Cor!! & Buster Special: go bananas with KID KONG!

Prepare to guffaw and giggle your way through the all-new Cor!! & Buster Humour Special from the Treasury of British Comics - out on 17th April!

Taking the greatest comedy characters British comics has to offer, the new special bring old favourites into the 21st Century and is guaranteed to raise a smile!

Longtime 2000 AD writer Alec Worley and artist Tiernen Trevallion get to go completely ape in the Special with their take on the classic Robert Nixon strip, Kid Kong. With a plentiful supply of bananas, we sat down to chat...

With the Cor!! & Buster Special you’re giving us your take on the Kid Kong strip. What was your approach to it?

Alec Worley: It’s just a three-pager and my approach was pretty much to just preserve the original premise and characters while upping the pace for modern readers.

Tiernen Trevallion: Yes, I imagined [with one eye] that it was an animation.

Alec and Tiernan, you’re both well known around these parts for your work on 2000 AD. So, what was it that drew you to delivering a very different version of Kid Kong for the Cor!! & Buster Special?

AW: As wonderful as the old strips are, a lot of modern humour comics for kids have a much more manic pace and the gross humour has gone up a fair few notches since the ‘70s. Look at strips like 'Star Cat' in The Phoenix, graphic novels like Dog Man, and shows like, say, Star vs. The Forces of Evil and Gumball; this is the kind of thing modern kids are used to. You can’t really replicate the pace of the old strips without producing a museum piece. Like it or not, you have to move with the times.

Tiernen, your version of Kid Kong certainly looks very different from Robert Nixon's original when you first see it. But, comparing the originals to this, you've kept so much, the look of Kid Kong is unchanged, the ideas of the strip the same. It's in the colours, I think, that you've stamped a new look on the strip?

TT: I’d say that the line work is certainly adapted from the original. I saw this more of a homage rather than a reinvention. With the colour I was trying for something a bit muted for the first page, where Kid’s a bit miserable, moving to the brightly coloured nirvana of the ‘Banana-Con'. Most of the looks and designs came from Alec’s script, however I did want to re-design Kid’s Gran slightly. For some reason I thought it was funny to make her a bit more ancient and hag like.

How did you decide on the strip, was it something you asked for or did the editor get in touch?

AW: Keith Richardson [Cor!! & Buster Special editor] asked me to pitch for it. But I was a fan of the original and I like big gorillas, so I was well up for it!

TT: Yes, Keith asked me. It was quite a departure!

How did you approach the balance between crafting something new and staying true to the spirit of the originals?

AW: I think all you’re really doing is just introducing the same character but to modern audience. So the characters stay the same; they’re just in a different setting and with a more modern tone.

When it comes to those originals, were you old enough to read them the first time around or have you come to them later?

AW: Yeah, I grew up on this stuff. Whizzer and Chips, Shiver and Shake, Buster, School Fun, etc. Anything with monsters in were particular faves.

The special is another part of the Treasury of British Comics, where we’ve already seen plenty of classic strips reprinted. What do you think of what’s been done thus far and what are you particularly looking forward to seeing, whether reprint or brand-new?

AW: I think Rob Williams and Ben Willsher have done an amazing job on Roy of the Rovers, and would love to see more original graphic novels like that on the shelves.

TT: Not really a Treasury strip, but as I did a Fiends of the Eastern Front with Ian Edginton, I might be biased! Hoping to do more of that… there are plans… I’ve no doubt there are some strips that could be reinvented to keep the the characters intact and bring them to a new audience. Perhaps a quarterly anthology?

With the Cor!! & Buster Special, we’re seeing these classics updated for a modern audience, something that’s essential to keep the comics medium flourishing. What are your thoughts on comics for children and how do you see things developing in the future?

AW: The market for children’s graphic novels is colossal. Books by Dave Pilkey and Raina Telgemeier have initial print runs in the millions! I’m sure one of Pilkey’s last Dog Man books was something crazy like five mill! Yet this never seems to get talked about in grown-up circles. Perhaps comics for adults are so insular and self-important these days such things never register on their news radar.

One thing I’m glad to see left behind is the notion of ‘comics for boys’ and ‘comics for girls’. So many publishers and authors have come out against gender-branding children’s books, the ‘Let Books Be Books’ campaign and so on, and it’s great to see Rebellion going the same way with things like the all-ages specials.

Looking ahead, I honestly think the future’s bright for kids’ GNs. However shaky things may be in in the adult market right now, the kids who are learning to love comics through Roy of the Rovers, Dog Man and Smile will swoop in to save us in a few years time...

TT: To be completely honest, I wasn’t keen on those ‘kids comics’ when I was a kid. I loved the artwork, but things like the Beano didn’t mean much to me. I was more into Tintin or Asterix, until the day I stumbled across EC comics, and then 2000 AD. So I’m not sure I can answer that question effectively!

How did you make your way into comics?

AW: Through the subs pile at 2000 AD. I wrote script after script after script. Made submission after submission. Listened to every scrap of feedback and eventually figured out how the medium worked.

TT: First thing I did was for the Black Library, the Games Workshop’s publishing company. I was a fan of the games the GW produce. I had a concept I wanted to publish, so I thought I’d better get into print.

What is your background, and what have you worked on thus far?

AW: I’ve been a freelance writer for almost 20 years, during which time I’ve done subediting, copywriting, comics, audio dramas and fiction. I had a good hard apprenticeship with 2000 AD before going out into the world and working on European children’s comics like Star Wars and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I’ve also done lots of custom work, and am now starting to break into the world of Warhammer fiction and audio dramas.

TT: I’ve worked as an illustrator and artist since leaving school in the early eighties. Didn’t really start on comics commercially until quite late on… without looking about 15 years ago? …probably more…

And with that, we leave them, happy in the corner, bananas in hand. Comic creators and giant apes... they love them! The Cor! & Buster Special goes on sale 17th April 2019 from all good newsagents and comic shops (Diamond PREVIEWS order code FEB191918)