A Sense of Doubt blog post #2798 - Good comic bits from newsletters!
Just a bunch of comic book goodness today.
from:
193: I did a thing - Gillen
- I’m linking to this again as there’s been talk about the possibility of Ellis quietly returning to comics. So Many Of Us is a document of over sixty women and non-binary individuals’ experiences with Warren Ellis’ predatory behaviour. It’s both thorough, and generous of spirit, including an open invitation towards meditated transformative justice. Apparently it has not been taken up..
- I contributed a one page script to this Hero Initative Anthology, which is now being kickstarted. Go back! Kelly Williams drew a really fun page off my comic. In fact, you can see it on the kickstarter page.
- Seeing personal essays about the impact of Doctor Aphra on the Star Wars site in Pride Month is a lot. I’m aware I’ve been very lucky in what I’ve managed to do in my career.
- Arthur Wyatt linked to this old Alan Moore interview from the early 00s. I’d read it before, and it’s just full of golden stuff. It’s so much fun.
- In terms of RPG craft stuff, the Gauntlet Blog is doing a lot of great stuff recently. David Walker wrote this two part piece about the power of asking better questions as a GM, and it’s just strong and broad stuff. Go read
from -
194: a reskinned Trebuchet - Gillen
- Al Ewing posted this short essay, coming out as Bisexual this morning.. Al’s always approached the page and life with a sort of fearless honesty I can only envy, and I read this and was proud to know him.
- AIPT just lobbed up a review of the reprint of the first half of my run on Journey Into Mystery which is very kind, but also vertiginous to look at, in terms of “Oh yeah. A Decade.” JIM is obviously a book which a lot of people love, but it’s also one of the books which without a doubt, changed my career and my understanding of myself as a writer. I’m now remembeirng wandering around a park, distraught, explaining to C exactly how its cancellation had come at the exact time when I couldn’t even scramble my Eject Button plans to end it in a way I wanted, and I’d have to do something else entirely… and then Fraction rode in to the rescue, suggesting merging our runs and going out on a Crossover to give JIM its space. Thanks Matt. I’ve said this before, but I’ve never felt as close to a character’s fictional position as I did when writing Loki on Journey into Mystery – the desperate scheming to get through this, somehow, and pull it off. It was a time.
- As part of crowd-sourcing something for DIE, I asked twitter to list the 5 spells they first thing of from a Role Playing Game. Which obviously was lots of fun, but that Fireball being the most popular spell led to pthe excellent Spells Through The Ages series entry of Fireball, which traces its roots way back when it was just a reskinned Trebuchet in Chainmail. I love this kind of stuff.
- Comrade Rossignol has started interviewing designers as part of his Teeth mailing list. Here’s him talking to Chris Bisette, whose The Wretched’s jenga-meets-vocal-blogging You Are Ripley And Trapped Waiting To Die’em Up is excellent.
FROM
195: Apocalypse Romances
A few weeks ago, we debuted the web version of our comic Melody of Cara Delevingne, Sean Phillips and myself did as part of the Rewriting Extinction initiative. The idea being that creatives from various field get together to collaborate a comic about the theme, to raise awareness and money. Go nose on the site for more, and here’s our comic again.
Anyway – the actual anthology is now available to pre-order from all the usual places (UK). And it’s… can I cut and paste the blurb?
The Most Important Comic Book On Earth is a global collaboration for planetary change, bringing together a diverse team of 300 leading environmentalists, artists, authors, actors, filmmakers, musicians, and more to present over 120 stories to save the world.
Whether it’s inspirational tales from celebrity names such as Cara Delevingne and Andy Serkis, hilarious webcomics from War and Peas and Ricky Gervais, artworks by leading illustrators David Mack and Tula Lotay, calls to action from activists George Monbiot and Jane Goodall, or powerful stories by Brian Azzarello and Amy Chu, each of the comics in this anthology will support projects and organizations fighting to save the planet and Rewrite Extinction.
You betcha.
