FRED EGG COMICS
Established 1980 by David Robertson
I make comics. I read comics. I write about comics.
My own comics work has appeared in 102: a Tribute to Jack Kirby, Adventures in Comics, After That!, Artificial Womb, Awesome 250, The Awesome Comic, BAM!, Belt Sander, Big Brown Eyes, A Bit of Undigested Potato, Chronicle, Copy This!, Crap Your Pants, Dead Singers Society, Dirty Rotten Comics, Drawn Under the Influence, Eric, Frankenstein Returns, Funtime, Good Comics Fridays, Guardian #opencomics, Inkthology, Jack Sprat, Liget, Love Bites!, Pocket Thoughts Annual, Race into Space!, Reworking Walter Scott, Sarararara, Shiot Crock, Small Pets, Sneaky Business, Star Jaws, Swift at 350, Time & Space, Tin Roof Collective Selected Works, Treehouse, The UK Web and Mini Comix Anthology, Water Worlds, Whatever Happened to Ticking Boy, Wilma, and at the 40075km website.
I’ve written for Comics Scene UK, The Comics Grid, The Comics Journal, Down the Tubes, Graphixia, The International Journal of Comic Art, Nude, Reference Reviews, Spaceship Away, Starscape, and Stripped.
There is a behind the scenes process blog for a comic I did as part of the Comics MLitt course. Have a look here.
I wrote and drew a comic on the history, present and future of comics in Dundee, called, 'Dundee Comics Comic'.
Through Fred Egg Comics, I publish my comics Berserkotron, Dump, Zero Sum Bubblegum, Wow! Retracted, Break the Cake, But a Dream!, Bell Time, Mount a Rescue, That Comic Smell Comic, The Tay Bridge Disaster, Booze Ha Ha, and Reject All.
Learn more about Fred Egg Comics in this A Place to Hang Your Cape interview, this Down the Tubes interview, this Comics Anonymous interview, this Redbird Review interview, and this Dundee Comics Creative Space interview.
Latest news is posted at my BLOG: http://fredeggcomics.blogspot.co.uk/
I'm on FACEBOOK:https://www.facebook.com/david.robertson.18488169
TUMBLR: http://fredeggcomics.tumblr.com/
And on TWITTER: @fredeggcomics
Buy comics at the SHOP: http://fredeggcomics.bigcartel.com/
Have a listen to comics podcasts I appear on here.
What they’ve been saying about Fred Egg Comics:
Bell Time is a very unique comic! It’s also a very psychological comic. The concept is very smart. The characters overall are very well developed. The story has good pacing, and the storytelling was also good.
Alkyone, Exploring Comics
Alister Black, Daredevils & Warriors
Overall Bell Time is another really solid comic from David, with funny bits and insightful bits mixed together. Unless you have a phobia about being trapped in a high school library, give this one a look.
Kevin Bramer, Optical Sloth
The stories are dry, funny and, what makes it really compelling, is how
recognisable the characters are, something that's often missing from
comic books. David's energy and world view shines through each story
helping to make this a refreshing read.
Eileen Budd, Redbird Review
Rob Clough, High-Low
Break the Cake embodies everything I love about British self-published comics.
Carl Doherty, Shelf Abuse
Many of the strips depict what are little more than incidents, thoughts or ideas put down on paper. Many of these are poignant or moving. All were, at the very least, interesting. A whole backstory can be inferred from a very few words and some simple images. David understands story-telling and communication. He presents you with incidents and the story or idea is contained within.
I really enjoyed them.
Peter Duncan, Splank!
Break the Cake is a great, diverse collection of stories and art that’ll keep you entertained from cover to cover!
Warren "Wee" Elliott, Almost Normal Comics
Bell Time is absolutely as fun as it sounds and manages to cross all those great school comics and tv series we remember with the world of time travel. David has a simple and iconically British style and he understands how a comic should flow.
Tony Esmond, Never Iron Anything
If you like your mind stretched with some often absurdist form-defying comics, check out Wow! Retracted, with plenty of head-scratching, brain-teasing strips from writer-artist David Robertson.
John Freeman, Down the Tubes
But A Dream! is a good example of how there's no one way to make comics, and how trying out various styles and kinds of storytelling can pay dividends over the years, especially as you look back and see how your work's evolved.
Christa Harader, Comic Book Yeti
Is Wow! Retracted worth buying? If you want to buy and read small press books and see what new creators are up to then -yes.
Terry Hooper-Scharf, Comic Bits Online
Robertson’s unique way of thinking makes each story interesting. There’s something of Harvey Pekar in the straightforward and commonplace nature of many of the events, and the art is simple yet effective which perfectly matches the tone.
Milo McLaughlin, Gaseous Brain
All the hallmarks of your average Fred Egg Comic are in Bell Time – the deadpan humour, the surrealism, the intimate artwork. Armed with a much longer page length than past comics, Bell Time becomes all the more enjoyably hooky. A definite highlight from Fred Egg Comics.
Fred McNamara, A Place to Hang Your Cape
When I first saw Robertson’s Dump I didn’t know what to expect, what with its Monster Truck cover and all. It came all the way from Scotland and it was pretty damn awesome!
We start off nicely with “Things to Do at 3 O'Clock in the Morning,” with some funny and creepy results. In “What a Difference A Day Makes” Robertson presents a powerful yet simple autobio piece with surprising frankness and a hint of melancholy. There is also a cool “30 Days of Comics” section that mixes the autobio equally with the absurd. Dump: The Difficult Turd Album is wonderfully printed, a good 80 plus pages of comics that will generally leave you satisfied.
Jason Marcy, Trouble with Comics
Break the Cake contains nearly 30 stories, in either black and white or colour, in a bumper-sized package. It houses some of Robertson’s most memorable comics to date and includes occasional artistic contributions from other collaborators.
Andy Oliver, Broken Frontier
... a collection of the different comics that the author's composed, plus some collaborations. These comics are black and white and they're straightforward and clear in terms of both image and flow.
Anne Persand, Xerography Debt
Robertson's key strengths: the juxtaposition between the often mundane nature of daily life and the absurdities that can be found within.
Robertson's art is not flashy but is simple and effective, a good fit for the everyday situations depicted in his work.
Gary Smith, The Big Glasgow Comic Page
If I saw this in a store or at a con I would not have any clear idea what the thing was by looking at the cover. Some people might think ‘what the heck is that?’ and pick it up out of curiosity. Others might think ‘what the heck is that?’ and pass it by. I hope they pick it up. It is an enjoyable read.
Shannon Smith, Poopsheet Foundation
One final thing I wanna mention - something rarely found in comics but so great and welcome when an artist takes the time to do it - is at the end of this issue is a ten-page section of sketches, doodles, scribbles, and the background story of how Berserkotron came to be. Great stuff!
Stratu, Blackguard
I liked David Robertson's story about Crohn's Disease, with the ironic subtext that many Crohn's suffer no longer crap their pants because they must use a colostomy bag.
Tom Spurgeon, Comics Reporter
There is something for everybody in Wow! Retracted, but for me every story has its own worth – the laugh out loud moments and the reality check moments is a really smart blend of themes to pull off and I can see me re-reading this again soon. Another Fred Egg success and I look forward to the next book too.