302: Give us magpies a bit of shiny
Hullo.
TPF21322
TPF5
Issue 2 For Joy
newcomics
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As mentioned last time, the remainder of The Power Fantasy #2's print run should reach the shelves this week, along with the third (count 'em!)* printing of issue 1. Buy ‘em!
After initial yays I reported last time, response to issue 2 continued to be great. In fact, we sold out instantly and had to make available a second printing and Caspar and Rian did a remixed cover...
...which will be available in a standard format and a foil one too, as we figured we kinda liked how the third printing alt looked. Give us magpies a bit of shiny, and we can't control ourselves.
The orders for that cut off on Monday, but should be in shops on October 16 – the same day as the Power Fantasy #3. Hurrah!
It's available form all fine comic shops and digitally (US/UK/CA)
November Solicits for Image are out, including The Power Fantasy #5
POWER FANTASY #5
OCT240512 - CVR A WIJNGAARD (MR)
OCT240513 – POWER FANTASY #5 CVR B ECKMAN-LAWN (MR)
OCT240514 – POWER FANTASY #5 CVR C 50 COPY INCV (MR)
(W) Kieron Gillen (A / CA) Caspar Wijngaard
End of Story Arc. They call aging punk Jacky Magus a sellout, just because he's betrayed his principles. Jacky Magus rolls his eyes. Oh, you sweet naive things. He hasn't even begun to sell out yet. As the first arc of The Power Fantasy ends, we discover exactly what what the world's worth.
We're joined by Alex Eckman-Lawn for a wonderful Etienne variant and another in Rian's florescent set of headshots.
The solicits say it'll be out December 4th, but with the printer mishaps along the way, it'll be nudged back to December 15th.
Still - end of the arc, wrapped up by the end of the year, which I always like as a general stance.
Jamie McKelvie needs no introduction to comic fans, and especially you lot. Since the Wicked + the Divine ended, he's been working on various smaller projects – but One For Sorrow is his return to larger creator owned work, writing for himself in an extended story for the first time since 2007's Suburban Glamour.
I describe ONE FOR SORROW from DSTLRY as a conversation between V for Vendetta and Penny Dreadful - a supernatural period procedural circling around a mysterious masked force. If you like our stuff, you'll like it. More so – I think if you like, my stuff you'll like it. It's Jamie, but it's also a plotted machine with a lot of structural fun. And if you don't like my stuff, you'll like it, as Jamie is free of my bullshit. It's also stupendously beautiful, but you know that, because of Jamie Fucking McKelvie.
And so, with pre-order cut offs looming, it'd be a good time to talk to him about it...
I suspect if we grabbed a bunch of random Jamie McKelvie fans "Period novel" may be quite low down what they'd expect from you. What made you gravitate towards there? What do you love about the setting?
I'm like a shark. If I stay still, I die. Also I have a big pointy fin on my back.
I go where the stories take me! I don't know if it's harmful to my career to not stick to one lane - probably much less in comics than prose, as readers of non-superhero comics often seem happier to follow creators from genre to genre. But I like all sorts of stuff, so I want to make all sorts of stuff.
As you know, this particular story had its origin in my character for the Blades in the Dark campaign you ran a couple of years back. Only the bare bones of that remain in ONE FOR SORROW, but the facts at the core of the story just wouldn't work in a London any later than the early 20th century. The other option would be to shove it into a dystopian future, which I considered, but ultimately it rang false. It's a great period for a story, as the Victorian era gives way to the Edwardian, and there are huge shifts in every part of society. It's also a period when the revival of gothic fiction was in full swing - Dracula is only a couple of years old, as is The Turning Of The Screw. With the supernatural elements of OFS, it just felt right.
The opportunities around costuming and design were also a plus, as much of a challenge as they were to research and then draw. I don;t like to make things easy for myself.
How are you finding the DSTLRY format? Double-sized issues with larger pages. How has that changed your storytelling beats? I'm aware that you as a writer tends to use higher panel counts than many writers, so was this more comfortable for you - or have you pushed it even further?
