074: Her From Enchanted Meets Lovecraft
Hullo.
I need to write this before cooking. In this case, a Simple Lamb Curry. When I am cooking, I always enter "Simple" into google before whatever thing I want to cook. My life is complicated enough with the weirdo comics.
Contents!
Invention
Bondion
Londonion
Sunlession
Craftion
Dublion
An enjoyable podcast about China
Bye!!!
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Solicits are up for October, including this, beauty. The text
THE WICKED + THE DIVINE Vol 7: MOTHERING INVENTION
In the past: awful stuff. In the present: awful stuff. But, increasingly: answers.
Collects THE WICKED + THE DIVINE #34-39
Which is all true. We list it as 168 pages, but we solicit before we really know how long it's going to be. We basically view the page count as the minimum we are going to give. We're presently trying to decide between 200 pages and 2008 pages at present, which depending how the layout goes.
The next issue is out on August 15th, which is basically our schedule pushing back and aligning. It does mean that the last issue in the arc and the special are basically in the same end of a calendar month.
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Out today are the 007 JAME BOND CASE FILES, which is a collection of the Dynamite James Bond specials, including my own collaboration with Antonio Fuso, SERVICE. It also includes the specials by Jody Houser, Declan Shavley, Ibrahim Moustafa with art by PJ Holden, Jacob Edgar and Ibrahim doing double duty. All beneath a lovely Tula Lotay cover.
This was an oddly tricky story for me to write, in terms of the conceptual engineering to make me care. As in, a lot of story ideas I had made me feel "so what?" Not because they were bad ideas per se, but that straight espionage is so out my wheelhouse. In the end, I found something which leaned into my obsessions, which also gave me the requisite set-piece. I saw James Bond, holding a WW2-era Sten Gun, in the middle of the Imperial War Museum in London. That's a very me Bond image. I can do something with that.
When I had that, the process of scripting was a delight. Any time I've written a genuine icon, the voice is just there. Before writing Wolverine, I always was a little intimidated – so many people have written him, what could I say with him? Except it's not like that at all. You know exactly what Wolverine will say. The same's true with Bond. Bond will say something cold and awful, like if a Maxim gun could speak. I don't think I'll ever do it again, but it was great to do it once.
I'll be looking forward to grabbing a copy of this – I haven't read any of the other stories, and they're all interesting creators.
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London Film & Comic Con is on this weekend. I'm there on Saturday. I'm on a couple of panels, and doing a quick talk as part of their symposium. I think the title I gave Tony was "How to manipulate artists ;"
I should underline the ;).
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I mentioned I did an Officer Quest in Sunless Skies a while back. The update that lets you complete the quest is now live, which means you can go and grab the Incognito Princess (as seen above) and see where her adventures take you.
This was monstrous. Never got paid to do a branching quest-NPC before, and it was a giggle. She's part of the whole Fallen London mythology, but she's a very me Monster. I like her a lot. "Her From Enchanted Meets Lovecraft" is the sentence that's just come to mind, which isn't really what she is, but it's a good sentence, right?
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This just got tweeted at me.
Is it true? Is it not true? Let's wait and find out.
(It's not true. Clearly. Spangly hit a major week, in that the artist finally realised they should invoice for the two issues they've completed so they can have money. Artists are amazing. The first issue has gone out to various people, and the feedback is basically glowing. We're getting close, basically.)
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I did a short tweet thing about a way you can check a comic story you've done is actually clear or not. They were collated here.
The short version is give your comic to someone and ask them to tell you what's happening, panel by panel. Don't interrupt them. Let them tell you the story they think the comic is saying. Then, when it bears no relation to your intent, see if there's anything you can tweak (likely in lettering) to make it clearer, or at least learn the lesson for next time.
This is actually the stage that Spangly New Thing is in at the moment. With first issue, we're basically going over sentence by sentence to ensure everything we wish to impart is there. Not that
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I’ll be over in Dublin on August 5th to celebrate the Big Bang’s Birthday. Details here.
I haven’t been over to the Big Bang for a couple of years, but it’s one of my very favourite shops.
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Just as a quick recommendation, I’ve been working through the BBC’s Chinese Characters podcast, which tries to tell a history of China through 20 figures. It leans heavily on the 20th and 19th century, but does do broad sweeps of other times. If you’ve always wanted to know which order the Dynasties come in, this is a quick and accessible overview.
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This week has been a breath between projects - between arcs on Star Wars, WicDiv and Uber. I did a draft of Spangly New Thing 4, and have written other short stories for anthologies. The problem with short stuff is that you end up not counting it as part of your work schedule, which means you can easily get into a situation where you realise you’ve promised people multiple-scripts worth of short stories. So it’s good to get them mostly clear. Also, I’m now pressing on with an outline for next week for a new thing, whose deadline has dropped on me, and I figure it’s as good a reason to stop procrastinating on it as any.
And now, to the Lamb Curry.
Byyyyyeeee!
Kieron Gillen
London
25.7.2018