Over to Martin for his write up of the event:
"Will and I gave some talks last Tuesday to 5th and 6th year high school pupils at two North Lanarkshire libraries about Burke & Hare, and the response was fantastic.
Many of the kids were keen on graphic novels (some were avid comic collectors) and everyone enjoyed seeing the book and learning about the process via which Will and I reconstructed the story, produced the script, created the artwork and lettering - and the extensive research we carried out to recreate a sense of authenticity.
It demonstrated that comics-books and graphic novels are not always about super-heroes or goofball characters, but can also incorporate abstract themes or concepts and expand to include stories of a historical nature, like our ghoulish story of the Irish serial killers Burke & Hare.
As Will said in at one point our talk – comics are words with pictures, so whatever you want to happen, can happen – and the knock-on effects can include the widespread exploitation of the source material, such as in film, television and computer games.
We hope to do it again at some point in the future."
And we certainly hope they will do it again, too, and have requests in for a repeat of the talk in several places already. I'll posts dates and venues here, and on the events section of the main website.
If you work at a school, museum or other organisation and are interested in arranging for Insomnia creators to come in and do talks, workshops or signing events then visit our FAQ page for more details.
No one ever to came to talk to us about comics when I was at school!
Fallen Heroes
Sticking with Martin we turn now to the Fallen Heroes adaptation.
Fallen Heroes is Insomnia Publications first adaptation, and I am incredibly excited about the book getting underway. Barry Nugent's dark, stylish, cine-literate, multilayered and tangled plotting, fused with Martin Conaghan's gift for the creation of living, breathing worlds, peopled with complex charismatic characters, mean we are set for the pulp adventure comic of the year.
Truly these are the Fallen Heroes we've all been holding out for.
With Burke and Hare having safely flown the nest Martin and Barry met up for some in depth chat at BICS to really explore some of the ideas that have been flowing between them.
Martin said:
"Barry Nugent's Fallen Heroes isn't just a great debut novel - it's a wonderful collection of vivid characters whose lives interweave on a heart-stopping action-packed journey into ancient magic and discovery. I can't wait to get started and find out where Napoleon Stone and the rest of the Barry's Heroes take me."
Barry said:
"I am very, very, very excited about the way Martin wants to take the adaptation and some of the ideas nic has thrown in in terms of dealing with some of the story elements which may not make it into the graphic novel. I think it's going to be very different than what people might have been expecting the FH adaptation to be be, in a very very good way."
If you'd like to read the novel in the meantime you can get it from Amazon and from Waterstones, and we will also have a very small number of the special "sketchbook edition" available from the stand at the MCM Expo.
MCM Expo
Speaking of the MCM Expo, it takes places 24-25th of October and it will Insomnia's first time with a stand at the show.
As usual we will have books for sale, previews of upcoming art, special offers, pitching and portfolio review sessions and creators on the stand to talk about their work.
Cy "Cancertown" Dethan, Will "Burke and Hare" Pickering and Jeymes "Buskers" Samuel" will all be signing on the stand at various points throughout the weekend.
There will be a limited convention edition of Buskers available which includes an exclusive CD featuring music by The Bullitts & the never before seen script and storyboards for the animated prequel to the forthcoming film.
If you would like to pre-order or reserve copies of books to be posted out to you or collected at the show please visit the Insomnia special offers page and contact us with your order.
Watch out for a big announcement related to all of this next week!
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1 comment:
The Burke & Hare talk looked fantastic and glad pupils were engaged. I have a few of these coming up and will keep you posted.
Glad all went well at BICS!
James Johnson
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