Adam Roche & Hannah Berry

Movie historian Adam Roche and Comics Laureate Hannah Berry, bring in panels from a dark BD and a filthy British funny mag, and talk comics with Kev F the comic artist.

See the images from all shows here on the blog (they're also in the podcast artwork).

Every episode, the guests reveal a panel from a comic, we try and guess where it's from, then we chat about it. Half an hour later hopefully we've learned something, or just shown off and had fun along the way.

If you've enjoyed this, why not buy us a virtual coffee at Kev F's Ko-Fi page.

Your host, and series creator, is Kev F Sutherland, writer and artist for Beano, Marvel, Oink, The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre, and most recently author and artist of graphic novels based on Shakespeare. kevfcomicartist.com

Join the Official Comic Cuts Facebook Page, aka Youtoobling, and comment on the show there too, why not?

Transcript

Kev F: 0:00

Recording in progress. Everybody, keep your fingers crossed.

Hannah Berry: 0:03

Okay, nobody do anything.

Kev F: 0:05

Nobody do anything. That's the instruction you need for a half-hour podcast. Hello, listeners at home. Today's recording may include some strong language and adult content. In fact, I'm pretty sure it will. I've got a couple of guests who I consider both to be particularly highbrow. But we're going to find out who's more highbrow than the other, I think, today. Welcome to Comic Cuts, the panel show. My name's Kev Eb Sutherland. You might know me as a writer and artist for the Beano, Marvel Comics Oink, Doctor Who, the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre, and my graphic novel adaptations of Shakespeare, but the chances are you probably don't. And my guests competing for Highbrow Guest of the Month are Adam Roach and Hannah Berry.

Adam Roche: 0:49

Hello. How are you? Thanks for having us.

Kev F: 0:53

Comic Cuts. We're looking at a panel, and we comprise a panel, there's a few of us. So the panel sees a panel, and we talk about the comics from the panel we discussed, and we call it Comic Cuts.

Adam Roche: 1:03

I didn't realise you did it live. Very few people do. I thought you just dropped it in. I'm so impressed with you. I can't believe it.

Kev F: 1:14

I don't know, A, why anybody's impressed, and B, why I don't just drop it in.

Adam Roche: 1:20

I've listened to a few of these shows. And I was like, wow, that's such a good theme tune. That's actually the best theme tune in podcasting, by the way. I didn't realize you do it live, so it just magnifies the uh magnificence.

Kev F: 1:31

That's going on the poster. I have two guests with me today who brought with them a panel from a comic or something close. We're going to see if we can identify it and talk about it. Maybe we and you will learn something about comics we didn't already know, or maybe we'll just show off a bit and have an enjoyable chat. Let's see. Joining me from uh rural Berkshire, Adam Roach. Hello, Adam.

Adam Roche: 1:53

Hello, how are you? You're right, Kev.

Kev F: 1:57

It's great to meet you. Now, listener, if you've not listened to The Secret History of Hollywood, that was essentially my introduction to podcasts, or rather, what podcasts could do, rather than just being some blokes in a shed having a chat. Because I was embarking on a long car drive. I know this will sound a little bit Alan Partridge, but I was driving maybe two hours there, two hours back, slightly longer. And people had recommended podcasts, and I was going whittle, whittle, whittle, waddle, whattle, waddle. And then I put this next one on, and I thought, oh, oh, I see. This is authoritative. He's talking about the secret history of Hollywood. Oh, he's written this. It's scripted. Okay, well, in half an hour I'll have to change to another program, but that's fine. I did the two-hour drive, and Adam was still talking about you Universal Monsters, about Frankenstein and Dracula and the 1930s movies. I did the return journey later that day, another two hours plus. And that first episode of the podcast was still going when I got home. Four and a half hours long. The episode, I can't believe it. Wow. How do you do it?

Adam Roche: 2:57

It was um, well, that one is actually seven and a half hours long. So it would have done you another another trip up the motorway.

Kev F: 3:04

Oh, it did. I drove to Scotland listening to yours. Secret History of Hollywood. You did Alfred Hitchcock, and that's over 20 hours of the podcast. Am I right?

