120: I have spent the afternoon walking around the house screaming
Hullo.
A little bit of an upkeep one this time – lots of updates and links, but I realised it’d be a good idea to leaven it all with some preview pages. Also, I’m wondering whether this is the newsletter when I’ll edge over the free limit on this service and have to start paying for it.
I also only just noticed that I went from 113 to 104 in my numbering weeks ago. Even though my actual files are labelled correctly. I am a professional, me.
DIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIE
October
Outside My Room
Inside My Head
Links
Byyyyeeee!!!
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DIE 6 is out this week. I promise it’s not two issues of DIE! DIE! DIE! #2 stapled together.
This is the start of the second arc, SPLIT THE PARTY. I’ll write more about it next time. Suffice to say, it’s blllleeeeaaaak as always.
Oh – here’s a couple of pages of preview for it, just for you lot.
Ooh, you scamp, Sol.
Solicitations for October also came out. Here’s Image’s and our one for DIE 8
DIE #8
WRITER: Kieron Gillen
ARTIST / COVER A: Stephanie Hans
COVER B: Marc SimonettiOCTOBER 02 / 32 pages / FC/ M / $3.99
“SPLIT THE PARTY,” Part Three The endless social whirl of the popular unpopular kids in Angria threatens to ensnare the party. Mistakes have grown in their absence. Have our heroes?
And in Boom’s ones, here’s the one for ONCE & FUTURE 3.
ONCE & FUTURE #3
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Price: $3.99
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Dan Mora
Cover Artist: Dan MoraSynopsis: Gran and Duncan are in a race against time to get back to the Otherworld. The sword in the stone awaits, and he who pulls the sword from the stone becomes King.
There’s also a couple of Public Things in August which you may want to know about.
Firstly, on Wednesday 14th August from 6 – 7pm, I’m doing a launch signing for ONCE & FUTURE at the London Forbidden Planet store. FP are doing an exclusive variant for Once & Future by my old friend David Lafuente. It’s above, and it’s beautiful. Hail him.
Then the next day I’m heading off to Worldcon in Dublin. I’ve never actually done Worldcon before, so I’m both intimidated and excited. I’ve been put on various panels for the show, so if you’re attending, you can see me in all of these…
Where words fail, music speaks’: literary soundtracks
16 Aug 2019, Friday 11:00 - 11:50, ECOCEM Room (CCD)
With the advent of digital music it is easier now than ever for authors to create soundtracks for their writing. Sometimes this is music that inspires the writing process, and sometimes soundtracks are published to enhance the reading experience. Our panel of authors will discuss the ways in which music affects their writing.Autographs: Friday at 13:00
16 Aug 2019, Friday 13:00 - 13:50, Level 4 Foyer (CCD)Kaffeeklatsch: Kieron Gillen
16 Aug 2019, Friday 16:00 - 16:50, Level 3 Foyer (KK/LB) (CCD)Stroll with the stars: Saturday
17 Aug 2019, Saturday 09:00 - 09:50, Ground Floor Foyer (CCD)Window to the soul: a character’s favourite song
17 Aug 2019, Saturday 14:00 - 14:50, Wicklow Room-4 (CCD)
Creators often use a character’s musical choices to show us their inner thoughts and hidden motivations: in Guardians of the Galaxy the music Peter plays is a link to his lost mother, in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Miles’s favourite song places him as a member of Generation Z, and Alex’s callous rendition of ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ in A Clockwork Orange has gone down in infamy. Join our panellists for a walk through our favourite characters’ musical memories.Tabletop RPG as inspiration for creative writing
17 Aug 2019, Saturday 16:00 - 16:50, Wicklow Room-3 (CCD)
Tabletop roleplaying games (RPGs) take us to fantastical new worlds and allow us to explore these places with others; it’s no wonder that they inspire us far beyond the table. In this panel, authors will discuss how games they have run or played in provided inspiration or source material for future creative endeavours.We love Image Comics!
18 Aug 2019, Sunday 10:30 - 11:20, Odeon 2 (Point Square Dublin)
Outside the ‘big two’, Image Comics is the most successful publisher in the USA and arguably has the most diverse range of titles. Once focused on superhero and fantasy titles, Image now has a policy of promoting creator-owned works – with popular titles including Saga, The Walking Dead, Monstress, and The Wicked + The Divine. Our panellists discuss their own projects and work with Image.Where is Ireland in the comics universe?
18 Aug 2019, Sunday 17:00 - 17:50, Wicklow Room-4 (CCD)
Apart from a few stereotypical characters here and there (Shamrock, Judge Joyce, Banshee etc.), Ireland doesn’t seem to have made much of an impact in the comics medium – or has it? Let’s talk about the growth of Irish comics and, we hope, the appearance of more Irish characters overall.
If you see me looking stressed, be kind and gentle. Do not make loud noises, unless the loud noises are Kenickie B-sides, which I always find soothing.
