105: the characters are the dungeons
Hullo.
My body, having failed to make a script emerge from me, made do with making pus emerge in a tiny red hill on my nose. But the script is done, and so this will be a relatively short one, because (in the idiom of Americans-writing-Hellblazer) I’m Going To The Bloody Boozer.
Contents!
Comics Which Are Out That I Have Worked On
Endgames
Incepting
Sniff
Design
Byyyyeeee!!!
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And issue 5 of DIE, which ends the first arc. The always astounding David Mack joins us as the alt cover. Clearly, there’s a lot more in the backmatter, as always, but these sort of things are fun. The first arc is the first movement of something, so we move the last few pieces, and set the dominoes falling. The series direction, if not the specifics, is perhaps clear by the end. It’s also one of the most astounding issues Stephanie has ever done. After the quietness in the pub, we can turn the volume up.
Preview here. You can find digital links here.
And Star Wars reaches issue 64, making it really hard to google up reviews because of Nintendo 64 getting in the way. Ah, when will you stop persecuting me, Nintendo 64?
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As the first arc is done, we’re also pulling together the final details for the first DIE collection, Fantasy Heartbreaker. As Stephanie is an impressive perfectionist, she insisted that rather than using design work on the interstitial pages, she’d rather draw some new pencil portraits of the cast as teenagers.
Here’s Ash and Sol.
I love this so.
Jamie’s done a test print for the Previews cover, which has turned out lovely.
Watch his twitter in case he goes further. Clearly, I’ll mention too. Matt is also getting sentimental. Here’s his folder structure for working on WicDiv.,..
…which is more issues than anything else. Cripes.
Expect more of this Last Episode Of A Long Running Sitccom When It Gets Ludicrously Sentimental nonsense in the coming months.
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Danger! Danger! Warren is blogging about comics again.
The writer notes for Peter Cannon: Thunder 3 went online, which is basically me worrying whether calling it The Mark Millar issue will be taken as shade or not. This went down very well, especially in the people who really got what we were shooting for, which is gratifying. It’s a weird, delightful superhero comic, and only getting more so. I was delighted to see Eric Stephenson at Image be kind about it when writing about Comix Experiences’ 30th birthday.
I recommended Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard’s excellent PETER CANNON: THUNDERBOLT along the way, and encouraged Brian and a couple other shops to order up on that book since every issue up through #3 seems to have quickly vanished from the shelves of every shop I’ve visited recently.
I clearly follow this advice. It’s going to make a nice trade.
Also, happy birthday Comix Experience. 30 years! Cripes.
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I’ve reached a strange and unfamiliar place in my workload.
I’ve been working this weekend, turning around DIE 7 for Stephanie. It’s with Chrissy now, who’ll be proofing it tomorrow, and I’m in the usual position of “Is this good? Will someone tell me if this is good or not?” We’ll see. I was in the shower on Friday thinking about DIE’s structure, and had a moment of insight in what I’m trying to do with it, on a creative level. I’m trying to destabilise myself in several ways, but to what end.
In short: I am deliberately forcing myself to plan less to see what the freedom does.
At the same time, as this is an issue which brings in some of DIE’s wider politics, I was nailing down the last few pieces of the map. We’ve been on one half of the DIE. I’ve known in broad strokes what’s on the other side, but now I’m just finalising the exact details of what’s in what triangle. It is something of a logic puzzle, in a kind of literary version of the “you have a fox, a chicken and some grain, and you have to get them all across the river” puzzle.
In short: I am actually planning much, much more than I have before.
On the creative side, DIE kind of is about the two intersecting. I have much more than I need. The job is playing and exploring these pieces, these characters, and seeing what they tell me. Especially the characters. I am exploring them like nothing else before. As in, literally exploring them. I know what they are, but I’m uncovering them as I dig down. You may have noticed we have yet to have a dungeon in the comic. I suspect the characters are the dungeons.
But that’s not the unfamiliar thing I’m talking about. The unfamiliar thing is that now I’ve handed in this script, I haven’t got a deadline for five or six weeks.
I’ve got scripts to write, and work to do, as always… I just don’t have an artist who will be deeply upset if I don’t get them twenty pages of my usual overwritten nonsense.
I can breathe. The sensation is unfamiliar. I have no idea what I’m going to do.
So, in the next week or two, you hear stories about a death cult emerging in south London in rat masks, chanting to our nameless leader, you’ll know what happened.
Kieron Gillen
London
3.4.2019