PLEASE Consider Supporting CBO

Please consider supporting Comic Bits Online because it is a very rare thing in these days of company mouthpiece blogs that are only interested in selling publicity to you. With support CBO can continue its work to bring you real comics news and expand to produce the video content for this site. Money from sales of Black Tower Comics & Books helps so please consider checking out the online store.
Thank You

Terry Hooper-Scharf

Thursday 12 March 2015

Team Sputnik Launch new web comic - "Skid Avenue"



Team Sputnik Launch "Skid Avenue"

TEAM SPUTNIK’s brand new comic strip SKID AVENUE is now free to read online, telling the story of JOHN and JO, a pair of ordinary folk who suddenly find themselves becoming part of the ‘squeezed middle’.

Skid Avenue Cast - Jo, John and Dennis the CatTaking a wry and humorous look at the problems of just-getting-by in austerity-hit times, SKID AVENUE is the latest brainchild of TEAM SPUTNIK, the comics partnership of writer Antonella Caputo and artist Nick Miller (Graphic Classics, Comic Football, The RHG). Inspired by real-life events, it stars JOHN and JO, former stars of the long-running strip The Really Heavy Greatcoat.

Updated every week, the first three episodes of SKID AVENUE are available at www.skidavenue.com, or on the web comics platform Tapastic at http://tapastic.com/series/SKID-AVENUE and there’s even a blog – www.skidavenue.blogspot.com – with lots of extra goodies for hardcore fans!

Described by one critic as “the pan-European comics creative team”, TEAM SPUTNIK has a proven track record when it comes to producing well-written, well-drawn, popular comics. Their adaptations of classic short stories for US publication Graphic Classics have drawn critical praise internationally. Chris Allen of Movie Poop Shoot said: “Nick Miller’s and Antonella Caputo’s take on The Carnival of Crime in Connecticut conveys the power of Twain’s sharply satirical jabs at morality and hypocrisy”, and Zack Davisson said: “Nick Miller draws a clever adaptation”.

SKID AVENUE protagonists JOHN and JO first appeared in the long-running strip The Really Heavy Greatcoat, co-created with writer JOHN FREEMAN and first published in On the Beat (later Off the Beat) in 1987 and published for mobile by ROK Comics and in the international comics magazine Comics International, one of the most respected journals in the comics industry. It has also been selected for publication in various titles, including The Norm, published by syndicated US cartoonist Michael Jantze.

Nick and Antonella first came up with the idea for SKID AVENUE during lunch. Nick says: “I hadn’t drawn John and Jo for years and we got to thinking: ‘What would they be doing now?’ When they bowed out of the original strip, John was working in a local government department and Jo ran a shop. We thought that, fifteen years on, they’d probably be doing exactly the same thing, but now they’d be coping with ten years of austerity and economic recession. We thought there’d be plenty of opportunities for ironic humour, especially if you’re part of that age group, as we are ourselves”.
 
Episode 1 of SKID AVENUE opens with JO leaving her homeware shop, Artyfacts, which is going out of business after a collapse in the market for annoyingly off-key windchimes.

At the same time, husband JOHN finds out the local government department where he works will soon be downsized. How will they pay the bills? Will they have to cancel their subscription to Aspirational Home Decorator magazine? Will they have to eat the cat?
“SKID AVENUE shows off the work of Nick Miller and Antonella Caputo at the top of their game - wickedly observed and funny cartoons, drawn with consummate style. They make me sick”. – John Freeman, comics editor
Skid Avenue... Everyday Tales of Squeezed Middlefolk...
SKID AVENUE LINKS:
RELATED COMICS:
TEAM SPUTNIK LINKS:
This DownTheTubes release is issued on behalf of Team Sputnik. Please contact them by email at team.sputnik@sky.com or call +44 (0)1524 68107 or to talk to the creators
Copyright © 2015 downthetubes.net, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this because of your press interest in British comics, comics events and comic creators.

No comments:

Post a Comment