The Comics Super Blog!
Alex Dueben reflects on recent comments from writer Kieron Gillen and others about interviewing and comics journalism.
Last Wednesday, Kieron Gillen made a few statements on Twitter, going after people conducting email interviews.
While I agree with what he said in general and responded that there is a place for such questions, I also hesitate to avoid making such broad statements. Just like with “rules” about writing comics, they don’t NEED to be followed, but one should have a good reason when they are not following them. I am aware that Gillen would likely agree with me on that point.
‘It’s complicated, but good complicated.’
The final issue of Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s The Wicked + The Divine arrives Sept. 4. Gillen discussed how he feels about reaching the end of the series in his email newsletter this week:
Continue reading “Quoted: Kieron Gillen on finishing ‘The Wicked + The Divine’”Check out a preview of the upcoming series from BOOM! Studios.
Fans of Kieron Gillen’s work on Doctor Aphra, The Wicked and the Divine and Die don’t have long to wait for their next fix. In advance of this week’s Comic-Con International, BOOM! Studios released a preview and a trailer for his six-issue miniseries “Once and Future,” with artist Dan Mora and colorist Tamra Bonvillain.
“I’ve just finished an issue of this before writing this newsletter, and I’m enjoying writing Bridgette and Duncan enormously,” Gillen said in his email newsletter this week. “It’s definitely filled the Doctor Aphra shape in my heart, in terms of doing blackly funny adventure fiction. In this case, with a lot of horror notes.”
Check out the trailer and some preview pages below.
Continue reading “‘Once and Future’ fills the ‘Doctor Aphra shape’ in Kieron Gillen’s heart”Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans’ comic about role-playing games naturally gets its own RPG.
If you’ve been Die-ing (sorry) to play the role-playing game at the center of Kieron Gillen and the amazing Stephanie Hans‘ Die comic book, you are now in luck — a beta version of the Die RPG is now available on the Die website.
The materials include a manual, character sheets and additional gamemaster materials, with something called the “Arcana” — “weird stuff and supplementary material” — coming with the next arc of the comic.
“It’s a somewhat meta RPG which is designed to let a group of players make their own version of the first arc of Die,” Gillen said in his email newsletter. “It’s about Die the situation rather than the specifics of Die. As in, you generate a group of real world people, who then sit down to play a role-playing game, before getting dragged into a fantasy world. Yes, it’s a little Meta. One of the playtesters described it as a manual of how to make your own Kieron Gillen-esque story, which I quite like. There’s a lot of me trying to explain how stories work, and how DIE works specifically. That means I suspect some of it will be interesting to folks who have no interest in RPGs at all. There are also at least three funny jokes.”
Continue reading “Role play as a role player in the ‘Die’ RPG”Plus: Mark Alessi passes away; DiNKy award nominees and more.
Dark Horse Comics has canceled the final two issues of Astro Hustle after writer Jai Nitz was accused of sexual misconduct.
The allegations were first published on the Her Campus website by Hannah Strader, a University of Kansas student who met Nitz when he was a guest lecturer in one of her classes. Nitz, whose recent work also includes a Suicide Squad story for DC Comics, briefly deleted his Twitter account (which is now set to private) and bailed on his appearance at 2019 Planet Comicon last weekend.
“Dark Horse takes all allegations seriously. We have cancelled future issues of Astro Hustle,” the publisher said in a statement to CBR.com. “While we were unable to prevent our distributor’s shipping of Astro Hustle #2, we are also suspending our professional ties with Jai Nitz.”
Astro Hustle artist Tom Reilly addressed the cancellation on Twitter, saying it was “for the best” and showing support for the victim. And Nitz released a statement to Bleeding Cool, saying “I am stepping away from comics and public life. I am seeking counseling and trying to live a better life for my loved ones.”
Continue reading “Comics Lowdown: ‘Astro Hustle’ canceled after sexual misconduct allegations against Jai Nitz”Family secrets and Arthurian legends collide in a new miniseries coming in August.
Writer Kieron Gillen has been on a roll lately, with the popular The Wicked + The Divine continuing to turn heads, and the newly minted Die and Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt garnering attention and good reviews. Now he’s teaming up with Dan Mora (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) for a new miniseries from BOOM! Studios that sounds like it’s right in his wheelhouse: Once and Future, which will involve Arthurian legends, monster hunting and a kick-ass grandma.
“I’ve been chewing over how the classic explorer adventure serial could operate in the twenty-first century for a while. Doctor Aphra transplanting the genre to space was one conclusion. Once and Future is another, taking a genre whose core has barely changed since the 19th century, and updating it for the now,” Gillen said. “Adventure, romance, supernatural horror and too much bloody research, as always. When BOOM! Studios told me one of the most talented action artists of his generation was interested in collaborating, I knew that we had all the ingredients we needed to create gold. Gold which, inevitably, our heroes will steal.”
