Kieron Gillen writes stuff and things. This is his more casual blog. For solely work stuff, you'd be best to go to kierongillen.com, assuming it's decided to work today. In practice, you'll be better off staying here.
I suspect
this one may ramble. Or it may not. The odd thing is always when
things which have been internally discussed forever end up not
needing to be discussed in public. For Journey Into Mystery
and Young Avengers, I always had the idea of the essay I’d end
them with… but when I got there, I shrugged and did a couple of
paragraphs which covered the basics.
(There was
a grace note in both, in terms of highlighting a motif – Write
Your Own Happy Ending and Be A Superhero. Save The World –
but that’s really minor detail compared to what I presumed I’d be
writing.)
Well… I
know it’s going to be quite long, as I’m going to include the
miniature essay on plot twists I lobbed up to respond to a question,
just so I can include some WicDiv specific stuff.
So, WicDiv
33. The “Everything you knew is wrong” issue.
Jamie’s
Cover
Jamie
coloured this himself.
There was
a lot of discussion over this, in terms of how to resolve the
equation that we’d set up. Where to go after the maximalist nature of
Dio’s 32? I won’t mention the other options, as at least some of them
may end up being used down the line. One suggestion I quite liked was
doing the equivalent of the ABC Look Of Love album…
…which
is this scene of posed romance on the cover, and when you flip the
album, you see all the lighting and crew. In some ways, that’s what
this issue does.
But black
makes sense on many levels as well. I suspect the idea of the
specific bleakness will confound the expectations a little, but the
statement of it is very there. We did say this was our Black
Parade too.
Worth
noting – first cover without a quote on the back. If we were sure
the readers wouldn’t have looked at the back cover before reading the
book, we may have put Lucifer’s “Am I the only one who didn’t see
that coming?” on there. But we couldn’t be sure of that, so we
didn’t.
Russell’s
Cover
What
Russell and Matt are doing over on Thor is state of the art
superheroics. I’ve loved seeing what Russell’s done across his time
with Jason, and the idea of him doing a cover was just exciting. It’s
meant to be the full range of the medium, after all. I was surprised
Russell went quite as maximalist as he did, but also pleased. I love
this kind of operatic movie poster cover, and it screams Imperial
Phase, including all the cast of the main arc. Dio’s the hardest one
to spot – that would be the black eyes over it.
IFC At
this stage in the arc, working out what on earth to put in the
synopsis is tricky. You have to throw your hands up to some degree.
The tweaks
to the bios are the other thing – clearly we’ve got to set up the
information required to comprehend the issue for those who may have
forgotten it, without just saying what the thing is. For the very
close readers, even the fact it’s changed will be a tell. It was
another reason we didn’t do a preview for this issue, and even if we
did, we wouldn’t have released that page. Velocity in reading is key
here.
With Woden
we restate “She had some mysterious hold over him” rather than
specifically talking about the Blakes. With Minerva we remind people
that she was tortured on Ananke’s machine, and then distract with a
:( emoticon.
Page 1
I believe
the script for this page and the next is in the trade as “Making
Of” material, which is fun. Chrissy tends to choose pages in terms
of what’s interesting, especially if we have something else to show.
In this case, it’s my drawing for the design of Woden’s Secret Base.
My basic
description for this was the Bat Cave, which is a man cave, if you
squint. Having an enormous penny in it could have been a giggle. We
had to have a few passes to get the lighting right on this –
debating the colours on the bars of the cage was also tricky.
In terms
of pulling out a detail, the suit of armour missing a head on the
right would be a useful one. Balancing the “making sure it’s
visible” while not leaning too much into “LOOK AT THE HEADLESS
SUIT” is Jamie’s storytelling problem here.
The main
dialogue problem was balancing the level of Cass’ response here with
her noise at the end of the last issue. Swearing to some degree is
fine, but it has to be a specific kind of fffuuuucccckkk last issue.
It couldn’t be a swear that promised too much.
Page 2
And it’s
Pink Woden! But he’s blue. Lighting, everyone.
