Extremely Online
First up, Skyscraper, a newspaper sized mystery comic is currently live on Kickstarter. Written by Ryan K Lindsay, with art by Mitchell Collins, colours by Simon Robins and edits by myself.
"When the VP of KDP flies out the top floor and dives into the pavement out the front, there are a lot of questions to answer. Enter: Keene, an independent contractor brought in to help figure out how and why she died. What unfolds is a mystery spanning decades that becomes less about why one woman dies and more about why a building would conspire to make it happen.
This 24 page one-shot utilises a central conceit that can only work in comics - every single page is framed exactly the same way, it’s a front shot of the KDP building, but different panels and tiers of the page can jump around through time. Collins’ expressive and intricate inkwork delivers us characters and moments through zoomed panels and cutaway areas so each page jumps around in time to build a truly epic story."
The project is already funded thanks to an amazing response from backers (a retweet from Brian Michael Bendis didn't hurt) and is worthy of your clicks and money. It's going to look amazing when it's all printed up.
Ryan has also done an interview at The Beat about the comic too.
In similar news:
https://twitter.com/ryanklindsay/status/1179515504827830272
More to follow :)
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Links
I'm enjoying catching up and going through Brian Keene's column at Cemetery Dance about the history of horror fiction:
"I truly believe that in horror fiction, there is no such thing as an original idea. They’ve all been done before. What’s original is your take on the idea, your spin on the familiar old tropes and monsters, your unique perspective and voice—your twist. Don’t waste a year of your life writing The Stand. It’s already been written. Instead, write your take on the themes presented in the book—themes that have existed in horror fiction since primitive man first started painting stories on cave walls. Themes that make up those holy books I mentioned at the beginning. Themes that were tackled in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Novelist and comics writer Warren Ellis often says, “Tell people who you are and where you are and what the world looks like today.” And that’s what writing horror fiction—or any type of fiction—really is. It’s taking universal themes and truths that have been examined by other writers for thousands of years, and offering your own perspective on them."
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The anthology Star Wars books were a huge part of my childhood. Tor.com has an article up on each of them at the moment, republishing articles originally published in 2013.
"There are a contingent of Jabba-ites (can I call them that?) who join the ranks of the B’ommar monks, creatures who live in the depths of the palace. This is terrifying because not everyone who ends up a monk got a choice in becoming one. And if someone’s going to rip out your brain and put it in a jar connected to a droid spider body, they should at least have the decency to ask you first."
Those spider-monks scared the crap out of me.
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Eurogamer argues that someone should make a video game out of one of my local train stations, Birmingham New Street. I'm inclined to agree.
"When I thought about New Street making a fun game, I thought mainly about the feeling of utter befuddlement it causes me - too many people, loose-limbed and arranged by a magical hand to be in your way at all times, dragging suitcases and children behind them while frantically looking around for the sign that may reveal the location of their train and save them from being too late. There are many games that are great fun just by virtue of how they exaggerate confusion and lack of control. Think Octodad, Manual Samuel or Human Fall Flat - a difficult control scheme or overzealous physics engine provides hours of fun simply by working against you."
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Wired has a longform piece up about Jack Conte and his company, Patreon.
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Bustle has a fantastic list of 21 short horror stories for your perusal. All of them are excellent.
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Mother Jones has a roundtable discussion up between four 'extremely online' writers and how the internet broke their brains:
"But so I think that the internet, by being organized in the form of social networks that are centralized on personal identity, has blurred multiple separate ideas of solidarity, to where political solidarity and civic solidarity are permanently enmeshed with the solidarity that comes with lived experience.
You can’t express solidarity with someone without somehow inserting yourself into it—partly because that’s just how these platforms are structured."
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A short one this week, I know.
Anyway, I'm off to contemplate Substack again. See you in two!