Continue reading “Gillen + Mora team for ‘Once and Future’ from BOOM! Studios”Plus: top comics and graphic novels at comic shops in November! Next ‘Dog Man’ book gets a 5 million copy print run! Kieron Gillen plays ‘Die,’ for real! And much more!
Chris Ryall, who left IDW Publishing in March after serving as editor-in-chief for about 14 years, has rejoined the company as president, publisher and chief creative officer.
“IDW is where I’ve spent the majority of my career, and I consider the company and its employees like family, so I am grateful for this amazing opportunity to return,” Ryall said in a press statement. “I believe that IDW has very significant opportunities to become even more valuable and important, and I am excited to further expand on what I started with the company nearly 15 years ago. I am also eager to help the company celebrate its 20th year anniversary in 2019 in varied and creatively invigorating new ways.”
Continue reading “Comics Lowdown: Chris Ryall rejoins IDW; Joe Illidge out at Valiant”
Plus: Tumblr changes its guidelines, November comics sales drop, Olivia Stephens, Sophie Goldstein, Geoff Johns, Kieron Gillen, Todd Klein, more best-of-the-year lists and more!
The Love Is Love anthology published by IDW Publishing and DC Comics continues to raise money for LGBT organizations; earlier this week IDW announced a donation of $51,000 to The Trevor Project, the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ young people. This follows a donation of $165,000 in 2017 to the OneOrlando Fund to assist the victims and families impacted by the deadly attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida on June 12, 2016.
“This has so exceeded any of my wildest hopes for the amount of money it could raise and the attention it got,” Marc Andreyko, who organized and curated the anthology, told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “We were able to give $51,000 to the Trevor Project two years out, when the news cycle is so fast people don’t remember what happened five minutes ago. I’m happy and sad that there is an evergreen quality to this.”
The anthology is currently in its sixth printing, available via online booksellers, comic book specialty retailers and through digital platforms.
Continue reading “Comics Lowdown: ‘Love Is Love’ brings in another $51,000 for The Trevor Project”
Both comics set to launch in January.
Heading into this weekend’s New York Comic Con, Dynamite Entertainment announced two reboots of some old comic favorites.
First up is Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt, by Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard.
“I’ve been away from the genre for a few years. This is me refreshed, grinning and more than a little bit angry. I want to try things. I want to have fun. Hell, we’ve created a whole new supporting cast of heroes for this series because we wanted to. I wanted to do a state of the art, state of the superheroic nation, and Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt is it,” Gillen said in a press release. “High adventure, big ideals, epic destruction, heroism, despair and nine-panel grids.”
Continue reading “Dynamite revives ‘Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt,’ ‘Turok’”
Fantasy gets real this December from Image Comics.
Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans, who previously worked together on Marvel’s Journey into Mystery, are rolling the dice on a new comic this December called “Die.” Clayton Clowes will letter the project.
“Stephanie and I have been wanting to work together forever – Journey Into Mystery 645 is one of my favourite things I’ve ever done, and this comes straight from there,” Gillen said in his weekly email newsletter. “The Earth needs a fantasy world created by Stephanie Hans, and I had to enable it.”
The story revolves around a group of teens who regularly play tabletop role-playing games. One night they mysteriously disappear, only to reappear two years later. Actually, forget my explanation — you can read this for yourself on this lovely, handy teaser the team put together:
Continue reading “Goth Jumanji: Gillen + Hans team for new series ‘Die’”
‘Bitch Planet,’ ‘Monstress,’ ‘The Wicked + The Divine’ among this year’s nominees for the comics category.
The British Fantasy Society has announced the nominees for the 2018 British Fantasy Awards, including the “Best Comic/Graphic Novel” category.
The entrants are selected after two rounds of nominations, and votes are tallied from the members of the British Fantasy Society and FantasyCon. Winners will be announced Oct. 21 at FantasyCon 2018. Monstress took home the award last year.
The nominees in the “Best Comic/Graphic Novel” category include:
Continue reading “Nominees announced for the 2018 British Fantasy Awards”
Dynamite announces ‘James Bond: Service,’ a one-shot featuring an assassin’s plot to exterminate the “special relationship” between the U.S. and Great Britain.
Joining a list of writers that already includes Warren Ells, Andy Diggle, James Robinson and Benjamin Percy, Kieron Gillen has signed on to write Dynamite’s James Bond. He’ll team with artist Antonio Fuso to write James Bond: Service, a one-shot due out in May.
“The thing with the icons is that I’m not particularly interested in doing a one-size-fit-all story for them,” Gillen said in his email newsletter today. “You need to make them live, and that means finding something that really captures you. As such, this ends up digging into some of the interest in history and geopolitics which drives work like Uber, and merging it with the contemporary era. It is very much a Bond inspired by Brexit and realpolitik. If you can’t use a country’s icon to talk about the country, what’s the point, right?”
Continue reading “Gillen, Fuso enlisted for James Bond one-shot”
