A Sense of Doubt blog post #1732- all from Warren Ellis Infinitam Abyssum - OO 19 August 2018
Though I am behind and I am just sharing content -- first imagery and then newsletter content -- but I removed the THAT ONE THING and LOW POWER MODE tags. Technically, maybe this is one thing, but it looks like a lot of things. And maybe sharing this much is a bit more than LOW POWER MODE. Still grading but not tagging that category either.
I like this stuff.
FROM
Infinitam Abyssum - OO 19 August 2018
ORBITAL OPERATIONS
Hello from out here on the Thames Delta.
(Edition title taken from an album called "Lucid Intrusion."
THE WILD STORM 16 came out this week. If you're following the series, hang on til issue 18, please! I'm laying a lot of track. (And finding ways to abuse and confound poor Jon in every issue.) We're in the bit where it goes quiet before it goes really really loud. Over here, I'm just warming up for the last six issues in the series' planned 24-issue run, coming in for a landing on a 528-page story in four volumes. It's been in the planning for a long time. I have particularly been waiting to do the big finish for a long time.
(At some point in the months to come, I'll do a bit about how I've been using the grids in this volume, and why. There was, in fact, a plan, all along.)
And if you wanted a copy of CEMETERY BEACH 1 by me and Jason Howard, Monday is the day to email, phone or drop in on your local comics shop and tell them. It's the first full-out action story I've created in god knows how long, and Jason has exceeded himself.
Novellas were my favourite thing to write. I only did three original graphic novellas. Amazingly, they all seem to still be in print! Which is what I had hoped for them: the 48-page squarebound format should be a permanent edition.
I love that Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips have done MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN JUNKIES as a 72-page edition. Hell, the very first TRANSMETROPOLITAN collection was 72 pages.
Sometimes, we should think in miniatures. A story should only be as long as it needs to be. By which I mean, the story should only be as long as the author thinks it needs to be. Other people will tell you that stories need to be longer. Don't listen to them. Listen to the story.
The form is as close as we get to the European comics "album" - by which I mean a short standardised form. We can do the Euro size, but in the past people would immediately bitch about racking and shelving.
There are things we lost because they were not put into permanent editions, but were instead stapled and sold as standard periodical ephemera.
FACE, part of the "Vertigo Voices" sub-imprint, was bunged out saddle-stitched, and was gone a month later. Illustrated by Duncan Fegredo (who is one of the all-time British greats) and written by Peter Milligan in full command of his powers. This book was probably Vertigo's literary-fiction peak. Bookstores could have displayed this next to Don DeLillo and Chuck Palahniuk.
Meanwhile, in Europe:
Manu Larcenet's fucking diary comic from 2001, THE ARTIST IN THE FAMILY, is still in print. And I don't mean to dis Manu at all -- we hung out for a long weekend in Finland, many years ago, and generally had a great time being terrible to each other and worrying the shit out of our hosts. The book is great. But, you know, there are reasons why I've always looked to Europe as a publishing model.
Okay, hold on, I'm going random now:
A few years later, in Oslo, I met Killoffer, then the recent creator of 676 APPARITIONS OF KILLOFFER, and just look at that fucking page.
It is an absolutely monstrous book, and if you'd met Killoffer, sweetly teaching Norwegians just enough French to say "Killoffer is very beautiful," you couldn't quite imagine this awful, disturbing thing emanating from him. But his control of the storytelling flow and the page is phenomenal.
And for no reason I've just been reminded of one of my favourite French comics magazine covers:
These are the three founders of the magazine. On the cover of their own magazine. 1974. I just love that in 1974 there was a comic whose cover was just a painting of the three founders looking this fucking cool (especially Claire Bretecher).
All of which is probably because in the back of my head I wanted to mention that IDW have been releasing new editions of Hugo Pratt's CORTO MALTESE books:
And, while they can be deeply peculiar and very much of their time, like Herge, they still retain marvellous instruction in the use of the medium. Pratt, working on the larger Euro page, locks himself into a 12-panel grid for the most part. Here's the thing about a consistent use of a grid, that's been kind of forgotten over the years. You use it when you want the panelling to become invisible.
It is, in fact, the equivalent of using "said" in prose. We use "said" because we want the instruction to become invisible, for you to live inside the speech. To replace "said" with "bellowed" or "farted" or "wept" tilts the sentence towards the author. Regular unbroken consistent grid panelling stops you looking at the structure and has you simply focus on the words and pictures.
And old Killoffer up there takes the panel borders away entirely and has you slip and slide through the page. Two different ways of achieving the same thing.
Which I think Eddie Campbell understood from the start:
(This is going to be the edition where six of my comics writer friends will be "this was fun" and two hundred of you normal people will unsubscribe)
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In an act of shameless decadence (I just got paid on a big job and I've been waiting for that money to shake loose for months), I have bought myself a second Kindle. This is an objectively terrible thing to do. But I cracked last week and bought myself a new EDC bag, as I got lazy, the weather got warm, and I kept leaving things behind whenever I went out. All the damn time.
(If you're considering a Kindle, by the way, the Paperwhite is the best. The Oasis is overpowered and overpriced.)
Maxpedition have always served me well, and so, while I probably should have gotten the Hunter Satchel from America's Peg and Awl, I decided to go for strength, function and waterproofing with the Maxpedition Neatfreak. Which is not a name that fits me. They don't seem to be easy to come by any more, so they may be reaching the end of their life. But I've never had a Maxpedition bag fail on me, and I figure it'll probably last me the rest of my life.
And the bag is just big enough that I can keep a Kindle in it. Those things sync really wall. And, like I said, I'm always leaving something behind lately, and sometimes I just want to sit and read somewhere, and the Kindle app on the phone is workable but believe it or not sometimes I want to put the phone down or want to read something on it without notification banners unfolding down the screen while I'm trying to read a book ffs
So I treated myself for once.
And replacing, updating and rigging my kit for the coming autumn, and blessed hermitage.
I have rambled in my charmless pre-senile way at you quite enough. I will write to you again next week from out here on the Thames Delta. Until then? Hold on tight. You're doing fine. How could it be otherwise? You were trained at Orbital Operations, and this weird shit cannot be the end of you. You are just too strong and smart. I know you are.
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1911.15
- Days ago = 1595 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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