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An unusual time for a newsletter, but I figure that doing one to time with the release of Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls. The servers should be going live as we speak, so if you want, you can buy it, and pop online to be beaten up by a teenager with infinitely better reflexes than your tired and sagging body. This may be autobiographic.

Alternatvely, you could turn to the lovingly crafted Story Mode (which I wrote) and have a nice relaxing time, until the computer, with infinitely better reflexes than your tired and sagging body, beats you up. This also may be autographic.

Or turn out to be – I have yet to play it, though I’ve got it downloading as we speak. I’ll be really interested to see how it’s all been integrated in the final cut. There’s an interview with me that’s been recorded, and I’ll link to it when it’s out rather than say more, as I’m still not exactly sure what’s PR-acceptable to say.

But basically if you want to stand on the left of the screen and punch someone standing on the right of the screen, and you’re both got three mates, and you’re all folks from the marvel universe? This is the game for you.

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It’s Caption this weekend, the revival of the British ultrasmallpress con. It’s at Seacourt Hall, Oxford on 8th – 9th August 2026. I’m going on the Saturday, where I’ll be involved with Writer/Artist speed-dating.

In fact, here’s the full schedule.

If you’re in the area, this is very much deep in the land of small press scene where I did my very earliest stuff, and a con I’m glad to see it. It remains the only con where Carla Speed McNeil used a pair of tweezers to remove a bee from my ear.

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I did another Skim over at Old Men Running The World, on Stonetop. You can tell it’s by me, as it’s got a big Charli XCX album reference as a subheader, plus stuff like this…

Shortly after I got properly into indie-TTRPG, my wife got into Improv. Like, deeply into it. On the London scene, formed a group, did festivals. So this gave me a front row seat to watching the subculture at work and play, and I just ate popcorn in delight. I learned a lot, and was interested in how it rhymed with what I saw in Indie TTRPG . Not in the way that Improv techniques can be used in games – but in terms of how techniques are taught, and their “play” culture and the idea of what good practise looks like in a creative form, and how they build a lingua fraca, looking for the “game” and so on.

(Also, a field where except for a handful of the very biggest stars, there’s absolutely no money whatsoever. That rhymes too.)

Anyway – at the same time, Bojack Horseman had just reached a series of inspired episodes where Todd joins an Improv group, and is repeatedly informed that it’s definitely not a cult. It’s using it to tell a Scientology story, except with Improv – but it’s also doing a Scientology story to gently mock Improv. Because Improv is definitely not a cult.

I thought of this all the time in the indie scene. With its love of structure, of learned techniques to maximise storytelling potential, of forwarding dogma to between enable freedom, I started quoting Bojack when listening to PbtA podcasts. This is definitely not a cult. 

Which really didn’t need to be in this piece, but I wanted to write it somewhere, and here we go.

You can read the rest here.

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The Comps for DIE: Loaded #8 arrived this week, and look great. Out next Wednesday (August 12^th). More details then.

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We didn’t win the Eisner, but Caspar did wink an Inkspot, which was a lovely thing for him. Hurrah! So, to let’s have a Caspar celebration and include some of his answers from his AMA, about all things The Power Fantasy, plus a couple of sketches he did at San Diego.

How significant would you say your input is on the story?

Caspar: Very significant! Apologies in advance as I get Cagey with questions like this as it implies Im a replaceable asset. Creator owned books are very different for WFH works where artist are brought on to finished scripts by an editor. If an other artist co created this series it wouldn’t resemble the TPF you’re reading. Kieron would have developed different characters with that artist, they may have the same power set and small detail alike age and birth place but these were all details that changed and developed over our conversations. For instance I pushed for Val to be a woman, another artist may have changed other aspects. Then there’s the tone. If an artist with a house style took on the series they may have developed something very gritty, absent of flair really nihilistic haha.

In movie terms I’m the cinematographer, actors, set design, costume design and special effects and in some cases the director. comics is the only visual medium I know where artist get treated less like authors and more like prompt generators, worsen now by the advent of ai. There was no issue 2 script until after I drew or developed a huge amount of issue 1, the foundations I made there help shape the rest of the series. The stops on the road were mostly the same from when we set off but how we got there changed.

Short answer this book wouldn’t exist like this without myself, It probably wouldn’t even be called the power fantasy! :)

A lot of TPF character have stylized dialogue, like Etienne’s purple text for telepathic communication or Eliza’s red speech bubbles. Are those things that fall under your purview as the character designer, or is that more the job of the letterer?

Caspar: Those are things we discussed with Clayton early. My panels don’t have boarders so I asked the balloons didn’t either, so when I use a white background Clayton will add a colour related to the character for the balloon. It’s really neat. I believe there were notes in the script about Et and El’s balloons, I definitely recall both having a few passes before we landed on the ones we liked.

How much creative control do you have for a project like TPF with the final artwork. Do inkers and colourers set the tone for the final page or does it come back to you for sign off?

