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Pony School




Pony School is a British Fanzine that recreates girls' Comics of the 1960s and 70s, edited, written and drawn by Edward Berridge and Bryan Coyle, and published under their Death Camp Jones Productions ('''DCJ''') imprint. It is part of a wave of Small Press comics spearheaded by '' Solar Wind '' that adopt a standpoint of mixed Irony and Nostalgia . The central conceit of the book is that it purports to be a modern day update of a Comic Strip that originally saw print in the imaginary ''Action Stations Boys Weekly'' and ''Fairytale Princess for Girls'', published by the fictional company P.T. Dunbar. It is written to be the direct antithesis to the work of writers like Anthony Horowitz and films like ''Teen Agent'' that typify the teen spy genre.


PLOT


The story revolves around the character of teenaged orphan Penny Ryder, forced to work for the British Secret Intelligence Service (or MI6 ) by the enigmatic Malcolm Jarvis, who is involved in some manner with her parent's deaths. The story switches focus between Ryder's exploits against foreign terror threats and her day to day life at the Muggeridge Equestrian Academy in Berkshire . Here she has to battle against the prejudice and scorn of her classroom peers, whilst learning the finer points of dressage and attempts to avoid regular assassination attempts by Svetlanka Borrokova, her Russian schoolyard nemesis.


CHARACTERS


  • Penny Ryder

  • Svetlanka Borrokova

  • Malcolm Jarvis

  • Mabel Bunty

  • Veronica Jinty

  • Kitty Muggeridge

  • Jack Wong (''D.O.A'')

  • Asa Ă”kami (''D.O.A'')

  • Valery Konstantyn (''D.O.A'')

  • Alex Price (''M.I.A'')

  • Jenny Ryder (''D.O.A'')

  • Jimmy Chong (''D.O.A'')



TRIVIA


  • The lead character, Penny Ryder, conflates several characters from popular British boy's Comic '' Eagle ''. The look of the character was supposedly based on Avril Lavigne , after the artist for the first issue was given a brief that called for a 'lank-haired, whiny' character.



  • Apocryphally, Ryder's nemesis Svetlanka Borrokova has a meaningless name, designed to rhyme with the phrase "bollock-over".



INFLUENCES




FURTHER DCJ PUBLICATIONS


The spin-off anthology comic '' Action Stations! '' not only parodies UK Girl's comics, but also War , Sport , Westerns and Children's Humour titles amongst others. As well as a 'period' Pony School story, it also includes strips such as Misty the Teen Detective, Secret Agent Skipper, StabFoot, Destroy all Japs! and The White Samurai. Other titles under production include the Manga -influenced ''Shido'' digest, ''Wild West Wendy'' and the second issue of ''Pony School'' (''PS2'').


PONY SCHOOL ISSUES


  • ''Pony School #1'', written by Edward Berridge & illustrated by Bryan Coyle, May 2005


  • ''PS2'', written by Edward Berridge & illustrated by Bryan Coyle, May 2006.


  • ''Pony School: House of 1000 Ninjas'', written by Edward Berridge & illustrated by Bryan Coyle (''abandoned one-shot'').



OTHER ISSUES


  • '' Action Stations! '', featuring work by Richmond Clements, David Evans, Victoria Stonebridge and Emily Snape (''edited by'' Edward Berridge ''& Bryan Coyle''), November 2005.


  • ''Shido'', written by Edward Berridge & illustrated by Bryan Coyle, May 2006.


  • ''Wild West Wendy'', written by Richmond Clements & illustrated by Victoria Stonebridge, May 2006.



REVIEWS


  • ''Perfectly paced, gripping and dynamically illustrated...Pony School is everything a small press comic should be'' - Pony School review, Comics International #186


  • ''I don't think I have ever read anything that manages to address the moral issues involved in pumping our children full of commercial comics in such an elegant way. It makes a serious attempt at witty satire and I think it pulls it off perfectly'' - Pony School review, Redeye #5


  • Pony School #1 was selected as one of Comics International 's ''Top Comics of 2005'' in their special convention edition produced for the Brighton 2005 Comics Expo



EXTERNAL LINKS