Metaphrog's Blog, page 7

Wonderlands Graphic Novel Expo

We're really looking forward to being part of the Wonderlands Graphic Novel Expo on May 30th. This one day event in Sunderland University's City Space will be a celebration of comics in their book form, with panels, workshops and publisher hall. Patron Bryan Talbot, author of the Grandville series and (along with Mary Talbot) Costa winner  Dotter of her Father's Eyes worked on developing the programme, and the whole event is organised by Sunderland Mac Trust.

We'll be kicki...

New Graphic Novel: The Red Shoes and Other Tales

We're really excited that this year will see the release of our new graphic novel! The Red Shoes and Other Tales will be published in October 2015 by Papercutz. The book includes our interpretation of Hans Christian Andersen's classic along with two other short tales. There will be some really exciting events at prominent festivals to mark the release, but more on this soon...


Papercutz is the publisher of New York Times best-seller Lego Ninjago, Nancy Drew, Geronimo Stilton, The Smu...

Book Week Scotland 2014

Once again it's been a busy few weeks and we've had great fun travelling around visiting places as far afield as Helsinki and giving talks and delivering workshops at  The Lakes International Comic Art Festival and Craigmillar Book Festival among others. Last week was Book Week Scotland 2014 and we did a string of events in schools and libraries up north.

With pupils at the Craigmillar Book Festival
First stop was Portlethen on Monday 24th November for two sessions with 13-14 year olds. We...

Comics Lab

This month we had the pleasure of running the Comics Lab, which Scottish Book Trust and Literary Dundee were hosting. The first part was a pretty intense weekend with wall to wall talks and workshops.


From left to right: Michel Faber, ourselves, Bryan Talbot,
Mary Talbot, Kate Charlesworth and John McSane
On the first day, David Bishop gave a talk on comics and how to write for them, Jonathan Cape editor Alex Bowler's talk was on the publishing side of graphic novels, and we deli...

Autumn Events

We're gearing up for a really busy autumn, now that we've finished our new book.
September already saw us do some events at the excellent Tidelines Book Festival, and we'll continue giving talks and delivering workshops in schools and libraries around Britain over the coming months.

We'll also be doing several public events at The Lakes International Comic Art Festival including a talk on how we self-published over the years, two drop-in workshops for 7-10 (fr...

Interview with Creative Scotland

There's an interview with us on Creative Scotland's Connecting: http://www.creativescotland.com/explore/read/stories/connecting/2014/metaphrog-on-graphic-novels-and-the-creative-process.


We talk about our work to date, our approach to the creative process and also our new graphic novel, due to be published by Papercutz in 2015.


Last year we received substantial funding for a year from Creative Scotland to research and develop new work and the graphic novel is one of the exciting outc...

New Graphic Novel to be published in 2015

We have been fortunate to receive funding from Creative Scotland to create new work this year. One of the things we have been working on is a new graphic novel which will be published by Papercutz in 2015. Papercutz is the publisher of New York Times #1 best-seller Lego Ninjago, Nancy Drew, and other fine graphic novels.


Some pages from this new book will be exhibited, in an exclusive sneak preview, at The Lakes International Comic Festival&nbs...

Metaphrog Recommends 12 Graphic Novels for Young Readers

In our capacity as Patrons of Reading, we recently had the pleasure of returning to Northfield Academy for a follow up visit, doing an in-depth workshop with S1 pupils and also introductory comic workshops with P7s.
We promised to compile a list of recommended graphic novels for the school, and indeed, any library interested in extending their graphic novel section (or in starting one) is welcome to use it too.
Pupils of Northfield Academy busy reading their c...

Patrons of Reading at Northfield Academy

Last year we were made Patrons of Reading at Northfield Academy in Aberdeen and, as the first ever graphic novelists to fill such a role, we were honoured and delighted. We'll be working closely with the school for the next three years to encourage reading and creativity.

 Our first author visits in this new capacity took place at the end of January and were great fun. We had the opportunity to work with the whole of the school's first year, in class-sized groups,...

Skint! Returns

In 2011 we worked on the graphic novel Skint! with playwright Gowan Calder. The book was commissioned and published by the Scottish Book Trust and distributed free in Scotland. It was such a big success that Standard Life Charitable Trust and the Scottish Book Trust commissioned a second Skint!, this time for England. Skint! for England was released in January 2014 and is available in print (45000 copies) and online.
We were commissioned once more, along with Gowan Cal...