There’s an huge array of talents from so many fields in here – like, do look at the list of collaborators. You can have a blurb like that, and not mention people like – say – Alan Moore or Taika Waititi.
- I meant to link to this when it dropped, but somehow slipped through the cracks. I’ve been enjoying old comrade Quinns’ series where he explores the quirkier edges of games and sports. However, his latest hit an area that overlaps with comics - War for Rayuba the logical collision between an OC-drawing prompt and a wargame, and a spin off of Kill Six Billion Demons. This is pure comics, and purely berserk. Go watch.
- Emily VanDerWerff’s piece over on Vox Isabel Fall’s Helicopter Story seems a sort of singularity of where we are, and everything is rotating around it. It’s the first time Isabel has ever talked about the experience, and it’s the sort of thing where very aspect of the story needs thinking about precisely and extensively. This haunted me.
- Molly Ostertag’s piece about queer readings of Lord of the Ring is just really strong. Academic and personal and everything.
- Jamila R. Nedjadi, of the excellent [Sword Queen Games](https://temporalhiccup.
itch.io/), writes about their personal discovery of gender via games. - Nicole Brinkley writing at length about twitter and YA, and whether the former broke the latter..
FROM 196: explosions and/or emotions
We’re a week away from my Guardian comic writer masterclass, so here’s another plug for it. You can buy tickets here.
Glorious Wrestling Alliance is one of my favourite British Self-published comics, and now it’s getting a proper YA Graphic novel edition which you can pre-order and look at the preview here. I gave a quote for it too: “”Imagine an epic wrestling match between the lust for life of Scott Pilgrim and the comic self-loathing of BoJack Horseman where we’re all winners.” That sounds like the sort of thing I’d say.
I just saw this when I woke up this morning. Fans put together the last episode of the D&D cartoon, which only existed in a script form until now. Jamie chatting about this was part of DIE’s origin story, so seeing it emerge as DIE starts to reach its conclusion is fascinating timing.
Rat Queens doing a kickstarter for a boardgame. This looks really well done.
I’ve almost certainly plugged Chart Music before, but the latest episode is so good, I have to do it again. It’s a rotating cast of some of my favourite 90s music journalists watching an old Episode of Top of the Pops, at length. I really mean at length. It’s six hours plus, but that’s for all the context, the deep dives into artists, the cheering and the slagging. It has me thinking a lot about pre-internet parasociality, the specific elements of pop-cultural times and a bunch more. Start with episode 2, which – amongst other things – looks at Dexys Midnight Runners, and basically had me punching the air.
It also has me weirdly obsessed with the Boxerbeat, not least for its video which shows it knows exactly what it’s for, namely, hitting things. This was a great record to have as an 8 year old.
Newsletter #58: The Best Loser
I came here to WIN. Oh ... wait. I lost? I ... sorry, I guess I'll go now
| 17 | 1 |
So, yeah, I lost all the Eisners Friday night.
Does it hurt? No, because I’m dead inside. The person I feel badly for is you, the reader, because my victory speeches were top notch and now you’ll never hear them.
OH COME ON GIVE US A TASTE
ugh I hate when you ask for a “taste”
PLEEEEASE
…okay. Below is the text I had prepared if I’d won in the Best Endless Comics category!
WOW IS THERE AN AWARD FOR BEST SPEECH
If there is, then it would’ve been a tie as well, ‘cause here’s my speech for if I’d won Best Writer!
NO CHIP THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE AT AWARD SHOWS
Anyway, after my losses, while I lay at the bottom of a dark pit of my own making, this ray of light shone down on me:
The Hollywood Reporter did a huge piece on our favourite eternally angry duck and there was this fun tidbit in there:
I’ve talked about this a little bit before, how I flew out to HoLlYwEiRd and pitched a movie to Marvel Studios with Ms. Thompson. It was a very surreal time, especially when I pounded my fist on the board room table and shouted “this duck FUCKS” and then quietly muttered “poorly” to a room full of executives.
While nothing ever came of the pitch, I’m still reluctant to post the images that Joe and I created for it, because, hey, who knows, right?
