112: conversations in pub toilets
Hullo.
I woke up this morning, having finally escaped DIE 8. I am now looking around confused, not quite sure what to do. I’ll do this.
Contents!
Better is a direction
August
Shrewsberry
Revolrevolrevol
Byyyyeeee!!!
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Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt 5 concludes the series. It was always designed short, sharp statement, and it’s exactly that. I understand it’s coming out in a Hardback in September, and should make a lovely collection. My writer notes for it should be popping up over the next week sometimes.
The reviews have been enormously kind – seeing this as the first one was a huge relief in terms of “oh, good, at least one person gets it” and this one made me actually well up, like a British Luvie receiving an Oscar.
I didn’t want to say this publicly, but this mailing list is friends, right? I think this is probably the best superhero series I’ve ever done, which is nice, as it’s the only one I feel I’ve ever done almost entirely on my own terms. I dislike the “me” in that sentence, because the band aspect has been so powerful. Everyone on the team has been fantastic. Now to work out a way to do something else together again, right?
Thanks for reading, and consider getting the trade if you haven’t.
This has also reached the Direct Market. It’s an anthology of stories about experiences at comic cons, both in prose and comics. I collaborated with my old friend Jules Scheele with an oral history of the Thought Bubble dancefloor. Long term readers are likely aware of my tendency to rant and mythologise the evening, and this is a chance to put some of my favourite moments down on paper. It’s a lovely book too, and explores this weirdly unique core part of comic culture.
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Solicits for August!
Once & Future from Boom! First issue!
ONCE & FUTURE #1
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Dan Mora
● When a group of Nationalists use an ancient artifact to bring a villain from Arthurian myth back from the dead to gain power, ex-monster hunter Bridgette McGuire escapes her retirement home and pulls her unsuspecting grandson Duncan, a museum curator, into a world of magic and mysticism to defeat a legendary threat.
● Bestselling writer Kieron Gillen ( The Wicked + The Divine, Star Wars ) and Russ Manning Award-winning artist Dan Mora ( Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Klaus ) explore the mysteries of the past, the complicated truths of our history and the power of family to save the day…especially if that family has secret bunkers of ancient weapons and decades of experience hunting the greatest monsters in Britain’s history!
That seems to sum it up. Here’s some of the preview art. In short, Dan Mota, Tamra Bonvillain and myself, making jaws drop. The reference points should be Indiana Jones, the Mummy and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae.
Okay – I’m being me again with that. Where does Once & Future fit into my 2019 books?
DIE is the weird, sprawling, personal epic. Peter Cannon is my short-sharp state of the nation address. Once & Future is the pure pop thrill.
And you know the bands I like. There’s nothing pure about my pure pop thrills.
Speak to your retailer if you want a copy. I think you’ll like it.
Talking about DIE, it’s also back in August
Solicits are here, but I’ll spare cutting and pasting the text here as there’s mild spoilers and the DIE trade isn’t out until next week. Of course, that means if the trade makes your head explode, it’s not too late to talk to your retailer and jump aboard the chapters here.
Thinking about it, SPLIT THE PARTY is to FANTASY HEARTBREAKER, as FANDEMONIUM is to THE FAUST ACT. That initial kick down the door and introduction is out the way. This is us digging deeper into these broken people and this broken world. That DIE is already working in a more sombre tone probably says so
I’ve taken to describing DIE as “Lord of the Rings as told entirely in conversations in pub toilets” which isn’t even slightly true, but captures a little of the intent.
Oh – the alt cover by Peach Momoko who has done lovely work with Angela and Case. The alt covers we’ve lined up for the second arc are just great. We’re very excited.
I’m at Comics Salopia in Shrewsbury this weekend, which is looking really interesting. It’s almost an Angouleme model con, taking over multiple places, and being highly panel centric.
I’m on a couple of panels. An Image panel at 3-4 on the Saturday and me interviewing Eric Stephenson from 12-1, also on the Saturday. I will clearly using the hour with Eric to pitch him books.
I won’t. It’ll be Image comics, comics and the future, and a lot of bold opinions.
I’ll also be signing in the square on Saturday at some point. Comics!
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As she couldn’t make it, my friend Marta gave me her ticket to see Mike Duncan being interviewed this week. Which was i) lovely for her to do ii) a lovely thing to go and do and iii) oddly well timed, as I wanted to plug Revolutions this week anyway.
