Salve! For the next week or so I’ll be posting the comics I made for the Iris Classics Centre in Oxford, for their Festival of Imagined Worlds last week

Classics vs. Harry Potter!

It was a fantastic festival, with writers and demonstrators of the worlds of J R R Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Lewis Carroll and J.K. Rowling, all showing off their wares and books and educating the children and adults who came to visit and take part. My great thanks to Dr. Lorna Robinson for inviting me!

The comics I drew for the festival were to do with the way J K Rowling uses Classical references in her work, sympathetically to enhance her imagined world and make it identifiable, in small touches like etymology (the names), Latin (the spells) and mythological characters (specifically the Chocolate Frog ‘Famous Witches and Wizards’ Cards and Fluffy, aka. Cerberus). The author studied Classics alongside French at Exeter University and would have been aware of all of these nuanced references as she made them. I chose to draw comics display the known fact about the etymology and mythology in order to let the kids make connections themselves. They’ll come out daily at around 3.40pm (GMT) and I hope you’ll enjoy them!

The week before, I was actually at Exeter University with ACE Classics (Advocating Classics Education)  where I gave students a workshop in how and why I draw my Greek Myth Comix. Thank you ever so much to Dr Sharon Marshall of the Classics Department, and Dr Arlene Holmes-Henderson of ACE, for inviting me.

I hope this week’s comics prove useful in stimulating some discussion, particularly in classrooms after half term!

All the best,

Jenks.