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Children’s book illustrators such as Sarah McIntyre, Viviane Schwarz and Gary Northfield are contributing to a new digital comic released this Friday (20th June).
Moose Kid Comics was the brainchild of Jamie Smart, a cartoonist for The Phoenix Comic, who wanted to showcase comic book talent in the UK.
“The Phoenix and The Beano are the only commercially available weekly titles still producing entirely original characters, but they are competing against big name licensed titles based on TV shows or merchandising,” he said. “We wanted to join in and help change things.”
Some 40 artists are taking part and McIntyre, the illustrator of last year’s Oliver and the Seawigs by Philip Reeve (Oxford University Press) is contributing a comic called Marvin Stinkypants. Schwarz, author and illustrator of There Are Cats in this Book (Walker) has drawn a strip Beasticles, and Northfield, who has illustrated books for Bloomsbury, has created a strip called Pet Crusaders.
And two members of the team behind 90s comic book hit Tank Girl (Alan Martin and Warwick Johnson-Cadwell) are creating a new and exclusive Tank Girl prequel, entitled Young Tank Girl.
Young Tank Girl will spread across two pages but most artists will only have one page or half a page, said Smart, commenting: “All the stories are centred around comic characters, and there’s quite a lot of slapstick. We wanted the kind of characters you see on Nickelodeon or the Cartoon Network.”
Moose Kid Comics is aimed at children but there will be enough content to satisfy adult comic-book fans, he added.
A first edition will be published on the website on Friday 20th June. Smart is hoping to create further comics depending on the reception of the first one and is also interested in building partnerships with publishers.