Published on 2 years ago

Welcome to Mossy and Gates and the new Rock Hall Zine!

Today we have announced out two latest team members and launched a new Rock Hall “Zine” which also coincides with our organisation’s, (Banana Enterprise Network) 10th Birthday too!

Our two new team members are called “Mossy” and “Gates”, and they will be working with our younger audiences. Mossy is a dog and Gates is a cat. Thomas Bonsor Crompton who owned Rock Hall in the 1800’s, used to own dogs and we believe that cats would have lived at the Hall too, in order to keep away rats and mice. Their names come from the old name of “MossyGate” which is now known as Moses Gate in Farnworth. Mossy and Gates have already been very busy working on a brand new “zine” (similar to a magazine but it folds out to A3 size) for our younger audiences! We are launching this “zine” today too.

All this would not have been possible without funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund and National Lottery Players and thanks to the huge amount of work undertaken by the two creators of Mossy and Gates and the Zine, called Joe Mathews and Brian Clarke who are working with us on this particular aspect of our Rock Hall project.

Our Charity (Banana Enterprise) started working with Joe and Brian in 2021 after we had an idea for a children’s series of books about the Hall and park. Jayne from our team thought it would be great to have the stories told by two animals (and in future will involve their fellow animal friends who live in the park). Joe was recommended to us by a facebook follower and the initial concept idea was created. Our Charity then started to look for funding to turn Mossy and Gates into reality and thanks to the The National Lottery Heritage Fund, 3 years later, we have now been able to make a great start by producing our first Zine. This is just the beginning though!

Here’s a bit of info about Joe and Brian:-

Joe has been a comic book artist since the mid-80s working on magazines like The Beano, Tom & Jerry Comic along with producing storyboards for the hugely successful children’s program Bob the Builder. He has published his own comics, Funny Monsters Comic with weird and wonderful characters such as Zackster Kid Zombie and Milly Monster Hunter. He also produced his version of A Christmas Carol in comic book form.

Joe Matthews

Brian is a comic book and magazine writer with 30-plus years’ professional experience. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Salford where he researches the subject of comics and literature. As writer, editor and publisher he has worked with Warner Bros., Mattel, Hasbro, DC Thomson, DC Comics and dozens of TV and film properties.

Brian Clarke

We are so grateful to have reached this stage and we hope that our younger audiences will be really pleased with Mossy and Gates.

We have ordered 500 copies of the Zine and these will be distributed to low income families in Farnworth during this summers events at Moses Gate Country Park. We will also have downloadable parts of the zine on our website as soon as we can.

Thanks for your continued support!