278: the long suffering
Hullo.
Espirit
Benetar
Links
Bye
I'm in Seattle, for Emerald City Comic Con. My first US comicon since before Covid. I'm tabling at A-10 in artist's alley (with the long suffering Caspar Wijngaard). I'd show a map of that, but I don't have FTP access on my laptop, so can't upload photos. You know what my maps look like. It wouldn't be any help anyway.
I'm doing a couple of panels, both on Friday.
Spotlight on Kieron Gillen
Fri, Mar 1, 2024 • 11:00 AM - 11:45 AM
Location: Summit • Room 431• ComicsThis is Your Brain on Comics with Chip Zdarsky
Fri, Mar 1, 2024 • 6:45 PM - 7:30 PM
Location: Summit • Room 432 • Pro Programming
In terms of my table time, here's a schedule for you. I've got nothing to sell you, so bring stuff to sign. My usual rules is five items at a time, but you can re-queue.
THURSDAY
10:00-12:00 – Signing at A-10
2:00-3:00 – Signing at A-10
3:30-5:00 – Signing at A-10
FRIDAY
2:00-3:00 – Signing at A-10
3:30-5:00 – Signing at A-10
SATURDAY
10:00-12:00 – Signing at A-10
2:00-3:00 – Signing at A-10
3:30-5:00 – Signing at A-10
SUNDAY
11:00-12:00 – Signing at A-10
2:00-3:00 – Signing at A-10
3:30-5:00 – Signing at A-10
Oh – anyone from the press around? Hit me up. I will have things to talk about.
Pre-orders for the second DIE supplement went live! And as I can't upload photos, I'm going to see if I can illustrate this with a blue-skies link...
@kierongillen.bsky.social on Bluesky
Announced yesterday, here's pre-orders for the second DIE Scenarios book. I'm skeeting this as I think this may be the best way to get an image of this into my newsletter.
I also lobbed up a picklist to demonstrate its tone. I wonder if this will work?
@kierongillen.bsky.social on Bluesky
Here's one of the picklists from my scenario's present draft, which gives you an example of some of the tone. I'm hoping it is both emotional and also funny. [contains quote post or other embedded content]
Anyway – order now for its September release. The first is still in the pre-order stage too.
- I know the editor who's writing the Author's Guide to Traditional Publishing and what they don't know isn't worth writing down. Looking forward to the kickstarter for this, which you can sign up for notifications here.
- Broken Frontier's second piece on the continuing (er) situation with Tales From the Quarantine is impressive in digging into its impact on comics crowdfunding generally.
- I've had this newsletter from Matt Rosenberg saved here for a while, where he writes about The Urgency Of Comics and how we're not really getting the best out of it. I want to write a proper piece, but I think time is going to mean I won't, so I just want to put it in your head. If we're to write the list of things the direct market is actually good at, one of them is what Matt describes. Namely, you can go nothing to art in people's hand so quickly, and there's a feedback loop between the two. Compared to the sluggish movement of book publishing, this is a lot. Why not use it more?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the last week has been a lot. Part of it is just getting ready to be here, and everything that entails. The other half is tying off a whole bunch of work that needs to be done before I go away. After I finish this, I'm doing lunch. But after I do lunch, I plan to get a bunch of comics pages written. There's an outside chance that I manage to do a first draft of all my remaining Marvel work, which would be nice. I think it's a very outside chance now I write that down – perhaps all my remaining Krakoa-era work would be a safer bet. But at the least, Powers of X 5 is done and so is X-men Forever 4. I just got the first pages from rotPoX 5, and they're as delirious as one would hope.
But while there's a few things carrying on, I'm also aware that march will be very different to February.
Especially fun is that Clayton is going through and lettering all of the OGN. It's just shy of 100 pages, so it'l take a while, but we're very close to being able to read the whole thing. Stephanie is playing around with ideas for covers, which is a tricky beast – a book cover isn't a comic cover. I'm also aware that when she's finished, and had a little time to recover, I need to write her something else.
March, eh?
Right – I can feel jetlag kicking in, so I'm going to sign off before I start writing even more nonsensical stuff than usual.
Speak soon.
Kieron Gillen
London
28.2.2024