But, because you’re loyal zdarsky.substack.com newsletter readers, I feel okay sharing this EXCLUSIVE look at one of the pieces!
He’s beautiful. And the MCU needs him.
AGREED
Okay! On to commerce! This week, Eisner-losing fan favourite DAREDEVIL is back with part two of LOCKDOWN! It’s bad news for Elektra and Matt as both Daredevils are up against their worst nightmares! With an ending that’ll have tongues wagging ew that’s gross
Mike Hawthorne is back and man oh man I’m gonna miss him (he’s not dying. I mean, we’re ALL dying, he’s just moving on to more impressive projects that will probably win Eisners). He’s a master of layouts and the human form, dynamic while grounded in reality. DON’T GO MIKE DON’T GO
EVERYONE LEAVES EVENTUALLY
Whoa just … ease up, okay?
SORRY
Beyond that, my big things this week are all audio!
I joined some pals to talk DOOM:
And I joined OTHER pals to talk GARF:
It turns out I know a lot more about Garfield than I do Dr. Doom.
And then there’s MANGASPLAINING!
This week’s episode isn’t up yet, but last week’s was a doozy! We got into the world of BL (Boys Love) manga in a roundabout way with the heartwarming story of friendship in BL METAMORPHOSIS! I highly recommend the series and the podcast and especially our show notes which are the best in the biz!
Okay, that’s enough! I’m done! Bye!
Love,
Chip
from 198: romantic, petrifying
The Eisners were this week, and well done to all the winners, but especially well done to Chip for his newsletter on it.. I did a complete ead of Sex Criminals this week, so I’ve been struck by the brilliance of Chip a lot this week, which is actively annoying.
I was virtually at ComicCon at the Gaming in Graphic Novels: A Programming Match Made in Heaven which was lots of fun. Just a big ol’ download of RPG and game and comic stuff. Fun!
The current Humble Bundle of a bunch of 2000AD stuff is just ludicrously good. If you’ve ever had an interest to explore this corner of comics, this is likely your best chance. So much stuff.
Ryan North does a useful thread about the various methods to clean up your twitter stream, and why.
And lo! The second arc of Eternals is announced, starting November. Here’s the solicit…
ETERNALS #7 Kieron Gillen (Writer) • Esad Ribić (Artist/Cover)
NEW ARC! NEW JUMPING-ON POINT! MORE THANOS! The Eternals have learned the truth of their existence. Their society is in shambles. Who can lead them? Who is the visionary that can lead them from the ashes? And how did they take the throne? Hail Thanos the Mad Titan, Eternal Prime.
Welcome to a new day. Welcome to hell.
That sounds fun.
I did a short interview over at AIPT when it was announced. which includes some broad details and thoughts.
Here’s a couple of quotes…
I think Esad, Matt [Wilson], Clayton [Cowles], and myself are making the most berserk sci-fi mythological comic on the shelves. We throw ideas at the page at velocity and quantity unlike anything else in superheroes. After six issues I think, at the least, folks know what we’re doing and why it’s not quite like anything else.
Of the many creative goals of Eternals, do that was certainly the biggie.
I think we’ve done that core work on the Eternals. Next: the other half of the mythology. The second arc is very much putting the deep focus on the Deviants.
…And…
Let’s just say democracy continues to have a difficult time of it.
There’s lots in the arc, but as well as the deviants side of things, having a look at the political dealing of the Eternals is a big part. Druig is someone who’s been doing this for a million years, and he’s using ever part of his sleazy skills to help Thanos.
Oh – and huge action. Issue 9 has the biggest battle we’ve shown so far. I figured I hadn’t given Esad a chance to draw a city being smashed yet, and this felt like a huge oversight.
And the back half? Oh my. Things escalate. Guest stars. Broken hearts. Trust shattered. Beating up gods. All the good, bad stuff.
Very happy to see this announced, not that it should stop folks just asking me “Is Eternals a mini?”
Io9 had the first preview of the fourth arc of Once & Future, which starts next week.
