309: hypercompetent lightning brain
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TPF4
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The Power Fantasy #4 drops, where after zooming out and looking at the big picture, we have a tight focus on Masumi. That it's a bit of a departure made me a little worried about this issue, but early response from folks who've read it has been pretty amazing. I maybe shouldn't have stressed – this is the issue which is closest to WicDiv. It's about an artist, being depressed and scared, wanting to be understood and how power distorts all that. Was a nightmare to write, in passing – structurally I had to eviscerate and rework it a couple of times, but I think it was worth it.
There's two alt covers – from Chip Zdarsky and our usual floro-variant from Rian. Look at them, and their radiant beauty.
I showed a 2 page preview last week. It's out in your fine local comic shop, and available digitally from Amazon (UK/US/CA and (eventually) on GlobalComix.
There's been an exodus of folks over to BlueSky in the last week, for some reason. Specifically, it seems most of comics has finally moved over there.
Coming out of Thought Bubble and the back end of a #UncoolTwo50 music challenge ([Here’s my Top 50 - more next week, probably), and with a lot of thoughts about what community can do and all that, I thought I'd try and help germinate conversation in a few ways.
The one which I think may actually be useful, and I'm going to try and do each week is just do a post saying “Hey – recommend one comic this week.” This is the one I did this week...
@kierongillen.bsky.social on Bluesky
It's Wednesday! Time for the brand new #WeReadsComics. Recommend a comic you think people should pick up this week! New or old, say a lot, or say little. I'd recommend QTing with a cover, as it's comics. What's exiting you? Tell the blue sky!
And here's what I recommended.
@kierongillen.bsky.social on Bluesky
MOON DOGS #1 from Horizon Experiment - a series of pilots for genre books transformed by a strong marginalised perspective. In this case, a familial horror story of east-African were-hyena. Codeswitching as lycanthropy, this is atmospheric, disturbing, fascinating, human #WeReadsComics #NewComics [contains quote post or other embedded content]
The hashtag is #WeReadsComics and click to see walk folks have been saying.
Do feel to join in, and a bunch are. What you into? Tell folks. It's fun.
I also now realise by tweaking I have messed the hashtag's grammar. Maybe it's part of its charm?
I plugged Til' Death Do Us Heart last time, but I may have got the link wrong? It's all here anyway, and episode 4 has just gone live. I'm told feedback is good over at the Heart Discord, though I'm a little hurt that rather than creating the illusion I have a hypercompetent lightning brain Grant told everyone they deleted all my thinking time in the edit.
However, I have a reason for plugging again instead of just having a little cry – the Dragonmeet live game on 30th November has been moved up to the Beaujolais room, which I'm hoping is called because we all get given lots of lovely red wine.
See folks there.
McKelvie's ONE FOR SORROW launched last week. Here's Jamie on the Off Panel podcast, talking about its creation, creation generally and a whole bunch more.
This piece on the eternal Kill Your Boyfriend passed my dash, and I posted it, which led to me promoting a Bsky conversation over your favorite Morrison-written comic.
Jim Zub writes about what it's like DMing in a castle. I'm fascinated by this kind of thing.
This old interview with myself and Alyssa Wong about Dr Aphra crossed my dash, and I re-read and was struck by it's one of the few places I've actually talked directly about sexuality stuff. Which is a funny place to have it, I realise.
The Wicked + the Divining Comics reaches issue 13, the Tara Issue. When I saw it was at this point, it made me chew over its connections with issue #4 of TPF. It's not the same, thankfully, but I can tilt my head and see them as sister books.
I was invited onto Insert Credit. Was fun to stick the arsehole Games Journalist mask for a bit. I also absolutely fell for someone's bit.
We Called Them Giants seems to be doing well – it really moved at Thought Bubble, for example. Responses online have been good too. Here's Sean over at the Beat's take: “truly stellar work by some of the best artists in the business and highly recommended to anyone who can find a copy. It uses the graphic novel to its fullest extent and makes you want more.” Go gets!
Moving back to Bath clearly has put games journalism back on my mind. Here's an academic piece studying German Reviews of Strip Poker games between 1982-1991.
Well, at least Thought Bubble was good.
I could keep this running joke up for a while, and also avoid writing an outro, but I don't want folks to think I'm phoning it in. Which was always a bad name. I've phoned in a festival review once, and it's much harder than just writing it down. File next to “Sleeping like a baby” which has presumably slipped from its original meaning of “Unpredictably”.
But I'm busy, and so anything I do is eating everything else. My inbox is a mess. As I just said to David Barnett on Blue Skies, I haven't even answered mails from myself. I just realised I haven't actually gone through Katie's notes on DIE 2's first script for lettering, and I got that before I went to NYCC.
The big problem is the additional thing – one job is extending seemingly endlessly, and consuming time which I should be using on clearing the above. The one which is grating is that I almost certainly won't be getting a zine edition of HOW DO ALIENS DO “IT”? done in time for Dragomeet. Art is the first casulaty of house moves.
Main work things? TPF5 going to press. TPF trade being pulled together. And... well, Caspar's just mailed me to tell me a cover artist is still waiting for any notes on her cover, I'll take that as my cue to jump off and get onto it.
Speak soon.
Kieron Gillen
Bath
20.11.2024