Steve English wins Bucket Prize with Mobile Phone-inspired comic

Steve English with his
'Tartan Bucket'

Steve English, creator of the ROK Comics-published strip Madd Science, has just been awarded the first Tartan Bucket Prize (named in honour of famous Scottish comics character Oor Wullie) organised by Dundee University in conjunction with D C Thomson.

The aim of the competition was to design a cartoon character and story that would be suitable for the likes of weekly print comics Beano and Dandy.

Steve's winning entry, Belle's Magic Mobile, will feature in the Beano in January 2012.

"It's about a girl with a magic mobile phone that she gets from her grandad who looks suspiciously like Alexander Graham Bell," Steve tells us. "I'm hoping there's lots of scope for follow up stories. I'm madly inking some new stories to show the Beano, but time will only tell if they see it that way too.

"They're going to publish it in January," he reveals. "Chris Murray, the guy who organised the Dundee Comic Day, has said he would probably put an exhibition together for that time too."

Madd Science is one of three creator-owned iPhone apps available from ROK Comics, the others being Ligeia the Vampire by Rodrigo Diaz Ricci and The Mobile Gospel by Rich Diesslin.

ROK Comics fans will recall Steve also won our very own comics competition, back in 2007.

In addition to his competition success, his football humour strip Football Earth now features in two more publications, She Kicks published by Baltic Publications and Farnborough OBG matchday programme.