September 2024: End of an Era
Hey folks,
I once again find myself up against it and writing this right before my self-imposed deadline of "the last day of the month", for reasons that are hopefully clear and apparent! Let's get into it...
The Usual
This month saw the conclusion of the Kickstarter campaign for Brigantia Vol. 2, and as you might expect, it's put me in quite an introspective mood. The first issue came out in 2016, and while I appreciate that 8 years is an extremely long lead time for a 6-issue series, doing the whole thing on the side of day jobs and a million other commitments should probably count as a mitigating factor. Even with how long it's taken, I'm very proud of the story - and if this volume ends up being the last comic I put out (not an unrealistic possibility!) I'd say it's a pretty good way to sign off. It's wild to look back at what I hoped for the series when I started writing it (released through Image was one dream), and my ambitions have dramatically scaled back as the world has knocked chunks out of my mental health and made this whole game much harder and less enjoyable the past 8 years. Now, I'm happy just to get it into your hands and put a satisfying full stop on the whole thing!
Anyway, the book is with the printer as I write this - I'll have the digital ready to go as soon as Kickstarter finish up their processing bits and bobs and it should be sorted in plenty of time for Thought Bubble. I'm also closing in on completing fulfilment for Secrets of the Majestic - all the UK pledges have been posted out (except for the ones which are being picked up in person at Thought Bubble, and they're all packaged up) and I'm making a start on non-UK pledges this week. Trying to fulfil two Kickstarters in one year always seemed like a wild idea, and I can confirm that it's not the least stressful thing in the world, but at least it clears my slate without anything spilling over into 2025!
Once all the toilet books are out I can (hopefully) start looking forward to all the wild stuff we have planned for the convention weekend - specifically the Secrets of the Majestic exhibition at the Mercer Gallery, which has been a lot of fun to work on. We'll be having an opening on the 15th November (the Friday evening before the con kicks off in earnest) which I'm hoping a lot of the creators will be able to attend, so if you want to hobnob with a bunch of toilet freaks, admire pages from the book and ask me why I came up with such a ridiculous idea in the first place - don't miss it!
The Tunes
It's that rarest of things, an all-metal playlist! And yes, I'm starting this one off with one of my own songs, but there's a good reason for it - somebody used a brief snippet of the heavy intro for this on an Instagram reel that went mini-viral last month and the result is that at time of writing, my old band Northern Oak have almost 3000 monthly listeners on streaming - not bad given that we split up in 2016 and never reached a fraction of those numbers back then! Anyway, I'm still very proud of this song and it has some of my best riffs in it, so there. Next we go into a couple of black metal blast songs - new Kanonenfieber (an extremely anti-war one-man BM project from Germany), followed by the atmoblack of Autumn Nostalgie and Fen, both of whom I'm looking forward to seeing live in the not-too-distant future. Bolt Thrower are in here as a tribute to the excellent Space Marine 2 which I've been playing this month, and they're followed by a new Linkin Park song which goes harder than I think any of us were expecting - the new vocalist is never going to replace Chester, but she's doing a great job based on the two singles they've released thus far. New Devin Townsend is always worth the time, especially when he's going for more of an uncomplicated metal sound, and I really enjoyed the Mastodon/Lamb of God collab - it basically sounds like Leviathan-era Mastodon, and since that's the best Mastodon album (a point that the other members of Ba'al do not agree on!) it works for me. I have a soft spot for this Testament album and their particular brand of bouncy thrash metal, and on the theme of "bands that a teenage Chris built his whole identity around", we're closing out with a track from the new Nightwish album that's also very enjoyable.
The Links
How Capitalism Incentivizes the Destruction of Art
Capitalism is supposed to encourage innovation. But in Hollywood, studios are creating a narrower range of films to avoid taking any risk at all.
I particularly enjoyed this longer-read article about how capitalism is a destructive force, spun out of all the hoo-hah over the cancelled Coyote vs. Acme movie, and it made me contemplative - without wishing to sound like a boomer, a lot of movies these days are shit, and there’s a real surge towards lowest common denominator, focus-tested to fuck storytelling where the goal (from the perspective of the people funding the whole thing) is to make as much money as possible, not to actually produce a good movie. Ironically, that approach doesn’t appear to be paying dividends with the number of “sure thing” blockbusters that have flopped dramatically in the past few years rising all the time - yes, the pandemic absolutely played a part in some of that, but I think that a lot of audiences are savvy enough to recognise when they’re seeing something inauthentic or jaded. There’s probably an equivalent for this in comics as well, but I don’t consider myself qualified enough to talk about that so I’ll let someone smarter than me run with it..!
And that’s all from me for this month - it’s extremely soggy, I’ve spent large chunks of today stamping around in the rain both with a dog and on the way to-and-from work, and right now the sofa and a hearty pasta/bacon/cheese/veg dish is calling my name. Enjoy the rest of your weeks!
All the best,