Webcomics Today: ‘Moose Kid Comics’ Is Well Worth Your Reading Time

Welcome to another Webcomics Today, this time celebrating something old, when Jamie Smart, million-selling author of Bunny Vs Monkey, decided UK kids’ comics needed something new…

As always, Webcomics Today has only two rules — whatever comics I feature here have to be online, and they have to be freely available. After that, the only rule is there are no rules. I can do whatever the hell I want here.

And, in this case, that means going back in time to a great kids’ comics project, all still available online and/or free to download. That project was the Jamie Smart-curated kids’ comic anthology full of the very best of UK talent at the time, coming together to bring us Moose Kid Comics. In fact, the genesis of this comes from a mention from Smart on Facebook that I picked up and added into a Sunday Spotlight. Except then I got out the books once more and had a read, and just couldn’t keep the joy of it all to myself. So, here we go, an extended Webcomics Today celebrating some insanely great kids comics.

Back in 2015 & 2026, when Smart planned Moose Kid, the UK scene for kids’ comics just wasn’t all that healthy. For years it crept by on dwindling circulations, with only the Beano left standing of the long-running titles, after The Dandy had ended in 2012. We’d yet to see the explosion of kids’ graphic novels, heralded by Jeff Smith‘s Bone and Raina Telgemeier‘s Smile from Scholastic here in the UK, and The Phoenix comic, launched in 2012, was still very much a subscription-only thing, with no indication as yet that it was necessarily going to do any better than its predecessor, The DFC.

So, with all that as a backdrop, Smart decided to do something about it. He’d already published several comics at this point, but he was by no means the big name he is now. His comics output veered between creating kid-friendly stuff like Desperate Dan in The Dandy and the early Bunny Vs Monkey strips for The Phoenix and more adult-themed works such as Bear for Slave Labor.

As Smart recently said on social media, describing the genesis of Moose Kid Comics, “Moose Kid was born out of a need to get more children’s comics off the ground (ten years ago was a real wasteland, not like now) and I had: Some Strong Ideas. So I enlisted the help of an absolute wishlist of incredible comic artists — from well-established pros to webcomic creators and everyone in between, and together we made Moose Kid Comics.”

With that in mind, Smart spent the next year-plus putting together three issues of the comic plus a Christmas Special. It was published digitally at first, and then, following a really successful crowdfunding campaign, print versions came out as beautiful tabloid-sized comics. All the creators involved were working for free, just for the sheer love of the project. Even better, Smart’s plan with those print versions was to send them, free, to children’s hospitals around the UK, the idea being that these kids, at their very worst moments, could really do with cheering up a little. And that’s what he did. As he says, “We did a really good thing, and every artist involved was a vital part of that.”

Of course, as with any big project like this, in the end, Smart had to pull the plug. These things simply take up too much time, and he did have, you know, a living to make. But those four issues are a monumental achievement, four massive comics full of some great talent, all doing great things, page after page of all-ages comics that, even a decade-plus later, still stack up as perfect examples of how kids’ comics should be.

You can find all of the Moose Kid Comics online and free to download at moosekidcomics.com. However, given the work Smart put in, given the money raised to distribute them to kids in desperate need of cheering up, kids in hospitals enduring things no kid should have to go through, can I suggest that, when you download them, you do the good thing and donate maybe £10 or $10 towards a children’s charity — maybe St Judes in the USA or Great Ormond Street Hospital in the UK? Seriously, it’s the least you can for getting your hands on page after page of some incredible talent offering their work for free to make Moose Kids Comics the success it was.

Right then, let’s get into the meat of it all and show you just a little of what you might be downloading and enjoying. I’m merely going to concentrate on issue #1 of Moose Kid Comics here. But trust me, everything I say applies to all you can download of the four issues available.

So, the first issue, packed full of names that you should already be familiar with: Neill Cameron, Abby Ryder, Jess Bradley, Sarah McIntyre, Gary Northfield, Chris Garbutt, Alan Martin, Warwick Johnson-Cadwell, Nigel Auchterlounie, Tom Paterson, Roger Langridge, Will Kirkby, and, of course, Smart himself, plus many, many more.

Frankly, I guarantee you’ll find loads to enjoy here. You might not get on with everything here, but nothing’s more than a couple of pages long, so if you don’t enjoy something, just move the hell on and enjoy the next thing.

As for the origins of Moose Kid himself, well, that’s covered by Smart (words) and Cameron (pictures) telling a ridiculously clever origin tale of a comic within a comic, real life on the comic page becoming the comic itself, Moose Kid Comics off to a fine start before the contents page…

After that, Smart brilliantly laces the story of Moose Kid and the wizards careering through the pages, chasing through the margins and even breaking into occasional strips. It all gives it a glorious sense of chaos, the sort of mock editorial thing and repeating gags that make old gits like me smile, memories of Leo Baxendale filling my head with the sort of anarchic wonders he’d used to populate his comics with.