Caspar: Pretty much total creative control, I'll get a a handful notes from Katie and Kieron after I hand in the art. Like an expression wasn't landing right with the dialogue, drew a character too short hahaha, sorry Val.

Biggest change made in the entire series was Eliza going to hell, I see a lot of people giving me props for the bold red pages, I actually drew this weird trippy scene with dozens of eliza walking in circles and faces tearing apart in the hell scape, it looked metal AF but wasn't hitting the vibe, stang to lose it but it was the right call! The red pages hit you like a brick and just lingered which is horrifying, you have Kieron and Katie to thank for that!

I also ink and colour my own work, it's all me :)

There's a particular thing you've been doing with color in TPF that I've rarely seen outside of early-'60s comics, where characters outside of the focal distance of a panel (and sometimes at that distance) will be colored in a flat tone, or small range of tones, that's not at all "natural": violet or green or blue. I love it and I am curious about how you decided on it. (And, more broadly, how did you develop the very distinctive TPF color palette?)

Caspar: So when we’re first started the idea which I think holds true for most of the story was that any human character outside of the atomics was coloured in a plain shade, and only are mains and supporting cast were fully rendered in colour. I’m glad you like it, it’s always fun when people pick up on these little details

I’m sure it’s no surprise to you that colors truly carry so much weight alongside their usage, looking at your reply about the reds in Hell up above, but it did push me to ask something if you can answer it! With this next upcoming arc, what color have you used the most?

Caspar: This may surprise you but I think grey! :0

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• The always good Tom Humberstone’s latest comic is Just Work, looking at couriers, exploitation and all the good stuff. As per his previous Luddites comic, this is doing research and making it current.

• The Worldcon panel guide is up. I’m in four, all of which are online ones. Three of which are game related, which feels something of a sea change.

• As a lead into the Eisners, the League of Comic Geeks did interviews with folks about their books. Here’s mine about The Power Fantasy.

• Grant Howitt’s patreon has been really good recently, with big, smart, personal and quirky essays. Here’s one about what he learned via running various TTRPG megagames, including the one I wrote.

• Cory Doctrow chewing over AI stuff, specifically the incentive encouragement for businesses to lie about its use. Also, the difference between self-directed and imposed use.

• I’m not a maths guy, but a mathy friend forwarded this about AI and countertheorums. He says the guy talking is someone whose thinking he respects. At the least, I’m entertained that the author trying to understand the proofs while I’m trying to understand him understanding.

• Hardcore History is reliably unreliable in its release, but the latest Alexander episode has dropped, and is as good as ever. The triangulation on what extreme experiences must have been like is the sort of person-forward thinking that just is great for a writer. Also, I was reminds me that Alexander was a literal short king and his mate/lover Hephaestion was an absolute unit, so now I'm imagining them as Asterix and Obelix.

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We’ve missed a couple of weeks.

The first week of that was being away, on an actual holiday with the extended family, and I wasn’t working. The second week of that was being back from holiday, with a to-do list that would make Sisyphus go “are you sure?”. That there wasn’t anything which 100% Must Do Now meant I put it off.

However, things have tamed a little since the. The way you can tell is that my actual website is back up – and it’s been down for months because I couldn’t find the brainspace to do the simple task of “ask my hosting people to upgrade the php”. Maybe I’ll have updated the bio by the time you read this.

The to-do list is still quite the thing, but it’s back to a normal level, including some long term projects. The holiday was a real break, and well timed. Around 10pm on the night before we flew out to Portgual, I did actually think “maybe I do need a break.” That’s rare for me. For a freelancer of a certain, unhealthy bent, part of my brain is always thinking “but now all my deadlines are going to be 10 days closer”. But I realised I was a little burned out, and needed it – and the space let me chew over a few things, and worked out what next, and where I want to focus.

So that’s good.

The To-do there is to wrap three projects as soon as I can, to leave as much space as possible to chew on the things I want to do. That’s 5 issues, between them all, and I’ve got 2 of the 5 done since then. With luck, I can clear the remaining three before any of my other deadlines bite in.

(There’s one thing which is in limbo while an artist is being sorted out, and I’m clearly hoping that drags on a bit more to buy the maximum space. It’s strange - I’ll be happier to rush when it solidifes rather than derail my present plan.)

I’ve started early work on the other three short CO things I want to do – one has an artist, and we’ve set up a Pintrest, which is always an energetic, entertaining stage, with me digging out Ian Miller images and all that. The second one had me reaching out to an old friend – who can’t do it (as I suspected, but I wanted to start with her) but has been a great chance to catch up. The third one is still in “oh god, who do I know who wants to do a horror comic in a strict grid?” space. But they’re there, and being chewed upon.

I also am explicitly trying to carve time to layout The Scions in an ashcan format – which is the sort of thing which always slips unless I actively add it to the To Do list. So I have.

Right – next on the to do list? Lunch.

Speak soon.

Kieron Gillen
Bath
6.8.2026