105: mumbling inaudibly at a hyperspeed thrum
Hullo.
It’s the sort of week that even just managing to finish my taxes fails to lift my mood above an autumnal day. There’s a lot of time passing going on.
Contents!
Finish Wars
That’s All We’ve Got
Bradford
Quinns Thief Guild Mistake
Byyyyeeee!!!
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Issue 67, where Angel helps me end my run on the book, and close out my time in the Marvel Universe. Let’s give Gerald Parel applause for the atmospheric covers – I love this kind of big symbolic imagery kind of thing, and Gerald has nailed it.
(I’m even managing to resist “In the final episode of my Star Wars run, Luke finds a novel way to open a Terry’s Chocolate Orange” joke. Mostly.)
Preview here. This, as per usual in my runs, tries to tieup the thirty-odd issues into a singular aesthetic entity. As in, a novel. Or in the case of Star Wars, a big movie. There is explosions, and at least one action sequence which is Angel and me going berserkly high-concept Star Wars set-piece. But the real thing for me, is getting to write the people. They’ve been great to be with. Writing Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, Threepio and R2 is as delightful as you’d hope it is.
It’s also the last Work For Hire I’m presently doing. So end of an era in three ways.
It’s been fun to do, but also fun to be done. Thanks for reading. Onwards.
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Yesterday was the 5 year anniversary of the release of the Wicked + the Divine. It crept up on me.
I suspect there’s an alternate universe where WicDiv sets the life length to five years, is called five years and has 5 Years as the theme tune.
I actually joke that it could still be the theme tune, but you just do the credits with Bowie hammering out this John the Baptist piece of prophecising of the doom to come. 5 YEARS! THAT’S ALL WE’VE GOT! FIVE YEARS! and then have a needle-scratch near the end, and drop a title card saying ACTUALLY, IT’S ONLY TWO.
They’re doing a fancy oversized hardback of the Peter Cannon run, which looks nice. I believe they’re including my pitch for it in there, though I also suspect it’ll be edited. I have a mouth on me. Have a nose at the link for more quotes. I finally actually say it’s my favourite superhero comic I’ve ever been involved with.
Anyway – out September, so speak to your retailer if you want one.
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More closely, I’m at the Bradford Literature Festival on June 30th, talking DIE amongst other things. You can get tickets here.
DIE’s trade been out for a couple of weeks now, and I’m coming down and looking around and generally acting like Mole at the start of Wind in the Willows. I will inevitably be dragged into an adventure by Toad.
A couple of pieces on DIE which may be interesting.
Firstly, Quinns of Shut up and Sit Down interviewed me. Quinns is a friend of long standing, so we’re riffing off each other, talking personal history and theory. Also, a few My RPG Session stories. Here’s a bit…
Quinns: Did a DM ever make you suffer in the ’90s? Didn’t you enjoy it, a little bit?
Kieron: I can’t remember enjoying it. Actual suffering of players is more a sign of incompetence than brilliance. Occasionally of actual sadism. It’s a fundamental lack of interest in the experience of the players. As such, any time I think of what you’re asking, I don’t have anything positive. It’s normally a “I will not be playing with this GM again” moment.
For example, the Rolemaster GM I once played with. We were exploring a castle. That’s what we did all afternoon, room by room. We never found anything in that castle. Anything at all. It took literally all afternoon. Four hours, at least. On the bus home me and the other newest player just glanced at each other in horror. What was that? We immediately set up our own group, because F No.
Quinns: I’m cracking up at my desk over here. Holy crap, that’s funny.
Kieron: It was like meeting an alien species who had entirely different motivations than ours.
Also here’s a fascinating long and personal piece about someone’s journey through and away from D&D, and how DIE hit him. There’s one bit in the middle which will hit you like an unexpected trap in a dungeon. I winced.
In passing: folks in non-traditional comics press who have an interest in talking about DIE, or the RPG revival generally, drop me a line. Doing so much with the Beta has meant I’ve done less hype than I’d normally done.
I managed to get the document for PROJECT MILLIONAIRE SWEEPER. This week is mainly writing Once & Future 4, and doing a bunch of meetings for PROJECT PRIVATE BUKOWSKI. This involves me talking on the phone, a task which isn’t exactly my forte. Mumbling inaudibly at a hyperspeed thrum. That’s my thing.
I need to start angling my reading back towards DIE research, as Stephanie is making her way through issue 8 at speed, meaning I need issue 9 nailed down. It’s going to be one of the weird ones in the arc – they’re deeply personal stories for the characters, but this one serves another master as well. Heh. No pun intended, but it works. This also means I need to start nailing down the third arc’s exact structure rather than the high concept.
On the bright side, the aforementioned stepping into the light has given me a few inches of spare brain space, so I’ve started running a game of Spire. It’s an RPG of Dark Elf revolutionaries trying to rise up against their High Elf oppressors in a mile-high edifice. I was suspecting I’d lean it to the pulp end of the spectrum – that I’d tagged its theme tune as Rage Against the Machines’ Know Your Enemy says a lot. Except within a half hour of starting, I’m playing a Dark Elf in palliative care, slowing dying after High Elf art-surgery has gone horribly wrong, speaking in a whisper, making a pained noise any time I turn my head. This isn’t exactly the storming the barricades I was thinking of, but it’s certainly interesting.
The other thing that defines this week is the coming weekend, which is one of the defining “things” in the social calendar for my friends. It may involve a murder mystery evening. There may be costume photos next time.
Hmm.
Kieron Gillen
London
19.5.2019