Another Way To Breathe

Spoilers, obv.

In short, you do it to yourself, you do, and that’s what really hurts. But as Mark E Smith put it to the Inspirals, Nobody ever said it was gonna be easy. That was a pretty indie start to the notes. Also, incomprehensible to anyone outside of certain demographics. Well, we all have google now. We’ll be fine.

Normally hard issues are hard for everyone. Jamie and Matt go down with me. In this case, the brunt of the problem was mine and mine alone…

(Well, Jamie had to wrestle with the establishing shots in the space and Matt had to do 10 pages with about 2 issues’ worth of colour schemes (and try to solve a visual logic puzzle too) but for once I think this mainly fell on my neck.)

But we’ll get to that, as the results of a lot of heartache are only in a certain section. The rest is relatively easy. Relatively.

Jamie’s cover: we’ve smiled at this a little, in that the discussion of Baphomet’s hair is the closest WicDiv has come to the debate around Billy’s hair in Young Avengers.

I personally just like that he’s still rocking his big metal pole.

Alison Sampson’s cover: Alison is one of those creative force of nature sorts. There are artists who can just be givenn a “Draw this character” instruction but Alison isn’t one of them. She really needs to know everything, so we talked a bunch, and ended up with something distinctly oblique, about confusion. If anything about this issue says that we’re not making it easy, this would be it.

While we’re talking, Alison’s collaboration with Steve Niles, Winnebago Graveyard has just been solicited, and you should order the living shit out of it.

Page 1

The idea for this scene occurred to me – marking your death day – and was so instantly upsetting that I obviously had to write it. Generally speaking, that’s our magnetic north.

Yeah, a WicDiv calendar does seem like an obvious Merch thing to do for Christmas. We’re trying to sort it out.

Having Amaterasu on the page torn out was Jamie’s choice, and an obviously good one given Minerva/Amaterasu’s enmity.

On a craft level, you’ll see how absolutely basic this is – establishing shot with dialogue to link it to internal scene (with dialogue individual enough for readers to know who’s saying it.) Five panels. Two characters. I wanted it simple, if only for contrast – but also a suspicion that the middle section would be harder than it was, and Jamie needed to save his energies.

As a writer in comics, you’re always spending resources. They’re not always money.

Page 2-4

August 9th would be the week after the Ragnarock we saw in issue 6. Putting that whole sequence at the cusp of the world being upended is clearly a thing.

Man, I love Minerva’s hair.

I suspect I was thinking IT with the darkness coming up the sink. IT is the King book which sticks with me, shall we say.

This is an unusual comics “thing” we have to consider – Image ask us what pages we want to send out as previews, and we generally speaking cut it as tight as we can. We’d like to keep as much fun stuff for when people read the issue. It’s a teaser taste, not a first course. So cutting on page 3 would be the place to go… which we didn’t, because that would leave whether Minerva in peril unresolved, which would imply that’s what the rest of the issue about. That’s not what the issue is about in any way, and we’d loathe to give that impression as i) it’s not true and ii) that would be boring impression to give.

Page 4 has some great panels – the pummelling by Baal with Minerva curled behind him. Minerva shell-shocked. Baal’s big-brother glance back. Nice.

Page 5

Enigmatic!

Six panel grid grounds it, obviously.

Page 6

Once more, a return to the five panel. Robust comics. If you’re writing a comic, and you don’t know the artist, defaulting to a five panel is rarely a bad move. Study Garth Ennis comics. It’s not the flashiest of choice, but it’s dependable and gives the artist a lot of freedom.

(There’s sparser panel selections you can use, but they’re a big risk to take if you’re not sure you’re going to get it back in the art.)

The thing I think of here is Jamie being very annoyed that I’d settled on May 1st, as that meant the panel had to be that wide to fit the calendar design bits in.

Page 7

“Phased” probably says it all.

Page 8-9

Okay. I suspect this is the bit that anyone other than the regulars will be reading this for.

Let’s get the basics out of the way first – each story is delineated by the colour block behind it. Read from left to right in any individual sub-story.

So on this first spread, the top 4 panels of the spread (signified by that big red block behind them all and the outlines) first, then the six bottom panels on the left (orange), the six bottom panels of the right (green), etc.

Obviously we were worried about this for comixology (It’s almost impossible to read in a PDF, obv) so we talked to them about the guided view, which actually walks you through each of the sub-stories perfectly. Yay comixology

It’s printed a little less bright than we’d hoped, so we’ve considered garishing it up a bit for the trade. That said, we’ve had far less “huh”S than we were perhaps expecting.

