310: in perpetual virginity
Hullo
The Superpowers
AMA For Love But I Won't Do That
Links
Bye
I've got nothing out this week, so thought it'd be a good time to look up at the future. First of all, THE POWER FANTASY's first trade, THE POWER FANTASY: THE SUPERPOWERS. It's out the end of January in comic shops, and early February in Bookshops.
This is the cover as it presently is – we gave one for Previews, but are still tweaking as we approach going to press. I'm still deciding on what quote put on the back. I know one will be Pulitzer Prize-winning Spencer Ackerman's one...
“A brilliant redefinition of the concept of ‘superpowers’ that illuminates how precarious great-power competition renders our lives. Watch a masterpiece take form.”
He's also writing Iron Man right now, which I need to go and read, as the idea of Spencer doing Iron Man is delightful.
Anyway - Talk to your retailer if you want one, especially if you're Waiting For The Trade. The orders will impact what ends up being printed. With the future of international printing clearly being about to face significant problems, I can see a second printing of this having to be priced higher than the bargain $10 we're releasing this one as.
That the trade is out does lead to another opportunity...
..., as issue 6 drops in early Feburary, meaning you can jump aboard. The solicits are here, which I'll spare as while I write around the direct spoilers, it's still pretty allusive to what's going down.
Oh, check out Abigail Harding's Alt Cover too, and the final Rian Design variant in the set.
So, speak to your retailer, especially if you're thinking about jumping aboard after the trade. There was some chat on the socials about how it's a book which folks seem to think is worth doing that with, which is gratifying – I'm someone who is by instinct a trade reader, so I'm aware that I'm trying to make the singles be something that would make me come in for every month. Worth noting that the extra content (the essays, the interviews) aren't in the trades. With printing being what it is, it's kind of a choice between including them or pricing it much higher. I've always figured the trades and the singles are different beasts, right?
Anyway, The Power Fantasy, continuing onwards. I just wrote the solicit for issue eight, which had me thinking that we’re really increasingly deep into this beast.
I'm catching up with stuff now a bit – the week of WE CALLED THEM GIANTS' release I did a joint AMA with McKelvie over at League of Comic Geeks. There's a LOT of things covered there, but there’s quite a few mini-essauys I felt worth sharing.
In fact, there's so many, I'm going to save half of them for next time.
Question for both of you. Phonogram and Wicked + Divine both cover some pretty similar ground in different ways. After having done Wic+Div do you think there'd be any stories you'd still wanna tell in the Phonogram universe and what do you think the main defining difference between the two series is, to you?
I occasionally joke that WicDiv was ULTIMATE PHONOGRAM (or ABSOLUTE PHONOGRAM in 2024 terms). As in, let's take something with a similar core, and do it in a way which may actually sell. And lo, it did.
They are quite different books, bar the tone, which speaks to their themes. WicDiv was a fantasy about a topic - Phonogram was the topic. Phonogram may as well have been music journalism.
I had (er) a lot more Phonogram things, most of which are way too late to do now. There's a few which may be repurposed in a different way down the line - the Chicago World Fair one and the one told across a single club for 50 years, for example, work with the Phonogram stripped out.
That said, there's certainly things which happen in my everyday life and I think "That would be a Phonogram story". It's an interesting alternate dimension to consider where it sold more and we became these weirdo cult creatives doing increasingly baroque music stories.
I am a massive fan of Über, and it's unfortunate lack of conclusion is one of my biggest What If's? in comics. Do you ever see yourself, or have hope for, being able to return to the story to finish it off?
Uber's situation unfortunately hasn't changed since it stopped - it's a comic I don't own (it was WFH) which is basically on hold until Avatar restart publishing. I check in with them when I can, and give updates on my mailing lists. I've got a few things I've pitched to try and get it out another way, but it's really always been in their court.
The other aspects remain: I'm committed to finishing it if it's even slightly within my power. There's only 4 issues left. I've actually written them, as I had no idea how long the delay would be, and I wanted them to be ready if they were needed.
Basically: if we can find a way, we'll get it to folks.
Question for Kieron: my favorite part of "WicDiv" as it was serialized was "Commercial Suicide" (snippets from the POV of various gods after some shocking events, with art by guest artists), and one particular part that intrigued me was the short, one-page segments titled "Video Games" (with art by series regular Jamie). What are some thoughts on their conception, execution, and legacy, almost ten years after their release?
