Mark Bradley - Bumble and Snug

Mark Bradley is a comics writer and artist who lives in Yorkshire with his family. He grew up reading stories about ghosts and monsters and promptly decided that he preferred them to humans. Having worked for the probation service for many years, he saw first-hand how important emotional literacy is and hopes his debut series will help young readers explore feelings in a fun setting. Bumble and Snug developed out of characters he kept drawing in the margins of other projects until he launched them on his Instagram account (@markbradleyillustration) and found himself with a book deal – something he never even dared to dream was possible.

In this episode, Mark talks to Nikki Gamble about his new comic book Bumble and Snug, which readers can enjoy from around age 5 upwards.

Originally recorded in April 2019

About Bumble and Snug
Best friends Bumble and Snug are Bugbops – little monsters filled with BIG feelings! In this full-colour graphic novel, join them on a funny, imaginative adventure with some VERY angry pirates, learning about the world outside and inside along the way.

Bumble and Snug are going on a big adventure to … have a picnic! But when they accidentally get lost, they’re both cross – is their adventure ruined?

Working together to find their way home, Bumble and Snug come across a pirate treasure horde. But taking treasure that isn’t yours is a good way to get into trouble; sure enough, some VERY angry pirates aren’t far behind.

Bumble and Snug are certain they can replace the treasure and fix things to make everybody happy. But there’s another monstrous obstacle in store – and this one has TENTACLES.

Bumble and Snug and the Angry Pirates is a story about being cross and how to listen, friendship and sandcastles, and one GIANT octopus!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:15

In the reading corner today. What a treat . We have Mark Bradley who's going to be talking to us about his new comic Bumble and Snug. Uh, it's a comic that can be read even by very young children. I'm not going to say it's aimed at five year olds plus cuz actually I really enjoyed reading it and I'm not five years old but I think the key thing is that very young readers could read and enjoy this comic book. So first of all, welcome Mark .

Speaker 2: 0:43

Hello.

Speaker 1: 0:44

Before we get into your new book, I'm sure our readers would like to know a little bit about you, what you were doing up to this point and how did you come to put together this children's comic ?

Speaker 2: 0:56

I'm self-taught artist. I've been an administrator for all of my adult life nearly so. But um, I've always done art as a hobby in the background and comics in particular and done those as web comics and the two characters in Bumble and Snug. I drew them for the first time pre around 20 years or so ago and I've just sort of absentmindedly drawn them over the years everywhere else until eventually they started taking over everything I was drawing and then started making little monsters that were in a similar vein to them and that basically became everything that I drew before on because I prayed Joe drawing them so much and then eventually I got to the point where I used to do these comic projects intending to do them as web comics and never actually really putting them up. And then my wife was like, you need to start putting one of these up . Aren't going to strangle your Mark <laugh> online. So they found their own web comic in one called Book Box just doing one one in a really scratchy style, really basic style. They sort of really took off that it ended up crossing path with the senior fiction designer at Hasher . Uh , a guy called Samuel Parrot . And then we developed a picture from there for the children's books that'd never written anything long before I'd done flash fiction and individual web comics. So literally happened after that. So it was all sort of stumbled along and happened by accident, which is weird and lovely. And Stranger <laugh>

Speaker 1: 2:17

As you were talking it struck me that when we think about comics, so much of what makes them work are strong characters. I want to talk about your characters. They're very approachable and possibly one of the reasons that they've been put into this package for younger children is that they're very approachable. I'm not going to say they're Mr Men , but they've got that simplicity of line and flat color and the names are very comforting and approachable. Tell us a bit about Bumble and Snug in your words.

Speaker 2: 2:50

So if you look at Bumble's design, she looks like an exclamation mark with the tall hat , like her personality was instantly there originally she was he cuz she had a voice like Brian Blessed in my head but that she's changed over the years and she's just bombastic. One of the joys of writing Bumble is I can put her in any situation story-wise and she will generate a story from it just by force of her own personality alone. Whereas Sn who's quieter and more reserved, if you look at Bumble design, she's an exclamation mark Snugs like a question mark with the round top and BU bodies . I'm a massive fan of silent comedies and so their personalities, it was natural after Bumble Snook came along with the bow tie that he'd be the Laurel Bumbles Hardee and Snook forms the heart of the stories in so much as he's the one that questions everything and tries to pull everything back down to earth and tries to keep Bumble grounded with everything. So they're a lovely pair to write and obviously mention Mr Men like Roger Hargraves. The biggest influence at the time was Ed EM'S work. I just became obsessed with Ed Emy and his how to draw books. The 8, 10, 12 16 shapes in there . I have them to hand my bookshelf right <laugh> all the designs of the local monsters in the world come straight from EM'S world of combining basic shapes and then a few extra lines.

