Hullo

Reloaded
Party not Solo
Faces
Links
Bye

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This has crept up on me. It was only at my signing at GOSH for Free Comic Book Day that I realised that DIE: Loaded’s first collection drops this week (in comic shops, at least).

DIE LOADED: ZERO SESSIONS is the sequel to DIE, picking up a year later. It can be jumped aboard straight, but I’d recommend going back to the first if you’re interested in all things DIE. It’s reviewed and sold well, and we’re really happy with the work. Stephanie’s work is better than ever. And you can go get it.

If you want to know more - short version, Goth Jumani, again – you can head over to the site which explains it, or you can watch a trailer. I’m going to recut this next so it’s plugging the collection and not the single issues, but you can have it now…

It’ll be out in Bookshops towards the end of the month, so I’ll mention it then too.

Go gets!

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It was Star Wars day at the weekend, and I managed to hammer out a quick essay about Why Han Solo Was An Amazing TTRPG Player And TTRPG Players Of Han Solo Characters Mostly Aren’t. It’s me taking some of the close reading I did for Star Wars to write the comics, and turning it into advice for folks who want to play Cool Lone Wolf without all their friends wanting to murder them. Random bit…

Anyone can make jokes about Storm Troopers’ accuracy. Easy. What you should notice is that there’s no point in the movie where the characters don’t run away the second they’re outnumbered, or treat the threat with the upmost sincerity. It’s not until Jedi we discover what happens if they stand and fight, and can ‘t run away – and the answer is “They get captured.”

And then there’s Han Solo.

Han Solo is the archetypal Han Solo in fiction. Generations of role-players have tried to play knock offs. Generations have shat the bed, as in their Love of the Effect of Han Solo On The Screen have failed to grasp how the magic trick worked.

You can read the rest here.

It went down quite well. It did make me think “Man, this writing about D&D related stuff is a very easy way to get engagement.” Lucky we don’t look at our analytics at Old Men. We are a blog, a more elegant weapon, for a more civilized age.

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I popped in and out of London on Saturday for Free Comic Book Day at Gosh. The always great Mauricio de Souza took some photographs, so let’s show how it looked.

It was lovely seeing everyone.

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• Due to random chance, I realised that this week could be an old link only special. In fact, I made it so, by saving new links for next week. Let it not be said I will abandon a theme. Anyway – in the heart of the metadungeon overtime hysteria (See my outro below) Gar linked to the Guardian’s coverage of the endless 2010 Wimbledon match, which I somehow had never read. Scroll down to 2:45 and go from there. This is s sports journalism.

• I saw Shimura Curves’ Stronger mentioned, which had me in my “I know this, but can’t place it anymore” even to the point where I couldn’t exactly place the band (The one Miss AMP was in?). I was right – great going back to this, and it is deep David Kohl-y stuff. This sort of very indie stuff isn’t stuff which I spend my time with anymore, but this is so much a part of my 00s.

• This got linked in a conversation after I was blinking at D&D Reddit - Jay Dragon on the Puzzle Maker’s paradox – that people who try to make games are likely people who played a game, and didn’t like it, but hung around to try and make a more welcoming game. By definition, they are not their own audience. That audience noped out and never looked back – so how can they know it?

• And this McSweeney’s Story from a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

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If I was to think of this week, I suspect it would be the excitingly endless Sisyphean overtime to the DIE: Metadungeon crowdfunder. One of Backerkit’s “things” is that if someone backs a project, it extends the crowdfunder by another 10 minutes. As long as someone else backs within 10 minutes, it keeps on going. However, as this was all part of the larger megadungeon month, it meant that if anyone backed any of the thirty projects, everyone’s overtime was extended. It went on for three days. I think it was three days. It seemed longer, as being perpetually 10 minutes away from getting the money to let you start work does make things stretch out.

Also there’s the amazing fear of… wait, everyone can still get cold feet. Maybe all 2000 backers will go “Nah” and cancel? There was one person who cancelled a £250 pledge after the deadline. I’m glad for them, of course – if you’re having second thoughts, cancel – but the “we’re funded, but not funded, except we are” state did extend the anxiety.

But it eventually ended, and we made £189,593, so the Metadungeon is work. Two stretch goals of mine unlocked, so I’ll be writing two sub-dungeon’s in Gar’s imminent masterpiece. I think this will be fun.

My to-do list has moved back to The Power Fantasy – Caspar is wrapping up the issue across the next couple of weeks (ahead of schedule) so I want to make sure a script is waiting for him. We’re in the mid-arc finessing point, where the open road narrows and we need to start making hard decisions. I’ve got a backbone for the issue which I like though – and it’s all written, leaving me with the dovetailing other material to sort out.

I was thinking of Creator Owned stuff this week for other reasons – partially as I have to choose what the next Script Club will be, but also as someone asked me this weekend how many comics I’ve written. A long time ago, I did have a rough list, but it was a long time ago, and I’ve written a lot since then. Now, I can’t face going through and working out how many Judgement Tie-Ins I wrote – as I’ve had my cry for the day already – but I will do it for my creator owned books. It’s the 20^th anniversary of Phonogram later this year, and seeing how much of the Good Shit™ I’ve managed to do will be educational.

I’m only counting things published in the direct market (so none of my small press stuff, none of the webcomic stuff) and not including random one off short stories in anthologies. I’m not worrying about issue length here – DIE was about 25 pages each, Some issues are 30 pages, etc – but I am doing some basic math to get a number of issue equivalent for OGNs and serialised short stories. I’m including anything which is creator-originated stuff, even if I don’t share 100% ownership with my co-creators (e.g. O&F). I’m also including The Ludocrats, as I converted them into comics, and it probably evens out with all the extra stuff above.

So...

51 - WicDiv
51 - Uber
30 – Once & Future
20 – DIE
10 – DIE: Loaded
18 – The Power Fantasy
12 - Mercury Heat
18 - Phonogram
5 – The Ludocrats
5 - Three
6 - Modded (18 x 8 page stories)
4.5 – We Called Them Giants (94 pages, so about 4.5 issues)
1 – Closer

= 231.5 pages

Let’s call it 232. as I’ve half written the next issue of TPF. Well over 4000 pages of Creator Owned comics. Cripes.

That’s actually more than I’d have thought. I now do want to know what percentage of my work has been creator owned. Not as high as I suspect 2006 era would have wished… but I also know if I told 2006-era me that I’ll have done over 200 creator owned comics in twenty years, I’d have been delighted.

That said, I probably should do some more, right?

Kieron Gillen
Bath
6.5.2026