Now here’s one hero with a super idea! Let’s start a book club…or better yet, a comics club!

Welcome to the Playhouse Comics Club! Every week on Friday, we’ll put a new post on this blog, with activities, videos, and links to online all-ages comics for your kids. Hopefully you’ll find something here that will entertain your children and keep them occupied during quarantine time.

Our book club hero today is Young Shadow, a futurist crime-fighter written and drawn by indy cartoonist Ben Sears. Coming in May is Sears’ “all-ages murder mystery” House of the Black Spot, available from Koyama Press.

 

Online Comics Dep’t: Alec Longstreth’s Isle of Elsi is a charming fantasy adventure comic built around inventive wordplay! New pages of Isle of Elsi are available every Thursday.

Longstreth lists his Isle of Elsi influences as “the comics of Carl Barks, The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame, the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, the poetry of Ogden Nash, Jerry Juhl’s writing on The Muppet Show, T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone (plus the Disney version storyboarded by Bill Peet), and pretty much any book I can find that has anything to do with dragons.” Great fun!

 

World of Wonder Dep’t: DC Kids features lots of all-ages superhero content, including cartoons, comics, and games. The DC Kids Twitter is especially good at encouraging kids to draw and create. Recommended from the Twitter feed is Victoria Ying’s easy-to-follow demonstration of the fundamentals of drawing a human figure—in this case, the teenage version of Wonder Woman! You can also find more arts-and-crafts ideas on the DC Kids Youtube channel.

 

 

 

Words and Pictures Dep’t: Storytime Online is an excellent resources for parents who could use professional help when reading out loud to their kids. Sponsored by SAG-AFTRA—the main American union for film, television, and media performers—Storytime Online features stars and celebrities reading uplifting, entertaining children’s books in short, professionally-produced videos. Kids will enjoy the stories, and adults will get a kick out of Ernest Borgnine reading Marcus Pfister’s The Rainbow Fish (1999) and Rami Malek performing Demi’s The Empty Pot (1996).

 

 

 

Pretty Pictures Dep’t: In 2015, Calvin and Hobbes cartoonist Bill Watterson won the Grand Prix, the highest award from the prestigious Angoulȇme International Comic Art Festival in France. Watterson drew the poster for the comics festival, and the result is a hilarious wordless strip that pays tribute to the newspaper Sunday funnies. Follow this link to see and read the poster!

 

 

This weekly blog post is written and compiled by Craig Fischer. To send along recommendations, ideas, and comments, please contact Craig at [email protected] [.]

 

Violet Citrus-AdePlayhouse Comics Club, Issue #2 (May 8, 2020)
PHP Code Snippets Powered By : XYZScripts.com