One interesting element is that if you want to go for that dramatic final page that gets people eager to read #2, as I did here, that comes after 45 pages instead of 19. Not that I would ever want to build an issue solely around that cliffhanger, but you're aware you have to hold the audience's attention for longer before that OMG moment. And also, with a 3 issue series, that's the equivalent of it happening at the end of issue 2, of a 6 issue mini. It does warp the shape of a story, or at least requires you to approach it a bit differently.
I do write more panels per page than typical, which might seem odd for someone who is also an artist? But I dunno. I've always been about what's best for the story, not what might sell best in the originals aftermarket (I'm all digital these days, so I don't have any originals to sell anyway). I tend to like higher panel counts. I guess the current mainstream standard for lower panel counts began in the Decompression period, and while it's certainly possible to make satisfying use of that, I also know I can often feel like a 20 pages comic doesn't give me enough... I don't want to say "value for money", necessarily, because I don't want to equate quantity with quality. But you know what I mean? A lot of the classics, even in the superhero genre, regularly used 9, 10, 11 panels a page. Sometimes more! It does take an artist who knows how to handle that. I know I can, so I'm happy to write it for myself.
DSTLRY pages are European sized, so significantly wider and a bit taller than US. This does give you more room to play with - something you can see in French comics especially, where panel counts can be high. And then there's contrast - if every page is a splash page, then no page is a splash page, to paraphrase Syndrome. If the pages before a splash are relatively dense, then when the splash hits, it really hits.
The real challenge for density, actually, was Edwardian use of language, both written and speech. Generally, they didn't like to use one word when twenty would do. There's a bit of a myth that authors like Dickens and Doyle are so long-winded because they were being paid per word, but it's not really true. It's just the style. There's actually quite a few audio recordings still in existence from the period, too, which I spent a lot of time studying to try to get a feel for it all.
So then you've got the problem - how to do you try to capture an authentic representation of that in a modern comic book, where the trend (and sometimes the need!) is to cut things down to the bare minimum? I think I got the balance right, but getting to that stage was demanding.
Throughout our time doing WicDiv, you were talking about how you felt the firm limitations on the book in terms of your style. You couldn't change too much, as it needed an aesthetic coherence. How do you see how your style has changed... and how have you applied it to this?
It's funny, because I was hoping in part to be able to strip back the amount of lines I was drawing while still making it look good, because my hypermobility makes drawing a page take 3-4 times longer than it would normally. Instead I found my art becoming more complex in many ways. I make a lot more use of light and shadow to create form and mood, focus the eye, etc. I don't think it's more realistic, necessarily, but I do think the internal reality of the world in the comic now is stronger. It has more conviction.
I suppose the other major thing is I've become much more confident about colouring myself, instead of taking a page to inks and then handing it to a colourist and saying "hope you can make this work". So I'm not thinking in black and white, I'm thinking about the whole thing. I know much more what needs to be done in the inks, and what can be achieved in the colours, and what's the best choice for either. I place the shadows and highlights as part of the "inking" process, even though they are used in the colouring.
Side note: for ONE FOR SORROW I am joined by my friend Courtney Vokey, in their first comics gig, as co-colourist. They have a background in design, and have a fantastic sense of storytelling and mood already, which is 95% of the job in comics colouring. We're collaborating on the interior pages. I was intending to colour it all myself originally, but I needed some help with the workload, and they've stepped up brilliantly. I expect them to already have been hired on other comics by the time this one is over.
What are you loving about a writer? If I've done my math right, this is... somewhere between your 10 and 20th comic. What are you discovering about yourself? What do you love about how approach the page? What are you excited to show people?
I don't love anything about being a writer, it disgusts me that I have fallen to the level of a comics writer. Horrible creatures, every one of them.
Don't worry – you write and draw, so you're actually that higher form of life, a cartoonist.
I'm not the first to say this, but I love the moments when a character veers away from your plans. When you realise "oh, this is who this person is". That happened a few times in this comic - Hooper is one character that it's especially true of. It's coming from inside your brain, of course it is, but it does feel like it's another person saying "actually, I would do this instead".
