi que quelques rafraîchissements sonores proposés par Julia Drouhin, (“L’arche” et “Mes prairies farcies”)avant de passer aux choses pas sérieuses les semaines suivantes ! Merci à la flûte à narine d’Antoine Ronco, l’acapella de Marie Venet et Léonore Fouré, les samples de Raphaël, Marco, Dinah, Jean-Philippe qui ont contribué à cette première émission.
Pedilüv : every thursday from 7.30pm to 6pm
Tags: Podcast · Shows
The wind was howling across the desolate moors. It was an incredibly howly wind, and they were almost unbelievably desolate moors. Such desolation has seldom been howled upon by wild winds anywhere, ever, throughout the records of time, since the unimaginably distant past when the moors were an alluvial plain across which roamed weird primitive beasts. Once those beasts howled here, now it was the wind, ferocious in its onslaught upon the barren emptiness of the moors. Barren and empty and desolate but for a tiny ramshackle near-dilapidated cottage hunched alongside the single faint path that stretched across the moors, twisting and winding and leading none knew where. It was in this vile brickish habitude that Pallid Ada, the Crippled Heiress, eked out her sorrowful existence.
This episode was recorded on the 11th June 2009. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the four publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.
Tags: Hooting Yard
Panel Borders: Yetis, ghosts and other things that go bump in the night!
Continuing children’s book month on the show, Alex Fitch talks to two creators of atypical titles for kids, which are being published by Walker Books. John Dunning is the writer of Salem Brownstone: All along the watchtowers, a Graphic Album in the European format which combines his script in the style of American horror writers H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe with Nikhil Singh’s elegant artwork, reminiscent of Victorian illustrators such as Aubrey Beardsley. Salem Brownstone was originally serialised in the small press anthology Sturgeon White Moss and Alex talks to John about the process of creating this unusual title.
Alex Milway is the author of The Mousehunter trilogy of pirate novels for young adults and in his new series of books – The Mythical 9th Division – which tell the tales of a trio of crimefighting Yetis who work for the British government, he is pioneering a new kind of storytelling in which every chapter of the books segues from sequential art into more traditional text. The two Alexs talk about the first of the Yeti books – Operation Robot Storm – which is being released in June and how comics can be used as another device to get kids into reading.
Panels from Operation Robot Storm (c) Alex Milway and Salem Brownstone (c) Nikhil Singh and John Dunning
For more info about this podcast and a variety of formats you can stream or download, please visit the home of this episode at www.archive.org
Links: Alex Milway – profile and info about Operation Robot Storm on Walker Books’ website
The Mousehunter website / blog
Old Hokey’s Whimsical tales blog
John Dunning – Interview with John & Nikhil on www.paulgravett.com
Info on Salem Brownstone and John Dunning on Walker Books’ website
Forbidden Planet International review
Interview with Nikhil about his Visa traumas at caribbeanbookblog.wordpress.com
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Tags: Panel Borders
Hello,
This episode is brought to you by Abe Pazos, aka Pick Up Spore, aka The Man With A Plan, aka Flan And Bran, aka Graham Atchew.
Actually I made the last three up, but the first two are real, honest.
Headphones are highly recommended as is a quiet and relaxing environment for maximum enjoyment of the episode.
Thanks to Abe for submitting this piece to the show 
1. Recording for Pitch Festival, Pick Up Spore:
www.archive.org
Tags: Marvin Suicide · Music
Panel Borders: Robots of various sizes
Starting Children’s Books month on the show, Alex Fitch talks to two artists who have inadvertently found themselves making comics for younger audiences. Joe List is a graphic designer and animator who, with his first collection of comic strips inspired by Saturday morning cartoons – Freak Leap – has compiled a whimsical series of adventures starring pirates, monsters and giant robots with spindly legs suitable for all ages. Paul Collicutt is a children’s book illustrator who has previously been engaged in fully pained artwork for traditional picture books but now, as the creator of a series of Robot City Adventures, is telling tales of a Retro Sci-Fi future where robot Private Detectives and coastguards mix with humans and sea monsters alike.