Well…
There was some debate on the colouring of Pink Woden, in various
modes, and various reasons, not least the slight differences in
colouring in his previous appearances.
(Issue 14
and issue 21-22, respectively.)
Have I
said Pink Woden is my favourite fan name? We use it all the time
internally, not least because Mimir is oddly hard to remember. Also,
if we get used to saying “Mimir” we may end up saying
accidentally in public.
Page 3
I had
someone reach out to me wondering whether Cassandra choosing to
gender someone by their voice and physical appearance was off. It’s
something I was thinking of at the time when writing it, and it’s not
exactly a line I’m happy with. But on balance, I felt it more likely
that Cass would say that than Persephone would say anything.
Cass is
imperfect in her language in lots of ways. I decided she’s more
likely to apologise about it down the line and kick herself, which I
may end up working in, depending.
(You could
also ask “why have anything there?” and that’s only answerable in
terms of the flow of information and ideas and conversation across
the whole scene. Difficult Difficult Lemon Difficult.)
Lovely
expression by Persephone in the background of the first panel – in
fact, her conflicted expressions throughout. I especially love the
reflection of the arriving Woden in the reflection of Mimir’s mask in
panel 6.
Page 4-5
The
challenge here was always choosing where to put the page turns in
this issue. What are the big beats. In my original draft the
LITTLE WODEN BOY interstitial was actually on page 6, which would
change the rhythm in lots of ways – not least in putting the
Falling God sequence on a page turn. In the end, we gravitated to
this. I’m much happier with it.
(Little
Woden Boy works as a creepier punchline at the end as well.)
Anyway,
hello! It’s David Blake.
I… I
maybe should save writing for the reveals all together. In fact, fuck
it. Let’s
drop the ask essay here and we can then talk about the stuff I
don’t include in it. I’m asked whether you change something when
someone guesses something, or how that feels?
****
Oh, god,
no. Never change anything if someone’s guessed something. Nothing
good lies in that direction.
Why?
Okay, let’s talk –
with no specifics –
Game of Thrones. If you go into the depths of fandom, Game
of Thrones is –
to some degree, in some areas –
a solved problem. There’s a good selection of fan theories (some of
which have come to fruition) which have so much meat on them it was
clear they had to happen, or the book would break its structure and
become unsatisfying.
These twists are available to anyone who wishes to
google for them.
The vast majority of people don’t. So… why
change the direction of the story? What’s the point of fucking over
the enjoyment of the vast majority of people (i.e. making your story
make less sense, as you’re abandoning the already existing thread)
for playing gotcha on a tiny fraction of your audience?
(As a quick aside –
compare and contrast theorising in a fanbase with actual events in
the text that’s being adapted. Clearly, anyone who is watching GoT
could have googled the synopsis of the book. Equally, anyone who’s
read the books knows the big beats. Does the adaptation change the
big beats? If surprise to everyone in your audience is all that
mattered, you would. We don’t.)
It’s also worth noting that, while obviously
some complain on the nature of the adaptation, most fans of a book
generally complain that they wish it was more like the book.
In other words, things that surprised them (i.e. differed from their
knowledge of the text) were less satisfying. They wanted to see the
big dramatic beats, even if they’re stripped of their surprise.
Surprise only matters the first time you read
something. For me, any worthwhile piece of literature exists to be
reread, and will open up more upon rereading. In other words, knowing
the twist should add to the rereading of the book. If it doesn’t,
and renders the story less than it was, it’s probably a bad twist –
which is one reason why I don’t tend to call them “Plot twists”
to myself. I call them reveals. The plot doesn’t contort. It’s
merely revealing something in the nature of the world the reader was
unaware of.
(As an aside, this means that someone who has
guessed successful the direction of the plot is actually effectively
skipping to their second read of the book earlier.)
There’s the other side of this as well –
not just whether a plot beat has been guessed, but the almost
inevitability of a plot beat being guessed. GoT fans have had
twenty years to puzzle this out. In that period, a mass communication
device emerged which allowed fans to talk to one another and share
ideas. This machine would have torn apart any plot.