Adam Roche: 3:14

Yeah, in three episodes. I did five, five, and no, it's five, six, and nine and a half or something. Nine and a half. And then bullets and yeah, nine and a half was the last one.

Kev F: 3:24

Must be intense. How many takes does a nine and a half hour monologue take?

Adam Roche: 3:30

Um, well, I tend to do them in one go. So that one I think I started about six in the morning and finished about eight at night. And then yeah, it took about two weeks to edit that one. The the you say, like, you know, oh, it's four and a half hours, it's really long. Um, the last episode I released was the first part of my new series on Cary Grant. And that edited was 12 hours, 42 minutes, just that one episode. So um that that's like I think that's got gotta be the record for the longest podcast out there. But saying that, I've just finished writing part two of that series. It's taken me 10 months to write that one. Um, and I was looking through it last night, and I think I'm estimating um it's gonna be about 17 hours just for that one episode. I mean, these are trying not to make them very long. Well, they're incredible. I have a start point and an end point in mind, and I write till I get there, and I go, well, that took me an almost a year, and then I record it, and I find that they just keep getting along.

Kev F: 4:31

Well, I suppose the odd thing is that they have started life as broadcasts, whereas really they are, and the content is listen, if you've not listened to them, you must listen to them. The more the most authoritative written work on these subjects. Universal Monsters, I have still not found a book that covers the territory that you covered in your extensive podcast. Uh, similarly, that Dalton Trombow and the uh the Hollywood 10 and the um the Warner Brothers with James Cagney uh mashed together. But the because you managed to conflate uh all these various uh parallel storylines, uh you've covered so much territory. Uh they are they're massive tombs in themselves. Are they printed yet?

Adam Roche: 5:15

Well, um, some of them I've turned into ebooks. The last series I did um I just finished was Shadows. That was the story of Valut, and that took three years to finish. And that's 11 parts. Um they varied in like between two hours and six hours, but they were sort of supposed to be smaller. But when you put them together, I think they're about 36 hours for the whole series. But um that has just been optioned for movies. So um that's on its way to the screen. Um, and I'm writing that. So it was gonna be a I was gonna turn it into a book because literally the research I did for that one was it's never been done before. You know, I had a friend at the Library of Congress and she pulled all of his letters that have never even been catalogued. And we went through it all and um poems to his wife, you know, sonnets he wrote on weekends, private letters, all his family correspondence and everything. I mean, half of the books you you get on Val Luton are just like pamphlets, really. They go, he did this movie, then this movie, then this movie, and you don't ever get a sense of who he really was, you just have to guess from looking at the films. But for the first time, I was able to, you know, give him a soul.

Kev F: 6:28

Well, your research on Val Luton, and I had not come across books about Val Luton at all. And because he's a producer, producers don't get written about in the same way as directors and actors at all, do they? Right, yeah. But you got his right into his childhood and indeed his family's history before that.

Adam Roche: 6:42

Hmm, yeah. Uh I was just finished the Warner Brothers series and I happened to get in touch with Mark Gatis, who was uh who'd listened to the Hitchcock series and the Sherlock Holmes series I made, and he was um he was like, you know, have you ever thought about doing Val Luton? I was like, that's a good idea, because you know, he's not a director, you know, he's not, you know, one of these people that is generally known really that much. So I said, Would you want to be involved if I did? And he was like, Yes. So we worked on these folk tales that inspired each movie. So Mark reads the folk tale at the beginning of the story of each episode that inspires the film about, you know, the episodes about kind of thing. And um, yeah, so it was it was really Mark Gates' idea to do Val Luton, but I'm very glad he did.

Hannah Berry: 7:29

Take credit.

Kev F: 7:31

Well, listener at home, you can tell from the uh work we've just been discussing that we're dealing with a pretty highbrow participant on that side of the screen. I'm about to undo it all, but wait, wait just one cotton picking moment because I have with me a laureate, Hannah Berry, comics laureate.

Hannah Berry: 7:50

You're not a laureate anymore.

Kev F: 7:51

Oh, ex-Laureate.

Hannah Berry: 7:52

I'm done.

Kev F: 7:53

Isn't it like being a president? Aren't you Comics Laureate Emeritus?

