011: speederbikes powered by an irrepressible trumpet
Hullo.
A very short one this week, unless I start rambling about pop music as an attempt to put off working out for another half hour.
Contents!
WicDiv26Done == True
WicDivWriterNotes ==True
Can't Start A Fire
Word-o-update
***
WicDiv went to Image, though in the lacuna between that and actually the presses starting rolling, we are fiddling. More than usual – I’ve just woke up to see what I suspect is the first take on the oddly problematic page 4. Matt’s done good. Do I need to say that? I should just get a “Matt’s Done Good” reaction image and insert it into the e-mail. Matt Wilson For Eisner, etc.
I think it’s a good issue. I suspect it’s my favourite of Imperial Phase’s classical comic issues so far. A lot happens, partially because I finally give in to temptation and 9 panel it up a bit, but also because – er - it’s 23 pages of drawn content instead of the usual 20. With WicDiv’s trickery, I suspect it’s a little hard to work this out. I’ll tell more about this when I do the writer notes for WicDiv 26.
Anyway, it’s basically done unless our consultants have a nose and we tweak some dialogue. Looking forward to you guys seeing it.
And, to sign off, here’s a bit of a panel of Baal.
Hullo, Baal. I hope you’re well.
***
I lobbed the writer notes online last night for 25. Lots of craft conversation on the nature of cliffhangers, as it’s been on my mind.
The cliffhanger last time is an unusual one for us, as I believe I said (I totally don’t re-read these notes after writing them. When we come to edit them for the hardback, it’s always a thrill. Hey C! Sorry about all the typos.) It’s a mid-action cliff-hanger. Normally we’re in a “reveal of important new information” or “completion of surprising action” place when we cliffhanger, and half the time we don’t even do that. This is a “half way through action” cliffhanger. As such, it’s about “How does this action complete?”
Structurally speaking, I tend to think that these tend to risk creating false drama. If you don’t go through with an action in any meaningful way, that’s what it is – a raising of expectations and a quashing of them, which – to use the technical writing term – is total bullshit. If you do go through with it… well, why didn’t you do it to end the previous issue? Then you have a “completion of surprising action” cliffhanger, which is much more honest.
So the main way to resolve them, for me, is that what DOES happen has to be at least as interesting as what didn’t happen.
***
After last week’s tracks of the year, a burst of older tracks have entered my life. The Comet Is Coming’s Space Carnival and Angel Olson’s Intern would have both been in my Tracks of the Year if I’d discovered them a couple of weeks ago. Angel Olson does that big wide-screen stark celluloid smartness, and I’m still picking the album apart (also, indirectly and sounds nothing like Olson, but I think it’s probably time I went deep into the Throwing Muses who I shamefully have never truly explored.) Space Carnival is just a hilarious rollercoaster of joy, all speederbikes powered by an irrepressible trumpet, and instantly found it's way onto my Doctor Aphra soundtrack. It’s causing me to chair dance even as we speak.
Then there’s 2015’s Downtown Boys, whose cover of Dancing In the Dark has been basically destroying me. The full album is great - the title of TOTAL COMMUNISM certainly delineates their intent directly – but this tore me apart instantly, and lead to one of those awful obsession cycles I get into when a record instantly means too much to me.
Punk covers of non-punk songs are things which either go incredibly right or incredibly wrong. The worst – and many are – are those who do nothing more than the simple joke of hearing a song through a different filter, an equally smug flip of the indie-guitarist covering a pop song in a sensitive way. It treats the song as material for a punchline.
And then there’s the best ones, which just open the song up, show its guts and throw it around the room. It helps that Downtown Boys are working in one of my favoured punk modes – namely an update of X-Ray Spex’s sax and scream power combo, though obviously with a bunch more of American punk in there. There’s so much detail to pick apart – the song’s primarily structured around the band carrying the main vocal line allowing Victoria Ruiz to interrogate and inhabit the emotional core of the record, while making it entirely her own.
Because really it simultaneously digs into the heart of the Springsteen record (it’s never more obviously a song about being depressed and trapped in your life and wanting out than it is here) and recasting it as a political statement (because a queer, PoC band singing a lot of these lines is immediately not just talking about the personal). The personal is the political, and vice versa, and the cover uses that to ignite the whole thing.
As said, there’s the detail here. Choice vocal readings – the phlegm rolls of the reading of “SAY YOU GOT TO STAY HUNGRY/I’M JUST ABOUT STARVING TONIGHT” is painful and thrilling. The gasping rush of “Wanna change my name/my clothes/my face.” And musically, how the band passes the vocal line between them, and the drums do the essential momentum booster around 2 minutes in. Wonderful.
Of course, when something hits you this hard – and I mean I’ve been in tears a bunch over this record – you know it’s more than just cold aesthetic admiration for it. I suspect it’s for the reason that it’s ended up on the WicDiv soundtrack. This is what doing WicDiv feels like at its worst (and best) – a rendering of a pop song that is primarily screaming which you can mostly dance to.
(Hell, even stuff like the “I’m sick of sitting around here, trying to write this book” resonates there.)
In short, great, go punk rock, etc.
I also find myself thinking of one of my general rules for life: never trust a man who disapproves of how Poly Styrene from X-Ray Spex sings.
***
Main writing this week for me is Star Wars stuff, which is going to be the theme for the next month or so. They’ll be a few other bits and pieces – a Modded script, a handful of art-for-art sake stuff I’ve promised to do – but I really need to get ahead.
The main exception to that is WicDiv: 455 – we’ve considered making it roman numerals, but sadly the year in Roman Numerals (CDLV) isn’t as clearly Roman Numerals as would do the job. Oh well. I’m doing my final bits of research alongside doing my usual scripting, and should actually write it next week. Jamie has done the designs for our lead, and the guest artist has just handed in their rough of the cover.
I suspect they’ll be more on this next week.
Right – I've put off working out as long as I can. Let's get to work.
Thanks for reading.
Kieron Gillen
London
12.1.2017