058: my hell is now empty.
Hullo.
Today's work has been entirely derailed, because as well as having three comics out (and my work-process always gets a bit off when there's a lot of issues out, due to puppishly responding to people's take on it) the NME has also closed down print publication. So inevitably expect a little download about that below.
Contents!
Shoppity!
The Adversary
Moving Into 92
Links
Byeeeee!
****
It's one of those big weeks, with all three of the ongoings I'm writing being out. Firstly...
The start of MOTHERING INVENTION, which is the first half of the final year of WicDiv. As in, the last twelve issues of the main series, plus what's probably going to be a couple of specials. It'll be coming to an end in mid-2019, just in time for us all to prepare to live our Cyberpunk 2020 dreams.
This arc is... oh, let's save it. As the name suggests, it's Ananke-centric, but you should see how we're laying it out.
And Star Wars 44, the start of MUTINY ON MON CALA, the new arc of Star Wars. It's quite a cute quiet-crossover we're doing with Darth Vader. We both were thinking about Mon Cala stories, and we realised that I was basically doing the 20-years-later take on what Charles is doing over on Vader. He's doing Mon Cala being crushed. I'm doing its rebellion. As such, there's lots of soft connective tissue between the two, without stopping them working as their own stories.
Also, I get to write Admiral Ackbar, which is a lot of fun, if mainly involving trying ways to avoid writing “it's a trap” whenever someone takes them by surprise.
Finally, Uber Invasion 12. Our first time back to spend any proper time in Germany, and things continue to be fucking horrible. Also, a key character reveal which was set up in issue zero, which means it's been in my head since 2008. An entire decade before I got to share a twist. That's almost George-R-R-Martian. Almost.
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The NME is to cease publication of its print edition.
This is real end-of-an-era stuff. This is the sort of thing I could have probably got a whole arc out of if I was still doing Phonogram, and the news prompted all manner of outpourings. Including me. That's just one thread. There's multiple ones. It's huge.
Inevitably, this is going to be as much ME as NME.
I hated the NME, but that's not the point. I hated the NME and bought it every week, and read it from cover to cover, and argued with its writers on finer points in my head for years. It was there, and if you moved in a certain space, you inevitably defined yourself with it, in opposition to it.
While it had eras of being otherwise, in my teens, it was the more conventional indie, the more blokey, the more sober of the two indie papers. My heart belonged to the Melody Maker, and the difference could be basically boiled down to “The Melody Maker writers used the word 'I'.”
For most of my late teens and early twenties, I wanted to be a music writer. I worked at it. When I was in the position I felt capable, the Melody Maker had already transformed into an attempt at an Indie Smash Hits approach (which was bad as it was a bad, cynical attempt at it rather than any particular problem with the concept). But the NME carried on, NME-ing as always.
I applied to work there upon leaving University, and somehow bluffed my way to the interview stage for the site editor job. The interview ended with me asking the wage, them telling me, and me realising I was never going to get the job with my experience. Its starting wage was higher than any wage I later earned as a journalist. Later, I covered the reading Festival for NME.com, and I was basically said that if I wanted work, I should chase it, as I was good enough.
I was good enough. I'd given years to have those words apply to me. I walked away to a Flaming Lips performance, and felt like I had wings attached to feet, like some kind of Belle & Sebastian-esque take on Namor.
I woke up the morning after in a tent backstage, squinted and thought “But I don't want to work for the NME!”
I was already working as a games journalist then, and after looking at my talents, realised I would do better in writing about games. I think I would have been a mediocre music writer – perhaps a little better than mediocre, but not as good as the people I wanted to be. Conversely, over in Games, with a bag full of stolen music-press tricks, I was basically Nick Kent.
I let my music writing ferment, and in 2006, it came out as Phonogram. There's two covens referenced in that. One is the coven Kohl's in, based around Careless Talk Costs Lives and Plan B, the music mags I was writing for at the time. The other is a mysterious monolith referred only to as The Adversary.
Adversary, Enemy. Enemy, NME.
We come back to the beginning – it doesn't matter the NME was the only organ I considered necessary for inclusion in the cosmology of my fever dream of a universe, as if Sandman was made solely from fading music mag clippings.
There's a third time I almost ended up working for them – after Phonogram we talked to the editor of the NME about developing a comic strip for them. We considered it, but let it die on the vine. The actual real thing? I didn't feel I was the guy to write a weekly strip in a music paper any more. I wasn't willing to be in gigs every night. Still, much like the time I was asked if I wanted to edit PC Zone, it's an interesting alternate history I do occasionally wonder what it would have been like.
In short: I didn't pursue the job as I thought I'd do it badly. I respected the NME too much for that.
It was the NME. The narcissism of small differences made them the Enemy, but that made them important, and in their way, essential.
And, my friend Abigail Brady said on twitter, no-one ever wrote songs that namechecked the Maker.
(Except the Kooks, and that says everything, right?)
Thoughts are with anyone who's lost their job through this. Working on a magazine is stressful at the best of times, and this is always the opposite of that. When I was working at PC Gamer at Future Publishing, there were multiple times the company was clearly in bad straights. We ended up in a club the night before everyone knew an axe was going to fall. The DJ played the Sex Pistol's God Save The Queen. We jumped around in cathartic glee shouting NO FUTURE! NO FUTURE! NO FUTURE FOR ME! Me being me, I'm sure I recognised the lyric when it hit. “I use the NME” sneers Rotten. I can imagine myself thinking, on a magazine in pain, that the NME was Immortal. And it is. But, as a hack once wrote, just because you're immortal doesn't mean you live forever.
It'll be missed. To return to Sandman reference, my hell is now empty. I hope Lucifer is happy, wherever he ends up.
*****
Chatting to the artist of Spangly New Thing about about fashion in a scene led to me asking twitter what, if they were a teenager in 1991, they would be wearing. The thread is a joy of random stuff, including adorable photos.
When looking for 1991 eras of photos of myself, I found this shot of Jamie, Ray Fawkes and myself eating an ice-cream.
I believe this is five minutes before (or five minutes after) we had the conversation which directly inspired Spangly New Thing.
As you may guess by the above, we've reached the stage where it's tempted to just start putting art teasers online but that would give away who the artist is, which would be a shame. But we're now in completely finished pages, animated character process sketches and me frantically showing close friends them stage, which is painful.
****
It's been a week for Kickstarters. Karen Rubins' Comic Turns comics-panel-meets-card-based-boardgame kickstarter is under way, and looks delightful. I've liked Karen's work for years, but had no idea she was interested in this kind of thing until now. Go nose!
Equally, Joe Glass is running a kickstarter for an anthology issue of the long-running The Pride, Britain's premier queer superhero team comic. Go have a nose, as there's some excellent talent involved.
I've only just heard this. The South Will Never Rise Again by Des Demonas. It's a relentless swagger of Mysterions-meets-Fall garage rumble which I love from the opening, but then at 2:16 after a string of repeating the title, the organ hits the high note and there's the most pefectly timed “Ha Ha!” and it becomes godlike.
****
WicDiv 35 still going to bed – we're a few days late on colouring, but we should still be good for the release. WicDiv 36 with Jamie, causing the level of sighs and despair as I knew it would. Star Wars 49 being hammered out as we speak, which involves serving up my finest Ackbar. And then... back around to Uber? I think so. Then To WicDiv 37, which I can feel emerging from my skin. Life!
The big news for 24 Panels was that we announced that Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbe have said they'll do a strip for the anthology. Details here.
Byeeeeee!
Kieron Gillen
London
7.3.2018