Here’s a couple of pages…
… and you can read the rest over at io9.
It’s good to be back.
Jamie kills on the cover too.
- Remember Come Dice With Me, the RPG I wrote inspired by the competitive Dining show? It’s been converted into German. Want to play it in German? You can grab it over here.
- To celebrate her getting ever-closer to finishing DIE, Stephanie has been doing a series of posts about the secrets of things she folded into DIE. Go nose. they’re all hashtagged.
- Over at Dynamic Forces, I do an interview about the Eternals: Celestia special. If you want a tease on what I’m doing with Makkari, Ajak and chums, go nose. *Last War In Albion reaches Morrison’s early-90s work, specifically Saint Swithins Day, which is one of the more striking one-offs in their biblography. I’ve written something for Panel x Panel’s next issue which is the only thing which you can easily compare to it from Morrison’s works.
- Tom Bombadil goes chillcore has to be heard My immediate joke is that this is what would happen if Jamie and I were given the rights to Lord of the Rings.
- This interactive-page NY Times article about The Madonna of the Long Neck is both really good, but also had me thinking about this sort of thing as comics. Normally they add a little animation, which isn’t necessary. I mean, Power Point As Comics is also true here. I often say comics is a bastard medium, and this is the sort of thinking I’m talking about. It can take from anywhere.
- I did a quick interview for my old university, which they’ve stuck a little online.
- The Guardian on the lack of financial rewards for creators’ material who’ve been mined for major superhero movie franchises.
- This piece on the generational attempts to jigsaw together destroyed Stasi documents is just fascinating.
- Karl Kerschl writes about how he made his own patreon-alternative from scratch. This is all good stuff. There’s a lot of quasi-patronage models at the mo (paid for Substack is basically identical to Patreon) and knowing what one could do is absolutely key.
This is a great short overview of Sean Philips’ career. With 20 years with Brubaker it’s easy to forget all the fascinating work he did before that.
Steve Perrin designer of RuneQuest has died, which led to this collation of his personal recollections of the making of RuneQuest, which is just great stuff, charming and full of detail. Fascinating game, RuneQuest, in this mix between a really strong simulationist tendency married to some narrative-heavy world-building stuff. When I first read it, it distinctly felt like something for grown-ups. I understand it was genuinely a huge success in the UK, to being an actual competitor to D&D in the early days… but then stopped. I find myself wondering about that, and the possible reasons. Obviously monocultural pressure is one thing, but I find myself wondering whether GW’s move away from being a games importer and packager changed that. Still – all idle speculation, above my knowledge.
from - 201: I Am Terrible At This
And the Eisner-Award-Winning Panel X Panel hits issue 50. Cripes. 50 issues is really no joke – I think back to when I was a teenage magazine obsessive, and I’m aware that a lifespan of many of those magazines was significantly less than fifty issues. For Hassan to keep this thing going, on a month by month basis, alongside everything else he does is a lot, and I can only salute it.
Its taken the theme of 50 years, and had a scan over all those decades to select their favourite books. Hassan asked me if I had any desire to hammer out a quick 500 words about anything, and “Kill Your Boyfriend” just jumped to mind. I am not one to resist random urges to write essays. You may have noticed.
I mentioned in the piece that it’s one of the two comics I actually bought a page of. I have been asked which page. It’s a rude one.
Ta-dah!
You can buy the issue here, or sub here.
I almost linked this Sktched piece in the Eternals write up at the top, as it’s a really strong overview of what we’ve done with the book. However, it is a complete analysis, so spoilery enough that I’ll put it here.
It’s been a good week for comic criticism. I linked to the Sean Philips last week, but I ended up retweeting two things from NeoTextCorp this week, and I can’t actually remember the last time I did that. Good work, them. This is on Grant Morrison, Superman and the Bomb. This is on Garth Ennis’ Punisher and its bleak understanding of America.
As well as the above piece, this excellent personal response to All Star Superman and what it says and encourages on an emotional level made me tweak a sentence in my KYBF piece above by a couple of small, but meaningful words, just to not entirely negate such readings.
