Comic Con - Thursday, Day 1: Attack of the Panels

Today was Thursday. Much more fun. True to last year's form, I swung from hating and fearing Preview Night, to quietly enjoying the more sedate Thursday.

Okay, not really sedate. That's hardly the right word. But I spent most of my time in panels today, which helped a lot.

I'm also an idiot and I left my sim card at the hotel, which means I failed to take any photos of anything except the daily loot. Here it is, the one lone photo from today:


Yeah, I cornered the market on Scott Pilgrim stuff.

If I'd remembered to take a sim card, I would have taken photos of all the cool stuff on the con floor. Like the full-size replica Owlship from Watchmen, or the huge Castle Greyskull, or DC's enormous, ever-crowded booth.

I'd have taken shots of the costumed folk (bless 'em, they really make the con special); the Boba Fetts, Batman villains, stormtroopers, anime ones that
I don't get, and knights in full plate armour beating the crap out of each other up on the mezzanine level.

I'd definitely have snapped a few blurry pics from the 4 panels we saw today -- 2 comics-related and 2 TV-related, which seems a good ratio. The first comics panel was Stan Lee and Grant Morrison. Stan Lee is exactly how you'd imagine him to be. Exactly. Morrison was polite and reserved, and seemed happy to concede the floor to Stan's constant showboating.

The next comics panel was a dream line-up: Robert Kirkman, Colleen Doran, Matt Fraction (Fraction!), John Cassaday, Jim Lee, Mike Mignola and Morrison again. They chatted amongst themselves. It was obviously very interesting, as they're all living legends. But it could have used more Fraction. The questions from the audience were pretty lame, but that seems to be the norm.

The TV panels we saw were for True Blood (Alan Ball doing an HBO vampire series. Yeah, that was my reaction, too.) and Dexter (the best show about a lovable serial killer ever). True Blood actually looks pretty good. HBO must have spent a fortune on advertising; the show's banners are plastered all over the con. Plus, they gave us all free bags, shirts, comics and a copy of the book the show is based on! The atmosphere in the Dexter panel was electric. But hey, if anyone deserves to be drooled over by adoring fans, it's Julie Benz and Michael C. Hall.

The food in the con is fucking terrible and costs a fortune. I know the American peso is weak, but $8 for a sandwich?

I'm no longer convinced our pro passes allow us to skip the queues. I swear to God I saw people doing it last year, but maybe it only applies to certain rooms. All I can say is, I hope it gets us into Joss' panel tomorrow.

I saw Comic Book Tattoo, the new Image anthology based on Tori Amos songs, and it is gorgeous. My Under the Gun collaborator, that young rogue Josh Hechinger, has a story in there, you know. The book is as big as a house and I'd never get it home, but I'm still foolishly contemplating buying a copy.

The business side of things is not going so fantastically. Several (okay, most) of the people I was supposed to meet are not actually at the con this year. We won't actually be hanging out at Eric's booth, unfortunately, but we'll still be handing out the CAGES buttons somewhere, sometime. Er, watch this space.

I'm surely forgetting a ton of stuff, but the hour grows late, and Friday looms near.

First, A Word From Your Host

It's been a long time since I weblogged something on these intertubes. The thing is, there've been many things in the last 2 months that I've wanted to talk about on here, but the twin devils of work and after-work idleness got in my way.

Now I'm in San Diego promoting our book, and I therefore have something half-decent to blog about, and all these other happenings need to be neatly summed up in a few sentences. Like so:

- We passed the 52nd week of Elephant Words (link to Elephant Words in the sidebar over there; I'd fetch it for you, but the touchpad on this EeePC is a bitch to use). That means I've written a short (sometimes incredibly short) story every week for the past year. I never knew I could do that. My co-conspirators at EW are some of the nicest people and finest writers a guy could hope to know. I plan to continue with it.

- Speaking of anniversaries, I'm at San Diego Comic Con again, and do you know what that means? Well, considering I started this blog in order to document last year's con, I'm pretty sure that means this blog is one year old. Huzzah!

- Our book is out. Well, no, that's a lie. Our comic CAGES is being properly printed in September. But I am currently in possession of several incomplete proof copies, and they're really real books. They've got glossy covers and nice binding, and they have our names on the front. It feels warm and fuzzy.

- Holy expletive there are a lot of good shows on TV right now. Battlestar Galactica, Big Love, Dexter, Mad Men and Flight of the Conchords have joined forces to overwhelm me with awesomeness. Are we living in a Golden Age of television? When did this Renaissance happen?