Hannah Berry: 7:57

I will I will refer to myself as Laureate Forever, of course. But um is is technically unofficially done.

Kev F: 8:02

What did a laureate have to do when she was doing it?

Hannah Berry: 8:06

I swan about mostly. I got a cape, got to wear it down Sainsbury's, uh you know, mostly sort of opening supermarkets, that kind of lots of fun in the supermarket, apparently.

Kev F: 8:15

Well, also you did a fair bit of research because you did a survey of the UK comic creators that it never been nobody nobody asked comic creators anything before.

Hannah Berry: 8:24

I think what a laureate was supposed to do is to um is to do more outreach things, but unfortunately, the the first half of my laureateship, I had a small child, so I was mostly behind my desk making plans for the second half of my laureateship, which uh there was then I I don't know if you guys noticed, but there was this disease that has been around. So all of my plans to go out and actually do things were so instead I decided to to stay behind my desk and um and conduct uh a big a big survey of comics creators in the UK to find out how we're doing and then what we need to do better and survive, and maybe we can give this data to people at Fund the Arts and say, look, we're making art, we need fun, we clearly need funding. Fund this, please.

Kev F: 9:06

I participated in this and I was a recipient of the various graphs and pie charts that came with it. What were what were the conclusions?

Hannah Berry: 9:14

Uh bad.

Kev F: 9:17

As somebody who works in the comics industry, it's always bad.

Hannah Berry: 9:21

It's always bad. We've always talked about how bad it is, but now we have categorical proof that it is quite bad. I mean, not for everybody. I think there are some people who are doing okay. There's a there's a uh, I think five percent of people who are making big, big bucks, but the majority of people making comics. I think that I think 87% of creators, this is off the top of my head, so this might not be accurate, but no one can refute this at the moment. So I'm gonna say 87% of creators have another job to support their comics creating. So we could financially we could be doing better. Yeah. But I think the the thing that came out, which was kind of lovely, was that everybody loved comics. Everyone's really enthusiastic about comics, and that's where that's why people make comics because they love the comics. We're not doing it for the big bucks. We could we've the big bucks would be nice, but that's not where we're doing it.

Kev F: 10:03

Well, also, you were able to bring people together. You did a number of Zoom conferences. I think we did more networking on a comics basis than would happen in a normal year, largely thanks to you. The Society of Authors now has a comics creators network.

Hannah Berry: 10:17

Comics creators network. So if there's any issues, any it's sort of it we've finally got a union, really. So if there's any um any issues that you need to uh address, any sort of legal issues, any professional issues, you can you can run it to them and uh or we, because I'm on the steering committee. They, we, I'm not a professional in that respect. I mean, I I don't I can't I can't vet a contract.

Kev F: 10:38

No, I I I hate you're actually a professional within comics. It does sound like you're an administrator who I've invited on because of their secretarial skills. Um you're brilliant.

Hannah Berry: 10:47

I'm very good at typing. I'm very good at typing. I was a I used to be an administrator before all of this, and um that's pretty good. Oh, I could I could file a file, let me tell you.

Adam Roche: 10:55

So you could open a supermarket as well.

Hannah Berry: 10:57

And and open a super scissors.

Kev F: 11:00

But but you also you've you've been selected at Ongolem. Now, listener at home, if you're not a uh au fa with Ongolem, the comic festival, it it is the biggest deal, probably in the world, certainly as far as taking the comics seriously rather than just having lots of film stars swanning around, isn't it?

Hannah Berry: 11:17

Yeah, I mean it it's it feels like it's um it's like the it's like the can of the Cannes Festival of uh comics. Is that fair?

Kev F: 11:25

Because you you were translated into French, which would be why you were a selection at Ongouleme.

Hannah Berry: 11:28

Yes, yeah, yeah. So my first book was uh written and lightly, they were all good retailers. Um is uh it was translated into French, and the French edition was uh part of the official selection at Ongouleme, and that was my first that's the first time I ever went to Ongoulem, and my god, that was that was eye-opening. That was an eye-opening because I'd only been to conventions in the UK before then. Um this is quite a while ago now, this is in 2010. So um, you know, things have uh obviously a lot has changed since then, but it was it was amazing seeing comics creators treated like like film stars. There was a point where um I don't know how you say his name, Enki Bilal, Anki Bilal.