Pages from Freak Leap by Joe List and Robot City Adventures by Paul Collicutt
For more info about this podcast and a variety of formats you can stream or download, please visit the home of this episode at www.archive.org
Links: Joe List – website / flickr site
Freak Leap website
Annotated Weekender blog
Paul Collicutt – Info on Robot City Adventures from Templar Publishing
Info on Paul’s books at librarything.com
Paul’s contact details at illustrator.org.uk
Interview at mindlessones.com
Recommended events:
Lost Treasures of the Black Heart
Josie Long’s monthly comedy night at the Black Heart Pub in Camden features an eclectic mix of comedians intructing the audience about esoteric trivia and facts you never knew you needed to know! Alongside this fol-de-rol is the paper magnificence of the We are words + pictures stall selling their four colour treats, comics and merchandise…
8pm, Tuesday 9th March, The Black Heart, 2 Greenland Place, Camden, London NW1 0AP
Tags: Panel Borders
Episode 20 – Hamlet with Desmond Leslie
Here’s one of the many Living Shakespeare records doing the rounds from 1962 featuring ” Musique Concrete and Sound Patterns composed and recorded by Desmond Leslie.”
Voice On Record is produced and presented by Sean Williams. Each episode features a selection of recordings of the human voice which have been preserved on vinyl. Historic events stand alongside esoteric guides to better bowling. Arid studio recordings are juxtaposed with location recordings rich with fascinating incidental sounds.
Originally broadcast on January 26th 2010.
Tags: Podcast · iTunes Music Store
As far as I can ascertain, the second album by the band VRIL has been made without any bee involvement whatsoever. These eighteen new waxings by the group – now a quartet – form the soundtrack to the European arthouse film classic The Fatal Duckpond.. Seven hours long, black and white, and silent for large s t r e t c h e s apart from these musical numbers and sparse patches of dialogue mumbled in an incoherent and invented language, the film is a visionary reworking of the 1956 Hollywood western The Bloodsoaked Revenge Of Escobar Beppo, itself an adaptation of a rare and little-performed Jacobean drama whose author was stabbed to death in a brawl and whose corpse was flung into the then stinking Thames.
This episode was recorded on the 11th June 2009. A complete transcript of this episode can be found on Frank Key’s Hooting Yard website. Accompanying Hooting Yard On The Air, the four publications We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, Gravitas, Punctilio, Rectitude & Pippy Bags, Unspeakable Desolation Pouring Down From The Stars and Befuddled By Cormorants are available for purchase.
Tags: Hooting Yard
Panel Borders: Necessary Monsters
Concluding webcomics month on the show, Alex Fitch catches up with artist Sean Azzopardi and writer Daniel Merlin Goodbrey as the first series of their epic webcomic Necessary Monsters comes to its conclusion after a total of 125 pages serialised over two years. The series mixes a ‘black ops’ style spy thriller with the tropes of modern horror films and bizarre characters with ultra violence to maximum effect. Alex talks to Daniel and Sean about the progression of the strip, the various ways it’s been published and their collaborations with another webcomics creator – Douglas Noble – on a zombie western (The Rule of Death) and surrealistic thriller (Sightings of Wallace Sendek) respectively.
Cowboy 13 does his thing in the start of the three page epilogue to volume one of Necessary Monsters by Sean Azzopardi and Daniel Merlin Goodbrey
For more info about this podcast and a variety of formats you can stream or download, please visit the home of this episode at www.archive.org
Links: Read Necessary Monsters online from page one, with more info about the cast of characters here
Reviews of chapters one and two and three and four on the Forbidden Planet International blog
Read an illustrated article on the construction of a page of the strip at www.comicmonsters.com
Sean’s website – www.phatcatz.org.uk
Daniel’s website – www.e-merl.com
Listen to Alex’s 2008 interviews with Sean and Daniel
Recommended events:
Five years of the Forbidden Planet International blog
The Forbidden Planet International blog celebrates its 5th birthday today and is an invaluable source of comics book and genre film news and reviews and a great friend of this blog. If you’ve never visited it before – and why not, it’s the 31st most influential blog in the UK according to Cision – now’s as good a time as any, with the latest post seeing the blog writers choosing their favourite authors and other recent posts include animation by Dylan Mercer, a review of Norwegian graphic novelist Jason’s latest book, info on Grant Morrison and Stephen Fry’s TV project and much, much more.
Web: www.forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog
RSS feed: www.forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/feed/
Twitter: www.twitter.com/fpinternational
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Tags: Panel Borders
Episode 19 – Ireland part 3
The final part of our Ireland trilogy focuses entirely on James Joyce.
Voice On Record is produced and presented by Sean Williams. Each episode features a selection of recordings of the human voice which have been preserved on vinyl. Historic events stand alongside esoteric guides to better bowling. Arid studio recordings are juxtaposed with location recordings rich with fascinating incidental sounds.
Originally broadcast on January 19th 2010.
Tags: Podcast · iTunes Music Store
