Fifteen Years of Folklore and Fear

Self indulgence klaxon!!

Magic Torch turned 15 last year, but this month, this week in fact, it's been 15 years since we published our first book, Tales of the Oak - which has pretty much been the foundation of everything we've worked on ever since.

Tales of the Oak collected a whole range of local folktales and half remembered legends, which had more or less fallen out of the telling, and presented them back to everyone to bring them back to life. We did actually have a plan when we did this, and it was to create a sort of "mythical" history and backdrop to what is often viewed as a fairly miserable and depressed community. Taking genuine local stories, national legends and a wee bit of creative license, we tried to make our hometown seem a little more magical. The stories could all be read and told independently, but read cover to cover, there is also an ongoing story.

The first 1000 copies of the book sold out within four weeks - quite literally outselling Anthea Turner's autobiography five copies to one in the Greenock WH Smith. Crazy times. Hilariously though, in our rush to get them into local bookshops, the glue bind hadn't properly set, and the first 50 copies fell to pieces. Bookpoint were very understanding about that. If you still have one of those faulty copies, it's really extra rare. Largely unreadable, but rare. Sort of like the dead sea scrolls.

We've reprinted the book a few times, thousands of copies have now been sold. And yknow, it's still available if for some bizarre reason you don't already have one...both in our online shop, via the Dutch Gable House and also for kindle. It is of course, ideal Halloween reading.

Here's the original founding members of Magic Torch below, promoting Tales of the Oak in the Tele in October 2000. We look like a terrible indie band. Or a sort of low rent Travis. Which is actually exactly what we were going for...

"Here are the young men the weight on their shoulders
Here are the young men, well where have they been..."

Andy and Mhairi - Scribblers for Hire

Scooby Doo and the Gang, with my wee Molly, chased by Captain Kidd
by Andy Lee

We've been really lucky these last two years, to work with a couple of smashing artists...and we like to really challenge them with various eldritch horrors and folk nightmares. But did you know, you can also commission them to do pieces of artwork for you, friends or family? I'm just one of the folks who has done just that over the last year, and above you can see a special Scooby Doo illustration Andy did for my daughter, below is an illustration Mhairi did for an Alice in Wonderland story I wrote for my wife for our 10th Wedding Anniversary.

You can see lots of Andy's other work and find out how to contact him at Call of the Deep or find him and his sketchbooks on instagram. Mhairi is at Mhairi M Robertson.

And hey...obviously there are lots of other cool local artists and crafters you could be supporting too, some of whom will no doubt be appearing at the next Violet Skulls Market in Dutch Gable House. Apparently it's Christmas coming up...why not do something a wee bit different this year...something special.

Alice, discussing the finer points of relativity with a watchmaker
by Mhairi Robertson

And keep a wee eye out, as Mhairi and I may well be shortly launching a kickstarter for another book.

All The Things...

the volunteers of magic torch are delighted with a busy year

We have been really fortunate this year to receive support from a whole range of funders. We have loads going on over the next few months, and so we felt it was important to just stop, take a wee breath, and remind you about each of our projects individually...but yknow, also all at the same time.


13 Commonwealth Tales is supported by the Celebrate Fund, created to help communities recognise the Commonwealth Games in different ways. We've already had some storytelling days and right now the project is just finishing production on two books, 13 Commonwealth Tales, an illustrated childrens book collecting traditional stories from Commonwealth countries and Uncommon Tales, a comic in which Sir Glen Douglas Rhodes explores some of the darker folklore of the Commonwealth. Thanks to Lottery funding, limited copies of both of these books will be made available for FREE in September and October.


Time and Place is supported by Awards For All Scotland, and is sharing creative responses to Inverclyde past, present and future. Exhibitions and music created by the project will be on display in The Dutch Gable House throughout October and November.


Achi Baba is supported by Heritage Lottery Fund and will explore an important part of Inverclyde's World War One history in comic form. The comic book will be published in July 2015, on the centenary of the battle.


Alongside that, we have our own self supported project, The Battle of Largs, which has created an exhibition based on John Galt's gothic poem, using artwork from Andy Lee and woodcraft created by local social enterprise Newark Products.