No one individual needs to guess anything. People
can make one step in a chain, and then that step is exposed to
thousands of minds. If even one of them can make the intuitive
leap to the next step, then it continues. No one person needs to be
clever enough to see the whole thing. The internet hivemind is Miss
Marple, seeing through the most contorted of machinations.
(In passing, this is one reason why Alternate
Reality Games are hard to do, because the mass hive mind will figure
almost anything out, almost instantly. Equally in passing, the
failure to understand this is another reason why Ready Player One
is bad, but that’s irrelevant.)
In other words, the reason why twists are
guessable is the same reason they are satisfying. A twist that isn’t
foreshadowed sufficiently to give the possibility of being guessed by
someone is not a satisfying twist, as it –
by definition –
came out of nowhere.
To make this specific to my own work. In the case
of the biggest and most intricate of my current books, WicDiv,
we sell about 18k in monthlies and sell 18k in trades (in the first
month of release). That’s our hardcore devoted readership. How many
people of them actually read the essays in the WicDiv tags?
I’d say 500 at the absolute maximum, and likely a lot less. So for
a maximum of 1.3% of our readership, we’d derail a still effective
twist for everyone else? No, that would be a bad call.
Especially –
and this is key –
the people who have chosen to engage with a fandom are aware that
they may figure something out. They are trying to figure
something out. Why take that pleasure away from them?
In a real way, I think, in long-form narrative,
pure plot twists which no one in the world guesses are dead in the
Internet age, at least when dealing with any even vaguely popular
work of art. You can do them in short-form narratives (like a single
novel, a single movie and perhaps a streaming TV show they drop in
one go) but for anything where you give a fanbase the chance to
think, it’s just not going to happen. A creator should be glad
their work is popular enough to have enough fans to figure it out.
Yes, I may have overthought this.
But that’s only half the question.
How do I actually feel when someone guesses
something that’s going to happen? Well, this is long enough
already. Let’s put the personal stuff beneath a cut…
*
I’d say you sigh “Oh, poop”and shrug.
And then you get over your ass, because you know
all the above is true. Writers are often megalomaniacs who think they
can control everyone’s response to their work. We don’t. We can’t
control everything. We can barely control anything. We really have to
let go. I’ve said WicDiv is a device to help me improve as a
person, yes? It would include in this area. I have to learn to let it
go, and internalise all of the above. If I can make most of my
readership have the vague emotional response I’m looking for, I’m
winning.
I’ve mostly succeeded at this. I’m certainly
better than I was two years ago.
(I’ll probably write more about spoilers and
twists and stuff down the line. I’d note that setting up twists
that *are* easily guessable by the hardcore is part of the
methodology. Having a nice big twist foreshadowed heavily is a good
way to hide another twist behind it. “Hey –
pay attention to this less subtle sleight of hand while I perform the
actual sleight of hand over here.” In which case, there’s less of
an Oh Poop response and more of a cackling evil mastermind response.)
The sigh can occasionally be accompanied with a
“Hmm. I wouldn’t have posted that” or –
more likely –
“I wouldn’t have posted that THERE.”
To stress, what follows isn’t about my work per
se, but culture generally, and is very much personal. This is stuff
which good friends disagree with me on.
As a fan, I never tweet my own fan theories. I
only tweet joke ones. Even my crack theories I don’t tweet, as
they’re normally so bizarre that if they actually DO happen, I
wouldn’t want to take the thrill away from people. Even in person
in conversation I make sure we’re going into a deep fan hole before
sharing them, aware that they may be true.
In a real way, the more likely I think something
is true, the less likely I’ll say it. As this is my job, I tend to
see basic structural ways stories are heading way in advance of most
people. I’m a composer. I know how music works. You have a vague
sense of what way they’ll go.
(One day I’ll write down my crack theory for the
end of the previous Game of Thrones season. Maybe after next
season, as it’s not impossible that they may end up doing it,
though it’s increasingly unlikely.)