Speaker 1: 4:18

I wanted to ask you about gender. You said that Bumble used to be a he , I wondered whether you were being deliberately gender neutral in this comic cuz it feels very gender neutral . It's interesting. Bumble is the female character, she's Blue. Snug is the male character, he's pink.

Speaker 2: 4:34

When I started doing the web comic, both of them were were male and that was intentional choice on my part because Snug I felt all along had to be male because I wanted a quiet, more emotional male character. Bumble was a originally in the web com was a gutless decision on my part to make Mel Bumble can be a bit absentminded And if you look back at 1980 sitcoms I was like I don't want to put those charact types . And when we were speaking with the publisher there was a conversation about whether it's change agendas or make them gender neutral . The gender neutral sort of appealed to me, but I really specifically wanted Snoke to be male because I wanted the character to be specifically that and be like, look boys , nothing wrong with openly showing your emotions. So then once I've made that decision my publishers and agents like look there's nothing to worry about with Bumble there being a girl in this. So it was a very conscious decision switch and in the comic Bumble can change her shape, her body say body size , anything like that. Bumble to my mind can be anything that she wants to be. Bumble is Bumble in my head.

Speaker 1: 5:46

That's , yeah , she's a hot air balloon at one point and it was really interesting cause I was reading this comic and they're obviously taking off in the sky and their snug in the basket , uh, all at the bottom of the balloon and I thought where's Bumble? Oh Bumble is the balloon <laugh>

Speaker 2: 6:02

<laugh> .

Speaker 1: 6:03

Tell us a bit about this first story. It's Bumble and snug in the angry Pirates.

Speaker 2: 6:08

It's about Bumble and Snug. Decided to go for a lovely quiet picnic and to find where the ones have the quiet picnic. Bumble inflates herself to be the size of a hot air balloon and carries them along to find the nice secluded spot. And unfortunately as his Bumble's way she gets a little bit distracted along the way by everything that she sees and gets them out to the seaside where snug panics a little and tries to get her to land and end up blowing them out to seeing crash landing in an island. Either find brewery treasure and and they manage to find an escape route and then get back to land. But then it turns out that the , the brewery treasure belongs to some pirates who are very angry about getting lost there and then it all takes off after their in a massively bombastic style after that , uh, involving a very, very angry octopus. When we were developing the books, we were talking about each book centering on a single emotion that we can explore . Cause I worked just as an administrator at the probation service for 10 years. One of the things that kept coming through is emotional literacy and obviously that's a big word in children's publishing nowadays as far as I understand it . Yeah , it's something you keep coming back to and back to and back to and back to when you are working in a criminal justice service and obviously anger in particular. So like that was the emotion that ended up going towards first is the emotion to look at particularly because it's something I'm sure most listeners are more than aware of issues surrounding how men deal with the emotion of anger. And I have a friend who's the child psychologist, so speaking to her about approaches to it, albeit when I was writing about it in the book, doing that in a way that wasn't preachy. One of the things you'll come across in the book is whenever they're talking about emotion they will all certainly be in the middle of escaping from a situation. So it's never stood there. And here's the lesson that we hopefully that comes across. Each book's got essential core emotion. I'm writing the story around bumble and snug with that emotion in mind with a creature or a fancy creature that's going to come to represent that emotion.

Speaker 1: 8:18

It's very well done because I have to say it's the story that was driving me forward all the time rather than thinking what would I stop and talk about in the classroom. I know that I would do that but first and foremost I just wanted to enjoy this comic strip . I want to talk a little bit about visual language in relation to the emotions that you're talking about. You have got one very angry pirate and there's a page where that anger just bursts out at the page. I wondered if you could talk us through some of the visual language that communicates that emotion.

Speaker 2: 8:53

It's been a really interesting learning curve on all the stuff I've done previously that can adapt however I want to it. But in this particular one obviously I want it to be really accessible to children who are new to comics and trying to keep the visual language very accessible. For instance, one page you're particularly talking about is a double page spread with with no background and bumble and smoke sort of in the background looking very short and the pirate is occupying probably two third of the page and then another fifth of the page is some symbols that may communicate some words that wouldn't be appropriate for young ears and in very spiky speech bubbles and then lightning shapes around the pirate and yeah , she's looking very angry and and

Speaker 1: 9:40

The mouth is so big

Speaker 2: 9:42

<laugh> ,

Speaker 1: 9:43

She's basically all mouth in that. Yeah

Speaker 2: 9:45

<laugh> it's trying to come through like when the octopus comes into it like a big dominating forms and my natural inclination more is more I'm not a less is more person. It

Speaker 1: 9:57

Will be interesting when you get the chance to go out and meet young readers to see what that page communicates to them .

