Warren Ellis's Blog, page 86

Bill Sienkiewicz's Violin Player

From the WhatNot group sketchblog, a wonderful piece by Bill Sienkiewicz, one of my first favourite comics artists.  In fact, I've loved his work for so long that I can spell his name without having to check it.  Loads of other great stuff at WhatNot, from people like Mark Chiarello and Becky Cloonan and Mike Oeming and Duncan Fegredo and and and…

The Fonal Jukebox

I am very fond of Finland's fine Fonal Records. They release fascinating work in beautiful packaging. And now they have put up a shitload of their output as a streaming jukebox. According to their tweet, some seven hours and twenty two minutes of music. So that's me sorted for the day.

The Winter Colours

Working in the back garden for as long as my fingers will operate, on a hard cold afternoon.

Bookmarks for 2011-12-12

Shock as retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas – Climate Change – Environment – The Independent
"Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region."
(tags:eco dooooom )
Wicker & Steel | Perc Trax
"Fusing a list of influences including classic Birmingham and Berlin techno, the early UK hardcore, jungle and drum & bass of A Guy Called Gerald, Ed Rush and Suburban Base and vintage British horror films such The Wicker Man, Witchfinder General and the output of the legendary Hammer studios, Perc's musical DNA is almost as unique as his production sound."
(tags:music bandcamp )

Brandon Graham & Simon Roy's PROPHET

PROPHET was a comics series by Rob Liefeld in the 1990s, from Image Comics.  I've never read it.  It ended at issue 20.

Recently, Rob Liefeld licensed a bunch of his old properties, including PROPHET, back to Image, where Eric Stephenson began matching them to creative teams with carte blanche to reimagine them.

I was, shall we say, skeptical.  And possibly slightly scathing.  Then Eric emailed me and told me exactly who he'd convinced to reinvent these properties.  Which did actually shut me up a bit. 

(these images are screenshot off a PDF advance reading copy, so don't mistake them for print quality)

Brandon Graham is the writer/artist of acclaimed comics like KING CITY and MULTIPLE WARHEADS.  Simon Roy is the writer/artist of the justly applauded JAN'S ATOMIC HEART.  Both of these are off-kilter, very modern urban science fictions.  In PROPHET, Brandon writes for Simon, and what is produced is something as close to classic French science-fiction comics as I've seen in a long time, with a hard edge of contemporary strangeness ground into it.

And it's very, very good comics.

They recommence the series with issue 21, as if it had simply paused for years.  I've never, as I said, read a copy of PROPHET before, and had no idea what the character or the central idea was.  I wasn't lost.  It sweeps you right in, as if it were the start of a brand new series.  Very densely populated with ideas, very readable, very accessible.  Very clever.  And very beautiful.

John Prophet is a cryogenically-stored agent, periodically disgorged from the bowels of the Earth to be dispatched on a mission.  This time, he's been underground for a very long time.  Possibly too long.

So begins a journey of deep weirdness – and I'm trying not to spoil it, so I'm not showing you the bit that made me laugh and sort of twitch and retch all at the same time, or even the most wonderful pieces of invention.  I'm hoping this little taste will be enough for you to at least look for it on the week of January 18, 2012, which is when it's released to comics stores.

What PROPHET by Brandon and Simon is, for me, is the best new science fiction comic since CASANOVA.  It's more linear than that book, and not as highly compressed, but it is rich, highly inventive, lustrous and a completely entertaining reading experience.  I really hope it finds an audience, because I want more of this book, and I recommend it to you without reservation.

Comics stores can still order more copies of PROPHET #21, using the Diamond order code NOV110358 – if you want to make sure your local store gets a copy for you, quote them that code, as it'll make it easier for them to do it.  Or, hell, just tell them you want one, if need be.

I hope that when you find it, you enjoy it as much as I did.  Thanks to Eric Stephenson for sending the ARC over.

FELL On Comixology

I am told that the first eight issues of FELL are on sale at Comixology right now, 99 US cents a pop.

Ben still has the script for issue 10, and I'll go ahead and finish issue 11 when he gets more than halfway through 10's script.  And we'll move on like that until we have enough of the intended final seven issues to go to market with.

Passed Over

Supposed big storm blew right over. Bloody Posterous has stopped working. Going out to buy wine in the vain hope of spending Xmas obliviously pissed.

Bookmarks for 2011-12-12

russell davies: to evanesce or materialise
"Tom and I were talking this morning about a new thing we're trying to push out of Newspaper Club – a way to let people easily transfer their individual reading from screen to newspaper. We realised that some people instinctively want to do that – they want to materialise stuff. And some instinctively don't – they want all their stuff to evanesce (as Adam puts it). And you can't really predict who will be drawn to what."
(tags:culture )
Five Ways The Comics Industry Could Dramatically Change In 2012. Aside From Digital. | Bleeding Cool Comic Book, Movies and TV News and Rumors
"Now there have been a lot of theories over the years about big big changes that could affect the comics industry, for good or for bad… here are five current faves from people I've been chatting to."
(tags:comics )
Broken20 » > B20_05 – John Cohen – Tar River
"John Cohen, one half of Brighton noise antagonists Dead Fader, unleashes his solo audiovisual release 'Tar River', a 40 minute plus mediation on, as he puts it, "alien landscapes, science fiction and underwater filtered music". Comprising a DVD release as well as a standard digital audio album."
(tags:music )

Heavy Metal Heels

Designed by Bryan Oknayansky.  More designs in a similar vein at suckerpunchdaily.

Why log this? The old comics muscle twitches: the one that's constantly trying to detect interesting new fashion thinking that can be interpolated into memorable character designs.

How The Higgs Boson Spells Universal Death (Maybe)

Tomorrow, there's to be an announcement concerning the Higgs Boson.  The viXra log has an amusing little take on the implications should the "God Particle" turn up in an awkward range:

It has been known for about twenty years that for a low Higgs mass relative to the top quark mass, the quartic Higgs self-coupling runs at high energy towards lower values. At some point it would turn negative indicating that the vacuum is unstable.

In other words the universe could in theory spontaneously explode at some point releasing huge amounts of energy as it fell into a more stable lower energy vacuum state. This catastrophe would spread across the universe at the speed of light in an unstoppable wave of heat that would destroy everything in its path. Happily the universe has survived a very long time without such mishaps so this can't be part of reality, or can it?

There is, for me, some black humour in LHC physicists spotting the Higgs signature, reading the energy value, and then slowly whispering: "…nobody move."

I also find myself wondering what that'd look like.  Lightspeed covers, what, six billion miles a year?  Which is, very roughly, the distance from Pluto to Earth and back again.  Even if The Higgs Doom was triggered off relatively locally, we'd have plenty of time to see it coming.  This wouldn't be a neat movie-style 2D shockwave.  Space is a volume.  This would be a stellar tsunami rushing towards us from all edges of the visible universe.

Hey.  It's a Monday.  Sometimes I think about these things on a Monday.