333: why people get eaten by wolves
Hullo
Big
Links
Bye
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Big week, in may senses of the word. Two things out. Firstly…
The Eisner-award nominated The Power Fantasy is back for its ninth issue, which is where I think we start knocking down dominoes, which we’ll keep on doing from now on. When the last issues have had specific focuses, this one goes wide, touching on everyone – though using Isabelle and Masumi as the throughline. This was a tricky one to write, but it’s the sort of tricky that I’m hoping is invisible to the reader.
We dropped the preview last week, if you want a taste. Purchasing and more details here.
Our alt cover this time is by Jamie McKelvie…
Talking about McKelvie...
The Wicked + the Divine Compendium is out in comic shops this week. I’ll write about it more in a couple of weeks when it hits the book shops too, but your local Fine Comic Retailer should be able to get this 1500 page volume for your entertainment. $60 too. This is, as we say in the biz, a barg.
Its comps just arrived. Look at it...
Look at how thick it is…
...and honestly, seeing it like this has absolutely discombobulated me, which I’ll come back to in my outro.
Jamie and I are doing a launch at GOSH in London on Friday, so do come and say hello, and see if you can lift it. The compendium, not GOSH, though the shop is probably lighter.
I joke – yes, it’s large, but the thing which strikes me by holding it is exactly how much like a book it feels. A big book, yes, but is a book. It was always just one long story, and it finally is. I couldn’t be happier. I mean, I could be – it’s WicDiv. Its basic tenor is always sad-to-bittersweet, but we’re in the top register of that.
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Comic Book Resources write on Golden Age: Mother Knows Best. “Elderly women certainly do exist in the world of comics, like Aunt May or Blind Al (Deadpool's roommate). However, they are often invariably part of the supporting cast, a slice of normality in an otherwise wacky world. Golden Rage: Mother Knows Best #1 grapples openly and unflinchingly with the fact that older women’s lives are valued less by our literature and our society. The second-class citizenship that exists passively in reality, transcending into a literal physical exile, gives Williams creative space to challenge our preconceptions about elderly women and celebrate the diverse potential for storytelling that they represent.”
I believe I mentioned before but Alarum & Excursions, the oldest D&D fanzine (or, specifically, APA) in the world is closing, but this is a good farewell overview with links to material about editor Lee Gold. She was a joy to interview for the DIE.
While we’re talking Tom, here’s another link to his I Am A Luddite comic, which is a quick historical primer on who the Luddites actually were and how they’re increasingly relevant today. Here’s a print version to buy too.
Greg Buchanan writes about burnout and procastination, and practical tips of how to manage your time. I suspect more useful than my own “if you are physically dizzy from hunger, now is the time to stop refreshing the internet.”
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It’s been an intense week of work – The Power Fantasy #9 going to press, but also wrapping two scripts, plus visitors and a poorly-timed bank holiday. That’s led to making sure my collaborators have stuff to do their scripts are done. Caspar got his on time, while Stephanie will be getting hers today, I suspect – though she has covers to work on, so it’s not as if she’s sitting glaring. Yesterday was really doing significant work on the Stephanie script AND finalising it, doing lettering notes for TPF9 and finding and writing a new capsule piece for the June at Image piece, because I’d failed to notice the Spectators collection was an early solicit, and is out in September. Gahk.
So I approached this morning, a little relieved – I basically have no pressing deadlines for 5 weeks (TPF 12) and it’s about clearing the decks before next week, which I’m basically having off for a “thing.” Which I’ll tell you about afterwards. So newsletter, taxes, bits, bobs, maybe finally getting Juni Ba his questions for an interview I’ve been wanting to do for weeks…
At which point there’s a knock on the door, and I get a delivery of eight boxes of the WicDiv trades. They’re heavy, both physically and metaphorically. After opening and looking at it, I feel like I’ve been hit around the head by one. That 1500 page book, with its spine, and everything it represents – those years of work from Jamie and me, our life as we were doing it, the 38 years of life leading up to it which I tried to work inside. I flick through, and you just see the big beats out of context, and I absolutely well up.
I’ve put on the playlist, which is something I basically never do any more. It’s a great collection of songs, but it’s also a memory kingdom of a dungeon full of curse song traps. I selected Belle & Sebastian’s If She Wants Me (“If I could do just one near-perfect thing, I'd be happy.”) and have left it shuffle for a while. I’ll lose it after writing this newsletter, as it’s a dark place to longer, and – as said – this is a lot of memories wrapped up in pop music. Not all or even most bad, I stress – Prince Charming came on, and reminded me of the Thought Bubble Dancefloor on the first WicDiv year, when Leah Moore came up and told me her dad really liked the book as it was filling the room. And a lot of them are just bangers.
But, on shuffle, it’s still got a gift for acting as a tarot deck. As I write this, Kenickie’s Psychic Defence comes on. Most of Kenickie’s first album was about wanting to be a pop star, and being afraid of never doing so. Psychic Defence is about the implosion that happened when they did – the emotional terrain that the third year of WicDiv was about. It’s a big epic sad song, with a glockenspiel, but its emotional heart is the spoken word section where Lauren recites a few sharp things said to her when she returned home to Sunderland. The title, of course, is ironic. There is no defence. The song is both documenting and recapitulating the harm.
God, can you imagine the awful fate if Kenickie’s second album landed, and they went stadium-big, and she’d be reciting the awfulness of people she knew, every night, until the end of time. It’s a defiant song. It’s why she does it. See these scars. But Christ, Lauren, it’s not good for you.
I’m really relieved that Lauren ended up where she has, as a national treasure. It seems healthier than the alternative.
Similarly, I’ll never do anything like WicDiv ever again, and that is an absolute relief.
Do buy it though. To paraphrase Luke Haines, it’s my second masterpiece and we do like money.
Oh, I promised you Amphibian horror. Content warning: amphibian horror.
Our new house has a small pool. A month ago when our friends were visiting, we were looking in it and saw a couple of frogs having frog fun-time. We stared, until they probably became uncomfortable and stopped, and then we became uncomfortable too and wandered away.
Chrissy looked up the gestation period of frogs, and when that passed, was on the look out for frogspawn.
There was frogspawn! The pond was alive with the tiny wriggling things. Absolutely teeming with them. She described her delight.
Then, from the reeds, emerged a larger spawn, with tiny stumpy legs who - like Jurassic Park in miniature - gulped down one of the frogspawn, and carried on its way.
We had frogspawn and newtspawn.
Across the few weeks have followed, both grew (in size) and declined (in numbers, for the frogspawn.) The image C described above haunted me – I didn’t see it, but I can see it. I find myself imagining what it would be to be like to be a frog parent, and for work reasons you have to drop your kids off at a nursery, which is perfect, except for one small problem. Namely, there’s other kids at this nursery who are three times as large as your kid, and they’re allowed to just eat any of your kids, whenever they want. The staff shrug. Newts will be newts.
You may note I used a past tense a couple of paragraphs back.
We had frogspawn and newtspawn.
Now we have newtspawn.
People move to the country to be close to nature.
This is why people get eaten by wolves.
Speak soon.
Kieron Gillen
Bath
28.5.2025