And Comiccon do another round of their Once & Future annotations. This time: it’s the origins of Merlin, which is one of those interesting questions. People talk more about The Real Arthur, but The Real Merlin is the one that intrigues me more.
from
Jim Zub’s Comics School channel is interviewing creators about creation and their origins, and talked to me. This was a delight. Partially to just talk over things with Jim, but also in that it dug into some unusual areas in my actual self-publishing zine and webcomic proto-me period. There’s a few pages from the photo comic I did in here, for example. Cripes. You can watch it here.
Big ol’ interview with Den of Geeks about Eternals. This was the first time I talked about the book post Issue 6, so includes me talking about the thinking behind the dark secret we revealed in that issue. If you’re interested in that stuff, this is a good one to read.
Sir Clive Sinclair died this week. John Walker did an excellent obituary here, which stood out among a lot which really centred the C5 to a distracting degree. Sinclair’s computers were cheap and populist and hugely influential on my aesthetic, both in terms of the games they begat (because being cheap, put the power of creation in more hands) and the magazines that emerged from that culture (Crash and ZZ64 show that they can be similar, but Your Sinclair could only have emerged from the spectrum). Quick recommendation for the film Micro Men, which tells the story of the early 80s war ober the BBC contract. Sir Clive hated it, but it’s a lot of fun. You can watch it here.
204: DIE (2018-2021)
On the way up to Coventry for Meanwhile, rather than actually working, I did a quick actual Q&A thing on twitter. I went back to some questions this week, and the above one is what dragged me back. As I say, I don’t take those things likely. I’m not even pleased with all these answers.
Let’s say a bit about each.
DIE – There She Goes, My Beautiful World – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds DIE’s actual playlist is here. which – like the book it’s about – is a more oblique and moody thing than WicDiv’s, and was almost entirely done in collaboration with the alien intelligence that is the Spotify Algorithm. That felt appropriate, given the book. If I had to choose a song to sum up DIE, I’d choose its opening one – Cherrylee by Gowns which was an aesthetic north star for the whole project. By now we’re at the end, and increasingly so as the series’ pieces moved towards completing, I came back and back to this song where Cave walks an amazing line between bathos and revelation when singing about the muse, inspiration, fantasy. I can so easily imagine Sol (or myself) howling “And I’ll ask for nothing/ Nothing in this life/I’ll ask for nothing/Give me ever-lasting life.” Quick plug for The Red Hand Files, Cave’s Q&A newsletter, which is perhaps my favourite newsletter of the moment.
Once & Future – Do You Remember The First Time?- Pulp This is the one which held up me tweeting. It doesn’t have a soundtrack, per se, which is one tell. Once & Future isn’t a wrestling with eternity sort of comic. It’s having too much fun to overthink it. I kept on thinking of things that I’d already lobbed on Aphra’s soundtrack – Bad Reputation would be fun, right? C then suggested this, which makes a lot of sense. Distinctly and quirky British, propulsive and with a weird melancholy underlying it. I could at least tie it to three or four characters in the plot, which is useful. I mean, I can imagine Merlin singing this at Arthur in a fan-video cut or something.
Eternals – Knowing Me, Knowing You, Abba As part of a Chriss Arrant twitter thing, where creators hyped their unannounced books with an oblique gif, I used an Abba Gif. I believe it was this. Knowing Me, Knowing You isn’t quite Abba at their most austere and adult, but I suspect the most austere of the upbeat big hits, and speaks a lot to how I think of Eternals. Time, sadness, reaching towards eternal beauty, the sadness inherent in perfection and that they all have Ikaris’ hair-cut.
TBA – Paris 1919, John Cale. Can’t say anything much about this one, but I suspect that there’s going to be people who pick it up and from the very first pages go OH, FFS. The comic does have a playlist, which is a lot of fun, and this is its first track. More down the line when TBA is Ad.
