357: Am I angry or just tired?
Hullo
TPF15
Meta
Clubby
Links
Bye
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The Power Fantasy #15 is out today. I think it’s a good one, and from the responses I’ve seen, I don’t think I’m alone on that. Also, I did a quick glance around the fandom first thing in the morning, and someone was already just posting spoilers. I’d suggest grab your copy before risking going such places, in case someone just blurts out that it was all a dream.
We dropped the preview last week, which you read here
Our alt cover is this amazingly creepy shot by Letizia Cadonici.
Go get it from wherever you get your comics from.
Oh – here’s some teasers I’ve done, which I’ll be releasing later (probably) and/or now (definitely).
Issue 16 is a month away. Get ready. It won’t help.
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A few weeks ago, we announced DIE RPG: The Meta Dungeon. We did it with a live stream on Discord, with Gareth Hanrahan, Grant and myself talking about it. We didn’t realise no more than 50 people could get on the stream, as we are fools.
So lucky we recorded it, eh?
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Okay, I just decided on what to do for this month’s Script Club…
Three #1.
Three is a comic I created with Ryan Kelly, with Jordie Bellaire on colours and Clayton “Capital” Cowles. It’s an inverted Thermopylae myth, of three helot workers on the run from 300 Spartans. It’s actually presently out of print, so is even something of a relative rarity.
I think this is interesting, as I’ll be choosing what script to give carefully, as this was one I worked with Professor Stephen Hodkinson closely to make sure the historical reference was right. As such, if I give one after his final notes, you’ll see a LOT of things being highlighted to get right. I suspect for anyone interested in research, this would be a good one.
Script Club is explained in this news letter, but basically me sending a monthly newsletter that includes one of my previous scripts (or similar length of writing). This is $5 per newsletter (So won’t be charged in a month I skip). I’ll always let folks know what the script is in advance, so they can nope out if they want. Oh – and it will be charged by Lemon Ink, our company.
Thanks for folks’ support. The response this has been great.
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Over at Shelf Dust Rob Cave writes about Berlin #14 and Horst Wessel, with one eye at the moment. If you haven’t read Berlin, you need to read Berlin.
Mat Kumar writes about the 1986 Ocean Batman game, a fascinating artifact from a period when Batman was as arguably as far from the Pop Cultural spotlight as it ever was – just before the the Dark Knight revolution and the Burton films changed everything (again). I’m actually finally reading the Morrison Batman run at the moment, and am imagining what would happen if the “It’s all canon” approach expanded to this. Isometric layouts, ala Young Avengers #4?
Actually, while we’re talking Grant, I had a jump scare when reading their latest newsletter. One of their readers wondering why other writers were afraid of the revolutionary possibility of Marvel Boy, prompting Grant to say no-one else really has written Marvel Boy correctly. For example, he wouldn’t have liked Be My Baby, as I had him do in Young Avengers. Grant’s correct, obv. Marvel Boy, as he was originally, wouldn’t have. The problem is, I came in over a decade later, and there was a lot more Marvel Boy. Being me, I wanted to synthesise what I could from those years, while getting him back in the short-shorts. My explanation for his Avengers period was that he had to have fell in love with Earth at some point. But why? “What does the proggy-Bach-is-monkey-music Kree culture not have? Pop”. Grant has the right to be eye-roll-y, in the same way I applaud Starlin ignoring what everyone else has done with Thanos. I’d also applaud if Morrison ever wrote Marvel boy again if they had Noh eject the decoy para-personality he’s been hiding under and get back to forging a new kree empire.
Actually, I was chewing over an essay of this – as in, what do you do when you take over a character? What you choose to integrate, and what you choose to ignore, and the various tactics different creators choose to take, and how they can turn out? It’s one of those questions in writing work-for-hire comics in these extended, endless universes. Is it interesting to anyone else?
While I was googling for an image just now, I found Colin Too Busy Thinking About My Comics’ old essay writing extensively about a single panel in The Singles Club. This is fun, and brings back memories.
Professor Emily Friedman has been doing short videos about her game-testing nights, where she gets together as many friends as can turn up, and then just play whatever GM-less TTRPGs that are on the menu. Here’s the first video about setting up the first night, and here’s the second which debriefs how it went. I fond these really inspiring, and a call to quiet arms. Why not?
Western Fear Of Rice is fascinating. I mean, every cookery book I have for family stuff basically says bin rice after a day. What’s going on with that? Joe Zadeh looks at it in bemusement, and works out what’s actually happening. “While appearing on The Graham Norton Show in 2023, the British and Malaysian-Chinese stand-up Phil Wang joked that the main difference between white people and Chinese people is that the former are ‘absolutely terrified of reheating rice. For white people, rice has one chance to be food. And if there’s any left over after the meal, it just becomes poisonous straight away.’ Out of curiosity, I texted seven white friends to ask if they were brought up to believe that reheating rice was dangerous. All seven said yes.”
Aaron Marks over at Cannibal Halfling has a walk around the OSR, and sees where it is right now. If you don’t know what the OSR is, just don’t click. It’s RPG stuff, and OSR-y-ness has been on my mind while running Mythic Bastionland.
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While being short, this has taken longer than I thought it would. I’m not exactly being quick this week. A lot of things have left me angry to the point of losing sleep, and when Iris alone is making me lose enough sleep, that’s not ideal. Am I angry or just tired? Why choose, etc.
That said – I say I’m working slowly, and that’s not really true. My new years back log of work has been cleared away. My inbox was mostly tamed, I got a lot of the small outstanding jobs wrapped, handed in the second script for a new thing and have the best part of an issue written this week too.
But there’s also odd signs I’m not too comfortable with. I do look at the issue I handed in last week a little askance. It’s brutal, and suspect at least part of that comes from my anger leaking in. That said, as people’s cheers to Daniel Warren Johnson’s Absolute Batman annual show, I’m not exactly alone in this one.
This world, eh?
Speak soon.
Kieron Gillen
Bath
21.1.2026