- Dr Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog was bloody fantastic, wasn't it? I can't wait for the panel at San Diego. (It's funny; I've enjoyed watching the stunned/appalled reaction from certain corners of the internet in re: Act 3. It's a Joss show, people -- that means guaranteed pain. At this point, I'd be surprised if he didn't rip our hearts out and show them to us.)

- D&D 4th Edition is amazing. Yeah, yeah, it's culturally lame, and playing it sorta makes me feel like I'm back in high school. But I think it might be one of the best RPGs ever written, or at least the best since Exalted. And at this point, I can't afford to be choosy about culture -- I'll take any book, game or show that makes me feel that sense of wonder and awe again.

Right. Next up San Diego Comic Con International!

CAGES Is Almost Upon Us

My first book CAGES is at the printers right now. Like, as we speak. This is fairly exciting.

It also means that I'm going to be very busy for the foreseeable future. The marketing blitzkrieg is already underway -- the official website's getting redesigned (ditto the Insomnia Publications site), press releases are being put out, and I'm sending digital review copies to those worthy reviewers and bloggers who want to write about it.

So... are you a comic book reviewer or blogger? Would you like a review copy of the book? Well, why didn't you say so? Just shoot me an email at the usual place, and I'll be happy to send you a copy.

For those of you going to the Bristol International Comics Expo in a few weeks, you'll even have a chance to pick up a special advance copy of the book. Just sidle over to the Insomnia Publications table and look for a Scottish bloke called Crawford. Tell him, in these exact words, "G'day from Xander". He'll know what to do.

Thirdly (!), some more exciting news about CAGES: Australian comics superstar Ben Templesmith (30 Days of Night, Fell) will be providing us with a foreword for the book. He is a scholar and a gentleman.

And last but not least, I can announce that Insomnia will be attending San Diego Comic Con again this year. Okay, actually it's just me and Mel. But we'll have a table, and banners, and lovely comics to sell. Have you booked your accommodation yet?

Okay, I lied, there's one more thing: My writing partner and all-around great guy Josh Hechinger just did an excellent interview for Sequential Tart. I swear, I would have pointed you to this even if he hadn't given me a shout-out in the interview.

Awakening: A Comic You Should Buy

Allow me to indulge in some product pimpage here.

Awakening is a zombie horror comic written by Nick Tapalansky, with art by Alex Eckman-Lawn and lettering by Thomas Mauer. It was recently nominated for an Eagle Award. It's published by Archaia Studios, who are responsible for awesome comics such as Mouse Guard.

Also? Awakening is really good and you should buy it.

Full disclosure: I met Nick and Alex at San Diego Comic Con last year. They were extremely nice and professional guys, and I remember they complimented me on my shirt. (That's the way to go if you want to flatter me, really. I heart my t-shirt collection). Anyway, they pressed their book into my hands and sold me on it with a very enthusiastic pitch. Which is fortunate, because without that experience, I'm not sure I would ever have picked the book up. Another zombie comic, right?

Not really. Awakening's not a gorefest, and it's not exactly full of scares. Nor is it a winking post-ironic examination of the zombie trope, or whatever else the kids are reading these days.

Nope, it's a down and dirty detective story where the zombies barely get any screen time. They're really more like phantoms than traditional Romero-esque flesh-eaters, and when they appear at all, it often happens too fast for us to get a good look at them. Tapalansky subverts all the usual zombie cliches: Instead of attacking in packs, they work alone; instead of roaming mindlessly, they hide in the shadows and strike like hungry wolves. Heck, their victims don't even turn into zombies, and they even occasionally run away.

So the zombie stuff is really there to lend menace and atmosphere to the overarching detective/forensics story. Much like Ellis and Templesmith's Fell, we get the sense that the town in the story is physically sick, festering with an unseen evil. It's all very moody, meditative and grim. All of which is a pretty clever device, but it might not have worked so well were it not for Eckman-Lawn's frankly beautiful art.

I really don't know how to describe the art and do it justice. It's like Templesmith and McKean had a love-child. Scribbly lines, wild ink spatters and off-kilter photo-collage are the norm here, and while this sort of style is currently popular and much-copied, Eckman-Lawn seems to be approaching a real visual technique of his own. Characters fade in and out of silhouette; in and out of reality. They appear flat and vaporous in one panel and lavishly painted in the next. Swirling patterns and scraps of newsprint fade in and out of the pages, subtext literally rising to the surface.

