345: Beloved of Machines
Hullo
Questgiving
Tickticktick
Links
Bye
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It’s the week leading up to retailers ordering DIE: Loaded. This means it’s time for you (beloved reader) to talk to your retailer about getting a copy and for me (broken writer) to walk you through it all.
DIE: Loaded is Stephanie Hans, Clayton Cowles and my own sequel to our three-time Hugo Award winning DIE. Our joke one liner is “Goth Jumanji” which works. It’s a story about fantasy, reality, our faded dreams and what games teach us. Folks seemed to like it a lot.
Oh, We made a trailer. Let’s drop the trailer.
...and if you want it in Portrait format, here it is on instagram.
Want to know more? I’ve pulled together a microsite over at Bindings to walk you through it.
DIE: Loaded — Bindings
The sequel to the three-times Hugo-nominated, award winning dark fantasy comic, DIE.
(Do spread the teaser around and the binding site. If you’re on instagram, reposting into your story or reposting is hugely appreciated. If you want to link the binding elsewhere, this bit.ly/dieloaded is a bit easier to remember than the full link.)
Anyway - that’s the why. Let’s talk hard details of what we’re putting out.
At the top is Stephanie’s cover, which is our main cover A – I’ll include all the order codes at the bottom, rather than spreading them out.
Our guest artist for the first issue is Peach Momoko. We’re trying something different with Peach – she’s such a popular artist, with both the general audience and the hardcore collectors. So we decided to do something to serve both groups. She’s the freely orderable variant as our B cover, and a rare 1:50 virgin variant for collectables.
It’s not just the A cover for Stephanie. She’s also providing a unique 1:25 variant with our lovely Fox motif, and our Youngblood tie-in cover to celebrate the Image icon’s return. It’s available in the colour, as shown, and a black and white edition.
We’re also doing a Very DIE-styled Blank Sketch Variant. Compatible with DIE RPG and any game which uses Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, Intelligence and Charisma. There’s probably another one of them.
Oh – plus the 56 page DIE RPG Quickstart is available for pre-order too. If you’ve been tempted by all things DIE, it’s an ideal chance to get this single-comic-format edition to try it out.
DIE LOADED #1 CVR A STEPHANIE HANS -
0925IM0266DIE DIE LOADED #1 CVR B PEACH MOMOKO VAR - 0925IM0267
DIE LOADED #1 CVR C YOUNGBLOOD TEAM UP VAR - 0925IM8026
DIE LOADED #1 CVR D BLANK SKETCH VAR - 0825IM8405
DIE LOADED #1 CVR E 1:25 STEPHANIE HANS VAR - 0825IM8406
DIE LOADED #1 CVR F 1:50 PEACH MOMOKO VIRGIN VAR - 0825IM8407
DIE LOADED #1 CVR G YOUNGBLOOD TEAM UP BW VIRGIN VA- 0925IM8030
DIE RPG QUICKSTART GAME GUIDE #1 - 0925IM0268
Okay – that’s it. Strange to do a shopping list like this. In truth, it’s not a quest. Go to a shop, tell your retailer you want DIE, and they’ll be happy to provide.
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Oh – and it’s also orders on Monday for The Power Fantasy 13. If you’re in the shop asking about DIE, you may as well, right?. Here’s the teaser, which I’d forgotten I’d actually done until now. It’s been that kind of day.
Our covers?
Caspar with Heavy being a bit miffed and the amazing Juni Ba with Etienne chilling out.
Caspar: 0925IM0381
Juni: 0925IM0382
Oh – I’ve seen a bunch of people spreading the word about The Power Fantasy. It’s genuinely touching. I wanted to write a bit about that here, but (er) see the outro. Today has been a monster. I’ll write more next time, but thank you.
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I was on the excellent TL;DR Podcast to talk all things DIE, The Power Fantasy and graphs, graphs, graphs. This is always fun.
The New York Public Library put The Power Fantays on their list of best books of 2025 for adults. This is really nifty company to be in.
A big interview over at Freak Sugar about We Called Them Giants.
The new Quinns’ Quest Play To Find out is Jenna Moran’s weirdo-classic Nobilis, and I’m really enjoying it. I find myself thinking what Quinns is doing with these worldbuilding heavy games is doing what most these games don't - follow the old screenwriting adage of Turning Exposition Into Ammunition. As in, the scenario is designs to explain the setting, and so (as a recording) it's both an intro to the players AND the audience. For me,it’s more useful and interesting than most traditional actual plays. More dramatic actual plays will tell me a story. More factual ones will show you how any given game is done. This isn't either. You want to know what it's like to enter the world of Jorume or Nobilis? These are audioportals.
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Script club plug: $5 for a once a month e-mail with a script. Next one is likely DIE 1 but I’ll confirm next time.
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I woke up this morning and found my phone’s screen had died. Hmm.
This added a complexity to a day which really didn’t need anything extra. I went to the apple shop, had (in a wonderful bit of randomness) a DIE reader try and help me and then fail to help me due to my brutal treatment of my phone. So I bought a phone. I can’t just transfer stuff across, due to the bust screen meaning I can’t confirm the transfer. So I just have to get everything working which isn’t in the backup. The only backup I have is of my ipad, for some reason.
It can all wait. All I really need is Instagram to post the trailer. Except my TFA is set up crappily, and I just can’t get into Instagram. The Instagram’s system is fucked. I spend over two hours banging my head against the problem, with increasing frustration – help files which simply don’t help, looping endlessly, reddit threads of people who either are fine or can’t get it to work at all, depending on whether the machine is kind.
In the end, I was about to give up, when Chrissy tried it and the links worked for her, because she is Beloved of Machines, and soon I was in. With barely any time to write this.
So it’s all curter than I would hope.
Thankfully, I think the binding site and the trailer basically do most what I hoped this mail would do. I’ll be working what I didn’t into the binding - quotes from folks - so check in there to see them.
As said, pass them around, speak to your retailer and start counting the days off until November 12th.
Speak soon.
Kieron Gillen
Bath
15.10.2025