087: a bag of holding, solely containing nerves.
Hullo.
This week. This week. This week. Suffice to say, this one will lean short. It's been intense for everyone, and it's been intense for all the same reasons for me, plus my own particularly work melodrama. THIS WEEK.
Contents!
DIE-ary entry
My Funny Valentine
Amis
Comps
Cats
Bye!!!
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This is the reason why I'm writing the newsletter today, and also the cause of many of my woes. The coming Monday (12th) is the cut off line for pre-orders for issue 1 of DIE. As in, that's where the print run for the book is set.
Basically, if you're popping into a comic shop to buy comics this week, and have an interest in reading DIE, now is the optimum time to mention it. If you're the sort to pre-order, you can do so. If you want to try to pre-order, here's an explanation. If it's all a bit bewildering, but you buy comics?
Well, just say you're interested when you're buying comics. Something akin to - “Hey, that Stephanie Hans and Kieron Gillen book DIE that's out in December? I'm looking forward to it.” Even without your explicit pre-orders, customer interest is definitely one of the things that affect retailers orders. Just a word, and we'd appreciate it. Stephanie has never done this before, and so is a bag of nerves. I've done it before, and so am a bag of nerves. We are a bag of holding, solely containing nerves.
On the off-chance you've come in late and wondering if why I'm shouting DIE all the time, you can find all the details about it on the site best expressed in our teaser trailer. I've added a bunch of quotes from people who've read the first issue to the site if you don't want to take my word on it. Go nose. Here's one from Rick Remender (and the Deadly Class trailers look amazing, right): “Really couldn’t have enjoyed DIE #1 more than I did. Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans are a powerful merging of talents. Feels like a well-oiled team that’s been working together for years”.
But there's lots more. Multiversity has just published an interview with Stephanie and me about it (with the excellent mistranscription born of my accent where “fantasy” is heard as “fancy”). Also, here's the first early review from the always excellent Elizabeth Sandifer. More will likely be coming in the next week, and so I'll be retweeting 'em.
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Two books out this week. Let's do a couple of pages of previews instead of covers for once...
Firstly, The Wicked + the Divine: The Funnies. Our final special, and our last-day-of-school-fun-and-games one. I write a couple of stories (the above THE WICKED + THE CANINE with Erica Hendersen, plus a short with Jamie) but really this has been a chance to invite a lot of people we love to play with our Universe. Who’s in it? Well, Erica Henderson, Lizz Lunney, Chip Zdarsky, Romesh Ranganathan, Hamish, Julia Madrigal, Hamish Steele, Kitty Curran, Larissa Zageris, Kate Leth and Margaux Saltel. Oh – and Chrissy, Clayton and Dee WicDiv all move more into the spotlight from their usual positions as they Draw, Write and Colour Stuff. Yay!
WicDiv is rarely a fun time, and I hope this is a fun time. We certainly enjoyed doing it, and I hope people don’t kill me for one of my strips. It’s tense, I tell you. And then…
And STAR WARS 56 is the start of a new arc, THE ESCAPE, which takes a different direction after the horror of Hope Dies. Our heroes, on the run, and surviving, and things take a different turn. As Salva has left the book, we’re joined for an issue by Andrea Broccardo who provides this prologue issue for the arc. Angel Unzueta takes over next issue too.
I’ll tell you about the inspiration for this one next time, as I’d rather not spoil it.
*
I’m excited to see this come back into print. Martin Amis writing a whole book about games culture in 1982 is one of those “Wait… did that really happen?” in games culture. Simon Parkin writes around it impeccably, as always.
The 24 Panels comps arrived this morning, the anthology in support of the Grenfell Survivors’ PTSD needs I co-edited. It’s out November 21st , so you’ll be able to get a copy from retailers then. It’s in online book sellers too.
There’s also a launch party planned on December 5th in London, but more details on that as they’re finalised.
*
Our cats have just passed their “two weeks of one room confinement” and have progressed to “two weeks of house confinement stage.” The door has been opened and one cat is clearly petrified by the concept of an external reality and the other shows no interest in it.
They are Bertha Kitt (Bertha) and Immanuel Kat (Manny). They are adorable.
They’re rescue cats. Manny was originally Mashy, and we wanted to push to something similar but more useable. Also, we like Black Books. Bertha was… well, Bertha’s name was a You Can’t Call Anything That! kind of name, and Bertha was what the shelter folks were calling her, so we decided to go with that.
As said, this one is going to short. I haven’t had as busy a week in five years. Putting aside the multiple scripts that I have to hand in (Star Wars 62, DIE 5 and The Wicked + the Divine 41 were due on Monday, Project Oh Carolina was due last Wednesday and the second issue of Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt is due on Monday), DIE 1 and WicDiv 40 had to go to image for prep yesterday and… okay, you don’t need to know most of it. But it’s a lot.
The task which warps everything is basically the final push of DIE before pre-orders. It’s a task which is simultaneously non-essential (as in, if it’s not done, DIE will still happen), utterly paramount above anything else (as in, the initial orders of a book are a primary thing that will define the rest of the book’s life), possibly entirely futile (as in, you have no concrete proof if anything you do makes a damn bit of different… but maybe it does) and entirely endless (there’s always another e-mail you could write, another angle you could push). It’s a self-replicating complex of work which will fill every single space of my day, from morning to 5am-awake-and-fretting. It’s fascinating, and intense and I remember last time I did this for WicDiv I was driven into such a gleeful mess that I ended up doing that fumetti comic of myself to at least try and get something useful and creative from this whirlwind of activity.
Still. In the middle of the tornado you take a breath, and the air is still. You think the book is good, and that centres you before the winds catch you and you’re sent spinning away again.
It is a time.
Byeeeeee!
Kieron Gillen
London
7.11.2018