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It’s also been a busy week for DIE RPG stuff. While it’s highly unlikely (i.e. only happening if I pull off a Bill and Ted’s Bogus-Journey-esque time-loop) that I’ll get the Arcana polished up in time for issue 6 dropping, there has been some very heartening things.
Firstly, Shaun Manning wrote up the session of DIE I ran at SDCC for Jody Hauser, Jim Zub, Sam de Leve, Amy Dallen and Shaun himself. You can find it here, and if you want a fairly detailed portrait of how DIE could work, it’s one. There is also at least three funny jokes, which is traditional for DIE, it seems.
If you want to go even deeper, Shaun’s provided me the recording of the session. You download and listen to it here. To stress – this is a recording of a game on a single mike, and not a game which we played with an eye to how it would be to listen to (i.e. there is cross-talk, etc). However, if you want a taste of how I actually run this beast (in a certain compressed and slightly playful mode, anyway) go listen. This was a delight, and I swear, it’s not usually as Meta as this.
Most of all, it was a useful playtest – I’ve written up my notes for it, which will be part of issue 7’s backmatter. My aim was to make a version of DIE which worked within an hour or two. This went to 2:10 and I don’t think anyone else but me could run it at that length. However, it does make a fairly useful blueprint for people trying to write one-session scenarios for DIE. You lose a lot of the fine detail, but it’s still very much A Thing.
Secondly, DIE actually turned up on a couple of my Fave RPG Listening Podcasts. The Gauntlet had a quick chat at the end of their latest (you are also giving me life, etc) and Ken and Robin used DIE as a backbone to explore presentations of RPGs in fictions in one of their always compelling explorations of Stuff, which was fascinating, but also revealed Ken has nosed at the DIE RPG rules, which is petrifying.
Games have been on my mind generally, as well as floating back towards proper DIE rules writing. have been also weirdly considering writing a scenario or a mash up or a hack for something else. The last cool indie RPG hotness was Bluebeard’s Bride. The current cool indie RPG hotness is Trophy. I want to write a mash-up called TROPHY BRIDE, except when I made the joke, I realised exactly how I’d do it and how it could be horrible. So we’ll see.
Ink has relaunched their newsletter (and now website) as The Artful. The first issue is here, which includes a really hefty interview with myself. This is an interview I scanned and thought “this is the sort of one I’d be fine with people reading. I don’t sound like an idiot too much. Or rather, at least I sound like an idiot who knows what kind of idiot he wants to be, which is the most I can hope for.” Go read and sign up.
Multiversity have annotated the latest issue of WicDiv. You can read these before I get around to doing mine, and make you realise I don’t need to do mine, as other people do it better. Also, Alex is on it again.
Comics Beat interviewed me about Once & Future. I’m twitchy around talking the political aspect of the book, as it’s overselling it. As I say in many interviews, you don’t sell Indiana Jones as an anti-fascist book, because if people come to it expecting that, they’ll be disappointed. But a lot of things are in the mix, certainly.
ComicBook have done their list of the best comics of the year so far. Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt and DIE are on it, which is lovely. I have spent the afternoon walking around the house screaming I AM THE GREATEST, but I always do that.
I was basically torn between listening between Pink’s Trouble on repeat and writing DIE 10 this week. Gentle prodding on twitter led to me doing a fast and dirty 2002-2004 era Rebellious-but-not-Really girl pop playlist. This caused an hour of insomnia on Tuesday night due to almost every one of them getting stuck in my head.
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This is much longer than a quick newsletter should be. Graphomania, my old friend, etc.
(The Brontes termed their teenage obsession with word generation as Scriblomania, which is a phrase I don’t think I got into issue 9 of DIE, but I find delightful.)
The week has been trying to catch up with what was happening when I was away. The inbox isn’t quite tamed, but closer. DIE 10 should be wrapped up shortly – I’ve got a first draft, which I’ll polish tomorrow. Stephanie is finishing 9 and doing final tweaks on the colours for 7, which goes off to Image on Monday. Various bits and pieces – a few tweaks so Dan can start on Once & Future 4, Ludocrats notes for the pencils for issue 2, and a couple of things involving PROJECT PRIVATE BUKOWSKI and PROJECT MILLIONAIRE SWEEPER. All the latter are going to extend to next week – Jim is doing his work on Ludocrats 3, which I’ll move in and do a script pass on, and as we have the inked issue 1 I should do a lettering pass for it. I should write a little about how writing Ludocrats works next time, eh?
Right. That’ll do. I have friends to meet. As in, hang out with. I’ve met them before. I’ve left this room. I know people. They’re the ones with the faces and the (er) other stuff which people are made of, stop pressuring me, you’re not my mum.
(Exception: my mum, who is my mum. Hi mum, etc.)
Kieron Gillen
London
1.8.2019