And of course you can still access our kids book Wee Nasties on scribd and ibooks, and our vintage horror comic Tales of the Oak, from last year's project Tales of the Oak, supported by Heritage Lottery Fund Our Heritage.

So aye, busy times. Good times too. Probably our most action packed year since we started. It's worth noting, that all of the grants above, are under 10k, awarded through funding streams which are ideal for smaller groups. I wrote a wee blog post at the start of the year with my own thoughts about funding, and if you, or your group has an idea for projects, why not try making them happen?

Hopefully we'll see you at some of our events over the next few months.

Fifteen

Fifteen...men on a dead man's chest? Fifteen...minutes of fame?

No...fifteen years since we started doing things as Magic Torch.
That's AGES. It doesn't feel like ages obviously, it feels much longer than that.

And so, a big thank you and a tip of the birthday hat to anyone who has helped us out over the years with our plans and schemes in our 100% voluntary efforts to have fun with local culture and heritage.

Here are five favourite bits of our story...

The handcarved cover to our first project - an illuminated manuscript
telling the story of Inverclyde for the Tall Ships 1999

From the days before we had photoshop, which would have made this picture much cheaper to produce...one of the massive posters from our billboard heritage project... (2004)

Neil sits ready to pass judgement at the retrial of Captain "Ray" Kidd in Greenock Court (2001)

Balloons from our hugely popular / unpopular Greenock Sugar Sheds Campaign (2011)

The formal introduction of our hero, Sir Glen Douglas Rhodes,
ushering in a bold new era of Magic Torch comics (2013)

Now seems as good a time as any to also remind ye about some of our publications from down the years...free and otherwise...

Wee Nasties free online via Scribd

Captain Kidd Comic and many more are available in our Olde Online Shoppe

Tales of the Oak folktale collection on amazon

Tales of the Oak Comic on comixology

Tales of the Oak Comic - Mr Cube Strikes

Local Heritage, Local People - Heritage as a Community Asset


We've so much cool stuff getting organised just now for release throughout August / September / October. We cannae wait to share it.

Finally, if ye want to write for the blog, or get involved with what we do, whatever that happens to be this month, just drop us a wee email.

On Comixology

Just a quick note to let you know that you can now purchase a special digital edition of Tales of the Oak online, specially formatted for tablet reading via the marvellous Comixology...king of comic apps / online stores.

We are hoping to produce further issues - there's plenty more stories to tell, but it will all depend on raising the funds for further issues...

Tales of the Oak - Our Year In Review

2013 has been a great year on the blog, we've had tens of thousands of visits, new writers, new friends and more folklore and stories than we've shared for a long time. Here's a wee stroll down memory lane, to our most (statistically) popular posts of the year...

As ever, John Donald's Old Greenock Characters remain a firm favourite - so I think folk will be pleased with one of the projects we have coming up next year, but stealing the show, beating out even the legendary Tommy Matches, was our trip to The Winter Fair...

Concern around the proposed windfarm development On Lurg Moor actually ensured lots more people discovered our local Roman heritage. Hats off to the group who continue to campaign - we have a few pieces from them coming in the new year.

We enjoy posting fiction inspired by the area on here as well, and this year, it was the mysterious Captain Nemo's shipyard visit which edged ahead.

The introduction of Sir Glen Douglas Rhodes proved to be one of the most popular posts of the year, which maybe goes to show that people enjoy a good yarn as much as they enjoy historical facts and figures.

Our major projects this year were of course Wee Nasties and Tales of the Oak, both still available to read for free on Scribd / kindle / ipad. Most popular pages related to this project were our Wee Nasties "deleted scene" featuring the Catman, and an explanation of how Andy and myself have been creating the comic pages so far.

2013 has been a big year for folklore and heritage all round, from Richard III to abominable snowmen, here's IO9s rundown of the year in international historical discoveries...

A big thank you to everyone involved in our projects this year, from directly helping out, to simply downloading and sharing what we have done or supporting our projects by buying our ebooks. It's not all just for fun, we do have a mission, and it's to celebrate the history and heritage of this area in a different way - with imagination and magic. That can be a hard sell down our way, so we need your help for that.

There's new books, comics and stories for 2014, and we look forward to telling you all about them very soon...

Local Heroes Assemble!