And the double-page spreads: Just gorgeous. Ditto the covers and the pages with closeups of character faces. The latter often feature elaborate haloes of design elements around the characters' heads, like crazy sunbursts of emotion.

Basically, it's stylish, gorgeous to look at, and a creepy-fun read. Best of all, there's a hardcover collection coming out in June. And if you're not already convinced, well, go check it out for yourself at the official site. All you have to do is email Nick, and he'll send you issues 1-4 as ebooks for free. That, folks, is how you market a comic book.

Video Mixtape: Under The Gun

If you read Josh Hechinger's blog (and you should, if only to marvel at the crazy amount of work the guy churns out), you'll have noted that he and I are co-writing a hitman romantic comedy comic called Under the Gun.

He recently posted a very cool Youtube mixtape of his influences for the series. I thought I'd respond in kind.

(Although mine's not quite as cool, because he already took that damn perfect Killers song.)

An early scene from The Killer, starring Chow Yun Fat:



Scene from The Big Hit:



Rock You Like A Hurricane - The Scorpions:




Warning: If you are not actually Josh Hechinger, this post might make little or no sense to you. In which case I advise you to back away slowly. Or, hey, stick around if you want to. It's your call.

In My Firefox Tabs Right Now

Let's see what sort of marvellous crap the internet has for us today...

Go Queensland! It's about time they did something progressive.

Thinking of going off the grid? This might help.

Free awesome art comix FTW.

For some reason, this makes me laugh uncontrollably.

Goddammit, why wasn't I born in the 60s?

Oscars for Dummies

Is it just me, or are the Oscar nominations really bloody awful this year? For Christ's sake, the list includes Surf's Up, Transformers and Elizabeth.

And fucking Juno got nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay?

Look, I've seen Juno, and that screenplay deserves to be fired into the sun, not nominated for an Oscar. Transformers may have been a shit film, but at least the script didn't jump out of the actors' mouths and clobber you over the head with its desperate relevance. Juno is basically a poor man's Knocked Up, except that Knocked Up was actually, y'know, funny.

At this point I'm sort of hoping the strike holds on until just after the Oscars. That way I won't have to suffer the craven image of ex-blogger Diablo Cody on my TV screen.

On a cheerier note: Holy shit, Brendan McCarthy now has a blog. The man's a stark raving genius, and you should check that link out right now. I mean, seriously: unicorn chicken eyes!

Shout-out numero deux goes to my friend Luke's new blog, soon to be full of designy goodness. Welcome to the blogosphere, mate.

Right. Less than 24 hours until I get on the plane. Mel and Austin: Save me one of those minty hot chocolates.

Looking Forward

2007 was a 'transitional year'. And that's about the nicest thing I can say for it.

I got a lot of promising projects started, almost all of which have yet to come to fruition. I also started a lot of things that fell over and died horribly. Certainly, 2007 holds the undisputed record for Most Formal Rejections, Most Broken Promises, and Most Exciting Projects That Disappeared Down A Black Hole Without Any Word Of Explanation.

It was a year of hoping, trying and waiting, and there's still a lot of waiting left before I find out whether all of it was worth it.

On the other hand, I went to San Diego Comic Con, I got offered real work doing something I love, I wrote more short fiction than ever before, and I completed NaNoWriMo. I also made a few good friends in both the film and comics spheres -- a bunch of altogether excellent people who I know I can count on. You know who you are.

2008 is definitely not going to be a transitional year. No more hanging around waiting for something to happen. Quite the opposite, in fact. As most of you probably already know, I'm moving to Vancouver in a month's time.

Why Vancouver?

Well, I have friends who are also going, and the (vaguely-defined) plan is to rent a big old house together.

It's a big city, and the prospect of living in a big city is starting to sound pretty good after five years in the least cultural place on Earth.

It's within flying distance of the USA, without actually being in the USA. And there's huge opportunities there for freelance writers, or so I'd like to imagine.

But mostly, when I get right down to it, it feels like the right thing to do.

Here's to 2008.

50th Post Comics Extravaganza!

Believe it or not, this is the 50th post since I started this odd little experiment of a blog.

Of course, 50 posts isn't very impressive for someone like, say Josh Hechinger, who gets in at least 20 before breakfast. But for me? Well, it's rather big. 50 posts in 3 months! That's, like... some number of posts per week. I no can do math. :(

Anyway, I thought I'd celebrate by giving you all first look at the cover to Cages, soon to be my first published comic book. (For those just waking up in the back: It's a dark future story presented as a self-contained graphic novel, it's coming out next year from the fine folks at Insomnia Publications, and the art is by the wonderfully talented Mel Cook.)