Speaker 2: 10:03

It's a more graphic design as well. It uses design elements that you find elsewhere in the book like the the zip tone backgrounds and things like that

Speaker 1: 10:12

And color is such an important part of that too. Vivid purple and you've got these dark, well the black because the mouth is essentially a black hole. It's

Speaker 2: 10:22

Yeah , yeah <laugh> .

Speaker 1: 10:23

But a lot of what happens in the rest of the comic really encourages a lot of wish fulfillment in children. You know these magical places you can , there's a map of you know, where unicorns are and then there's the kinda sea side and you can see that that would trigger them to want to create their own Yes places to add to your map . I

Speaker 2: 10:45

Would love to see that <laugh>

Speaker 1: 10:48

And also your mon monsters, you know we've got bumble and snug but you very enticingly show us lots of strange creatures.

Speaker 2: 10:55

That's how I relax drawing little monsters just doodling away. But that's my happy place. Yeah , I wanted to include a little guide to start them off on their own. I've already had some lovely little ones sent through social media of people's children drawing the room , not something I was prepared for even though I stuck a how to draw a section at the back and has been absolutely wonderful. <laugh> ,

Speaker 1: 11:17

I talk a little bit about the sort of comic influences on you , not a comic exactly , but as I'm sitting here talking to you, I'm , my eyes are drawn to a poster that's hanging on the wall behind you, which is the Finn Family Moon troll From the Stories by Tova Yassen there is some sort of similarity between the moon and that's very simple line and that round belly you kind of know how to respond to that character, don't you? Yes. Tell us about what , how you came to the movements and why they're so important that you've got a poster in your room .

Speaker 2: 11:53

To Anson's one of my, my five biggest influences, not on the world on me , I'd like, I have a huge cupboard full of additions of her books. The moon . I first came to them with the stop motion animated series that came from Poland and when we imported it over here it incinerate by Richard Murdoch . And it's like anything as a child, there's something you click with but you don't know why you click with it. There's a line in a song a a song by brand called Johnny by way I think it's called this, frequency is My Universe. And the moments like that, the frequency of them , there's just something about them . For me nowadays, the thing that I absolutely love most about them is, and like I say , I'd like to draw a little monsters, that's not a coincidence that I love movies where there's this little universe full of little creatures that oftentimes are fairly thinly veiled metaphors or designs for a central emotion. The way she does that in, I'm gonna use a word that I should never use in regards to anything anyone's done with that , but she seems to do it effortlessly. Like it comes off so naturally in the way that um, she does it. And I can draw a straight line between what I love doing and what happens in the Moon and Stars .

Speaker 1: 13:06

Now while we're talking about comic heroes, I've been following you a little bit on social media in preparation for today. I was taken with a tweet that you put out about Garfield. There was a kind of questioning about whether Garfield had ever had any influence on comic book creators and it kind of struck me that you didn't probably feel that positively about Garfield, but then you listed some other characters and I was thinking, oh yeah, I can see that they probably had a strong influence on you. So maybe take us through a little bit about your comic heroes and then maybe secondary tell us why you have a question mark over Garfield. I'll ,

Speaker 2: 13:49

I'll start with Garfield first. Like I'm literally ambivalent on Garfield. The reason I asked the question is, I was born in 1980 , you couldn't move for Garfield like it was on the back of people's windows, it was on tv, it was the books where every , there were Megan and I was trying to think of where I see those influences now. And like I say , outside of like a particular sense of humor in sort of 2000 era web comics, I couldn't think where I saw that. Which is weird because Garfield is, it's off the top of my head I think is Jim Davis is like the second most successful English language comic creator ever after Charles Schultz peanuts. And I personally can't see where the influence has gone to for something that was so huge. So I'm really interested to go away and sort of looking into more and said I haven't read Garfield since I was pre eight , nine years old. But in terms of the other ones, Calvin Hops is, it's a cliche to say it's influential to you as a comic artist, but there's a reason that cliche is true. One of the strongest memories about comics in my whole life is there's a particular strip, which is the Tyran rs Rex in F fourteens , um, of being on holiday in Wales with my grandma and my mom and being sat on the floor reading that strip for the first time and not being able to breathe . I was laughing so hard . And it's something about the sheer amount of effort that Bill Watson puts into his line work . I think where it's like that he's done so much work on something so incredibly goofy that just appeals. I find it hard to articulate why I love that strip so much because I've just got so much wrapped up in it . The characters, it's so incredibly drawn is so the way that it gets these incredibly deep thoughts into this incredibly accessible strip. Bill Watson is absolutely monumental in terms of influences , uh, and things like that in Ben Clinton's books now and Jelly . When I was approached by Hash , I was trying to research children's comics and obviously came across Dogman by Dave PKI and now while Angel had literally just come out. So I picked that up and that was really influential in terms of like panel structure on the page and how to approach panel structures through younger audience people like James Kacker who did series called Johnny Boo , Andy Watson, his influence won't show some uh , in my comic, but he's one of my all-time favorite comic creators with Kerry and the Knight of the Forest , uh, is Gly Comics Gum Girl . Do , I could list like about a thousand different names like Dana Simpson's work is fantastic. Who , uh, does Fian and Her Unicorn , uh, which is very much a spiritual sort of uc success , modern day spiritual success. It's things like Kel and Hobbs <laugh> .

