Rich Johnston, Gary Erskine, and Mike Collins Collaborate on Kate And William: A Very Public Love Story
This morning, I’ve been hearing some rumblings on the Twittersphere about an upcoming comic about Prince William and Kate Middleton. At first, I just assumed that people were talking about the upcoming Bluewater Productions bio comic about the couple, which was announced last week (see here). However, I did wonder why people were talking about it so much, because these Bluewater biogs are usually pretty vanilla, and I personally couldn’t really see what would get people excited about that.
Well, it turns out that there is another biog of the couple coming out, and this one is written by notorious comics blogger/journalist, Rich Johnston. Rich talks a bit about the project over on his Bleeding Cool website, where he describes the project as being “A biographical comic book telling the lives of Prince William and Kate Middleton before their upcoming wedding”.
Joining Rich for this project will be two fantastic British artists, who I’m a big fan of: Gary Erskine and Mike Collins! The book will be released by British small press publisher Markosia, whose books I have reviewed on here many times, and should be released on April 2nd, 2011.
The book is receiving pretty good press coverage, particularly from The Guardian, who wrote an article about the comic, which can be read here. On Twitter, Rich says that he’s been contacted by several other publications, including Vogue, and classic BBC 1 young adult news show, Newsround.
Rich says that he’ll have another interview up on Bleeding Cool later today, so keep an eye on his site for more info.
Related posts:
- Image Comics Press Release - Rich Johnston Pursues Chase Variant This February!
- Go Check out Rich Johnston’s BleedingCool.com
- Gary Erskine Interviewed by The Guardian
- Bluewater Commemorates Prince William and Kate Middleton’s Engagement
- Richie Rich® Creative Teams Announced
As far as I can tell, Blue Water’s bersion is a series of illustrations, traced from photos, with narrative captions.
The Markosia version is a comic. Scenes, dialogue, characters, actual panel-to-panel storytelling.
That wouldn’t surprise me at all. I don’t think Bluewater really have quality in mind with all of these biography comics they keep pumping out, it’s all about piggybacking on whatever celebrity is in the news that week. I mean, I serious home they donated to Wikipedia’s recent fund drive, because from what I can tell, that is their main information source on these things!
That being said, not every one of there comics is a completely pile of poop, as they’ve had a couple of small press types write a few comics, for example Pete Rogers recently wrote a David Beckham comic for them. i haven’t read it, because I couldn’t care less about Beckham, but I’ve heard people say it’s well written, which doesn’t surprise me, because Pete is pretty good writer.
I also have to admit that I once reviewed a Bluewater Barack Obama comic. I was sent it by Tanzanian artist, Azim Akberal, who asked me to look it over, because it was his first US work. I reluctantly agreed, and while the subject matter was a bit flag waving for me, it was readable, at least. Akberal artwork was the real star though. Sadly, with the more recent ones, it’s like you say, a bunch of trace photographs…
Best of luck with the project!