036: Smart But Not As Smart As You Hope You Are
Hullo.
I still need to finish off Star Wars 39 today, so this will be more of a Just The Facts one than usual... except I actually wrote a short essay during the week, which keeps the Plugging Vs HeadThinks at least vaguely on an even keel.
Contents!
Goth
Archeologist
Pop
Meta
Byeeeeeeeeeee!
****
The Wicked + The Divine 30 is out, the second episode of Imperial Phase, and where we basically say “Dionysus sits in the dark for an issue” and are not joking. It's pretty serious, slow moving, with only occasional rays of light piercing the gloom. Preview here! Hope you find it interesting.
We're putting Issue 31 to bed as we speak, which is pretty startling, and a more upbeat approach. Jamie's been posting some non-spoilery panels, which I'll include here.
Baal, with Jamie's last minute decision to do deep shadows which looks great.
Yes, I did go “are you sure?” when I saw the leggings, and made sure there was a beat she could change them before she walked into the hall of mirrors I was planning.
In other notes, I've managed to finally wrestle down what we're doing for the December issue, and now just have to pull it together. It's looking to be an unusual one, but also a more playful one than WicDiv's usual austere use of the word “unusual.” If it turns out right, it'll be our seasonal gift to everyone for getting through Imperial Phase.
****
Aphra 11 out. Preview here.
****
I woke up last Thursday with the sudden urge to listen to Electric Six's Pro-STD anthem Infected Girls. Not being one to deny myself my random cravings of pop consumption, I did. After chaining it five or six times, which basically what I do instead of smoking, it got me thinking about the Electric Six, and specifically the one time I actually saw them live.
I liked them, but I wasn't a fan. No-one was a fan. That was the problem.
This was at Reading, between the first and second album. They'd become popular off the back off two singles – Gay Bar especially becoming unavoidable. Not being complete idiots, they'd saved it for the end of the set. The second it finished, people started streaming from the tent. En masse. However, being a certain kind of idiot they hadn't played Gay Bar last. Playing it last would have spared the very public humiliation of seeing exactly what a crowd thinks of you. That's one thing at the end of a career, when you realise that single was your one moment, and you huddle around that still-glowing ember to stay warm for as long as possible. But after your first album, when you hope this is the start of something big, that's a knife. Why would a band do that to themselves?
Their final song was their cover of Queen's Radio Gaga.
I am also not a fan of Queen.
However...
Radio Ga Ga's is a somewhat double-edged hymn to radio and the power in it, and implicitly what radio brings you, both the medium and the message. Relevantly, it works on a long opening build, with that melodramatic rush of climbing intensity, adding more and more necessary weight to every single lyric. So, we start with Freddie (and now Valentine) hailing the medium which brought him the world – the medium he is now speaking to you through, the medium that he's inherited. So, as the crowd thins like overnight alopecia, with so many backs to him, he may as well be singing to himself as he hits the last lines before the chorus.
“You had your time, you had the power
You've yet to have your finest hour.”
When everything before him states clearly that he already has.
I've got a lot of sympathy for the Smart But Not As Smart As You Hope You Are people – fairly obvious being one myself - so Dick Valentine doing the raging against the dying of the light to a crowd of uncaring Reading rock fans is an image which has always stuck with me.
So I share.
***
Oh, I mentioned Journey Into Mystery omnibus last time. Take off the slip, and you'll find this...
Which is something we talked about, and I'm particularly happy to see on the actual book. That's about as perfect as it gets for reasons which are probably spoilery.
***
Rest can wait until next week – where hopefully I'll say a few things about Nine Worlds, and write a little about Spangly New Thing's Artist's response to reading the demo script. Luckily, they like it, or I'd be fucked.
Byeeee, etc.
Kieron Gillen
London
9.8.2017