Kidnapped launch

Jeremy Briggs kindly sent me the following report from the launch of the Alan Grant / Cam Kennedy graphic novel adaptation of Kidnapped which was recently released in Edinburgh. My thanks to Jeremy for permission to post here.

I got the chance to go to the Kidnapped graphic novel event at the Scottish Book Trust in Edinburgh which took place on the day after 7,500 free copies of the graphic novel had been given out around Edinburgh. Artist Cam Kennedy and publisher Ron Grosset were there to give a presentation about the new graphic novel - writer Alan Grant had to pull out as he was taken ill earlier in the day (presumably with the same bug that is doing the rounds here at the moment).

As part of Edinburgh being the UNESCO City of Literature, the Robert Louis Stevenson novel Kidnapped was republished in full text, junior text and a new graphic novel version. 10,000 full novels and 7,500 junior novels were given out as well starting on the Thursday morning and by the Friday evening we were told that all the free graphic novels were gone and that they had been the first to run out. All versions of the novel are also available to buy and they were keen to point out that they believed that Kidnappit, the translated Scots version, is the first full colour graphic novel published in the Scots language.

There were around a hundred people at the event with maybe a dozen being from the 2000AD generation and the rest being anywhere from primary school age to pensioners. Cam Kennedy, by the way, has a very dry sense of humour and was most obliging to everyone in the autograph queue afterwards. When I mentioned his work in Battle and Commando to him, he just smiled and said "Ah! The old days."

Oh, and the graphic novel is well worth a read.