386: a picture of a Goat
Hullo
DIE10-1
Hatful Live
Links
Bye
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Later in the week than usual, but I wanted to get this out, as there’s a bunch of stuff I’d like to give folks head up about. First of all, the DIE: Loaded #10 comps arrived, which look lovely. Look at them. Our guest artist is Alison Sampson, and I love it.
As it’s out next week, so here’s the preview.
Coo.
Upgrade now****
Announced this week as Part of the Worlds Lair festival is this live game of Hollows. Where
Naomi Clarke, Grant Howitt, Jasper William Cartwright, Meghna Jayanth and myself are (er) playing a tactical combat TTRPG on stage? Also, I am shocked that I have moved from being the person who looks mean and moody in headshots to the person who grins in photos. One day I will reach the level to just send in a picture of a goat instead of my actual shot. Grant is an inspiration to us all.
Saturday, November 7th , 7:00-8:30pm, apparently.
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Chrissy and Tom Humberstone’s latest collaboration I Know The Way Out has been short-listed for the 2026 Selkie Awards for best Short Comic, which is great. If you want to grab one, you can order it from Tom’s shop.
Actually, talking Tom, he continues his run-up to Halloween by writing about Horror movie sequels, complete with illustrations. I’ve been loving all of them – I’ll link to his piece on Nightmare On Elm Steet: the Dream Warriors, as it’s the one which is sort of DIE-adjacent as an influence, but you should read them all.
Just launched yesterday and funded in a handful of hours – the Murderbot Graphic Novel adaption from Cosmic Lighthouse. This looks great.
DIE RPG: Metadungeon update from Chant! Gar handed his first draft of persona gen, so we’re all on our way. Chant includes a bunch of the fun stuff Gar is doing with the persona gen stuff, which has some inspired real-world-character-sheet stuff. It’s great to see this come together.
This thread about DIE RPG popped up on Reddit, which led to a bunch of folks talk about their experience in playing the game. There’s lots of this sort of chat on the Discord, but if you want a good sampling of why folks like the game, and what it does and what it doesn’t do, this is a really nice group.
I was fascinated by this piece about the Mount Pleasant carpark in Liverpool, which is some dungeon-architecture in real life stuff. Writing that has me thinking about a fantasy town which really does have this Dungeon in the middle, looming out of it, which people just sort of live around.
Claire Biddle’s on Elastica’s reissue. Quite the band, that Elastica.
The Five Geek Social Fallacies crossed my dash randomly, and I am reminded that it’s a good idea to cite the old magic occasionally, as I’d forgotten it, and could do a reminder.
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This week threw me, as I basically managed to get two day’s work done on Monday, which put me ahead of things. Thankfully, this early triumph was overcome and now I’m back to roughly where I should have been.
As well as getting The Power Fantasy #22 over to Caspar (end of our return arc), the big thing was getting a character design bible over to an artist for a new book. Character Bibles are interesting. They are, for me, are mix between physical design stuff, but also saying who these people are, to get input from my collaborators. I try and leave as much stuff open as I can, so they can see what they respond to. This kind of thing is the start of a conversation rather than the end of one.
It’s also when a book is most full of potential – the first time we’re really meeting these people, and likely the first time I’ve shared the core idea of them to my collaborators (outside of a rant on DMs or in the corner of a bar). It could be the best comic in the world! Or it may all go wrong. It’s shiny and new, and everything is possible.
It also probably gets out the sort of over-long energy that other people use to torture their DM’s with multi-page character backstories.
While I obviously can’t share you anything of the new one, I figure I could share you a little of an old one.
This is Ananke’s original profile from the Wicked + the Divine. You’ll see how some things absolutely reached the page, some stuff where abandoned, and lots that was tweaked. But it’s still recognisably Ananke.
Obvious huge spoilers for WicDiv throughout.
ANANKE
Our eternal Villain.
With her, we walk an awkward line. She's always sinister, but the fact she's a murderous villain should be hidden. She's very good at what she does. She has dignity and poise, and the angle we show her is someone who has seen generation after generation of gods die. She looks like a widow, in perpetual mourning. She rocks a wise-old-woman role, and rocks it hard.
Bar the 90 year difference, she is identical in looks to MINERVA. We will be disguising it in various ways. I like the idea of facial tattoos on her, which really lean into the Priestess role – however we could use masks or anything else you fancy. I see her in something long and regal. She can still walk, albeit slowly. We could give her a cane if we wanted, and decorate that in some fashion – but when the power flows through her, all that goes.
She's done much across the years – Graves' idea of triple-goddesses actually came from Ananke, which is her own analysis of the eternal relationship between her, Demeter and Minerva (She as the Crone and Maiden, Demeter as the Mother). She's also highly knowledgeable in religions. While she has her favourite lies to tell of what gods each person is, she actually analyses the people beforehand, and tries to choose a god that feeds into their idea of who they are. So if they have someone who considers themselves a sort of moody goth sort, she may choose Seth or Hades or similar, etc.
In a real way, Ananke hasn't had much of a life. This is, what we call in the business, Irony. This is best encapsulated by a single element. She hasn't performed since the spell. She's never sang. She's never created. She's just used all her inspiration to keep this story rolling along, and making sure everything ends up as it was when it started, just so she can carry on living. When I made up this story, I wasn't aware that there's an obvious meta reading for this being a critique of WFH superhero work, but I'll also be a fool to say it's not there.
It's worth noting that she has faked doing performance with the generations Maker's equipment... but this is a different thing from actually being a creator or performer. Before the end of the story, Anake may get her chance to perform when she knows she's going to die. She tries, and her voice croaks. She just can't do it. Against all the cheery optimistic stories that say it's never too late, I suspect WicDiv will kick against that. Age is one thing. It’s ethical collapse and the blackhole of the heart is a more serious matter. You can waste your talent.
When we present this to the reader, this will be sold as a sacrifice. She exists as the advisors to these generations, who get to create, and never has anything for herself. Yes, they die – but she has to watch them die, and if she doesn't, they stay dead and they never come back. She has to experience all that – and simultaneously never have the life they have in their two scant years. She lives forever, but she has no life – she says this to them, and this is how we gain whatever sympathy we have for her.
Perhaps it's worth stressing the only complete lie in that story is that the gods come back. The gods' power comes back, but the individuals are dead, dead, dead.
Ethnically I see her as Mediterranean. It could be Greek. It could be someone from the Middle-East. She doesn't tell anyone, and it's always tricky to guess. She's from the Fertile crescent from somewhere between 4000-5000BC. It doesn't map that easy.
Ananke is normally presented with a Spindle, if you want to use that.
She gets more powerful as she harvests the heads of the generation. As she keeps them captive, she fundamentally gains their powers – in the same way that Woden gains Othin's. As we progress, we'll see Ananke start to use other gods' miracle signatures.
Archetypes: Fading Movie Icon. Greta Garbo in “I Want To Be Alone” mode.
Personality: Stern, tired, sinister, occasionally pained, often cold.
Powers: Everything. She keeps it hidden, and plays to Godly archetype powers, but she has much more power than anyone else – or rather, she has exactly the same amount of power as anyone else, but she has access to it all.
That’s a taste, anyway. The new one is smaller than WicDIv’s one, but not by much. WicDiv was a lot. Folks may have noticed.
Hmm. I wonder if any of my character bibles may suitable be a good thing for Script Club? I’d have to check what was in one. On that note - I wonder about pitches. Hmm.
Speak soon.
Kieron Gillen
Bath
1.10.2026