In a brief break from our regularly scheduled Christmas programming, and to try and make up a wee bit for the Big Comic Book Bash postponement last month, just had to share this preview panel for a short strip Andy and I are doing. Behold, Inverclyde's first superhero team! It was a sort of an in joke initially, inspired by the very cool Absent Voices project, but Andy did such a bang up job here that I'm thinking the guys need their own adventure. Or at the very least a teeshirt or line of 3D printed toys (assuming someone wants to buy me a 3D printer).

So from left to right we have -

Tin Jimmy - James Watt's steam powered robot, reactivated in the 21st century
Catman - Not the hero Greenock needs, but the one it deserves
Mr Cube - Tough talking hard nosed sugar cube emblem often used by Tate and Lyle
Egeria - The living statue, having adventures when not hanging around West Blackhall Street
Captain Kidd - The super pirate. Somehow.
Mary Lamont - Teenage witch, back from the dead for revenge. And perhaps dancing.

The short and sweet Mr Cube Strikes! strip will appear early next year. The first issue of our Local Heroes comic will be out...uhm...well whenever we get around to it probably. Someday maybe. Who knows? Certainly we've a couple of new comics coming out next year...

Meantime, if local heroes and mysterious steampunk robots are your thing, you may enjoy the very similar themes of my other project, kids fiction, Tin Jimmy.

Coming up next in our Ghost Story selection, it's Cantus Arcticus from Mark Jones, a terrifying tale in five parts. (Mark has put the rest of us to shame this year)

Merry Galoshans! Tales of the Oak Comic - Now Online!

Just in time for Halloween tomorrow, you can now read a slightly edited digital version of our Tales of the Oak comic, available free online via scribd. Don't say we aren't good to you. Or else. Hopefully we'll get the resources sorted to get a special expanded digital edition out via comixology, ibooks and kindle etc later in the year.

Almost 1000 copies have been distributed and the final free glorious paperback copies will be available next month as part of Book Week Scotland...we may well reprint em one day, but then they will no longer be free! Catch em while ye can.

Tales of the Oak by Paul Bristow

Also still available is Wee Nasties, our Galoshans Play and a Witch Trial for all the family to enjoy.
Even better, the good folk of Greenock Players popped along to The Dutch Gable House on Saturday, to perform and film a traditional Galoshans play. Check it out.

Ahem. With all that free stuff, it seems like a slightly less awkward than usual moment to draw your attention to our forthcoming ebook A Nip in The Air...exclusively available for Kindle. For a mere 99p, less than a pumpkin or bag full of monkey nuts, you can help contribute towards our next year projects, while also getting a wee fright. Bargain! Don't worry, I'll remind ye again...

It's nearly Halloween...where do I get my free Tales of the Oak Comic?

It being the Season of Witch and all that, you'll be after your free copy of local horror comic, Tales of the Oak, how else will you accurately terrify the hordes of wee Galoshans turning up at your door with your knowledge of authentic local folklore? And what of you even more unfortunate souls, who do not live in Greenock with easy access to the terrifying Dutch Gable House?

Well, for a short period of time, you should be able to find copies in Quarriers Village at The Three Sisters Bake, in Port Glasgow at 7 /12 John Wood Street, from this weekend at Glasgow's Steampunk Cafe and there will also be copies available at Greenock Waterfront Cinema All Night Horror Marathon.

If you are interested in having a few copies of Tales of the Oak to distribute at a Halloween Event, let us know... auld.dunrod@gmail.com

After that, well. the final free physical copies will be given out at The Dutch Gable House during November at Book Week Scotland Events...then...it will be too late...all too late...

And if you just can't get enough of scary Inverclyde stories, you may enjoy our fundraising ebook A Nip in The Air, available for kindle.

Friday 13th - Unlucky for Some

One of the stories in our Tales of the Oak comic deals with the folklore surrounding the town horseshoe which sits at the fountain in the town square. The horseshoe has moved around a few times, most recently in May this year, when it was flipped to face away from the river, to ensure good luck flowed the right way, back towards the town. But supposing it was facing towards the river for a very good reason...

Here's page one from Sir Glen Douglas Rhodes adventure The Call of Clutha, hands down my favourite strip in the whole comic and some of Andy's best work...check out the Mariners Home...awesome.