We wanted something really different and eye-catching for the cover, so we contacted Jonathan Hickman -- iconoclast, comic artist and soon-to-be-superstar -- to see what he could come up with. And, yeah, it pretty much blew us away:





But that's just whetted your appetites, hasn't it? What's that you say? You'd like to see some more of Cages?

Well, alright. Here's 5 finished pages from Chapter 2. This is about a quarter of the way through the book; our heroes, the three children, have just escaped from the lab and met a group of survivors, who are led by a slightly-crazed shaman:
















But that's not enough for you, is it? You'd like to see even more art from the brush of the prodigious Miss Cook, wouldn't you?

Well, because I can't say no to you, here's the cover art for Mysterious Visions Anthology #12, to be released next year and containing our story Ho Versus Joe. It's a blood-drenched black comedy that answers the eternal question: Who would win in a fight between Zombie Ho Chi Minh and Zombie Joseph Stalin?





(Dimestore Productions have taken down the project pages for some reason, but you can still see the fantastic Ho Versus Joe Round 2 character illustrations here.)

This concludes our 50th post. I wish I could promise you that the next 50 will be witty, erudite and bursting with content, and that they'll enrich your lives in hitherto unimaginable ways... but that'd probably be lying.


Cross-posted to my Comicspace and the official Cages website.

Writing Drama -- A Great Resource for Writers

This is a capsule review/recommendation of Le Clown & L'enfant's Writing Drama, written by Yves Lavandier. Full disclosure: They were kind enough to send me a free copy all the way from France, so I thought the least I could do was talk about their book.




First, let's talk about what it isn't.

It's not a Hollywood handbook, full of insider gossip and tips on how to survive pitch meetings. It's not a how-to guide for people with no idea how to format a script. It's not a small book (in fact, it's almost 600 pages of fairly small type). And it's not a book for everyone.

It is, however, incredibly worthwhile for the intermediate-to-experienced writer, or anyone interested in the craft of dramaturgy. It's an unashamedly thorough and serious book, containing hundreds upon hundreds of well-researched examples to back up the author's opinions -- which are of course prominently on display.

The first few chapters are full of bold assertions and opinions, as if Lavandier were getting it out of the way early to allow time for the naysayers to leave the room. He sets up very quickly that he believes in dramatic rules, has little time for fuzziness and divine inspiration, and dislikes the Auteur Theory (a common tune, but his takedown of it is actually very readable -- complete with swipes at Godard). He's big on the idea that conflict lies at the heart of life, and that drama is life.

He then goes on to the real nuts and bolts of drama: the protagonist and his relationship to the objective; the idea of obstacles -- what's effective and what's not, how melodrama works, whether tragedy is really dead; how to properly use deus ex machina and Macguffins.

Further chapters deal with Characterisation (where we learn why even minor characters require objectives, and Lavandier takes a humorous jab at the male Rescuer character, as embodied by DiCaprio in Titanic), Structure (mostly the usual stuff: inciting incident, Act 2 twist, death and rebirth of the protagonist), and Unity (where things all go a bit Aristotelian). We also get informative chapters on Dialogue, Character, and Exposition (and how to place it so it doesn't suck),

Then we get to the more unique chapters. There's one on Preparation, for instance, in which Lavandier discusses proper foreshadowing and how not to tilt your authorial hand, or cash all those (metaphorical) chips too early. There's a fantastically in-depth chapter on Dramatic Irony, which includes many, many examples and explanations, and just might be the highlight of the book. And there's a whole section on Comedy, which Lavandier argues for and champions as one of the most versatile and powerful forms of drama.

The book is rounded off with some toolbox-y tips on authorial intention, the work process, writing for children, writing short films, and the right ways to read a script.

If I'm making the book sound dry or overly academic, it's not. Lavandier has an easy, conversational-intellectual style, and he likes to deviate into interesting little alleyways: Why a car is not a character, for instance, or a full-blown defense of caricature as a form of comedy.

There's really only one big problem I could see: The book is mostly about film, but the author likes to toss in the occasional reference to plays or comics, just to spice it up. While he's obviously incredibly knowledgeable on the first two subjects, I often felt like comics were given the short end of the stick. He tends to talk only about bandes dessinees, and then only about old staples like Tintin and Asterix. This is sort of the equivalent of pointing out the flaws in Golden Age Superman comics -- quaint, but ultimately a bit pointless.