(Seeing it live was both fun and strange – as someone who listens to podcasts at 1.25 speed, he sounds much less hyper in real life.)
I came to Duncan’s History of Rome when doing the long research for WicDiv 455. I wanted to have something in my life which gave me a slow chew over the whole Western Rome period. I knew the story I thought I was going to tell, but I wanted to ground it as widely as I could. Of all the resources I used, the History of Rome was the one which gave me the long, slow pan over the thousand years of history. It wasn’t the only source – it may not even be the most directly influential – but in terms of the one which let me take a long walk over terrain, there’s no comparison.
I’ve been following the Revolutions podcast ever since, which is another walk over an expansive bit of terrain. Duncan’s doing histories of political revolutionary insurrections. It’s fascinating stuff. Some are ones I thought I knew quite well, but didn’t. Others were ones which I knew nothing about bar the results, and were simply fascinating. All I learned a lot from, and I suspect you would too. Generally speaking, if one asks for revolution I suggest it’s useful to know how that’s played out previously. In detail. Where they went right, where they went wrong and the energies inside each of them, and how we can recognise the similarities and differences today.
Rome is a go-to metaphor and filter to understand the dominant powers in the world, where they went wrong and their fall. As such, I suspect knowing Rome is of most use to the right. Conversely, I suspect Revolutions of most use to the Left.
Duncan’s just reached The Russian Revolution. Two episodes in, and we’re back with Marx, Engels and the First International. If you don’t want to go back to the start with the English Revolution, this is a very good place to jump on.
He’s also extremely witty without diminishing the subject matter. I should have said this up front, but I was too excited about upcoming Bakunin podcast.
DIE 8 is finally with Stephanie. It was a battle, which is somewhat appropriate given the issue’s general theme. I have emerged from it to a bulging inbox and a bunch of other stuff that’s lagging. As soon as I’ve finished this mail, I’m going to pick one of the fires and start throwing sand on it.
That said, the little bits of research I had to do to get some of the worldbuilding straight has left me deeply excited about issue 9, which is the issue 3 of the second arc. I still have a bunch more reading to do in the next month, but I think I’ve got a genuinely creepy angle on it.
I also had a Ludocrats summit. I’m trying to not talk about Ludocrats much – it’s been so long delayed that we’re basically going to have to restart the public hype train only when we’re ready to solicit it. I’m also not sure if I’ve mentioned David isn’t doing the book now. Alas, he had to drop out. However, the new artist (who we’ll save for the public reannouncement) is about to finish the first issue, which meant it was time to return to actually get the second issue ready.
Ludocrats is co-written with my old partner in gaming crime Jim Rossignol, which is a process of generating stuff together, then I execute into comics, we talk about it a bunch more, and then C hits us with a stick of editing until we return to our caves. However, it’s been a while, so I wasn’t even sure what state the rest of the synopsis and our rough issue 2 were in.
The awful truth: I was dreading that after the long delay I wouldn’t care about it at all, and I’d have to find a way to re-energise myself. Two things happened when Jim and I sat down…
We were instantly delighted by it.
We found issue 2 was actually in a much more complete state than we thought it was. In fact, it could be polished to a satisfactory state in a couple of hours. Phew.
So we sat there, laughing at the us of a few years ago had made, and making new ones. By the end of the day Jim had beat me in a game of Warhammer, and we’d laid the plans for the next step, which is basically me taking apart issue 2 for the last time, and him starting work on our plans for the back matter.
(Remember when Ellis used Moore’s phrase “a real slab of culture?” as a goal for the FELL books. Ludocrats’ aim is to be a real slab of unculture. It’s a lot.)
Anyway – it won’t come out until next year, so there’s plenty of time, but it’s delightful. Terroful and awfulful too, but delightful as well.
That’s a week or two down the line. I have two priorties. Firstly, I have to actually work on the pitch for PROJECT MILLIONAIRE SWEEPER which I’m enormously behind on (yes, PROJECT MILLIONAIRE SWEEPER is a new working title. Goodbye, Shaggy singles as titles, hello Kenickie B-sides as titles). Secondly, we have to get the DIE RPG Beta ready for release next Wednesday. Chrissy is just finishing off the proof-reading of the main manual at the moment, which will be passed back to me for the final additions from the last round of playtesting. Oh – and the Godbinder’s third sheet needs to be filled up with spells.
So yeah – next week, release of DIE: FANTASY HEARTBREAKER and this. It is a time.
Kieron Gillen
London
30.5.2019