Tiiiired. Sitting here listening to Pocahaunted and chugging coffee in order to stay lucid enough to do a GRAVEL phone conference set for 1.30am. This week’s been utterly buggered — you may have noticed the silence here — by a member of the family being rushed into hospital early in the week, which has turned everything into bubbling chaos and is necessitating runs to the hospital, rescheduling, etc. And then the snow hit, turned into two inches of white stuff sitting on three inches of ice, and Britain shut down because it is now a country of weaklings and jabbering genetic wreckage who shit themselves when the sky moves.

GRAVEL phone conference with my producers is to set the storyline. I’ve spent what little time I’ve had this week putting all my notes in order. Which is how I ended up writing the line "Bill, you’re kind of persona non fucker around here."

Also, at the top of the week, I wrapped the last few pages of ULTIMATE COMICS IRON MAN ARMOR WARS #4, which is one of the more ridiculous titles that I haven’t invented myself. Sadly, the Marvel office chose to ignore the alternate titles I wrote at the top of each script. I liked IRON MAN: HUMAN SEX JEEP the best.

Had a conversation with David Bogart at Marvel about the future of the NEWUNIVERSAL: STORMFRONT project there that got stalled when my computer and backups were destroyed. Should be sorted in a few months. I think Dave’s official title at Marvel is Grand Inquisitor or Witchfinder General or something, but I’ve known him pretty much since he started out in the business, and, frankly, it’s always nice to know that there’s a guy in that office who will never try to screw me over. Dave will look after me.

Or, of course, I will have him killed. I know lots of people in New York. I mean, trust is good, but insurance is better, right?

If I can just get a few more pages on other things out over the next two days, then from Monday I am done with 2009, and anyone who doesn’t like it can bite my muckpump.

More coffee.

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

Variety says:

Summit Entertainment has set Oct. 22 as the release date for "Red," its espionage thriller starring Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren.

Red," based on the WildStorm/DC comicbook…

…because apparently reading the names on the spine is hard work.

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

The joy of Fridays.

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

I made a fancy blog, it'll probably be where I post a majority of my comics and such online. So check it out, I'm hoping to post pretty regularly. Thanks!

http://blakesimscomics.blogspot.com/

“In Dulce Jubilo” – the Medieval Baebes.

“Just Like Christmas” – Low

“Christmas Wrapping” – The Waitresses

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

A new page of Freewheel is up! Jamie is all packed up and ready to leave home, but where will she go?



Also, some big news on the Freewheel: Volume One Fundraising Campout, which is a little Kickstarter-style pre-order-with-benefits program thing I just started to raise money for the first and very expensive printing of Freewheel: Volume One, which will collect the first five chapters. After I announced the Campout on Tuesday, it's already gone over the $100 just this morning! In fact, it's at $148 as I type this! We've got a Can of Beanz, two Can Openers and two Matches. Who will bring the Firewood and put us over the $200 mark?



In other news, I don't know if I mentioned this before, but Jen Vaughn (the slammin' cartoonist behind such comics about menstruation as Menstruation Station and Don't Hate, Menstruate!) has started a new webcomic called Mermaid Hostel, which is about an underwater world not unlike our own in which mermaids exist and run a hostel in what I am assuming is the ocean. She updates it on Fridays and it is pretty neat. You should check it out! If you are a squeamish person, it is not about periods in any way (so far). I don't imagine that mermaids get periods but who knows?

In I Was A Bear Episode 3, I learn how to tackle.

RIGHT HERE.

A new project from BERG:

We’ve been working with our friends at Bonnier R&D exploring the future of digital magazines. Bonnier publish Popular Science and many other titles.

Magazines have articles you can curl up with and lose yourself in, and luscious photography that draws the eye. And they’re so easy and enjoyable to read. Can we marry what’s best about magazines with the always connected, portable tablet e-readers sure to arrive in 2010?

This video prototype shows the take of the Mag+ project…

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

I Was A Bear Episode 2 features an important lesson learned at my first practice.

RIGHT HERE.

So as you might know, printing books is expensive. For someone like me, it is rather prohibitively expensive as the cost of printing 1000 copies of a 96-page graphic novel will run me about $2500, which I don't have. Currently I have the first three chapters of my webcomic, Freewheel, all drawn and ready to go. I will have chapters four and five done by March 2010. I would like to collect the first five chapters into a book at that time, so to raise the money for that I've decided to hold a virtual fundraising campout!

Be sure to check out the campout page for full details, but essentially the idea is that you get all kinds of special stuff based on the amount of money you give. With the lower levels you get stuff like signed copies of the book, or a small print, or original art. With the higher levels you can get goodies like original pages from the book, you get to name a character, or even have your own face drawn into the book! Yes, it's kind of like that Kickstarter thing you keep seeing people doing, except I'm doing it myself instead of using a third-party service!

All funders will receive email updates every two weeks!

All funders will be personally thanked in the book!

All funders will receive a personalized certificate by mail indicating their name and level of funding!

Even if you can't afford to help out financially, you can help spread the word! Let people know about the Freewheel: Volume One Fundraising Campout! Every little bit helps!

Come on, don't you want to be the Mayor of Hobotown?



Oh and yeah, there's a new page of Freewheel today!