(In practise, being lost in a whirl of time and space was part of the intent – as the title says, PHASED. You can absolutely read it like you’re looking at snowflakes.)

What’s it about? Well, bar the aesthetic effect of decentralising the narrative (and other things) there was the problem of 27 and 28 having a lot of work to do. I had… a lot of solutions. At one point I was thinking that ALL of 27 and 28 would be like the Phased section, just to do everything I wanted them to do, with issue 27 just ending with a page which read <CONT.>

(The one idea which made me smile was playing with doing the whole issue like Ray Fawkes’ magnificent graphic novels The People Inside and One Soul. The chapter title would have been BUY THE PEOPLE INSIDE, IT’S REALLY GOOD.)

In the end, I started writing without thinking about how I was going to present it, and generated a bunch of scenes. Far more than was required. After doing all that, I stepped back, and everything tilted a little, and I saw the way through the maze. A lot of the material could just be excised and (after I’d killed a darling) moved to in Imperial Phase Part II. As such, it was a case of arranging what we had into something that felt like a meaningful sequence.

And it ended up actually fitting into 10 pages. I’d budgeted 12, which meant I had 2 spare pages which I used in the final scene for added mood. PHEW!

Oh – the other general thing to say before actually talking about the specifics is that I’ve always wanted to do a comic that runs at the pace of the PREVIOUSLY ON bits of TV shows, and this is the closest we got to that.

On a craft point, it’s worth noting how we tried to introduce various ideas to it. The first 4-page sub-story with Sakhmet/Persephone is the first thing you see and stretches across the spread, with the two other stories as simple blocks. Plus you can read those first two panels as their own things. The coming back to that scene at the start of the page would hopefully make you realise they form a line, and have another look at the colour blocks. The more challenging layouts come later, after the ground-rules have been introduced.

Or so’s the theory.

Anyway! Content! Obviously a lot of closing off stuff people would be wondering about given the last few issues. If WicDiv isn’t doing that story here. Or, at least yet. I know I would be wondering about what London made of a multi-story monster appearing to attack the shard.

(That the first baal scene is commented upon by the second baal/norns scene is another hand-hold to get people through it.)

Man, I still love Baal’s beard.

Page 10-11

More attempt at hand-holding – the top of both pages being six panel stories, and the second story running across the bottom page, and able to be read by itself.

I suspect the actual hardest thing is the phone messages – partially as the natural order of phone messages confuses the reading of a panel (as in, the new messages are at the bottom) and partially as it turns the Baphomet/Persephone sequences in story in a story. As in, we are now in the present day with Persephone texting Baphomet while thinking about what happened at Christmas.

Not easy. But – y’know – Phased.

Cass continues to go for most sweary character of 2017. I occasionally read people don’t like WicDiv saying that all the characters swear too much. I can imagine Cass leaning into their face and screaming “I SWEAR TOO FUCKING MUCH! MOST OF THE REST JUST SWEAR A LOT. PAY SOME ATTENTION, FUCKNOSE!”

Yes, “someone creates apparitions of your dead family so you can have Christmas dinner with them” may have been one of those “Yeah, that’s really upsetting. Let’s do that” ideas.

We had to work on the colouring here to get the desired effect. In the first pass it was much brighter, which left it too cheery. A “they may be in heaven” sort of vibe. We ended up with something much more sickly.

Persephone’s expression though. :(

Page 12-13

Now we start just going across the page to pummel that in.

If this sequence has a backbone, it’s the Norns, of course. All other stuff is fragmentary – there’s a throughline with Cass.

The nomenclature ShinTwo™ only came to me as writing, and made me basically bang my head against the table. I’ve had quite a few people ask if I’m referencing one random star or another. No. This is just the sort of thing a certain sort of pop-star does.

Sticking TM at the end of a sentence and fucking with the punctuation is a joke I first fell in love with circa-Amiga Power. Never forget how ludicrous a corporation’s attempt to own language is. Give them the respect they deserve.

Cass’ body language throughout the dance sequences is just a joy. The first panel on the previous page too. I’m a dancer – by which I mean, I throw myself onto the floor with joy and little care of how bad I look… but god knows I’ve got enough friends who find the whole thing hard. I’ve played Dionysus here IRL enough.

The Cass/Dio conversation here is something I was worried about, and pleased it seem to have gone down well.