This is amazing. DIE: Split The Party won the British Fantasy Awards 2021 award for best comic/graphic novel As we won last year for Fantasy Heartbreaker, we’re absolutely overcome. A lovely thing to happen, especially in this week.
We’ve done a bunch of podcasts recently, it seems. GWW had Stephanie and me on to talk about DIE. The latter half is all about issue 20, which we have proper spoiler awards before. This was really fun.
Meanwhile, WMQA over at ComicsXF had me on to talk about everything. Once & Future, Eternals and DIE. We got them all, which was a lot of fun. I don’t feel I’ve done much press in a while, so I’m enjoying yapping a bit, and hopefully that comes across.
This is something I’m really excited about. Mark Sable and I have been talking about RPGs and comics forever, and he was planning his own RPG comic with Chris Anderson at the same time I was pulling together DIE. And with wonderful timing, in the week DIE ends (and you may find yourself in the market for a new excellent RPG comic) its kickstarter launches. There’s an excellent interview over at ComicsXF if you want a grounding in the its berserk, grungy energy.
Big week, once more, which seems to be a trend. Not that I’m complaining. On a personal and professional level, things are going well. This is always worrying, as I’m always a waiting-for- shoe-to-drop person. However. I’m even less anxious about some of the things than I have been – as we can talk about it properly now, let’s use the DIE RPG as an example. After a weekend of really looking at the manuscript, and running through it with RRD’s Grant on monday morning, I’m comfortable about the KS. I’m in the place now where I am explicitly finishing up chapters and stepping them away, then sending them over so RRD can properly move into publisher mode. So much is editing as well.
I often think of the bit in Bendis’ Fortune & Glory, his autobiographical hollywood memoir. Firstly, it’s great, so if you haven’t, grab it. It’s one of the books that comes to mind all the time, and a really useful primer for any professional dealing with that town for the first time. Secondly, this specific bit… well, Brian is writing a draft of Goldfish, one of his crime noir indie books. He hands it in. His agent tells him that it’s a little heavy. Brian asks what that means. Well, an average screenplay may be about 100 pages or so. His is well over 200. Brian despairs, and then his agent just encourages him to take a deep breath and then go watch some movies to see exactly how sparse they are. And then, edit.
“There’s a good screenplay in here.”
Beat.
“There may be three.”
I love that, and as an overwriter, I feel seen. With DIE RPG, knowing the bits that need to be long and the bits which will be better if they’re not is very much this final leg. The game is in a good place – I just ran a short 3-part game with friends, which was just a humbling, rejuvenating experience, and it’s been a long time since I’ve had a game which wasn’t at least good. I just can’t wait to see it all together in a single volume, and share it with people.
I’m almost segueing into talking about things we want to do with the book, and I’ve already said I want to save that for down the line. So I’ll stop.
That’s just one thing, and there’s a bunch more, all of which are thrumming along. It’s a lot. It’s the sort of week that I keep on forgetting it’s my birthday. I think it’s tomorrow, but I’m not going to check, as I’ve really got to do final tweaks on Eternals 7 and a datapage of gerrymanding, in the mighty marvel manner.
Speak soon.
Kieron Gillen
London.
29.9.2021
On the way up to Coventry for Meanwhile, rather than actually working, I did a quick actual Q&A thing on twitter. I went back to some questions this week, and the above one is what dragged me back. As I say, I don’t take those things likely. I’m not even pleased with all these answers.
Let’s say a bit about each.
DIE – There She Goes, My Beautiful World – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds DIE’s actual playlist is here. which – like the book it’s about – is a more oblique and moody thing than WicDiv’s, and was almost entirely done in collaboration with the alien intelligence that is the Spotify Algorithm. That felt appropriate, given the book. If I had to choose a song to sum up DIE, I’d choose its opening one – Cherrylee by Gowns which was an aesthetic north star for the whole project. By now we’re at the end, and increasingly so as the series’ pieces moved towards completing, I came back and back to this song where Cave walks an amazing line between bathos and revelation when singing about the muse, inspiration, fantasy. I can so easily imagine Sol (or myself) howling “And I’ll ask for nothing/ Nothing in this life/I’ll ask for nothing/Give me ever-lasting life.” Quick plug for The Red Hand Files, Cave’s Q&A newsletter, which is perhaps my favourite newsletter of the moment.
