Cor!! Buster Easter Special 2020: The dynamic duo Birdman & Chicken return!
11th April 2020
Get ready to for some much-needed giggles and guffaws on 8 April, as you get to chortle through the Cor!! Buster Easter Special! Inside you’ll find classic Brit humour characters given a new spin for today, a perfect antidote for the times we find ourselves in.
Buy now in print and digital >>
The Cor!! Buster Easter Special 2020 goes on sale Wednesday 8th April 2020 from all good newsagents, whatever comic shops may still be open (please support them however you can!), and through the 2000 AD and Treasury of British Comics web shops.
Inside, alongside the likes of Grimly Feendish, Sweeney Toddler, Gums, Faceache, and Kid Kong, you’ll also find the triumphant return of THE dynamic duo, those fearless feathered fighters against crime… it’s Birdman & Chicken! Yes, Trevor Metcalfe’s bird-brained heroes from Krazy comic return at last, courtesy of writer Keith Richardson and artist Edward Whatley.
Evil-doers beware, you’re about to get your feathers ruffled in ‘The Squawk Knight Returns!‘
Keith, you’re both overseeing the entire Cor!! Buster Special as editor and writing the new Birdman & Chicken strip inside the Special.
Can you tell us a little bit about what to expect from these new adventures of Birdman & Chicken here?
Keith Richardson: Birdman and Chicken is a strip which originally ran in a Brit funny book, Krazy and was drawn by Trevor Metcalfe. It was a homage to the great 1960s Batman TV show.
In our story, Birdman and Chicken have gone their separate ways.
Chicken is now working with a (ahem) reformed villain and Birdman is left self-isolating himself from the world of super-heroics. Needless to say the situation changes by the bottom of page one!
Edward really brought it life.
Birdman & Chicken starts as you mean it to go on, with that great DKR homage on the first panel and that title, The Squawk Knight Returns. And through it all, you’ve captured the whole vibe of both the original and the light-hearted Batman pastiche.
Were you both fans of Trevor Metcalfe’s original in late 70s Krazy? Or is this all new to you?
KR: I knew about the strip having read a few Krazy comics back in the day, but it wasn’t a title that I collected on a regular basis. I remembered Birdman and Chicken so the strip definitely left an impression. I am a fan of funny superhero strips though. Bananaman was the first one that made an impression on me. My fave is definitely The Tick though – pure class.
Edward Whatley: Being from the US, I didn’t get to experience the original Birdman & Chicken stories when they were first published, but when Keith asked me to draw their new adventure, I found the original stories online and read the whole series, which I found to be intimidatingly great. It was a perfect blend of action and humor.
Edward, the art for Birdman & Chicken is a near-complete change from the last time we saw you, drawing Captain Crucial vs Fuss Pot. There’s a real sense of Alan Davis running through the pages, the sort of Davis artwork that I remember seeing on his Batman run on Detective Comics back in the day.
Was this a deliberate look for this strip? Looking through your various sites, there’s some art, like Dober Man, which does remind me of Davis, even early Adam Hughes (from his earliest work on such comics as Maze Agency), but then other strips have a completely different look.
EW: I’m an Alan Davis fan from waaaaay back (I also loved his run in Detective Comics) so thanks for the comparison. I try to give every story the look it needs, so for Squawk Knight Returns I was trying to give it the best Bronze Age superhero aesthetic I could muster. I even took Keith’s script and broke it up to fit the 16-panel grid Frank Miller used in Dark Knight Returns so that the storytelling was reminiscent of DKR. From there I tried to make the art look like an 80’s superhero story while staying close enough to the original strip that the characters would still be recognizable.
Oh, and what’s the obsession with Captain Crucial? He’s appeared in both of Edward’s strips so far… is it part of the deal that he only draws a strip if it has Captain Crucial in it?
KR: There’s no obsession. Last year I wanted a crossover between polar-opposite characters and it just so happened that Captain Crucial was chosen. This time around it made sense to have our Superman pastiche interact with our pastiche of Batman. That being said, I do like Captain Crucial so don’t be surprised if he pops up again in the future.
EW: The inclusion of Captain Crucial was all Keith’s idea, but I was glad to have him back as I really enjoyed drawing him in the first Cor!!! Buster Special. His cool hip personalty really lets you draw some interesting facial expressions and poses. In the new special, the hipster Crucial and the stoic wooden Birdman are an interesting combination. I’d love to do a story in which they interact more.
Keith, you’re the man in charge for all of these Specials, whether the recent Action 2020, this Cor!! Buster, or the many we have still to look forward to for the rest of the year.
It’s obviously something close to your heart, but how have the specials gone down with readers, both old and new?
KR: Mixed, but mainly positive. I have had some tremendous feedback for Action 2020 and some reasoned criticisms. There is an element…wizened naysayers so immersed in nostalgia that they are never going to like anything new. At least they like our trades!
It is difficult catering for older readers whilst trying to attract newbies, but hopefully we have got the balance right as far commissioning goes.
Are you still looking at getting the various specials out as annual things, or could we see a more regular schedule for some of them?
KR: I was hoping for maybe a mixture of the two, but obviously with all the turmoil recently, who knows what the future holds?
Finally, what characters from the archives would you both like to see in the next Cor!! Buster Special? Is there any particular one that’s really crying out to be brought back?
EW: I would love the chance to draw a full-fledged Captain Crucial/Birdman team up in the style of the old World’s Finest Superman/Batman comic. In just two panels, Keith wrote a hilarious conversation between the two characters and I’d love to see him develop their tense but funny relationship further.
KR: Wow – quite a few. I would like to bring back Prambo, Kid King, Watford Gap, The Evil Eye, Wiz War, Stone Age Brit, Robot Smith and Sub. Is that enough?!
Oh yes! Thanks to Keith and Edward for answering those questions! You can find Birdman & Chicken in The Cor!! Buster Easter Special 2020 from Wednesday 8th April 2020! You can get it from all good newsagents, whatever comic shops may still be open (please support them however you can!), and through the 2000 AD and Treasury of British Comics web shops.
