Cor!! Buster Easter Special 2020 – Kazam! It’s Daisy Jones’ Locket!
13th April 2020
Time for a bit of much-needed laughter in your life, with the new Cor!! Buster Special, featuring some of the greatest characters from Britain’s golden age of humour comics!
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, you’ll get the chance to find the funny with Faceache and Frankie Stein, giggle along to Gums, snicker with Sweeney Toddler, and discover the delights of Daisy Jones’ Locket, a wonderful little strip from writer Olivia Hicks and artists Shelli Paroline & Braden Lamb, featuring a classic Brit comics set-up of a girl with an enchanted locket and her own personal Genie to help her out!
Richard Bruton asks the questions…
Olivia, Shelli, Braden, hello to you all, I hope you and yours are all well and keeping safe in these most difficult of times.
SP: Thank you! I have family working in hospitals, so I’m thinking of them a lot right now. Everyone, please stay home with a good comic if you can, for their sake! Richard, Olivia, nice to meet you both. I had so much fun working on this comic and am really proud of the collaboration!
OH: My partner works in an old people’s facility, so every day I stress anew about them, but other than that I am doing ok! Making sure I check in regularly with my family.
Shelli, it’s so nice to meet you! I’m so glad you enjoyed working on it (I was worried there were too many panels!) I haven’t seen the strip yet but I’m so excited to see the art. I was already excited but from the description here, I can’t wait! It sounds absolutely gorgeous.
Olivia, Shelli, first of all, what’s Daisy Jones’ Locket all about here?
OH: The basic gist of the strip is that whatever Daisy wishes for, her genie comically misunderstands. In the new comic, Daisy and her genie accidentally end up on a piratical rampage! Cos what’s better than pirates? Nothing!
It strikes me it’s another one of those classic Brit strips where the character’s powers or particular unique thing are very simple and narrow but, like so many of the strips such as this, the fun is to be had in the ridiculous situations you get to put them in?
OH: Yeah, exactly! It’s a set up that’s ripe for pure chaos, so I just wanted to make it as silly and entertaining as possible.
SP: I love a good ‘Monkey’s Paw’ story – especially if they hinge on language – so I was immediately drawn to the well-meaning but confused genie.
Olivia, you’re new to the Cor!! Buster Specials, but the last thing you wrote for 2000 AD, ‘The Hockey Sticks of Hell’ for the 2018 Sci-Fi Special, was something that, to my mind could easily have fitted into either the Tammy & Jinty or the Cor!! Buster Specials as it shares that old fashioned storytelling sensibility.
But what was it that attracted you to Daisy Jones’ Locket?
OH: I’m a nerd and I like to do research on the strips and channel the heart of the classic comic into the story I want to tell. With Daisy Jones, I was attracted to the strip’s incredible propensity for dad jokes. Just the pun in the title alone was enough to make me want to write it.
Shelli, you and Braden are a couple creating comics, with quite a number of projects to your names as well as you, Shelli, co-directing the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo (MICE) and you, Braden, providing colours for various multi-million selling Raina Telgemeier graphic novels.
Yet this is your first foray, as far as I can tell, into the world of Brit comics. Assuming you were born and bred Americans, I doubt you’ll have seen many of the classic Brit humour comics contained in the Cor!! Buster Specials. In which case, what was your process for getting the (quite lovely indeed) artwork onto the pages for Daisy Jones’ Locket?
BL: We grew up reading some of their contemporaries. I’m a little familiar with the distinguished competition, Beano. And Buster’s dad, Andy Capp, was in American newspapers.
SP: Thanks so much for the compliment! There were a couple of things I was excited about for this comic. One being the chance to put a new spin on an old favourite. I have some experience working on licensed comics – Muppets, Adventure Time, Garfield – and it’s always nice to play with someone else’s toys while having the freedom to update and redesign. Secondly, THE LARGE FORMAT. I love a big page chock full of story.
It’s noticeable, in a Special full of a myriad of styles and art types, that your work on Daisy Jones’ Locket stands out, a very modern style, very relaxed artwork, incredibly readable, and with a gorgeously minimal colour palette to match.
SP: Yes, it’s a bit of a throwback actually. Braden and I explored a lot of mid-century illustration and design when we drew the graphic novel Making Scents, which is set in the early ’60s. We kind of lean in that direction in our own style – the graphic look, brushy inks, and limited colour palettes.
Hopefully, we’ll see more of these kids specials coming from the Treasury of British Comics. And thinking ahead, what other characters would you love to get your hands on in the future from the massive archive at the Treasury of British Comics?
OH: HIRE A HORROR! Oh my gosh Hire a Horror beyond any doubt. When I was a kid I would read my dad’s old Cor!! Annual and I loved that these horrible rich people would hire monsters for their petty purposes, and the monsters would always punish them. I also loved Gus – everyone seemed to dislike him and be out to get him, but he would always overcome just by being sweet and clever.
And I have some faves from Sally – The Justice of Justine and Catgirl. They’re both teen superhero stories, and I think they’re both really fun. I also have a hankering to do an update of Life’s a Ball for Nadine from Jinty. She’s a black heroine, and as a black woman I’d love to write an updated version of her story.
BL: I’ve long been a fan of the Goon Show! [pauses for audience applause] … [not a sausage] I don’t know who’s allowed to make comics for that property, but I would love to draw those insane characters and absurd situations.
Hmm, there was A Telegoons comic in the old TV Comic from 1963-1964, drawn by Bill Titcombe, but that’s not part of the Treasury of British Comics – although maybe in the future!
It’s a great thing to see the Cor! & Buster Special out there, bringing these classics to (hopefully) new readers as well as those readers picking it up with nostalgic memories. or this sort of comic.
What do you think is the way forward for kids comics? Is it something along the lines of the Cor!! Buster Special publishing a few issues per year and then delivering a bigger collection, or is it some type of original graphic novel format such as we see with Raina Telgemeier and Dav Pilkey?
SP: More of everything! The more different doors there are into the world comics, the more young people will get into them, and start exploring. I want kids tripping over comics everywhere they go!
OH: I agree with Shelli – we need both. I think the published book format is so important, but you can’t find graphic novels really in newsagents. Having floppy comics in the newsagents and the supermarkets is a great way to get even more kids reading.
BL: I totally agree. Longer comics like graphic novels, memoirs, and nonfiction are great for building some important skills like critical thinking and empathy, but sometimes (like right now, in particular), you just need a good, quick, silly gag to brighten your day a little.