If I had a really good theory I’ve gathered
evidence for? You can guarantee I’d put it beneath a cut. That’s
the stuff which bemuses me. It’s a cousin of posting major spoilers
about any piece of culture the day it comes out. The worst is one
regular twitter trope –
I’m always bemused when people do a “Calling it! XYZ will happen”
tweet. Which strikes me a little like standing up in the cinema 20
minutes into a film and shouting out that you’ve guessed the
ending. This ties back to the stuff I wrote above about twists being
less effective in the modern age, except in a place where you can
control the context and conversation. People may message in movies,
but they rarely message everyone in the room.
(In passing, as it’s vaguely on topic –
you may remember the research from a few years ago saying people who
know a twist enjoy the story more than people who don’t know a
twist. Even if this is true –
and a single study should always get an eyebrow raise –
it strikes me as a confusion over what “enjoy” means. All
pleasure isn’t equivalent, and you can only have surprise on your
first time through a work of art. That’s novelty. You can have that
and then gain the “not surprise” experience second time through.
If you spoil a work, it means the “novelty” experience is
something you will never have. You may enjoy something more if
you know the twist but you can always rewatch it to get that
pleasure. If you’re spoiled, the individual specific pleasure of
that first watch has been stolen.)
But that’s a conversation of social mores.
Really, it doesn’t change anything in terms of how we act… and
sometimes, I even grin when someone gets a twist in advance. The
machine is working as intended. It’s actually kind of worrying if
no one is thinking something is up in an area you’ve set up to be
iffy. And… the alternative is worse –
hell, there’s buried twists and details in Young Avengers
that no one’s managed to figure out yet.
Twist ending: oh, no, I was a ghost all along.
****
I’m pretty
sure the asker was asking about the Woden/Blake/Jon twist, and I’m
primarily talking in terms of balancing the various needs of the
group.
The
problem with this twist was less making sure that people didn’t get
it, but making sure that everyone understood its import. If,
hypothetically, I didn’t want (barely) anyone to get it, we wouldn’t
have mentioned Jon after we introduced him in issue 6. Problem being,
everyone needs to know Jon is a person who is Blake’s kid when they
hit this beat. My solution was to just reintroduce Jon hard, and
resolve it, knowing that most people would just accept that. Then
everyone knows who Jon is, so the father/son switch makes sense.
(In other
words, far better some people suspect Woden is Blake rather than
everyone going “Jon who?” Especially because the real horror of
the Woden/Blake reveal is in its details.)
There’s
the other aspect to it as well – it’s the sacrificial decoy aspect
that I mentioned above. Even if guessed, it’s a big enough twist to
distract people. I reveal this at the start of the issue, so people
will probably suspect that’s enough big reveals for the issue. Yet
no.
(See also:
issue 11’s dual deaths)
In
reality, I was much more worried about the relatively small leap from
realising Woden Is Blake And Jon Is Pink Woden to Mimir Is A Head.
But more
on that later, I suspect.
Anyway!
Storytelling!
There is
something incredibly instantly disturbing about Blake without the
helmet on, right?
Persephone’s
line was tweaked a bunch. I cut it as far as I could while still
existing. It’s a tiny moment of Rising Action, immediately
squashed.
The switch
to green as the cage goes to full power, plus Matt Wilson’s wonderful
pixel effects.
Love the
Tron-eque light-bike trails seguing into flashback…
Page 6-7
The first
date is just before Ragnarock 2013, where we first saw Jon on the
stage in Laura’s Flashback in issue 6.
This is a
“Performance” by Jon, so is presented as such, in the same manner
of Persephone’s performance in issue 20. Jamie’s integrated circuitry
design is great, and allows us to go to a limited palette. 8 panel,
8-bit glory.
And Jon
Blake.
You write
and discover the characters. Jon has barely been in the book – he
has a couple of lines of dialogue in issue 14, and that’s it. I
always knew why Ananke rejects him as unsuitable, but specifically
how that would be articulated was something I thought I’d discover on
the page. Writing a new character this far into the book is the sort
of thing which keeps it interesting.