Nearly to the end of the first volume, now:

…Alan Moore who’s also in the audience at an early Roxy Music gig and watching Brian Eno in some insane costume making music with Science, Alan Moore, whose early career could easily be described as trying to find out what might happen if Brian Eno had written the Fantastic Four, Brian Eno, who conceived of his generative art software project 77 MILLION PAINTINGS as “visual music,” which is as good a term for “comics” as any I’ve seen…

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

TOTW is basically a joke that Ariana and I pull each week in our joint guise as the International Electrophonic Unit. Basically, we take some of the stupider things I’ve said on Twitter and elsewhere, often in a state of extreme alcoholic refreshment or severe sleep deprivation, and put them on a t-shirt. Ariana set up a Cafe Press store (because this is a joke and engaging with a serious maker of t-shirts would be less funny to us), and… well, once a week, here we are.

Through this website and this Cafe Press store, we’re going to release one t-shirt a week. It’ll go live on Monday… and it’ll die Sunday night — midnight UK time, more often than not. Each one lives for a week, and then it’s replaced by the next week’s shirt. Until I either run out of dumb ideas or Ariana’s brain explodes.

So, every Monday, I’ll post the new shirt here, and you can peer at it more at http://www.cafepress.com/electrophonic.

HOWEVER, THIS WEEK: it’ll run ’til next Monday, as we’ve been running late today due to my being in London for meetings. Okay?

This one needs some explaining. I once opined on Twitter that the word "scrotum" ruins everything. And proved it by providing the helpful example "scrotumpunk." And then, um…

…I present to you T-Shirt Of The Week #008: SCROTUMPUNK:

We also offer a couple of perennial items. Mostly because I wanted one of these for myself:

(And also a MAN COOK MEAT WITH FIRE "splatter-shield", because Ariana’s crazy)

Thank you for your kind attention.

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

I have to go into London tomorrow, as I’ve been instructed to meet a producer. Sometimes my agent talks to me as if she has some kind of remote-operated Destructo-Ray Projector in my office that’ll burn off one of my balls if I disobey her instructions. But she speaks with such confidence that I start to worry that she does actually have some kind of remote-operated Destructo-Ray Projector in my office, and so I go to the meeting.

So it’ll be all quiet here until tomorrow night.

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

• UNKNOWN FIELDS DIVISION | AA INTER UNIT 7_The End of the World and Other Bedtime Stories
  design fiction from a crack squad of Architecture Association students
  (tags:design fiction )
• shi jinsong gun shape baby carriage

  (tags:design mad )

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

Poster designs.

Wouldn’t you love to see her do comics? I know I would.

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

• “Dee’s Siren Song” – Mission: Comics & Art – San Francisco – Events
  gallery exhibition opening by Jamaica Dyer in San Francisco
  (tags:art peopleiknow )
• house of bedlam | Ghostwriter
  Short story by Sarah Sharp
  (tags:fiction peopleiknow )
• Extraterrestrial Life Official Disclosure Imminent – page 2
  "The Obama administration and its supporters are poised to take a bold step forward in helping our planet become an interplanetary culture that openly deals with the challenges posed by extraterrestrial life."
  (tags:nutters ufo )
• Earth’s atmosphere came from outer space, scientists find
  "…volcanic gases could not have contributed in any significant way to the Earth's atmosphere. Therefore the atmosphere and oceans must have come from somewhere else, possibly from a late bombardment of gas and water rich materials similar to comets"
  (tags:geo )
• BBC News – Monkey calls give clues to language origins
  "Two studies suggest that the ability to combine sounds and words to alter meaning may be rooted in a species of monkey."
  (tags:neuro )
• Ancient Amazon civilisation laid bare by felled forest – life – 10 December 2009 – New Scientist
  "Signs of what could be a previously unknown ancient civilisation are emerging from beneath the felled trees of the Amazon. Some 260 giant avenues, ditches and enclosures have been spotted from the air in a region straddling Brazil's border with Bolivia."
  (tags:history )
• Loud bass music ?killed student? Tom Reid | Metro.co.uk
  "Tom Reid, 19, was taken ill in a crowded London club after standing close to the speakers and telling a friend: ?The bass is affecting me.?" Not the only way that music can kill you, either.
  (tags:death music )

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

After many years of doing rough work on Visors and Treos, I switched back to notebooks this year. Moleskines and Field Notes. Usually working with a propelling pencil, until I found a reliable micro-Sharpie thing earlier this year. Just because I think it’s always worth looking at the way you work and seeing if a change won’t do it good.

These are from a Field Notes notebook started on 5 July 2009.

Had to crank this one up in GIMP, as I was working in pencil (some notes on ASTONISHING X-MEN I scanned were too faint for the scanner or GIMP to save). The left hand page was made around the time I was speaking to the Architecture Association. As you can see, I do tend to go back and add guidance notes later — here, reminding me not to re-use this bit because I ended up using it in a WIRED UK column.

On the right, is how I tend to start roughing out a comics script. It’s almost legible, innit?

I write GRAVEL as "scriptments," usually — a cross between a script, a short story and a film treatment, that Mike Wolfer then turns into something that makes some kind of sense before he starts drawing it. They can run to four or five pages, sometimes just becoming long runs of dialogue. This is me halfway through #15 of that book, just banging the dialogue down without stage directions, as it comes to me:

Yes, I do have bloody awful handwriting. Always have had. I’ll often write in block caps just for the sake of legibility — sometimes I can’t read my own writing.

I’ve filed the serial numbers off this one, as it were, because it was for a work-for-hire project that never got off the ground due to my lack of time. Hence the odd gaps on the page. But this is what you’ll most often find in one of my notebooks: looking at comics page flow. This was the start of several pages of diagrams and notes, trying to find a formal page flow I liked for a DPS, or Double Page Spread.

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

Because it’s Friday.

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)