Speaker 1: 16:30

I wanna talk a little bit about comic theory. Yes . And whether that's something that has influenced you as well. I'm thinking about the people who've sort of written about how to create comics, whether it's the Scott McLeod or Paul Grat . Is that something that you're interested in as well?

Speaker 2: 16:48

Sure . God , yeah . I mean like I think I read McLeod for the first time when I was pre about 19 I think. And that just blew my mind at the time. Uh, the approach to , I absolutely adore that Will Eisner Ania at the time and lately people like , uh, Neil Cohen who I am obsessed with the stuff that he's doing, which is to do,

Speaker 1: 17:09

He's like the grammar, isn't it ? Basically he's

Speaker 2: 17:11

Grammar , basically looking at comics in the same way you were construct a sentence in prose and saying there's stuff going on here that we haven't properly studied. He's doing at the moment, he's doing a wide ranging international study where they're looking at comic str panel structures from around the world and how there's a generally a different amount of average amount of panels per page, different types of pages, different angles, different com density of images and panels. Fascinating, fascinating stuff that seems to be indicating the idea that this sort of image is a universal language isn't as universal as we think. It isn't that it's a learned grammar. Um , I can't recommend anyone listening who hasn't encountered his words to , there's , there's a few videos on YouTube where he is talking to people and there's also stuff by hacking graphic novels and worth a thousand words by Meryl Jaff and Ho , which that ago looking about using comic theory in classrooms. I started looking into it more and more something that's weirded like it's possible to sort of read comics and be unaware of how spectacular the boom in children's graphic novels has been over the last decade. And it's why I talk so much about it so passionately. We need to understand that this is coming up and it's gonna fundamentally change comics in the US and UK for generations now . It's

Speaker 1: 18:39

Interesting , it's sort of went through a a little bit and all the kind of traditional weekly comics disappeared. Yeah . Didn't they ? So it's quite interesting to see these coming back in a different it's format.

Speaker 2: 18:51

I talk a lot about the rise of children's graphic novels online unfortunately. Cause I'm talking usually on Twitter. It doesn't allow for nuance . Deep dive into it that I'd like to because obviously whilst there's been this explosion in the US which is starting to happen over here, especially when you look at Alice Oman's recent success and Jamie smart repackaging of the , uh, bunny versus monkey graphic novels and Jess Bradley, no relation, who the a day in the life of who Gnu and you , the explosion graphic novels happened in the last 10 years , but it was predicated by the surgeon Manga publishing in their sort of nine years prior to Smile coming out , uh, by Telma . Yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:30

And you mentioned , uh, manga and there seems to be a little influence of that in your own work with the stats and you know , it's a bit Pokemons , isn't it ? Oh , love <laugh> . And even the idea of bug poli it , it kinda Pokemon feel . Oh there's ,

Speaker 2: 19:46

I I love the little in Mango . Well not in , not in every Mango, but some Manga wears obviously the cutaways where they do the Chibi style characters as an emotional reaction where the emotions are so big that they warp the reality of the page, the way that they use lines to replace backgrounds and like big, really that's something actually in the neck of the second book that I've done the rough artwork for about to start the final artwork imminently. And I'm gonna need to go back and do some reading up on some of particular mangoes where I want to pull some of that influence through more . In that one ,

Speaker 1: 20:21

You've introduced us to your wonderful Bumble snug. You've given us a great insight into the comic book world and also how trends are changing . And it seems that accessibility in particular of Comics for Children is growing, which is a great thing. I can't wait to see what they make of your books in schools and classrooms and the kinds of questions that children send you and the sorts of drawings that are gonna be dropping through your email box and on your social media feeds . Uh , for sure. And I'd just really like to thank you , mark , for taking your time today to come and talk to me in the reading call . It's been such a pleasure. Thank you

Speaker 2: 21:04

So much. No, a absolute pleasure to be on.

Speaker 3: 21:07

In The Reading Corner is presented by Nikki Gamble and produced by Alison Hughes. If you have enjoyed this podcast, please do leave a review. For us to find out about other projects, including an audience with events and the exploring children's literature, summer school, visit www dot exploring children's literature.uk. Join us again soon in the reading corner on your favorite podcast platform.