Thank you - Commercial Suicide is an arc we were really proud of, but we're also aware that it is (as they say) one for the heads. I think it's the volume with the lowest score on GoodReads? It's also the one with perhaps the most critically acclaimed issues in it. It was a lot.
It came for various reasons - part of it was just wanting to do Phonogram 3, which Jamie would have to draw. We could have stopped WicDiv, but that felt like a huge risk when it was a book with momentum - especially after that cliffhanger. So we were always planning a guest artist arc... but the idea struck to tie it into Laura's absence from the plot. She is gone, and so is Jamie... and when Jamie comes back, so does she.
The short stories were our way to make sure the readers knew that despite that, Jamie was still involved with the book. Folks don't reliably read anything in the book more than the comic, so even if we put JAMIE WILL BE BACK NEXT ARC in 72 point text, folks likely would miss it. One pagers seemed a relatively low effort way to make sure he was there.
I can see Jamie want to hit me for that "Relatively low effort".
Kieron - Could you share what it was like writing The Ludocrats? Is there any reality where those ludicrous characters are explored further? I imagine your headspace at that time must have been wild.
I'm a formalist writer, so Ludocrats was a technical challenge for me - I'd come off the back of a string of really successful indie books. With Ludocrats, I wanted to see if I could do a book which lost shitloads of money. And I could. Hail my genius.
Ludocrats was a giggle - it started as a writing exercise with comrade Rossignol back in our games journalist days. We wrote back and forth, riffing as these characters and building a universe built upon this vague philosophy. Around 2007, after Phonogram, we started actually developing it as a comic, with the awesome Lee O'Connor. It ended up fizzling out, as we both got lost in the website Rock Paper Shotgun. Years late we tried again with the amazing David Lafuente, and after some years, David dropped out. And then Jeff Stokely said he'd be up for it... and then, 15 or so years after it was conceived, years after it was announced, issue 1 came out the first day of the Covid shutdown. Which was April 1st.
Do not call a book "The Ludocrats" if you're not looking for ludicrousness.
It was a book about a sense of play - like, it's dense with it. When we started working on it, it was a lot of hanging out, getting in the headspace and riffing. Afterwards, we took the notes and worked on them, editing, trying to give shape.
If the book posited something, it was the hope we could make people dig a weirdness for weirdness sake comic with a sense of bonhomie. Folks often seem a little intimidated by weird books, as if they're not in the cool crowd and risk not getting them. We wanted to present it like a party - yeah, it's wild, but you're very much welcome.
Which didn't work, as said, but the theory is sound, and what the book is about.
You never know in terms of doing some more. Grant Howitt, the publisher of DIE RPG and famous game designer, often asks about it, and I smile at the idea of it being an RPG. In some ways, that'd put the credo that powered it to best use. You are welcome. You're a Ludocrat too.
Kieron, I saw you're writing a new Star Wars story for A New Legacy, very cool! Is this a story that's been brewing since your days working on the book, or is it something entirely new you put together when approached for the new release?
It's great to be back writing them, but it's actually the opposite. They asked me if I'd like to do an Aphra story and I basically said "It'd be lovely, but I don't think I've got anything to say with her" and then I looked out the window, had an idea of something I hadn't actually riffed on, and then I pitched them it. And that's the story.
It was nice to just take them out for one last time. It's an insert into the timeline, and I was surprised to realise there was basically no time in my Darth Vader run where I actually had my whole cast - Black Krrsantan, the droids, Vader and Aphra - all together and interacting. I worked out a place where they hypothetically COULD have been and set the story there.
Dragonmeet this weekend, with the live Heart Game of the Death Til' We Heart podcast. If you're inspired at all by the sister games of Spire and Heart, Bundle of Holding are running two PDF bundle deals right now, one for Spire and one for Heart. This is all good stuff.
I still need to watch it, but Quinns' Slugblaster review reminds me it was one of the games that I lost when my luggage got stolen at Gencon, and it's possible I may have a PDF download code somewhere in my inbox.
Blue Tapes is an indie label which predominately releases minimalist and experimental on tape (though it's online too). It's very much the sort of stuff I was following closer back in the 00s circa Plan B. I listened to the latest which is some quality drone.