Okay, let’s open with a couple of creators who Smart was working alongside at The Phoenix when Moose Kid was put together. First, you’ve got Jess Bradley, creator of Squid Bits in The Phoenix, doing her usual big cartoon silliness with Cecil P. Wombat, Expert on Everything, a grand treatise on polar bears and how they really prefer to be called “ice bears,” how they have no sense of smell and “wallow in stinky things,” how they love romance novels … all of which leads to one of said polar bears taking exception to all of Cecil P. Wombat’s “facts.” Her work in The Phoenix has always been great, all those super silly moments in Squid Bits just so perfect, and it’s all captured here in just a single page, perfectly silly indeed…

Gary Northfield goes wild with his Pet Crusaders, again taking just a single page to give us manic invention and utter silliness in a story of madcap, marauding mutant pets, given super-powers by a new brand of pet food and given loads of wonderfully ridiculous moments by the invention of Northfield’s brain (Mind Fish! Stretch Bunny! Electro-Catic! Canine Crusader! Dash-Hound! Invisi-Dog! and last and probably least … Arthur The Tortoise!!!!).

The Beano is represented firstly by Spleenal/Nigel Auchterlounie, here with a really twisty tale of Sherlock and Watson in Airlock Homeboy and Doctor Whatsup, Space Detectives. You should know that I’ve already featured Auchterlounie’s work plenty in previous Webcomics Weekly, where he can veer perfectly between glorious all-ages material and far more grown-up stuff, although all of it shares that wonderful knowing humour.

There’s also welcome representation from Tom Paterson with Beelzababy, spawn of Beelzabub! Paterson’s a veteran Fleetway and DC Thomson comics maker from the ’70s and through to the 2000s. Those of us lucky enough to have been young in a time when he was making so many great comics will immediately recognise his style from the likes of Beano, Whizzer & Chips, Buster, The Dandy or Beezer, that wonderfully Baxendale-esque look to things. I love that Moose Kid has this connection with the past, a link to the anarchic previous generation of kids’ comics.

Of course, with 36 pages to fill and with many of the comics in here taking up just a half page, there’s a hell of a lot of creators involved, and Smart was, ahem, smart enough to get many creators onboard at Moose Kid who were either adjacent to kids comics or who would perhaps later go on to feature in making kids’ comics of their own. That would include Joe List‘s ridiculously daft tale of Slugman PI‘, Sarah McIntyre making a rare but very welcome return to comics with Stinky Pants, where Martin and Liam hang around the forest, one of them in his pants, stinking out the place — ridiculous but fabby. Likewise, how wonderful to see Roger Langridge with Lil Dead Boys and great to see Matt Baxter doing his tale of the “old biddy on a jet-pack”, Nan-Tastic.

But let’s end with a few more alternative moments from Moose Kid, like Steve Tillotson’s tale Baked Alaska, a town where everything and everyone is edible, although actually eating them would be rude. Or another glorious outlandish thing, Andrew Waugh’s Big Things Hiding Behind Small Things, which is exactly what it says, and all the more wonderful for it…

Then there’s Alan Martin and Warwick Johnson-Cadwell giving us a tale of Young Tank Girl, cleaned up and minus all the swears, but still giving us all the anti-establishment stuff in their story, as young Becky and her mates discover an abandoned WWII military museum. And what does a military museum have? Oh yes, it does indeed.

(But exactly is that a Tank Girl comic? Well, you’ll find out when you read it — and when it continues in Moose Kid issues #2 and #3)

Frankly, I could go on and on and on in praise of so many of the strips in here. Porc by Andreas Schuster just looks divine, the stylistic lines with a real Adventure Time feel in a single-page silly tale of a pig taking out the trash. Or Mark Stafford, hardly the first name you’d come up with for incredible UK artists for children, what with his series of very much not for all-ages books with David Hine. But no, in just a few half-pagers here, he gives you a bizarre set of holiday ads. Meatskull The Unvincible by Chris Garbutt had me from the title, but the art and story, wordless but manic, impresses greatly, as does his other strip in here, the really Whizzer & Chips feeling Scrambles (He’s a good egg, on the inside). Or Crypto-Pocalypse by William Tallman, another cracking little strip, the post-apocalyptic Earth host to all manner of mythical beasts, but best of all there’s a vegan Sasquatch with hair styling and male grooming issues. And what about Beasticles by Viv Schwarz, another wonderful comics artist back in the day we’ve seemingly lost to illustration? It’s a little bit Mutts, but very much it’s own thing as well, with all that wonderful turn of phrase, fabulous timing, and just perfect dialogue, the very spirit of being idiotically young, and alive, and full of the sort of manic energy that these youngsters have. Love it.

But I’ll end with Badgers Of Fury by Vincent Woodcock, one strip that looks totally different to all else in here; its muted tones wildly different from the relentless technicolour elsewhere in the comic. It’s got something of the grime of Ren & Stimpy et al about it, something slightly unsavoury, plus mindless pointless violence and death gags. Perfect for a kid’s comic. (No, really, kids love that stuff.)

Honestly, there are so many strips in Moose Kid Comics, of such incredible quality, everyone going for the bizarre, the ridiculous, the high-intensity hit ’em hard and fast, make them laugh, laugh and laugh payoff, and so many of them succeeding so perfectly, that you should really take the time to download it and then go looking for the work of those that tickled you — and there will be many.

I mean, obviously, as with any anthology worth its salt, there’s all sorts of stuff in here, both issue #1, in the subsequent issues, and that short Christmas Special. And not all of it worked for me, but hey, that’s all personal taste. You might hate some of the things I love and love some of the things I just didn’t enjoy. But the point is that Moose Kid Comics set the bar real high and then clears it with plenty to spare. Smart, as curator, has done an excellent job. It’s a practical embarrassment of riches, something that, even a decade-plus on, still stands up as something you should really get hold of and share with any kids you know.