Other than that, it's an extremely useful and informative book for anyone who wants to learn the rules of drama... and for professionals who think they know everything under the sun. I've had it for a while now, but I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. It's certainly something I'll be going back to, and I plan to put it on my Shelf of Usefulness, next to Strunk & White, Scott McCloud, and John Gardner. Frankly, I'm not one for screenwriting books, but if I had to pick the most advanced, most comprehensive, and generally most helpful book on the subject, I'd pick Writing Drama.

If you want to know more, there's a good interview with the author at his site. And if you'd like to buy a copy, you can order it straight from the publisher (strangely, Amazon don't stock it).

I Made You These Links

Here are some wonderful links, courtesy of the magical information tubes:

• Cool yet terrifying: Robot face mimics your own face.
  
• Creepy yet thought-provoking: Cory Doctorow imagines Google as the Evil Empire.
  
• Crude yet hilarious: Anonymous hero eviscerates bad webcomics.
  

Excelsior!

Field Trip

I'd say it was worth the hour-long drive to Brisbane.

I'm talking, of course, about the Sherpa Chicken dish at the Himalayan Kitchen restaurant in Fortitude Valley. If you're ever in the area and hungry, I highly recommend it.

But the Writers Festival panel was good too.

With Bryan Talbot, Shaun Tan and Eddie Campbell in the one room, there was something like 70 years worth of collective comics industry talent on display. Eddie Campbell proved to be funny and charismatic, and was basically responsible for leading the discussion. (Well, it certainly wasn't being led by the inept moderator, who looked and acted like he'd wandered in there by accident. At one point -- and I shit you not -- he interrupted Bryan Talbot to ask, "So Shaun, you just won the New South Wales Premier's Book Award. Was that... good?")

As it was, a lot of the panel was wasted on getting the clueless audience up to speed on just who these authors were and what they'd written; and much of the rest was spent examining the fairly silly question implicit in the panel's title ('Does the Literature of our Time have Pictures?'). The 'argument' over graphic novels versus literature wasn't much of the sort, with Talbot taking the moderate position, and Eddie Campbell jokingly advocating for a complete overhaul of the standard nomenclature ("Just use made-up words. Call them something different every time.") The audience questions -- all two of them -- were pretty facile (That old chestnut "How is a comic like a film?" made its mandatory appearance).

But there were some gems in the rough, with Talbot and Campbell making fun of the slapdash way that mainstream journalists cover comics, and Tan describing the process of doing background design for Pixar. And at the end of the day, I got to shake Talbot's hand and tell him how much I enjoyed Alice in Sunderland.

In all, it was a rewarding evening. And if you're ever in the neighborhood, just remember what I said about the Sherpa Chicken. Delicious.

An Outing

Okay, so I'm definitely going to this tomorrow:

Does the Literature of our Times have Pictures?

Eddie Campbell, Guy Delisle, Bryan Talbot and Shaun Tan.
Hear four of the world's most renowned graphic novelists talk about the rise and rise of the medium and the ideas and issues that propel their work.

It should be fun, though I'm the only one in my group who actually knows who these people are. Doubtless, my colleagues will spend some of the driving-to-Brisbane time frantically flicking through my copy of Talbot's Alice in Sunderland.

I'll let you know how it goes.

It's Quiet... Too Quiet

I've been slack with the blogging recently. Too many projects in the works, with more sprouting out of the ground every day, like mutant mushrooms. Or... something.

Here's some things you may or may not find interesting:

• I broke down and decided to submit a bunch of my Elephant Words stories to various short fiction markets (the whole process of which was made much easier by the magnificent and venerable Duotrope). Now we play the waiting game...
• The Brisbane Writers Festival is on soon. Really soon, in fact. Graphic novels seem to be getting the spotlight treatment, with guest appearances by Eddie Campbell, Bryan Talbot and Shaun Tan. I'll have to try to get up there for one day at least.
• The aforementioned Bryan Talbot is the genius behind probably the best graphic novel of the year, which you should read if you like Lewis Carrol, books, comics, or being really, really entertained.
• I enjoyed this Wired article on the best tools and technology for writers. Their suggestion of an unlimited public transport pass is an especially good one, and one that I might make use of after next year's planned geographic relocation.

Until next time, gentle readers.

ALL CAPS

People are always interested to learn that there's no standard script format in comics.

Okay, no, they're never really that interested. But I was interested, the first time I learned that fact. Coming from a screenwriting background, where readers/agents/anyone will happily shred your script because it has improperly indented sluglines, or the wrong brand of metal brads or whatever, it was a breath of fresh air.