Tales of the Oak will be released this weekend as part o Doors Open Day, available FOR FREE exclusively from The Dutch Gable House.

Doors Open Weekend - Dutch Gable House Sale!

In addition to your FREE copies of Wee Nasties and the Tales of the Oak comic this weekend, there's also the chance to grab other Magic Torch books at bargain prices...

Our folktale collections Tales of the Oak and Downriver are half price at £5, our reprint of the Thriller Picture Library Captain Kidd comic is £2 and....while recently clearing out the boiler room we call our office, we discovered two whole boxes of our reprint of Views and Reminiscences of Old Greenock.

The book was originally published to raise funds for Ardgowan Hospice in 2001, and sold out very quickly. So this is probably your last chance ever to nab a copy of this version of the classic work, a fascinating time capsule of Greenock at a period of significant change. The very limited stock of Views will be available at the Newark Enterprise Shop in The Dutch Gable House exclusively September 14th and 15th, priced £5.

All profits from book sales are reinvested in local social enterprise and heritage projects, including The Dutch Gable House itself.

You also have an exclusive opportunity to purchase Limited Edition prints from Wee Nasties as produced by Mhairi Robertson and an additional print of Granny Kempock..

Oh, and there should even be some exclusively designed Tales of the Oak mugs by Andy Lee, and lots of new traditional hand finished gifts from Newark Products. So it's all go eh?

Tales of the Oak - Comic Making

With Tales of the Oak, we are trying to interest different audiences in local folklore. Unlike Wee Nasties, or our other books, here we have specifically concentrated on the slightly darker stories, so if it were a film, I think the comic would be rated 12A for "scenes of terror and fantasy violence". The original Tales from the Crypt comics we have based the project on were of course banned altogether, so we were careful not to go too far...

A page from one of the original EC horror comics,
we have tried to use a similar style for Tales of the Oak

The process for us, was to research some local folk tales and then turn them into comic stories. People script comics in all sorts of different ways, this is a page of one of our scripts...

The scripts were then passed to Andy Lee, who worked in two different styles - the pages were either pencilled, inked, scanned in and then coloured...

Or created from scratch digitally

Then evil genius Pete typeset, designed, swore at, reset and generally magicked the pages into the finished article. (which by the way is available exclusively at The Dutch Gable House this weekend for FREE)

A few pages we tried in different ways, so to go with the "silent movie" theme of Night of the Comet, Andy tried colouring the pages. It was really cool, but somehow the blood seemed a bit...bloodier. So we opted for eerie unearthly green instead.

Months and months of time and effort has gone into producing the publication, including lots of time from volunteers, and for Andy in particular it has been something he has worked on almost every day since last October. We hope you'll enjoy it.

We've shared this vid before, but it really is a tremendous overview of the history of the EC Comics...

Tales of the Oak Launch - Doors Open Day

We've been working on our Tales of the Oak comic for almost a year now, and we're really pleased to say it's finally away to the printers and will be available exclusively at the Dutch Gable House on Doors Open Weekend, 14th and 15th September. 64 fully illustrated pages of local terror featuring shambling tunnel dwellers, cursed hiflats, ghost pirates, zombies and evil cultists. Oh, did we mention that it's FREE.

Tales of the Oak is funded by Heritage Lottery Scotland, like our storytelling project and our childrens book Wee Nasties. We'll also have our last remaining copies of Wee Nasties available on the day, along with an exhibition of some of Mhairi and Andy's original artwork and sketches from the book and comic.

And that's not all you'll be able to enjoy. We've now moved lots of Sir Glen Douglas Rhodes furniture and curios out of storage and into his replica study in the Dutch Gable where you will be able to experience his life and times, the wonderful Newark Products shop will be open, selling a wide range of bespoke and handcrafted gifts, plus there will be folk music in the Back House and films in the Secret Cinema. It's all good.

We'll be along from 10 - 4 on both days, hopefully see you then.

And I don't want to panic ye or anything, but the last time there was a local heritage graphic novel, Identity The Archivist's Treasure, there were 4000 copies and they were all gone in quicksharp time. That's why you can only get it online now. There's only 1000 Tales of the Oak. So get em while they are hot...