Once & Future – Do You Remember The First Time?- Pulp This is the one which held up me tweeting. It doesn’t have a soundtrack, per se, which is one tell. Once & Future isn’t a wrestling with eternity sort of comic. It’s having too much fun to overthink it. I kept on thinking of things that I’d already lobbed on Aphra’s soundtrack – Bad Reputation would be fun, right? C then suggested this, which makes a lot of sense. Distinctly and quirky British, propulsive and with a weird melancholy underlying it. I could at least tie it to three or four characters in the plot, which is useful. I mean, I can imagine Merlin singing this at Arthur in a fan-video cut or something.
Eternals – Knowing Me, Knowing You, Abba As part of a Chriss Arrant twitter thing, where creators hyped their unannounced books with an oblique gif, I used an Abba Gif. I believe it was this. Knowing Me, Knowing You isn’t quite Abba at their most austere and adult, but I suspect the most austere of the upbeat big hits, and speaks a lot to how I think of Eternals. Time, sadness, reaching towards eternal beauty, the sadness inherent in perfection and that they all have Ikaris’ hair-cut.
TBA – Paris 1919, John Cale. Can’t say anything much about this one, but I suspect that there’s going to be people who pick it up and from the very first pages go OH, FFS. The comic does have a playlist, which is a lot of fun, and this is its first track. More down the line when TBA is Ad.
This is amazing. DIE: Split The Party won the British Fantasy Awards 2021 award for best comic/graphic novel As we won last year for Fantasy Heartbreaker, we’re absolutely overcome. A lovely thing to happen, especially in this week.
We’ve done a bunch of podcasts recently, it seems. GWW had Stephanie and me on to talk about DIE. The latter half is all about issue 20, which we have proper spoiler awards before. This was really fun.
Meanwhile, WMQA over at ComicsXF had me on to talk about everything. Once & Future, Eternals and DIE. We got them all, which was a lot of fun. I don’t feel I’ve done much press in a while, so I’m enjoying yapping a bit, and hopefully that comes across.
This is something I’m really excited about. Mark Sable and I have been talking about RPGs and comics forever, and he was planning his own RPG comic with Chris Anderson at the same time I was pulling together DIE. And with wonderful timing, in the week DIE ends (and you may find yourself in the market for a new excellent RPG comic) its kickstarter launches. There’s an excellent interview over at ComicsXF if you want a grounding in the its berserk, grungy energy.
Big week, once more, which seems to be a trend. Not that I’m complaining. On a personal and professional level, things are going well. This is always worrying, as I’m always a waiting-for- shoe-to-drop person. However. I’m even less anxious about some of the things than I have been – as we can talk about it properly now, let’s use the DIE RPG as an example. After a weekend of really looking at the manuscript, and running through it with RRD’s Grant on monday morning, I’m comfortable about the KS. I’m in the place now where I am explicitly finishing up chapters and stepping them away, then sending them over so RRD can properly move into publisher mode. So much is editing as well.
I often think of the bit in Bendis’ Fortune & Glory, his autobiographical hollywood memoir. Firstly, it’s great, so if you haven’t, grab it. It’s one of the books that comes to mind all the time, and a really useful primer for any professional dealing with that town for the first time. Secondly, this specific bit… well, Brian is writing a draft of Goldfish, one of his crime noir indie books. He hands it in. His agent tells him that it’s a little heavy. Brian asks what that means. Well, an average screenplay may be about 100 pages or so. His is well over 200. Brian despairs, and then his agent just encourages him to take a deep breath and then go watch some movies to see exactly how sparse they are. And then, edit.
“There’s a good screenplay in here.”
Beat.
“There may be three.”