The fun part (or annoying part, depending on your point of view) is that you get to change the way you write a comics script to suit every new project or new artist. CAGES, which I've been working on for over a year now, has gone through dozens of slightly different script formats. But it wasn't until the latest rewrite that I hit on the idea of writing out the dialogue in ALL CAPS.

Warren Ellis does it, and I'm sure others do too. It's a pretty obvious idea -- after all, that's the way all comics text appears on the page. But it always seemed clunky and distracting, somehow, until I actually gave it a shot. Also, instead of underlining text that was going to be bolded, I decided to try actually, you know, bolding it.

Here's how it looked before:

RAPH: Mike, come on…

MIKE: You come on, Raph!

RAPH: What does that even mean? Look, I’m just saying, at this point we should probably –

RAPH: Run!

Whereas, in the new draft, it looks like this:

RAPH: MIKE, COME ON…

MIKE: YOU COME ON, RAPH!

RAPH: WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN? LOOK, I’M JUST SAYING, AT THIS POINT WE SHOULD PROBABLY –

RAPH: RUN!

I have no idea why, but I find this method about a thousand times easier to work with. It's such a little change, but it's allowing me to produce much more natural dialogue. Perhaps it's something to do with the bold making it easier to 'feel' the emphasis, but who knows?

Whatever works, right?

(This post was cross-posted to the CAGES blog.)

Finalist

This is cool: Jason Rodriguez, editor of the acclaimed Elk's Run, and the even more acclaimed Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened, has been running a competition over on his blog.

The rules were simple: Write a short story based on a cute but enigmatic old postcard. The best entry wins a copy of Postcards signed by a whole legion of talented people.

Well, I entered, and it looks like I'm into the top three.

The winner is now decided by public vote. Now, I already have a copy of Postcards (It's pretty great, and you should check it out). I do not, however, have a super-cool signed-and-sketched-in copy.

So if you've got some spare time, you could always read my piece and those of the other two finalists (both worthy in their own right), and then vote for the one you like best.

Grindstone

I've finally knocked out Cages Chapter Three. On the whole, I'm extremely pleased with it; far more so than with the previous two chapters.

And so my Work List of Doom becomes a little shorter. It now only includes, for the next two months:

• A new issue 1 script (22 pages),
• A possible two more comics scripts (22 pages each),
• A ~30 page feature film treatment (due soon),
  
• An outline and treatment for a webcomics idea,
• An outline and script for a TV pilot collaboration (45-50 pages),
• More notes on a friend's feature film script, and of course,
  
• The novel, which has been hovering at 20k words for over 6 months and really needs an infusion.
  

Interesting times...

Sequential <3

That thing in the title? It's a sequential heart. Get it?

I love comics, I really do. I'm writing chapter 3 of CAGES right now, and it's fun, fun, fun. Heroes get shot! Bad guys get eaten by monsters! Robot clones!

In honor of comics, here are some cool links:

Panel and Pixel, the spiritual successor of the Engine, opens to much fanfare and silliness.

Paul Pope's new book Pulphope is the best book about the creative process you'll read all year. Plus, it's unbelievably gorgeous. A bit like me.

This one's for all my friends who don't yet read comics: A link to a whole bunch of fantastic Issue Ones, free to read. I guarantee there's something in there for everybody. If you like crazy-explodey-action, click on Casanova. If you like crime-noir, try Fell. If you'd like to feel all indie and relevant, read Phonogram.

And now I'd better get back to that script...

Surprise!

UPDATED: Last two pages added.

My friend and collaborator, the uber-talented David Montoro, just sent me a little surprise -- an illustrated comics version of my first short story at Elephant Words. I thought I'd share it with you all, because it's too good to keep to myself.

Here's the original story.

And here is the super-awesome comics version...














Artists are magic. There's no other way to describe it.

(Fun Fact: The original title of this post was 'Surprendre', and then David helpfully wrote to tell me that this is actually the verb form, and that the noun form of 'surprise', in French, is actually 'surprise'. The more you know...)

Returned

The flight was long and painful, but I'm home.

Time to get to work.

Expect lots more blogging in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here's my latest Elephant Words piece, inspired by this image. I wrote it just after getting off the plane and just before my brain slipped into REM sleep-state. If anyone figures out what it means, please tell me.

In other news, Warren Ellis is shutting down The Engine. This is disappointing and sad. Still, that's the beauty of the internet: It never stops changing and adapting. Geeks will find a way.