Enjoy our trailer for the comic below...

Sir Glen Douglas Rhodes - Greenock Folk Hero

A recently discovered portrait of local archivist, adventurer and folklorist Sir Glen Douglas Rhodes, sometime resident of the Dutch Gable House. The picture and some of Sir Glen's archive materials relating to Captain Kidd are currently on display there.

Sir Glen disappeared shortly after his famous investigations into river and serpent worship cults in the area. We will dramatise elements of his archive and his battle with the sinister Cluthee in the Tales of the Oak comic later this year. Sir Glen is also involved in the Tin Jimmy Mystery, made an appearance in Identity The Archivists Treasure and has been a regular fixture of and inspiration for Magic Torch's folklore and heritage publications, since our very first book, 13 years ago.

You can pick up a FREE collectable postcard of this portrait at The Dutch Gable House, 7 1/2 John Wood Street and other community venues across the town.

Tales of the Oak - Digital Art

That's all the pages scripted for our Tales of the Oak comic, and Andy's working away so we can hit our deadline - we'll be launching the comic in September on Inverclyde's Doors Open Day this year.

There's a broad range of stories in there, from adaptations of some classic tales and ballads, to stories inspired by more recent and urban folklore.

You've already had previews of our Slenderman and Green Oak Trees strips, but there's 64 pages of terrifying action. Meantime, here's some more of what Andy's been up to...

The Wee Nasties Are Coming!

Here's a video to accompany our new book Wee Nasties. We have copies to give away from Thursday 16 May at The Dutch Gable House as part of the Inverclyde Festival of Heritage. You can also see an exhibition of Mhairi's lovely artwork there.

We'll be at The Dutch Gable House from 16 - 19 May, and from the following week, there will also be some FREE copies available from Inverclyde Libraries. When they're gone, they are gone, but don't worry, we'll be making a digital version available later in the month.

A big thank you to Heritage Lottery Fund Scotland for supporting this project.

You can hear some other silly kids poems here...

Wee Nasties Launch

We're delighted that Wee Nasties will be launching as part of Inverclyde Festival of Heritage , two weeks today, on Thursday May 16 at The Dutch Gable House.

Wee Nasties is the first publication from our Heritage Lottery Fund supported project Tales of the Oak.

FREE copies will be available on Thursday 16, and throughout the weekend. After that, from 20 May, you will also be able to get copies from your local library, 7 1/2 John Wood Street, McLean Museum and we'll be delivering a limited number of copies to local schools and nurseries.

Magic Torch will also have an exhibition of Mhairi's original artwork and sketches in the Dutch Gable as well as a wee space dedicated to Captain Kidd (it is May after all, traditionally Captain Kidd month for us)

There will be an audio version online, digital version available later in the month and also an exclusive competition which we'll share with you soon.

Cannae wait.

Watt's This? Giant Robot Attack!

Few work in progress snippets from Andy Lee, wonder watt this thing could be?

And on a totally unrelated note, here's the first in an irregular series of strips by Andy n myself highlighting some of the social niceties of living in the West of Scotland.

Open All Hours - Magic Torch Shoppe

Today Magic Torch charges headlong into the late 20th Century with the launch of our new online sales facility or "wee book shop".

For now you can buy our first two books, Tales of the Oak and Downriver, as well as our new reprint of a 1950s comic Captain Kidd Buccaneer. All profits are used to help run projects which promote local heritage and folklore in Inverclyde. There's also a few links to free stuff, cos we're nice like that.

We'll be adding to the selection over the year, because as well as our Heritage Lottery supported FREE books Wee Nasties and the Tales of the Oak comic, we have a few new ebooks coming out later in the year. Anyhow, fill yer boots.

Slenderman Comic by Inverclyde Academy

Away back last year we worked with 1st and 2nd Year Pupils at Inverclyde Academy to put together a scary comic strip - hopefully we'll get a chance to do it again this year. The pupils devised the story and situations, helped us script them up and then Andy worked up the pages.

Here is what happened when internet nightmare meme The Slenderman visited Greenock...

Slenderman in Greenock (Tales of the Oak Preview 1) by

And if you're feeling all freaked out by Slenderman, why not for a moment just try and imagine how he feels...