I was talking to lovely comics academic Mikayla J. Laird at Thought Bubble about teaching, when she mentioned her reading lists for her students. I'm fascinated by her stuff. Here's the one for Western Comics and here's one for Manga. It does make me think what I'd put on my own reading list in a course.
Marie Le Conte writes about why she suspect Blue Skies has done as well as it has while Threads has basically done so poorly. Namely, it pays attention to the posting middle-classes. “Crucially, though, what defines a member of the posting middle class is their love of the game. They don’t post because they’re trying to sell a product, or solely to advance their career. They don’t post to advertise themselves or their company. They post because they must. There’s something fundamentally wrong with them and the worms in their brain makes them spend entire days posting away on the computer.” I fear she's right, though it does make us all sound a bit like Rorschach.
Thought bubble coverage! Harrogate News on the Majestic Toilet Anthology exhibition! Down the Tubes' festival review!! Me talking to Comic Book Insider while sitting by a Christmas tree!
It was Trans Day of Rememberance this week. Here's Laurie Penny deploying their considerable skill to go FFS about everything right now.
A Power Fantasy release week is always interesting – especially with issue 4, which germinated all manner of interesting chat. Feedback was really strong – as suspected, it was a lot of people's favourite issue, and even the few folks who are colder on the book were less chill. The private conversations were fun too, especially from fellow creatives. That its a very specific kind of horror story lands, and made me hyperanalyse my own response to many things, everywhere.
Mainly though: recovered from Thought Bubble, and settling back in here. The House is becoming more house like. There's still work being done, so there's significant low-level chaos, but areas where we are are becoming really nice. I'm sitting at the back of the house, with a table that's moved so now I actually have a view of this ludicrous town, which I still mainly describe as Rivendell.
I did so in a mail to an acquaintance recently, and he – not knowing anything at all about Bath – asked me to give me a quick download on the city's basics. Here it is. Let’s get everyone up to speed.
It's easiest to explain Bath with a few swiftly googled pictures.
It's also fairly easy to explain Bath in a sentence: It's where the majority of Bridgerton's external shots are filmed.
(Due to my university and 20-something days being in Bath means there's a weird experience cognitive dissonance whenever I've watched it - every time it goes external, I'm thinking "Ah, yes, I remember when Kid with Knife vomited in that alleyway.")
It's in the South West - near Wales, heading towards Devon and Cornwall. The nearest big city is Bristol, which is close enough to get on a train and be there in 15 minutes.
Bath basically has an aesthetic. It's got history - it's a Roman Town (the Baths themselves are roman). It had a bit of a "Rome of the western empire" vibe, because of it also being a city surrounded by these hills. Later, you can argue that England as a concept started here - the first King of All England was crowned in Bath Abbey just before 1000. It's got firm Arthurian connections - a lot of my Arthurian Horror story Once & Future was set here. Modern bath is born of being a Georgian Spa Town (We get the Jane Austen connection around here too - Northanger Abbey and Persuasion are set here, and there's always been a lot of period drama filming here.) That means we get Bath as an aesthetic - all buildings have the sandstone finish, even now.
When I moved, it was coming out of being a relatively run down and sometimes bohemian city. “Relatively” is a loaded word, but it was relatively cheap to buy places in the 1970s (Damp is a perennial problem in Bath, perhaps unsurprisingly). That seems to have turned around. It's always been a Tourist town, but by now it is a FULL TOURIST TOWN, and looks it. It's a town that gets by on its looks.
My own staying in Bath was born of it being home of Future Publishing, the big games mag publisher. I smiled at the irony of this big religious-y medeival city, where men went to contemplate the divine in perpetual virginity was in modern times a place where men went to contemplate the divine art, in perpetual virginity.
I describe it as Rivendell as I grew up in a fairly standard Midlands town (which has only got more grimy in the years since I left it, thanks to everything). Coming from there to Bath felt like going to visit the elves. Places like this can exist? Really?
I also remember how I described being drunk there when I first moved- actively weird and oddly transgressive: "Like having sex in your grandparents’ bed."
It was only literally as I was moving back, looking at a map of where my house was near, did I spot Solisbury Hill and realise... wait? Is the Peter Gabriel song literally about hiking up that hill? Those "I could see the city light" being the city I'm in? Yes. Yes, it was.
I'm still the writer of Phonogram, so I've been listening to it a lot.
That's Bath.
Speak soon.
Kieron Gillen
Bath
27.11.2024