Kev F: 12:03

Uh I'd say Anki Bilal. But Bilal.

Hannah Berry: 12:06

Mr. Bilal was walking across the uh across the room, followed by his entourage and trotting after him, the Minister of Culture. What a sight to behold. It's just another world. Found out since that they're they're not doing so great either, but you know, there's still there's prestige there where there's nothing.

Kev F: 12:22

It's all relative. And yes, the respect they give to the ninth art is uh a very different matter. Hey, tell you what, we've got highbrow. Let's stay highbrow. Now, I've got two guests who brought panels with them that we're going to look at. You should be able to see these on my website, kevfcomicartist.com, uh, or on the holding artwork for this episode of the podcast, depending where you get your podcasts from. But you know what? You shouldn't need to see these pictures because of the great job we're gonna do describing them. I said highbrow. Uh, I flipped a coin and we're gonna begin with Adam's selection, which I'm gonna share to the screen now.

Adam Roche: 12:59

I apologize in advance, listener.

Kev F: 13:05

You can't see this. You might be able to gauge to some degree uh the the type of thing we're looking at. Uh because, well, we're gonna have to try and describe it. No, no, I say we, Hannah, you're gonna have to try and describe without guessing without guessing where it's from paint picture with words, yes.

Hannah Berry: 13:24

So there is uh there's a man with a swastika on his shirt, uh, he's got his trousers down, his bum out, and he's he's standing with his feet in a bucket of pig shit on a stage. Um, there's lots of people looking behind him, and he's saying, uh-uh-uh, oh yes, I can feel it coming out now. Go on, fuck off out of it, you blasted queen.

Kev F: 13:44

And don't forget, the queen is visible. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is visible in the top left-hand corner. As the curtains part, the queen is in the royal box. So this is a royal variety performance uh for the panologists at home that study line composition and this sort of thing. Uh, this is a pen and probably brush, or brush uh or pen. Anyway, it's an ink black and white drawing intended to be seen in black and white. It's a square frame, probably quite small on the page. I say that because I know what kind of page it's from. Um, and it depicts exactly what Hannah said: this spiky-haired, cartoonally faced character with this rosticket, bare ass, in the pig shit, swearing at the queen, but with his back turned to the queen.

Hannah Berry: 14:25

Uh is he knocking one out or is he having a post?

Kev F: 14:27

He is knocking one out.

Hannah Berry: 14:29

Oh, I'm so I'm so naive, you see, I just didn't know.

Adam Roche: 14:31

He's knocking a very specific thing out.

Kev F: 14:34

Okay, Hannah, would you like to guess what comic this is from?

Hannah Berry: 14:38

Well, I mean, I I would say it's a it's bumpty, but I don't think it's 1978.

Adam Roche: 14:44

I think you spelled that word wrong.

Kev F: 14:52

My rather disappointing guess would be that it's the artwork of Davy Jones. And in fact, you can see little initials at the top of the picture which say GPD S T D S. And that's Graham Dury, Simon Thorpe, and Davy Jones. David Jones has drawn it. Simon and Graham have written it uh along with Davy, and it's from Viz Comic. Adam, can you tell us more about what story in Viz this is from?