I was
worried it would be hard, or shallow, as surely all the relevant
little bits of me are already taken with the rest of the cast? Within
a couple of sentences of typing, I knew I had completely forgotten
one Gillen archetype.
I realised
Jon was a heroic take on Lloyd/Mr Logos.
I laughed.
Of course. Perfect.
The 11
days later says so much about how intricate the timeline is around
here. It’s the day before Baal and Sakhmet made their public debut.
The “She’s
a fucking weirdo/language” panel is a joy.
Yeah,
Ananke really does like hanging around in people’s gardens.
I
specifically called for Ananke to be in an outfit from a previous
God-creation sequence…
Page 8-9
…so
Jamie could reuse the masks and only draw Jon transforming, and pull
an extra page out of the budget.
The most
embarrassing bit here is that I wrote this from my memory of Mimir’s
legends in the early drafts, and only remembered to actually check my
notes at lettering. In fact, I’d got a couple of minor details of
Mimir wrong.
(Or
rather, didn’t grasp the complexities of Mimir – it’s very hard to
get a take on Mimir, because the main myths we have of him are
contradictory.)
Page 10-11
Man, I
want to go to Mimir’s club night.
In my
original draft I wrote it as Jon cutting off Ananke’s “Mimir” so
that the god name wasn’t revealed until the last page of this whole
section. As in, it would stop people putting the book down, googling
“Mimir”, realising “Heads” and then possibly seeing where we
were going at the end of the issue.
I decided
against it, in that’s only going to be a tiny fraction of readers. If
people want to break the flow of their reading to look up facts, I
can’t control that. Even then, I also knew it would be far from
certain that just because they realised Mimir is a head, that they’d
then realise others could be a head before the end of the comic.
And NOT
including Mimir breaks the flow for everyone else, and is a bit
cheap. Better than that.
That knife
gets around.
Page 12
First
panel: I never get bored of modern blur photoshop to show this kind
of effect.
PoV shots
are something I adore in comics. The six-panel grid gives it lots of
space as well.
Honestly,
that last panel with Mimir’s own reflection is the creepiest thing in
the world, and I love it.
Page 13
Yeah, I’m
much happier with the interstitial here. Horrible.
(To state
the obvious: Pinocchio reference.)
Page 14-15
I just
imagine the tension in this room. Ugh.
I
originally had a bunch more written for Woden here, but cut it. It
was much better in the silent. He may say some of it down the line,
but cutting it right to the basics – the particularly creepy basics
– seemed key.
We went
with a normal gun. Normal guns were at the start of the story, and
have sort of disappeared. Once more we return.
Lots to
unpick in all this dialogue, so won’t give anything else. I’ll say
the whole exchange about the machine was as finely picked over to
imply the meaning as much as anything else in the book – that’s the
thing about comics. The flowery fancy stuff? That’s great and fun.
But the real job is the compressing of precise exact detail,
especially in a book which is nothing but precise detail.
I was
chatting to Jamie about issue 34 earlier, and Jamie said how much he
likes drawing Mimir’s helmet. Looking at page 15 makes me see it –
the second and fourth panels are just excellent in completely
different ways.
Page
16-17-18
Jamie
chose the steady angle, I believe, with a background drop, and Matt
working the colours to show the emotions.
First
panel is where the last of the fun drips out of Cassandra’s
expletives, and we’re just left with something that’s really just
offensive and ugly. If there’s any point where the issue reaches the
black cover, it’d be this sequence.
I’m glad
they’ve got here though.
Clearly,
this is a Jamie masterclass. Pick it apart, learn. delight. Like –
penultimate panel on page 16. The pause, the glance aside. Perfect.
Look across page 17. There’s a mixture of emotion and sheer dullness
and boredom and fear, and how it all pushes and pulls again.
(“And I
got it” is something else)
I believe
I’ve said WicDiv contains a recapitulation of basically
everything I’ve ever done as a creator. Mainly the Jamie and me
stuff, but basically everything. I realised Laura’s arc on Imperial
Phase is me reprising what I did in Generation Hope –
probably one of my least remembered things, which strikes me as fair
– it only landed properly as we inched towards the end of the year.
