065: Dicey Moral Dilemmas
Hullo.
Today's main thing has been watching the sort of memeic shuffle between people who still really like May The 4th as a thing, and people who are bored with it and are trolling by using it to link to another sci-fi franchise, and the new wave of people who are bored of people being bored with it.
I should delete twitter, and possibly humanity. Yes, I just got Thanos in the Buzzfeed Which MU Character Are You Quiz, I have no idea why.
Contents!
Out and Semi-Out
Vote
Delays
FCBD
Links
Media
Byeeeee!
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Two comics are out, kinda. Star Wars 47 is the turn of the story arc of MUTINY ON MON CALA and we segue from something that's been fun and games into something that's increasingly not. I'll remember the issue mainly as me actually giving Threepio a starring role. He's a protocol droid? Let's do some protocol. Basically, Threepio is Gary from VEEP from an issue, and we had a lovely time.
Also out is Uber 13. Abstractly. I've had people ask me questions about what happens in it, so I presume it's in some shops, but it's not out digitally and clearly hasn't reached all shots (because it's not in my own shop either). So probably best to give your local shop a call before you make a special trip if you are hungry for the usual awful.
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We had a surprise this week – The Wicked + The Divine picked up a nomination for Best Continuing Comic in the Eisners, against Black Hammer, Giant Days, Hawkeye and Monstress. It was well timed, as The Issue That Never Ends was going through its last few painful days and it felt a little like (as C put it) the Universe stroking our hair a little and telling us it was okay.
I'm not being coy with the surprise, by the way. Unless a book wins earlier in its run, it's unusual to pop back up three years in. A second Eisner nomination is pretty astounding, especially in the company of a bunch of books we adore.
Best of all though, Clayton has been nominated for Best Letterer too, something he absolutely deserves. Last year was our battle fry of EISNER FOR MATT WILSON, and this time it's EISNER FOR CLAYTON COWLES. Comics professionals can vote online, and we encourage you to do so. In terms of books he's been signalled out for, Clayton has been lettering Bitch Planet, Redlands, Black Bolt and Spider-Gwen, and that's the tip of a lettering ice-berg. He's a hero, as much as I'm worried that if we give him a heavy award he may use it to murder me in revenge for some horribly overwritten script, it'd be awesome for him to win. If you're a pro, stuff is here.
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Talking about the ISSUE THAT NEVER ENDED, we're now in a place where we can talk about release dates. Basically, we were hoping it could only be delayed by a week, but issue 36 is actually going to be delayed by two. This will push the release date of 37 back by a week, assuming that there's no further delays. If this holds, issue 38 should be back on schedule.
Assuming that all of the above happens...
WicDIv 36: 16th May
WicDiv 37: 13th June.
WicDiv 38: 11th July
… but we'll keep you updated.
What happened? A mixture of personal issues and the simple fact the issue was about twice as much work as any normal issue. The feedback we've had so far has been pretty startling, so we hope it'll be worthwhile.
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It's Free Comic Book Day. Jamie and me are doing a signing at GOSH from 3-4, and there's other delightful events throughout the day. Come along! Say Hi! If you're not in the area, you can check if a participating store is in your area. Always worth remembering that while there's a bunch of free comics, they're not actually free to the shop. If you have the money, it's always worth buying something in the trip, before it returns to standard Fee Comic Book Day on the Sunday.
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I'll be appearing for signings and panels at the London Film & Comic Con. It's on July 27-29th, but I suspect I'll only be ther on the Saturday.
Ex-Titan Titan Tara Ferguson has just announced her independent comics marketing company. This is good news, I think, and a sign of the times.
Si and I were interviewed by the excellent Bria about all things Star Wars for the main Star Wars site. This was a lot of free-wheeling fun, and flips around to us interviewing Bria at one point. Really, as Si takes over the reigns fully and I move into a more advisory capacity. It's a great time to take stock of the character. I'm proud of her, a Disaster Lesbian in a Galaxy Far, Far Away.
I've still got I, Tonya going around my head, and this article on its use of camp was useful for me. Of the complaints at the movie, there's genuinely two strands. One who think it's too sympathetic to her and absolves her of the possibility of guilt, which I can understand though not agree. The other that argues which it's laughing at Tonja Harding, which is simply something which I cannot comprehend. This article got me thinking on some angles on that, where the gap is, and the use of camp in my own work.
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Media consumption this week?
I finished The Book Of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch. I just made the mistake of googling to get the link, and saw its Good Reads page, its surprisingly low score and clicked in to see what people were saying. Sufficing, it's divisive. Oddly enough, that seems thematically resonant with the Book of Joan. Set after apocalypse, with a new art of body-poetry born of grafts and tattoos, we discover the resistance and the woman who starts to use her body to chart the history of the messiah/anti-christ who brought them there. And that's basically in the first chapter, before moving with a berserk velocity ever onwards. Feminist, environmentalist, philosophical, gloriously confrontational, fascinatingly irritating, bleakly beautiful and with tableau of body-horror that had even my baptised-by-Iain M Banks loving self squirming, I was all over this, even when I disagreed with it, which was often.
I also saw Avengers: Infinity War. I would make a joke about being impressed at how much David Tennent worked out to be this new, bigger purple man, but that's spoiled by Jessica Jones not painting him purple, so I'll just leave it carefully to one side. I'm late to the takes of hotness, so I haven't much to add – it's a fascinating thing that I can't quite believes exists on the big screen. It consists almost solely of fight scenes, brief comedy sketches and Dicey Moral Dilemmas that you could pull out of a Tell Tale Videogame. Yet it makes it work, and when it's fundamentally a villain protagonist story, that's something else. We will never see its like again, except perhaps next year. It's an interesting time.
For those who followed my rambling last week, I decided to actually try and run Blades In the Dark for my group of basically entirely newbies, and it worked beautifully. The Dark Project meets Peaky Blinders meets the Wire of it requires buy in, and the players certainly did, going instantly darker than I was expecting. I'll probably write more about this mechanics and how it's going when I go a little further, but it's a hell of a game. Its signature mechanic is the flashback system (where rather than planning a caper in advance you do it retroactively during play, to keep momentum) is the easiest to describe, it's a fascinating interconnected machine.
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Work? Basically finishing off WicDiv 1373, which has gone through the TEAM WICDIV! Editorial process and is now with the artist. The general response is What Is Wrong With Me? Which is pretty much as intended. It's equally as horrible as 455, but coming from a completely different direction. Its main influences as Ken Russell' The Devils, Joan of Arc, Carrie and the tiny fragments of Black Narcissus that I've actually seen. It's also the last of the WicDiv historical specials, which was a strange thing to realise. This is one of the first of the lasts of WicDiv, but they'll build up over the time.
(It's worth noting that there is another special, but it's not a historical one. It's more akin to the Annual, except also completely different from that. You'll see soon enough.)
I've also been on Uber 17, which I'll be completing over the weekend, as I've kept on being distracted by little research holes. I am mainly fascinated by how many bunkers Emperor Hirohito had, and how many he never actually used.
Right – let's get this out and get back to work.
Byeeeeee!
Kieron Gillen
London
4.5.2018