Adam Roche: 15:20

Sorry. Um silent with shame. This is my favorite comic strip ever. Only because it's um well, it's from the it's from issue number 86 from 1997 in Viz. I didn't realise comics like this existed in the world that when I was um uh that age, and um I remember reading this comic strip. It's called There Goes My Knighthood, starring Donald Syndon. And I can honestly say, to this day I can read it and I can't get through it without just losing my mind. It's so funny. It basically begins with Donald Syndon in a suit, and he's on his way to the palace because he's about to pick up his knighthood, and a fly lands on his shoe, so he says, Well, the queen can't possibly uh give me my knighthood when I've got fly footprints all over my shoe. So he tries to get rid of the shoe um and ends up um making himself more dishevelled. Then all of a sudden down the street walks the queen. So he says, Oh, I can't look like this in front of the queen. So he dives into a bin, um, hence the uh fish bones and banana peels you can see in his hair there, uh, and ends up rolling down the road. He gets out, he goes into a launderette, takes off his clothes, and then spots the queen coming again, so he has to jump into one of the tumble driers, which gets switched on, and then the queen walks fast. But when he gets out, his clothes have been destroyed, and the only clothes they can give him are a Nazi t-shirt. Anyway, escalates, he jumps over a wall to avoid the queen, lands in a bucket of pig shit. Um, and he goes on and on and on, and this this bee won't leave him alone all the way through, and he ends up hopping through a door to avoid the queen, um, and not realizing it's a theatre. And at that very moment, the the bee flies into his penis, and he has no alternative. The stage hand that's nearby says, You'll have to wank it out. So he has to he has to wank out the bee, uh, which is the thing you're seeing in this picture. And as oh, as as he um, shall we say, ejects the bee along with his bodily fluids, the curtains swing open and he realizes he's at the raw variety performance in a Nazi t-shirt and stood in a bucket of pig shit, having just ejaculated onto the stage, and the bee just flies you know drunkly off, and uh he turns to the crowd and says, Well, there goes my knighthood. Oh my god, it's so wrong, and I'm so sorry for bringing it. But when you said I'm not a connoisseur, as you can tell. But um, when you said give me a comic strip you love, I have to say, this one has followed me throughout life, and um I adore it.

Kev F: 18:28

This is the single most entertaining comic strip that we have yet had on the follow this.

Hannah Berry: 18:35

How am I supposed to follow this? Come on now.

Kev F: 18:37

I'm actually dizzy with laughter at this. But that but that was Viz, Viz made you laugh. I had been reading comics since I was a kid, and loads of them were supposed to be funny. Viz was the first thing that was ever actually funny. Something like this, laugh out loud, funny, and then you've got uh Roger's Profanosaurus next to it. Sweary kid, sweary Mary, top tips.

Adam Roche: 19:00

Top tips were just genes. You know, if you if you if your vibrator's broken, just fill a cigar tube with angry wasps. Oh god, those guys are just so funny. I mean, so wrong. I mean, you wouldn't ever build a collection out for it, you wouldn't be proud. But my god, they were funny.

Kev F: 19:19

I I I think there's quite a lot of people in hand.

Hannah Berry: 19:22

Isn't that what Cleopatra did?

Kev F: 19:23

But built the collection out of Viz.

Hannah Berry: 19:26

No, Cleopatra's needle is a big Viz fan. All over the if you look inside the uh the the pyramids, just Biz Wolf Wall. Um no, didn't she fill a fill a tube with bees?

Adam Roche: 19:39

Oh, really?

Hannah Berry: 19:40

Well I I'm sure I read that. Well, it's got rooted historical facts. Historically accurate.

Kev F: 19:46

It turns out all the people in Viz were actually really good classical researchers.

Adam Roche: 19:51

Yeah, they just got all their top tips from moments in history.

Kev F: 19:55

The other amazing thing about Viz is that it doesn't translate, does it? I mean, it does. Translates to reading out like this. This is perfect. And so many people I've I've heard Viz quoted more often on high-falutin uh chat shows on on uh uh channel four and radio four, especially when it was at its peak. I remember Richard E. Grant uh making Jonathan Ross Collapse with Laughter and a mutual discussion about Johnny Fart pants. Um but it doesn't translate. Have you ever seen the animations they've they've made? They did a claymation version of the fat slags, they did um uh cell animation of Roger Melly, the man on the telly, which featured uh Peter Cook does one of the voices. I know Harry Enfield, yeah. Harry Enfield did voices, Jimmy Nail did uh Sid the Sexist, and they lose whatever magic they had somehow.

Adam Roche: 20:41

Yeah, I know I totally agree. I used to have those videos. Um I quite like the Roger Melly one because uh I enjoyed seeing the uh Jimmy Tarbrush and Bruce Fivesythe golf tournament thing, and when uh he smacked um Bruce Fivesyth with the golf club. I I found that particularly satisfying. But yeah, I I totally agree. I mean they were they were they were meant for you know sort of round the back of the bike sheds, look at those boys, kind of they're you know, they're that kind of shared humor thing. You don't really want it, you don't need it on TV.