I also love the satisfaction of knowing something is missing, realising what it is, and then realising how it spills out across the rest of the story and makes it stronger. Obviously I also hate knowing something is missing, and spending hours or days trying to figure out what it is. Luckily Katie West is an incredible editor for bouncing these problems around with (and spotting some I'd missed). But the way it's like a jigsaw puzzle, except you don't already have the pieces to hand, and you have to figure out how they form the right shape to fit into the picture.
I've discovered I love the maths of it, the moving parts, figuring out how much weight and space to assign to things, where to place them, how to make it all fall together towards an end that feels right. The benefit of doing both the writing and drawing is that the decisionmaking there doesn't stop at the script. It continues through every stage. Drawing comics is always partly writing comics, but one brain doing both makes it more fluid.
And I'm excited for people to see all of it! The first issue has a lot to do, and I think it achieves it, and ends in a place that shows where the rest of the series is headed. I'm excited for people to see how we're approaching some of the elements of the book (eg why I'm using JOHN WICK as a reference point), in ways that aren't associated with period books but I think work really well here.
Finally, how dare you leave me, you bastard, you beautiful bastard.
It's just how it had to be. One day you'll understand.
I won't, Jamie. I'm not very bright.
Speak to your retailer by Monday (September 30th) to pre-order One For Sorrow. It's out November 6th.
I finally found the time to start using the #newcomics hashtag again on bluesky with some capsule thoughts of PDFs I've recently read. Here's tweaked versions of them...
I'm lucky enough that Chip shares PUBLIC DOMAIN early, so I've read up to issue 10 (out November). I have a low tolerance of comics about comics, but an infinite love about comics about humans. This is one of the most human books in the direct market, and absolutely hilarious. A+ stuff.
Also have the earlier advance of the first 3 of FML from DeConnick/Lopez before release. The first is great, and it gets better and better. The dual-narrator structure - mother and child - sings, and every issue reveals its not quite what you thought it was. FLCL meets Hopeless Savages? And a lot more? A brilliant, personal, funny book. Pre-order!
It's time. ONE FOR SORROW from DSTLRY is Jamie McKelvie's return to the gothic fray that is comics. Sitting in the Venn diagram between V for Vendetta and Penny Dreadful, this stalks, pounces and demands your attention at knifepoint. Order before September 30th, out Nov 6th.
I'm doing an article on it, so read the whole of ONE HAND/SIX FINGERS's dual-series/one-novel. Ram V/Campbell does the fucked up cop. Watters/Kumar does the fucked up killer. Together, it's a heavily Philip-K-Dick story with a haunting visual language. The collection's out by Xmas.
Talking about Dick influenced - SKIN POLICE from oni by Jordan Thomas and Daniel Gete takes a little of bladerunner and adds to a lot of Cronenberg. It's just good to see what Daniel's up to - tearing flesh, as if we never stopped Uber. I miss you, man. Out Oct 2nd.
THE EXORCISM AT 1600 PENN takes a character-first approach to its horror focus, using the majority of its double-size to establish and set mood. I've loved Del Ray's nervously oppressive line since REDLANDS, and it's really at play here. Out Oct 16
I was ludicrously late to reading my THE BIG BURN issue, as it was out in July, but I enjoyed Henderson/Garbett's Dantean take on Ocean's 11. Garbett's always has a gift for flirty, likeable rogues, so it's ideal material for him to have fun with.
Read an advance of ABSOLUTE BATMAN #1. So much to chew over - but the #1 reason to get it is that Dragota is just doing gods own work in bringing the style and thunder in pure comics. I can't remember the last time I've seen someone kicked in the face harder. Snyder establishes a Working Class Batman while Dragota turns the volume way up. Out Oct 9th.
THE MOON IS FOLLOWING US is Warren Johnson/Rossmo/Spicer's latest joint, and dropped this week. Big fantasy adventure with all the big emotions and bigger kineticism. Also I feel for Johnson - this is the sort of thing which is ludicrously hard to hype without spoiling.
NULLHUNTER by Michael Walsh and Gustaffo Vargas applies Vargas' fleshy-love of violent cyberpunk to a high energy take on the trial of Hercules. If you want a one-liner, the mood is basically Warren Johnson does ODY-C. Out Oct 23rd, still time to pre-order.