I love that, and as an overwriter, I feel seen. With DIE RPG, knowing the bits that need to be long and the bits which will be better if they’re not is very much this final leg. The game is in a good place – I just ran a short 3-part game with friends, which was just a humbling, rejuvenating experience, and it’s been a long time since I’ve had a game which wasn’t at least good. I just can’t wait to see it all together in a single volume, and share it with people.
I’m almost segueing into talking about things we want to do with the book, and I’ve already said I want to save that for down the line. So I’ll stop.
That’s just one thing, and there’s a bunch more, all of which are thrumming along. It’s a lot. It’s the sort of week that I keep on forgetting it’s my birthday. I think it’s tomorrow, but I’m not going to check, as I’ve really got to do final tweaks on Eternals 7 and a datapage of gerrymanding, in the mighty marvel manner.
Speak soon.
Kieron Gillen
London.
29.9.2021
Chloe Mavael over at NeoText takes a walk through Alan Moore’s comedy works. I do wish this stuff was more kept in mind when thinking about Moore.
Legendary Inker Tom Palmer died this week, and Tom Brevoort’s reminisces are well worth reading.
People Make Games have Sam Greer investigate how the games industry fail the working classes, and how and why they’re so desperately under-represented. People Make Games’ videos are always good, and this is no exception. This is a topic I think about a lot – mainly in terms of “were I to start my career now, from the same background and socio-economic niche as I was, would I be able to have a career?” The answer is basically “No.”
Gretchen Felker-Martin examines moral-puritanism in the discourse and looks at what harm means. The situation she describes is one that’s nagged at me too, and starkly illuminated a few fissures. It’s full of take-away quotes, but this is a useful one: “Art may be an ideological battlefield, but beware anyone treating it as the whole of any given cultural war”
Waypoint do an Oral History of Red Alert 3’s legendary Tim Curry performance. This is great, and weirdly moving, stuff. Humanity, eh?
Grant’s just posted the August update for the DIE RPG.
Some key distilled things for those who hate clicking… * The intro comic is done! He shared a few panels, which I put at the top of this section.
Possibility of more hyperfancy holographic dice – there’s a waiting list you can sign up for her.
We’ve made the Fair Gold coins chunkier. Go see a picture, and admire Grant’s coin flip of one.
RRD now have a mailing list for retailers to jump on. They also list the distributors who’ll be able to get the game from – relevantly to this comic-centric mailing list, is Diamond.
The PDF version of the RPG should be out mid-late September.
Pre-orders will remain open until we go to print, which will be shortly after the PDF goes out. We’ll update you.
Layout is well under way. Loan’s work in progress stuff is shown in there. There’s an example below.
I posed this to twitter, as it was nagging at me. Basically – pick five stories to give to someone to introduce either the Marvel or the DC universes. As in, the crash course so someone can read it and basically get the vibe. The answers (of various kinds) are great, and (like any mix tape) reveal what people think is important. Typically, I asked this question and have no idea of my own answers.
An overview of Alan Moore’s How To Write Comics book, which argues it’s an all round great book for writers, let alone comic writers. I’d agree – it’s a tight 48 pages, of 4 essays he wrote circa Watchmen and another one 25 years later, and if you can find a copy, grab it. Lots sticks in my mind, but a quote near the end is something I call back to a lot: “Finally, if you want to be a truly great writer, it is perhaps worth remembering that even in this, it is more important to be a good human being than it is to be a good writer.” You said it, Alan.
Over at Humble Bundle, there’s just over one day to go in the 00s Image Bundle, which has a bunch of great stuff in – the Paul Grist material alone justifies it, and we believe it’s the only way you can get hold of Jamie’s first work (Long Hot Summer) and original black and white Phonogram: Rue Britannia. Though I may be wrong. I haven’t checked. I know neither are in print. I think. I also haven’t checked that.
I mentioned Shamballa when I wrote about Alan Grant passing, but this overview by Steven Cook of how he put together the Shamballa trade’s design is really great process stuff.
I suspect unfair to the people it’s quoted, but this article about assigning everything wrong in your life to Capitalism has a lot to chew over.
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2210.16 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2662 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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