Kev F: 21:13

Well, that's the great thing, isn't it? If you entertain yourself, entertain yourself and a small group of friends, that sometimes um the best for many people, you know, doing this sort of stuff at school, that would be where it'd end. I mean, I was one of the people who then was involved in the Viz Lookalike mags. Um, I was doing things called gag and cack and bloody hell. And do you remember that? Astonishingly, they only sold a tenth of what Viz sold. Of course, when Viz sold a million, selling a tenth of that was pretty good. Uh, when Viz would go down to maybe 150,000, selling a tenth of that uh was not such good business. But yeah, it it was uh an amazing, what remains an amazing phenomenon. There's nothing like it. Uh Hannah, what do you think they'd make of it in Ongolen?

Hannah Berry: 21:59

Oh, poo-hoo it, probably. They need to watch this picture. I've only been there twice. I'm not I'm not an expert.

Adam Roche: 22:07

They need to introduce it on stage with this very panel. You know, someone needs to reenact this at Ongolen.

Hannah Berry: 22:14

Yeah, this would be the breakthrough. This would this one would I can't believe I forgot about Viz. I can't believe I didn't get this was Viz. What a what an almighty brain fart.

Kev F: 22:21

I I can picture this at Ongolen. They would blow this a hundred feet high and put it on the side of a cathedral. That's what they do.

Hannah Berry: 22:27

The Minister of Culture there, yes, good good line work.

Kev F: 22:32

Well, there was actually an exhibition of Viz sculpture. The the actual team uh had an exhibition in London. It was at the time of the sensation exhibition, and so they did they did things which were actually parodies of Damien Hearst and parodies of Tracy Emin and other other famous works, but they did them with the fat slags, and I think there was a fat slag chopped in half and uh put in a tank, but they did them with sculpture. They uh a lot of money went into this because there was a lot of money bouncing around in Viz and the world at the time. Um turns out they were sort of doing it as a jokey piss take, and they weren't actually that serious about the art. I, however, being pretentious, was and thought that they were too.

Adam Roche: 23:09

It definitely reflects my my sense of humour. Not not, you know, I don't wear Nazi t-shirts and masturbate in front of the Queen. But I do do it. Well, try not to.

Kev F: 23:20

It's the only reason you had you on.

Adam Roche: 23:25

Wankgate. No, um, so I remember like growing up in the 80s and 90s when like you still had all the all of those British sitcoms on. Never the Twain, May to December, all those, you know, kind of mulberry, all those kinds of things that um I remember so vividly from my youth. So I remember being you know quite young when this strip came out and just just really knowing who Donald Syndon was. For them to have picked Donald Syndon for this, I think is genius. They really were very clever at picking the right people in um in culture at the time and just lampooning them. Donald Syndon. There goes my knighthood. I love it.

Hannah Berry: 24:07

Immortalized.

Kev F: 24:12

Well, listeners, we've had a look at the highbrow suggestion. Now, some of us are in the gutter looking up at this. We're looking now at what Hannah has brought in. And um uh, listener at home, you'll be able to see this on the website, you'll be able to see it on the holding image for the episode wherever you get the podcast from. But no, now to stop tittering, everybody, because Adam, it now falls to you to describe what we're looking at.

Adam Roche: 24:44

Right. Okay, so um so we've got six pictures. Um sorry if I'm referring to them in the wrong way. I'm not wrong. But um, you have uh a bird's nest, uh, and the chicks are chirping, and there seems to be some kind of small human in amongst them. And the mother has come back to drop a bug into the mouse chicks. She drops one into the first chick's mouth, and then goes in to go to the small human, and instead of dropping it into his mouth or her mouth, sticks his head straight down the child's throat and rips out its I want to say tonsils or something. Guts anyway, and produces those for the baby. Or is I can't quite make out what's happening.