When Lemire choses to draw a story himself, it's a safe bet for a quality book. I've the first two issues of MINOR ARCANA, where he does small town supernatural family drama. The Tarot's an overplayed hand, so him finding fresh stuff here is impressive. 2nd issue is especially good.
The new DEAD EYES mini, THE EMPTY FRAMES is powered by a team who know who are the best of making what I think of less Street Level vigilante and more Pub Level vigilante. The thrill of a crime story that knows that capitalism is the real crime. Very glad to see it back. Out now.
I'm reading Sarah Jaffe's From The Ashes at the moment - specifically talking about grieving what we've lost as a process of moving to a future, using her own experiences of grief as a filter on the wider societal experience of it. It's really good, and I suspect I'll write more when I wrap it, but I was reminded I need to link to her recent newsletter Love's Not Work where she chews over the reasons for this book and the previous one, amongst other matters – especially an anger on the desire to excise these things from one's politics.
Rascal's piece on the D&D scene in Iran is one of the best they've published, I think.
M John Harrison on Agency. Harrison is great and one of the greats, but when I read his criticism and theory I also think, “Man, you're standing on a cliff and saying it's great to jump off, which works, because you can fly.”
I hit 300 at the same time as Nick Cave's red hand files. He asked his readers to define what they thought Joy was, and published the lot of them. Scroll down and have an Ozymandian experience of gathering your own meaning from a thousand perspectives glimpsed peripherally.
Dan Watters' newsletter on story structure, and how he applies it to Comics. Specifically, he's someone (due to the nature of the medium in the time he entered it) who had relatively experience writing to a longer form until Lucifer, and is chewing over what it all means. Lots of Pansters vs Plotters.
I was on Batforce Radio to talk about The Power Fantasy and everything else.
Autumn is saying hello. I'm resisting putting on the heater in the work shed.
That sort of sentence which says where my head is, in terms of writing today. As in, I don't really want to do it and I'm cold. It's all cold. There's things I feel I should write about, but “should” is terrible motivation. The world is terrible, and will be terrible after I carve out words to triangulate it. Write to politicians. Protest. Give money. It's a shitshow.
The intense work period extended as it proved that it was just too intense a period, due to all the other demands on my time – so there's some work outstanding there. Thankfully, the person waiting for a script needs more time with the previous one (which I suspected would be true) so I have more space to play with, which led to the first part of the week concentrating on finishing the Hollows scenario, the only thing I was actually late on.
I just handed that in, a couple of days past deadline, which isn't great, but could be worse. Let's see what Chant makes of it. My scenario (or “Hollow” in Hollows' parlance) is THE LABORATORY OF ERASMUS WARD.
The last thing I did was the map. Here is the map.
Er... this will be drawn properly by the artist, I stress. Though I guess Hollows is a Horror game, and this is pretty horrible.
You can still pre-order Hollows here, btw.
After this, I'm onto various Power Fantasy stuff (Issue 4 is sent to image on Monday, so we're sorting out backmatter and similar final details) and back to the videogame. I did get all the stuff I needed to do, but I've a few other jobs to attack. Thankfully, it being the same structure as the last load, I know exactly how long it should take me – so, if I don't get distracted, it should be wrapped and over by Friday.
We've also sold the house, surveys and chains and everything else pending. As we know where we're going, it's looking increasingly like it's happening, and I will be waving goodbye to London. It's real enough now that I've started thinking what ritual nonsense I'll be doing to bid adieu to the Smoke.
In terms of regular ritual, there was one on Saturday – Al Ewing, Sarah Gordon, Dan Hart and myself threw our quarterly quiet club night, which was the usual giggle. I danced in new shoes and hurt my knees, and loved seeing people. So, yes, it's cold, except when it's not, and for that I'm grateful.
Also, I wrote all this before lunch, which was 1-2 hours later than usual, and it turns out I, for all the autumnal gloom, I was mainly hungry.
Speak soon.
Kieron Gillen
London
25.9.2024
*I smile writing this, as it's been forever since I've done this particular Amiga Power running joke, which – of course – means nothing to all but three of you.