The plot was basically “Is Hope Good Or Bad?” when the answer was
“Her Dad died a few days before the issue started. She’s fucked
up.” Only in mainstream death-happy superhero comics would that
work as a twist. This was a bit like that – we distance the reader
from Persephone and just show the actions and see what you make of
it.
“Try to be kind. You have no
idea what people are going through.”
That was
the stuff I’d had planned from the start, but it only got more
specific as I got nearer it and WicDiv became what it was.
I’ve talked about having mixed feelings about WicDiv’s
success. Laura’s arc is it writ large. I hate that the definitive
work of my career is this. If my Dad was not dead I would not have
written this book. There is a guilt and anger that is hard to
articulate directly there, and is the material I was mining for this.
On a
boring technical level, we did a lot of work with Cass explicitly
saying facts to ensure that no one in the readership thinks Laura is
confessing to killing her family. In an issue as twisty as this, I
suspect some people would have.
(The
second panel on page 17 is another one – tall enough to have a
bunch of half ideas.)
And Laura,
after making a breakthrough, immediately crumbles to another mistake.
The
“Laura” line is a nod to the song, and one of the lines in the
original WicDiv document sheet.
Page 19
I was
going to tweak Cass’ line – in some myths he’s a giant –
but that she’s musing gives her a little freedom to dance around what
we know.
You know,
I suspect one reason why Mimir was never brought up as an option
connected to Woden is that he’s one of the very few Norse myths
who’ve never appeared in a Marvel superhero comic. Or at least I
don’t think he has.
Normally
we’d put something as big as the head remove on a page turn, but it’s
a physically small beat, so not something you will automatically
recognise out the corner of your eye when you’re reading.
I love
Cass’ thinking face in the penultimate panel. Thinkythinkythinky.
Two major
beats happening on this page, of course – it appears Mimir is a
head (or a robot head, perhaps?) and Mimir thinks the machine does
nothing.
And then
we hard-cut to what we do, but it’s worth dwelling on this a little.
When thinking of plot structure, I talk about a few ways to disguise
twists. Earlier, I mentioned a Big Twist can make people suspect the
twists are over. This is something I tend to think of as a revealed
move. As in, you create a machine of logic with a missing part. You
add the missing part as late as possible, and then immediately move
to what has been concealed before the audience is able to process the
new information.
Hence two
beats and a hard-cut…
Page
20-21-22-23
Anyway –
this clearly had to be a page turn. To state the obvious.
Steady
angle shot here, to have the awfulness of it there. I suspect if I’d
had space I’d have had the last panel on page 19 be a third of a page,
so the two removed heads could mirror one another.
As a minor
detail, Minerva’s running feet in the second panel of 20 are really
good.
Minerva’s
gesture on page 21.2 is a joy. I know that feeling, Mini.
I really
wanted Inanna to be talking from off panel on page 21, but that
definitely would give the game away. The problem with distinctive
fonts…
And 22 is
the reveal on the heads. Probably best not to say much more about
this, as I suspect any of the design elements will intersect with
what happens in issue 34, so I’ll talk a bit about it then.
Tara and
Inanna’s expressions really are wonderful.
Luci’s
line came surprisingly late. The “Talking Heads” interstitial
came early. The only reason I wasn’t going to use it here was in case
I wanted to use it later. I decided I didn’t.
Okay…
twists.
In
reality, for me, it’s a case of once you’ve decided that this is the
plot, the only way to do it is dovetail towards an issue like this.
Any of these individual beats provide too much connective tissue to
the other ones, meaning all must be revealed or none.
(You could
argue about Minerva, I suspect. Maybe.)
It’s been
strange writing a book like this – when so much is there early on.
Seeing who got what and who didn’t, and how people reinforced people
has been interesting. That the core WicDiv tumblr community
has never really suspected Minerva was off is in some way a surprise
– though I’ve had people talk about that directly and personally.