Kev F: 25:36

Well, I I think that's a very fair description for the benefit of the panelologists at home who study line composition and technique and that sort of thing. We're actually not looking at a single panel, we are looking at uh six panels from that's okay, uh, from the top third of a page. They're in line drawing, I'd say drawn in pen, but then coloured in watercolour. And I would say that it's real watercolour and not digital. Uh the panel borders are actually free hand drawn. They'll have been ruled in pencil, but they've been freehand drawn to give you a sketchy style. And it's a very realistic nature drawing. Birds in the bird's nest are very realistic. But the cartoon child in the bird's nest, who's the size of a very small bird, is very cartoony. When the child opens its mouth, its mouth is as wide as its entire face. So we're looking at something cartoony, but uh not quite totally comic. That is to say, we're not looking at beano and dandy type of humor. We're looking at something so uh bittersweet and crossover that I would say we're not looking at something British or American. I would say we're probably looking at something French or European. One of the clues I have there is that the noise the birds are making is pee, pee, pee, written P-I-I-I, and the eyes have got dots on the top as if they're lowercase. And the child is also going P I I I with dots on the top as if they're lowercase. And then when the child throws up, having had its gut pulled out by the bird, it's going R R H H H sound very onomatopoeic. But I'm gonna guess that it's French. Adam, would you like to have a stab in the dark? Guess what kind of comic this could be? He can give it a title.

Adam Roche: 27:07

Um Nature's Revenge? I'm not sure actually. I have no idea, but everything you were saying there was clicking. It's very, very penguin in the way that um, you know, it's it there is there's no words, it's all sounds, but it could be anything. But yeah, it definitely looks European the more you say it. But it's I really like it.

Kev F: 27:31

I'm gonna guess that it's French, and I'm gonna guess that the central character is the small child that's ended up in the bird's nest, and it's probably aimed knowing the French, they don't say it's aimed towards smaller readers because it won't insult the intelligence of anyone, uh, but it's probably very popular with younger readers, and I'm saying it's called something like petit peepi. Um Hannah, put us out of our misery. What is it?

Hannah Berry: 27:55

Uh I'm afraid it's it's not petit peepee. I I sound like I'm really um I'm a massive Francophile now because we've just been I've just been talking about France. But this is you're right, it's French. It's um it's beautiful darkness or jolie ténèbre, if you uh excuse the pronunciation by um Veilman and Carisquet, if you excuse that pronunciation as well. Um it's this story about uh it's this this I actually was translated into English, but I I got it first in French, and I've just I'm just I flat out refuse to buy a book twice, so I'll never have any finger. But um it's this it's this story about these uh like little sort of um like little fair little fay creatures that little fairy folk that uh are all living inside a house and having like a nice tea party, and um and suddenly their house starts to fall in around them and they all escape, and it turns out their house is actually uh a little girl who's just died in the forest. It is dark as fuck. It's actually the first time I've ever read it, I didn't have a child. Now I have a child, and now it's like, oh, I I this is really um this is an unpleasant read now. So the house was a girl, did you say? Sorry?

Adam Roche: 29:03

The house was a girl, did you say?

Hannah Berry: 29:05

Yeah, the house is a little girl that has just died in the forest.

Adam Roche: 29:07

Right, so it's like the numbskulls almost. The numbskulls in a corpse.

Hannah Berry: 29:11

Yeah, yeah, it's not it's not quite numbskulls because you never see them like inside the the little girl which is alive. It's not like they're they're controlling her what she says and and and or sees or you know, responding to that. They're just in there having a tea party, and they then the the house starts to decay. Um and they flee. So and it's about the stories about these little creatures that are living, they're trying to make their way in the in this this lovely lovingly rendered forest, um, beside the decaying corpse of a girl that's just been murdered. And it's not the whole thing is like it's really, it's really sweet, it's really sort of twee, and there's like there's a lot of whimsy. It's all about the you know, the main character is is in love with this guy, but then this guy sort of goes off with this other girl who's who's like a sort of a princess, and all the other the other characters love her. But it's so it's so dark and it's so brutal. This this little character here is just like a little throwaway character who um I think she's one of three, and this is the last time you see her. You just assume I guess she's dead now, and all the other characters, the other little characters just sort of meet these really grisly ends as this story goes on. And I think that I I should have read, I should have reread this before um before this, but I think there's only one character, like only the central character survives in the house of the man who it suggested murdered this little girl. And it's it's like it's just this it's just a horrifying glimpse of whimsy and brutality that is life. And there we go, there we go. That's it.

