Hullo

D4E
Covers
Library
Parasite
Links
Bye

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Say hello to DIE: Loaded #4.

This is kind of the issue where we start to explicitly talk about Isekai, a word which I seem to have to learn to spell. We dropped the preview last week, and you can read it here. It’s a fun time one, at least for DIE, which may not be your level of usual fun.

Here’s our alternate cover, by Fabrizio De Tomasso who is doing really glorious, atmospheric stuff.

If you need an intro to DIE: Loaded, here’s the site. Includes links to (ooh) lots of things, including purchase links. I should update to add Sweet.shop links as well – as Sweet.shop’s beta has now launched, so if you sign up, you should be able to buy it from there.

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For those who didn’t back the kickstarter, the excess copies of The Wicked + the Divine covers collection are now available to order from a couple of online retailers.

If you’re in the US, you can order it from Floating Chair for $55 for standard edition and $100 for the deluxe one.

If you’re in Europe (or need to ship to the rest of the world) you can order from Liberdistri, for 65 Euros for the Standard edition or 120 Euros for the deluxe.

An ideal gift for people who likes WicDiv, fine art book or anyone who just likes spending money randomly by clicking links.

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This was a fun thing to be asked to be part of. Staffordshire Libraries are doing an exhibition of comic related stuff in their collection, which will be touring across the year. For the next two days it’s at Stafford Library, before heading across the county.

I gathered a bunch of script, roughs, penciled and finished art pages set around Stafford, from the books I’ve set in the town. Namely, that’s WicDiv (the Leila del luca issue) and DIE (more heavily). It’s all been pulled together on a board. Here’s a quick photo of it…

...but seeing it in the flesh likely is the best way to get it. It, and the rest of the exhibition, will be travelling to the following libraries on the following dates…

2nd Feb – Friday 13th Feb – Comic short launch Stafford Library
23rd Feb – 27th March – Tamworth Library
7th April (Tuesday) – 8th May – Library – Perton Library
18th May – 19th June - Library – Burntwood Library
29th June – 31st July – Library – Cannock Library
10th August – 11th September – Library – Burton Library
21st September – 23rd October – Library – Biddulph Library
2nd November – 4th December- Library - Newcastle Library
14th December until end of the year or end of Christmas holidays – Stafford Library

While Stafford Library has changed premises since I was a kid and was in there every week, it’s still a pretty amazing thing to have my work explicitly shown in a place 2026-era Kieron would be looking at. If you’re around, go have a nose.

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Another good reason not to be on X, is that I hear that the writer vs artist debate has come around again. I’m somehow involved, in a post that seems to have gone mildly viral, involving a photo of me teaching. It’s not even the first time it stirred up some nonsense.

This is the photo, the over-the-top punchline at the end of a section in my teaching comic writing masterclass.

I spend the previous thirty seconds talking about how the writer is god-creator of all comics who all must hail, before dropping the slide and then moving from that to talking about one should do to be a good collaborator.

The slide, of course, is needlessly provocative, which is why it's presented in context, to a room of writers, with the goal of trying to educate anyone who's a fucking egotistical arsehole who's going to end up abusing an artist with their bullshit.

It’s also funny. It gets a laugh.

However, beneath all that, the truth it expresses is pretty basic.

“A writer who doesn't draw needs an artist to make a comic exist" isn’t controversial.

By definition "no pictures, no comic". It doesn't say anything about the quality of the work… just necessity.

The artist doesn’t need you, but you 100% need the artist.

In a different world, specialist script-only comic writers wouldn’t exist. In some markets, they basically don’t. You need to know that, and then make choices to justify your existence, to become a symbiote that makes the work better and do everything to avoid turning from a parasite to an active host-destroying parasitoid. In reality, the more you know about how hard comics are for artists, the better the comics you make. That’s one part of becoming good at writing comics.

It’s a metaphor, a way of thinking of things. You know, writer stuff.

Plus, at the most basic level, a comic writer who doesn’t understand that an artist’s job is more physical work has no business being a comic writer.

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• I feel very attacked. Kula Shaker, perhaps my least favourite band of all time, have a new song which is set mostly in a small Games-Workshop-stocking games shop and is basically the plot of DIE, and all powered by AI. I submit. You win.

• Game Designer Isabelle is interviewed about Girl Frame the deeply intentional alienation mechspolitation RPG. “Girl Frame is a powered by the apocalypse game about lesbian mech pilots navigating social interactions with each other, under the watchful gaze of a "Handler" tasked with using them as tools to defeat an eldritch threat. It focuses on identity, fascism, transfemininity, and extremely toxic social dynamics.”

• Joe Quesada’s covering the absolute nuts and bolts of comic storytelling continues to reward. This time it’s mainly about how a reader’s eye is lazy, and frankly, that’s good to know and good to use. The trick of squinting while staring at a panel to highlight what a reader will see alone is golden. Also, relevant to the bit about parasites above, the importance of at least understanding some of the job of your collaborators. It did remind me that I meant to take an acting class, to learn about working off scripts in another way.

• Two weeks until the Power Fantasy lands, but Sktchd had their regular Double Take feature about this arc. Mostly behind a paywall, but you should sub to Sktchd at some point, right?

• Comrade Walker writes about emotional sounding indie game Perfect Tides: Station To Station. This sounds cute, and I smile at John doing an inverted version of a classic 2000s-era Kieron-Gillen I-Have-Kissed-People intro.

• An article over at Gayming about how DIE highlights the fundamental queerness of TTRPGs. In short, yes, it does.

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What a week, once again.

A lot of things to whine about, but I’ll save some of them for when it’s the right time to tell them. For example, I went to see Garth Marenghi last week on Thursday, and in the Q&A consulted him on important matters. I will not ignore the wisdom of Garth Marenghi.

Things actually changed direction last thing on Friday night, where after a particularly brutal week creatively,a mail arrived just before I turned off. It was my notes on my second script for a new thing. This was a script where I was testing what boundaries I had with the licence holder – as in, this is how hard I want to go. Is it cool if I go this hard? This is pretty normal. I write what I want to write for a job, and don’t mind being told no. It’s their property. Much better to do that, and accept you may have to rewrite, than write more safely and produce weaker work out of fear.

But there were no notes.

That put a smile on my face. A lot of things last week were hard, but this particular job is turning out easier than I expected. So I wrapped DIE: Loaded 9 yesterday, and moved onto the third script today, where I’m continuing to keep the dial turned to 11.

Speak soon.

Kieron Gillen
Bath
11.2.2026