Blake/Jon and Minerva-is-Off-In-Some-Way were the two twists I would
guard, but their primary importance was in how they led to the Heads.
When Ray
Fawkes told me “There’s a reason you’re doing all the
decapitations, right?” circa issue 2, I suspected that I’d
overplayed the hand by having a literal talking head in issue 3…
but it turned out fine.
“Played
the hand” is interesting phrasing, and telling. Writing something
as intricate as this is like doing a slow-motion card trick, in
public, constantly. It is a form of constant stress. I have been
paranoid of fucking it up in stupid ways, and it’s impacted every
single conversation I’ve ever had about WicDiv. Like just
writing one name when I mean another or something. There was a
hilarious panic when I added ‘Killer Queen’ to the playlist, just
thinking of it as a quite funny Ananke song… and then realised
there was only one character in the cast with a connection to the
band Queen, and that was Minerva. Should I take it off the playlist?
No, someone may notice that, and it’s against my rules anyway. I
quickly added a few other things to camouflage it.
As if
anyone is watching that closely, y'know?
That’s an
extreme example, but an entirely characteristic one. I have lost
sleep over it. Even a year ago, I wished I could just get to 33 and
not worry about it. When 33 dropped, it was simultaneously excellent
(the response was basically what we expected) and an anticlimax (The
amount of emotional and intellectual effort you put into doing this
is not worth it. It could never be worth it.) I’ve been telling
friends that I’ll never write a story that operates like this again.
Partially that is because I wouldn’t want to repeat myself, and
partially because – as I said above – I think twists are less
effective in long-form serialised work in 2017, but mainly as I don’t
think I want to do this to myself again. I’ll find some other way to
torture myself.
(Spangly
New Thing certainly abandons the Scorpion’s-Tale narrative model in
favour of an intricate character clock of woe.)
Actually,
talking playlists… I have prepared something. There’s a secondary
WicDiv playlist which I’ve been using since July for songs
which speak to the end of year three and the remainder of year four.
I didn’t want to add these songs to the main playlist in case a
particularly determined WicDiv fan worked out issue 33 from
them. This says a lot about the high levels of anxiety I’ve been
running on for the last few years on this topic. It would be terrible
to blow it in such a dumb way. Now, those reading in issues know
secrets the trade readers don’t. So it’s going to be an interesting
few months.
Here’s
the playlist. Keep it mum. I’ll add it to the main list when the
trade’s out. Don’t shoot me for the first track.
You may
have seen us trying to prod people to reread WicDiv before 33.
This was partially in response to a friend who read 33 before it came
out who said – I paraphrase – “I wish I could tell people to
reread the series now, because after they read 33, those issues are
gone, forever.” She’s right – it’s a pure ‘everything changes’
issue, and you can’t reread the comic earlier, because everything has
transmuted beneath your fingers.
Which is
by our design, but is still a grim thing to think about. We’ve
destroyed all those issues on the shelves, and replaced them with a
new story. On the bright side, we’ve given you 35 free comics. I
suspect this returns to Jamie’s and my twitchiness over comic
prices, and trying to make ours better value, every way we can. In
this case, we want to make rereading valuable and exciting.
SIGH! This
has been a journey, friends. I’m glad I no longer have to think about
any of the above. There’s huge stuff coming in the final year, but
it’s got entirely its own character and momentum. The cards we’re
playing with have fundamentally changed. There’s so much stuff to
come, but it builds from this.
Oh – I’m
sort of regretting mentioning the thing about the third theme in the
backmatter, as it’s clearly the sort of thing that’s going to drive a
certain strata of reader to distraction – especially as if there’s
any number of other themes in the book. The one I was thinking
intersects a little with pre-existing major themes, and speaks to the
particular spin on them. We’ll get to it eventually. Don’t worry.
Anyway, to
sum it all up, clearly with four talking heads, WicDiv is four
times as good as Sandman. That is a FACT.
Christmas
Special shortly, the trade collection in January, the 1923 Special in
February and we’re back with issue 34 in March, with the new arc.