Omg please be real!
The head is from the infinity war teaser. It's cap.
Dat Widow tho
Omg please be real!
Of course you are
New Avengers #28 was fucking incredible holy shit. Loving how all this is coming together. And how the books are completely intertwined now.
I'm in here working on issues 9-12 of THE WILD STORM. I started the issues 7-12 arc with a list of things the arc needed to do. The list went over three pages of a notebook, and then got cooked down to one page. Issue 7 kicked off some of the plotlines and did the business of restarting the series. Issue 8... well, issue 8 is A Thing. It's a little different. Which leaves me 9, 10, 11 and 12 to continue and complete (most of) the plots I start in 7. I know where they end, pretty much. But I usually try to leave myself a little space in the middle to invent and alter and shuffle. In this case, I left myself a problem to solve. However, because I'm an idiot, I realised that I'd actually written myself into a bit of a corner in issue 7. And I spent so much time digging out of that that I realised the other day that I'd not connected some other stuff up.
SO I've spent the last few days holed up in here fixing the story, without distractions and with people bringing me food and water.
Assembling plot beats too tightly can - at least for me - squeeze the energy out of a story. I mostly want and need to know where I'm going, but I want space to wander in and out of the story's milestones. Sometimes it's as simple as, in GUN MACHINE, having the space to do a few pages about an old 45 single made into an ashtray. Sometimes it's as objectively dumb as knowing the characters need to have a plan to solve their problem but apparently saying to myself "I'll come up with the actual plan later, fuck it." Past Me sometimes seems to live just to screw with Future Me.
Past Me was supposed to write most of this newsletter.
Check out "the big piece of paper" that Alan Moore graphed all the story beats for BIG NUMBERS on.
I think a story can be graphed to death. GLOBAL FREQUENCY was written so tightly that before I started scripting properly I wrote a list of what each page needed to do in the story. Ed Brubaker reminded me of that the other day -- evidently Wildstorm sent him one of my FREQ scripts, back in the day, and I'd left the one-line guide for each page on the script.
When I asked you what you wanted to see from this newsletter, a few weeks ago, 97% of you said "more writing process stuff." So the rest of you can blame those people.
And blame Past Me for screwing this week up. I'm out. See you next week, with an improved, more informative and longer edition with, you know, shiny bits and an attractive radioactive glow.
BUT: take care of yourself, do something this week that's just for you, protect your head and hold on tight. I need you here, and so do other people.
Physical comics were a mistake.I dropped my copy of Green Lanterns vol 1 in the swimming pool
Physical comics were a mistake.
And I would still have my comics.If you say that again I will throw you iPad in the pool or whatever sci-fi thing you use to read comic books!
*cries*I... agree with Sandfox.
Throws up in mouth a little
I... agree with Sandfox.
Throws up in mouth a little
*cries*
I wonder what wacky post-SDCC rumors we're going to get in the coming days.
Is there a reading order for Abe Sapien? It's a bit confusing when some arcs have their own numbering and the others have a consecutive numbering.
I dropped my copy of Green Lanterns vol 1 in the swimming pool
Omg please be real!
oh godI dropped my copy of Green Lanterns vol 1 in the swimming pool
It's all in order if you read the volumes from 1 to 9.
I dropped my copy of Green Lanterns vol 1 in the swimming pool
A first hand account of the distress, and downright traumatic issues, that can arise when you start doing digital comics.Ah, I see. Just kind of a pain since CMX doesn't list the single issues in order. Looks like The Drowning is the place to start, though.
I dropped my copy of Green Lanterns vol 1 in the swimming pool
A new copy of GL Vol. 1 is $17.Physical comics were a mistake.
My comic accidents:
I had a cold and was in a more depressed than usual mode and I sneezed on my comic.
I was reading a trade outside and a small bug landed on it, I went to shoo/flick it and it got squished and a blood dot was left on the page.
I was reading a floppy outside and a page I was turning ripped in the side, just from the pressure of turning it. This was one of the first signs I was going to quit floppies.
A first hand account of the distress, and downright traumatic issues, that can arise when you start doing digital comics.
Ah, I see. Just kind of a pain since CMX doesn't list the single issues in order. Looks like The Drowning is the place to start, though.
..
I... agree with Sandfox.
Throws up in mouth a little
Pulled my trades out, the order presented is The Drowning, The Haunted Boy, The Abyssal Plain, The Devil Does Not Jest and then it transitions into the actual ongoing. As mentioned, the main part is not to start the ongoing until(v. minor spoiler) and Imo reading The Drowning some time before the last arc of the ongoing enhances the reading somewhat.Abe leaves the BPRD
My Bishoujo Squirrel Girl just came in, and man, so fucking happy.
The days of building huge heavy longboxes is over.
I only buy trades (usually hardcover) for stuff that read great in singles.
My comic accidents:
Does this count as an accident if the damage was totally deliberate?
I bought a crap-ton of complete garbage 80s 90s comics "by the pound" (literally) off Ebay, had a bunch of friends over, and we cut out panels and word bubbles we thought looked interesting or funny them laminated them all separately, and threw them into a pile. Then made a game where you drew a hand of 20 panels and 20 word balloons and had to make a comic out of them, preferably multi-panel but even one perfect panel was okay. Beer helped a lot.
If you have a laminator, I highly recommend trying it sometime. Just be careful that your one friend who has a stick up his ass about the sanctity of comics and all that doesn't find out and end up yelling at you because you're "destroying art" and "destroying history" and whatnot.
She's a lovely little figure. She'll look great next to Ms. Marvel.
Yeah, I can look up the order as I go, I just find it a bit inconvenient that they did mini-series numbering and ongoing numbering in different parts of the series.
The days of building huge heavy longboxes is over.
I only buy trades (usually hardcover) for stuff that read great in singles.
And I would still have my comics.
Yeah, but would you rather have to spend another $500+, or another $10 replacing the trade?
Yea, it's definitely inconvenient. The problem is , those issues aren't part of the ongoing series, they really were minis.The Drowning was a five issue book published in 08, The Devil Does Not Jest 1-2 were 2011. It wasn't until 2013 Abe actually got an ongoing to compliment what Arcudi was doing in HoE, which went 36 issues and is numbered as so.
They do have a confusing/real bad history that way though, the BPRD being a good example. It really was effectively an ongoing for ages but published as consecutive mini series. They eventually remedied it with the BPRD , renumbering at #100. However, they're marketing the new main ongoing starting this month as #1 to denote it as a jumping on point but apparently will revert to the full numbering after the first arc, which really undermines the whole thing again.
I'm pretty picky with trades and hardcovers in general now. Since I buy singles digitally, it's usually more convenient to just load them up on my iPad than to buy and open a book, especially when trying to read in bed or something.
That and the fact that I'm more or less out of bookshelf space makes me more cautious with buying them. I think later this year I might just sell some stuff to the comic shop just to get rid of it.
I was actually just wondering how they were gonna handle that lol. I guess that's one way to do it.
Trying to parse through Hell on Earth via singles did kind of demand a guide at points. Luckily the singles do at least end off saying what the next issue is, making it a pretty painless affair once you get going outside of a few cases. It did get weird at points though, as the Ashley Strode stuff was released in trades after its initial release for example.
I probably wouldn't do either tbqh.
You're gonna need that precious real estate for the Hell On Earth/Abe omnibus too
And the Hellboy In Hell Library Edition *dies*
Wait, they have Hellboy Library editions?!
Fair, fair.
Man, I really don't want to watch wrestling tonight. I'd rather just watch Game of Thrones.
Oh Donnie. Say it isn't soWait, they have Hellboy Library editions?!