Page turn, to show change of direction, obv…

Page 14-15

…and into Cass experiencing another god’s power. I can imagine her end of year list updating.

And this spread is where we start tearing at the morings, and doing a horizontally aligned six panel grid across the middle of the page. Yes, writing this issue was very much like solving a puzzle – as I said, I’d written far more stuff just in terms of raw dialogue and ideas, and working out what could be arranged artistically was the thing.

The middle block also creates a time gap between the opening scene and the latter one.

That the backbone to all of this is a rave sequence draws a lime to where we’ve done similar things – namely, issue 8. However, where it’s 8 panel was about beat and flow, this is about confusion.

Page 16-17

Yeah, another mix up. Shifting sands are shifting and another set of moments.

The Sakhmet panel is bleakly amazing. Nice work, guys.

Man, this spread is a world of awesome. I’m glad I ended it with a joke of the BEEP.

Er… it’s been an odd arc for me. I was writing it with an idea what I wanted it to be, and was annoyed with myself that it wasn’t for what I felt was too long. Drugs, decadence, self-destruction, sex, awfulness… and it was mainly tying up necessary business from Rising Action. I wanted it more awful, and I was frustrated as I couldn’t get it there.

That’s no longer a problem. I think the themes of the arc are undeniable, both in form and content. I should have relaxed a little – the point of these two arcs was always the slow burn. For better or worse, it really is what we wanted.

Page 18

The Cassandra Project was a game mod I wrote for in the early 00s. I did say everything I’ve done gets worked into this fucker.

(Lead character Charlotte Williams is certainly a early example of a Gillen character – a self-described Sylvia Plath With A Sniper Rifle. Even if you can get it working with whatever current Deus Ex is, I wouldn’t recommend it for my writing. It’s an exciting mess of my influences. It may as well have been called THE CASSANDRA PROJECT: KIERON HAS JUST READ PLANETARY AND STILL REALLY LIKES THE INVISIBLES.)

Page 19

Jamie added the insert panel to show David Blake, as it’s been a while since we’ve actually crossed paths. This led to a somewhat intricate series of questions over how to actually letter the fucker to get the exchange between Blake and Cass to work. We ended with the ellipsis speech balloon, which is always a sweetie.

(For those who are following craft, I wanted the big panel on the machine to reintroduce it as a larger thing. The whole issue has been so cramped and it needs to breathe. Or rather, loom.)

As an aside, “Loom” is a word I over-use in my panel descriptions.

Page 20-21

Yeah, those spare pages I had were really useful at this point.

I played with cleverer grids, but a straight STATEMENT/JUXTAPOSED IMAGE six-panel seemed to do the trick.

Lots of set up for the specials here, most obviously the “rumours about 455.” Also, at the half-way point of the whole two-part thing, we get the meaning of the title. Imperial phase.

I suspect this sequence was strongly influenced by the research for 455, generally. It’s easy writing Blake when you’ve been wallowing in research.

The bathing-in-blood is a nod towards the ever-popular Countess Bathory, who actually invented the bath. True fact.

Madness is a loaded word, and I wish Blake didn’t throw it around so casually – hell, Cass too. It’s much more about obsession and addiction and excess. Still: we’ll try to walk this line.

Lots of lovely Imagery from Jamie here. The Dark Knight Returns Baal/Minerva is the one which makes me smile most, and Dionysus’ is the one which breaks my heart.

Page 22-23

And we finally mention a question that’s been asked ever since the Norns appeared in the book.

Man, Skuld and Verðandi are getting chatty.

Page 24

Man, getting to end an issue with a splash image for dramatic effect. This must be what BKV feels like ALL THE TIME.

Seriously, Matt and Jamie do some wonderful things here. Getting the level of oppressive looming darkness is absolutely what the issue is about, and it’s a testament to that.

Page 25

Comrade Rossignol, my old partner in crime, game developer and co-writer on The Ludocrats, and I have a line we tend to quote to one another. It’s a paraphrase of a quote from Ballard: “My advice to anyone in any field is to be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker.”

We quote it as: “stay true to your obsessions and your obsessions will be true to you.”

It’s basically been our respective careers’ magnetic north, but there’s certainly times when I wonder how good it’s proved for us as human beings.

Next issue is the end of Imperial Phase Part 1, which – thanks to all the hyper-compression of this one – actually lets to linger with space. But we’ll get to that soon enough.

Anyway – thanks for reading. See you next month.