341: Carla Speed McNeil got a bee out of my ear
Hullo
Reassuring
Club
Hobgoblin House
Robosexual
Bubz
Links
Bye
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Big week, and I’m writing half way up a mountain without wifi or reliable Gs of any kind, so I will be curt, and try to get this all done before the clouds look at my phone funny and we lose all connection to anything that isn’t a nearby goat.
The Power Fantasy’s second volume hits comic shops this week, and circling through into book shops in the next two. Last time I looked British comic shops were also getting them a week after the US, but in this world of fractured Diamond, one cannot be sure.
I discovered that it was out this week by the great Adrian Tchaikovsky posting that he’d got his copy, in a thread where he talks about how much he likes the book and what it does. To grab a line out of context: “It's one of the best comics I read maybe… ever.” Which is lovely to hear – I adore Adrian’s work.
Don’t know TPF at all? Here’s my introduction to The Power Fantasy, which I need to update a little for this trade, but should be enough to get you started.
I’m really proud of what everyone did with this volume. Hope you enjoy it. Spread the word.
Also out today is CLOSER, the one and done which compiles the short story Steve Lieber, Tamra Bonvillain, Clayton Cowles and myself ran in the Image! Anthology a year or two back.
More details and preview pages here.
It’s what I termed an apocalypse romance back in the day, leaning towards the apocalypse rather than the romance. If you liked Phonogram, you should like it – it’s very much the sort of story I could imagine writing if Phonogram had carried on forever. I muse on that in the back matter too.
This got decent orders for a one-shot like this, but I also suspect if you’re not swift, you’ll likely miss the print run, so do grab your retailer.
I’ll link to the first two reviews, though both spoil the basic concept (understandably – it’s an impossible book to write about otherwise). Not that it breaks the book, but does remove the thrill of “Oh – that’s what we’re doing.”
I’m fond of this kind of thing. As I say in the back, maybe I’ll do some more.
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I announced Script Club last time, and folks responded wonderfully. It also made me think “the point of this is to actually pay for the mailing list costs. I’ve got enough signed up that one newsletter will pay for months of the newsletter. So maybe I just send one out every 3-4 months?” But that also puts us in the perverse situation where I am giving folks who signed up less of the stuff they actually signed up for.
Then I thought… Kieron, you’re working solely in indie comics at the moment, all of which is paid back end. It’s okay to accept money for things that people want. I lean masochistic, but sometimes I really take it so far.
So I’ll stick to one a month (or at least no more than one a month, depending on whether I remember or not). I’ll say what the next script (or other piece of extended writing) will be in the weeks before, so folks can drop out of the list if they don’t want it.
I think the first issue of WicDiv remains a good first one. I’m thinking maybe DIE #1 for November. Maybe TPF #1 for when the third trade drops in March 2026? By then, I think all the spoilers in the script will be out there. I have a fun idea for a Christmas one too. We’ll see.
So if you want to join up, do so. Here’s a link....
TL;DR: $5 for a no-more-than-monthly newsletter, which includes a script. Give me coins.
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This Sunday (7th) is Zinezilla in Bristol, at the Trinity Centre. Chrissy and I will be both there – she’s doing poetry comics, and I’m doing the above – I plan on a walk through why and how I put fantasy in real locations, how I’ve done that and why it’s good for you. I’m hoping I can find the maps of my primary school so I can annotate them and actually show my pre-teen parcosms.
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Chip, Rachael Stott and Tamra Bonvillain have a new comic from DSTLRY out this week. White House Robot Romance is a whole lot of fun. I said this, and DSTLRY put it in a fancy layout.
Coo!
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Thought Bubble announces their next wave of guests, including Stephanie, Caspar and me. This is the week of DIE: Loaded coming out, so a great time to come and say hello and/or how dare you.
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Laurie O’Connel does interesting games – this time is Full Send, a tarot-powered competive/narrative game about Mountain Climbing. I gave him a quote: "O'Connel climbs this unexplored terrain with confidence and flair, and doesn't put a foot wrong. It's summit special." That’ll teach Laurie to ask me for anything.
Over at Teeth, Marsh interviews Emily Friedman on actual play, academia and RPGs.
Ed Zitron writes a length cheat-sheet of linesof arguments to use with AI boosters.
When I got a mail in my inbox entitled, “Is Gerrymandering Cheating or just a good strategy” I thought “Either this is very good, or I’m going to unsubscribe to whoever this is.” It was Kill Screen and I didn’t unsubscribe.
When I fell into comics’ arms in the early 00s, there were two comic conventions in the country. That seems hard to imagine now, but it’s true. Bristol Comic Con, which was a small thing of maybe a couple of thousand people. And Caption, in oxford, which is a couple of dozen, tops. Caption was back this year, and Broken Frontier reports. I’ll always have a special love for it, as it’s the only con where Carla Speed McNeil got a bee out of my ear with pair of tweezers.
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As I said, I’m up a mountain again, visiting C’s family for a week.
I’ve done it enough times to realise what it tends to do to me, and I’ve tried to lean into it. Aditya’s Digital Declutter has nagged at me a little, and looking at my own life, and things which are useful and positive to me, and things which are harmful and perhaps un-needed. And also being aware that poison is often a matter of concentration.
What I’ve tried to do is leave space, and see what I fill it with when removed from some of the usual easy distractions. You’d have hoped I’d be more present, and there’s certainly been some of that. Some of it is distancing in other ways – 5 books across the week? Maybe 6? It’s not as if I’m entirely with people if I’m reading.
Some of it is just getting caught of loops of thought in my head – I sometimes feel as if my thoughts are like a butterfly, which flits around rapidly, moving from flower-topic to flower-topic … but I’m in a jungle, and there’s these webs. If I hit one of the webs, I’m stuck there, the thoughts going around and around trying to resolve something which has no relief. If the week has taught me anything, it’s realising how often this happens, especially if I hit a trigger. Now, some of those triggers are just random, but sometimes if you’re in a certain are of the jungle, there’s predators who live there. When it’s something involving work, so something I’m trying to think about, the risk of just getting stuck is pretty high,
I did a joke on BlueSky – I won’t be a landlord. You all live rent free in my head. – which is very much me chewing over this. I’m aware that the obsessive running conversations is one of the things which makes me a writer, but I’m also aware it can be no fun at all, when it’s 5am, and you’ve been awake from an hour, running a conversation you’ll never have with someone who’ll never know.
Yeah, that’s all pretty bleak. Don’t get the wrong idea. I don’t feel that bleak. I feel clear. There’s probably a reason why I’ve been so obsessed with Julian of Norwich the Anchorite this year – what one does when they’re alone with their thoughts and what their thoughts do to them. Trying to work out what’s going on with this bit of my brain seems useful.
To bastardize Rorschach: I’m not trapped in here with you. You’re not trapped in here with me. I’m trapped in here with me.
And one should try to understand the nature of the trap they find themselves.
Next time, I swear, I’ll do some jokes.
Speak soon.
Kieron Gillen
Piedmont
3.9.2025