Kev F: 30:35

This is the sort of things you can do in comics. What I've always said is that comics, as far as the film and TV business is concerned, we are the cheap wing of research and development because we can do things and make them look as full and complete as a finished movie, but it hardly costs you a thing. So the imagination, I think, has been able to go wilder more often in comics or B Day in this case, uh, than in any other art form.

Hannah Berry: 31:00

Yeah, for sure. I I really think that I I was reading recently that um uh I think is it Netflix that are, or no, it's Sky that are supporting the the theatre in the UK. In fact, well, Netflix needs to be supporting us in in comics, you know, recovering from the from COVID, because we we we are basically we're churning you out with this material here.

Kev F: 31:17

Well, yeah, a lot of stuff getting adapted. I I I didn't mean to turn this to to the subject of ad adaptation. Oh, we're on it now. But but yeah, uh we seem to be uh really providing the fodder because we're visual. That's it. Comic books, they do a lot of the the design work as well as the storytelling.

Hannah Berry: 31:33

Yeah, proof in concept, I think, is the phrase. Exactly.

Adam Roche: 31:36

I love I love this. Um I love this strip, by the way. I think it's great. I'm definitely gonna seek that book out.

Hannah Berry: 31:41

I came so close to choosing uh a strip with poo in.

Adam Roche: 31:45

Um I wish I had now.

Kev F: 31:48

I'd far rather you had a bird sticking its beak down the throat of a small child who lives inside the corpse of another small child.

Adam Roche: 31:54

Murdered girl, yeah. I think it's brilliant.

Hannah Berry: 31:57

It's a little brat. They're all horrible, horrible characters that die, I should say. All of them, even the main character, it's just they're just really spoilt little bratty, disgusting creatures.

Adam Roche: 32:07

Well then this must be very gratifying to read.

Kev F: 32:10

Yeah, it's a good to an extent, these I think are all morality tales. Uh Donald Sindon using losing his knighthood and uh the people who live inside the dead body of a murdered child getting their come up.

Hannah Berry: 32:22

I mean, I've certainly learned something from listening to these two tales.

Adam Roche: 32:24

I certainly have.

Hannah Berry: 32:25

I've grown as a person.

Adam Roche: 32:26

Well, I think come up and describes both.

Kev F: 32:30

On which bombshell. Thank you, Adam. Thank you, Hannah. We have been looking at uh Donald Syndon losing his knighthood in a strip by Davy Jones and the team from Viz Comic. And we've been looking at, was it Pretty Darkness, aka Jolie Denebre? It was beautiful darkness by am I right there, Felman and CoSquare.

Hannah Berry: 32:51

Uh Keras Square, which is two people. I don't know their real name.

Kev F: 32:54

Here's me trying to write down what you say, not pausing to ask you again.

Hannah Berry: 32:59

Well also I mumble at high speed, so I'm amazed you got even that. Frankly.

Kev F: 33:04

Listener at home, have fun trying to Google the titles of all of these works, especially just put in Donald Syndon wanking. We'll know what you mean. If you've got any questions, you can find us on our various social media. Adam, where would we find you?

Adam Roche: 33:17

Um, on Twitter, I'm on at movie histories, and my personal one is at audiojoe. My website is uh www.secrethistory of Hollywood.com.

Kev F: 33:26

And also check out At a boyclarence, everybody. Thank you. Hannah, where do we find you on the socials?

Hannah Berry: 33:32

Uh on the socials, I'm at StreakofPith, P-I-T-H, on um Twitter and Instagram. I'm hanaberry.co.uk, just on the regular internet. And if anybody wants to know anything more about that depressing our survey, it's hanaberry.co.uk slash survey. And just have a good old read and a cry.

Kev F: 33:50

A good old read and a cry. Well, you have been enjoying the most highbrow episode so far of Comic Cuts. I'm on Twitter at KevF Comic Artist and at KevfcomicArtist.com. Please click subscribe to be sure of hearing every episode when it comes out and leave us a review. Why don't you? Thanks again to Adam Roach and Hannah Berry, and to you at home for listening. I've been Kev F, and this has been Comic Cuts, the panel show.