Hullo

London
Ending
Poland
Bush
Small
Links
Bye

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It’s Free Comic Book Day on Saturday, and to celebrate it, I’m popping quickly into London and signing at GOSH between 1 and 2, sitting next to the lovely Ben Wheatley. Look, a flier above.

As well as the free comics, they’re also running children’s events all morning. Comics? For children? Seems unlikely.

More details in the link here.

Also remember – always good to support your shop by buying some fee comic books while you’re there.

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It’s the last few days of the Meta Dungeon. DIE RPG: THE METADUNGEON. Chant RRD has been cooking up hypothetical masters for each decade. These are just lots of fun.

The last ones are an exclusive, as they’re not on the RRD socials yet. Shush!

You can Back here, etc. I describe the tiers here, but for those who have been DIE RPG curious, this is a great chance to get the core rules and anything else too. We unlocked the Stephanie stretch goals, so the Metadungeon will have six (count ‘em!) beautiful Stephanie chapter headings.

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I’m looking forward to this – I’m to be a guest at Pyrkon 2026 in Poznan from 19^th to the 21^st of June this year. It’s my first time in Poland for a con, I believe – and only my second ever European Gaming con (though I’ll be signing and doing comics stuff too). I haven’t been to poland since a wedding, so I’m looking forward to being back. Here’s an article they ran about me.

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The next Script Club (Details in link) is The Power Fantasy #1, which should go out on April 31st.

I haven’t gone through and read this yet, but I think it’s a fun one – Caspar and I feeling it out, before we’ve worked on a project like this together. The further we go in, the more we work out our own language. We had worked together on Peter Cannon: Watch, but that was such a firm strict formalist approach that meant a certain approach to the script was needed. In this, we found our own groove.

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This crossed by dash. Custom The Power Fantasy miniatures. Cute!

I did imagine havinag The Power Fantasy Licenced Wargame, where if any of your units attack, you flip the whole table.

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• Here’s the Comic Journal’s obituary for Sam Keith, which is a really good deep dive into a fascinating talent. Sam’s own work is so distinctive that I always forget that he was the original artist of the Sandman, which is how you know you’re cooking something up powerful. For me, that’s the artist equivalent of Moore’s achievements being so hefty elsewhere people somehow forget he was one of Constantine’s creators.

• Gerry Conway passed this week. No big bios yet, but here’s the Beat’s. Seeing the outpouring of love to him shows how loved he really was, across multiple generations of creators.

• The BBC noting Britain being a voice-note averse country led to some discourse, which did get me thinking. Voicenotes only re-entered my life in the last few years, and are a major form of communication for a subset of folks I know. As in, carers. It’s fairly logical - you can’t type or read when you’re making sure a child isn’t about to throw themselves beneath a passing rhino.

• This online day long workshop about writing Folk Horror looks fun. Lots of interesting people, but my attention was brought by my friend Saxey posting their video hyping it online. See them pitch it. I am charmed.

• Graham “Cthulhu Dark” Walmsley starts a series of posts about How To Design TTRPGs.

• Jay Dragon on the three secrets of games, which is fun. “I think all game designers should know why game designers exist. You don't need a game designer to have fun playing games with your friends. The game designer is the older kid on the playground — they're someone you trust to provide you with a game that will give you what you're looking for. As we get older, and our taste gets more particular, and we have even less time in our days, the game designer becomes even more valuable. The core of the relationship with the game designer is built on the trust that the game designer's recommendations on how you have fun will be fruitful.”

• Pornsak Pichetshote is doing a newsletter called DAY 2. “There’s a lot of stories about how writers break into the industry. But there’s much less about how they maintain their career afterwards. Probably because that story is made up of a thousand tiny decisions that only form a narrative in hindsight, once the writer’s forgotten so many of those minute moves. And yet, it’s a story I’m obsessed with. I’ve sifted through my idols’ interviews and histories to piece theirs together, as I think most writers do. It’s undoubtedly an interesting story. But is it interesting to follow as it goes? DAY 2 is my experiment to find out”. It’s a 24 part story of what happened (and happening!) in the biggest year of his career, even as it’s still going on. I am fascinated.

• It also came to me in a spooky way. I was listening to his Off Panel interview, and thinking “that sounds interesting” while I was walking. I just called up the subscribe page, and was LITERALLY pressing subscribe when he said my name, in an amazing jump scare coincidence. It was also based around him thinking my early career was playing a blinder, which is not what it felt like on the inside. I suspect that’s an essay there.

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I feel like I’ve been relatively productive. This is likely because I’ve had to been. As I said last time, I had to change gear from the script I was writing on Monday to write DIE 10. I polished that off this Monday, and moved back to the abandoned script yesterday. And I’ve wrapped a zero draft of it now – which is a whole day ahead of schedule. Which is lucky, because I have even more things I have to do – rewrites and a few more bits and bobs for an other media thing, this fucking newsletter, my Trophy Dark scenario rewrite - and I need to take tomorrow afternoon off as an old friend I’ve not seen since before Covid is passing through town. Priorities, innit?

After all that’s off my desk, next up is the next issue of the Power Fantasy – the third one, as Caspar will be wrapping the second shortly. Clayton did a lettering pass on the first issue, and it’s looking great. Caspar being able to take a beat has made a gorgeous book even more so. I’ve also got the first art from one of the big unannounced things, and it’s just amazing - great artist I’ve never worked with before, just doing lovely stuff.

There is another thing ambling around in the background – I was noodling on it last monday as well, but have left it alone. I’d written it, and it wasn’t feeling right, so I want to give my brain a bit more time to chew it over. I’ve actually even taken a step back from the research for it, and started reading a novel rather than research middle. Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky – the latest in the Children of Time series, which I adore. I reached the new evolved animal last night and, despite Adrian having told me what it was going to be, I just beamed at it. Absolutely my favourite animal, and rendered delightfully.

Look at me, resisting hyperevolved animal spoilers, like a boss.

I’ll end it there, as if I do, I may be able to get this out before lunch, and I can get on with the next thing on the list, which is such a disorganised thing to be doing at this time of year that I’m embarrassed to give any further details in case you think even less of me.

Kieron Gillen
Bath
29.4.2026