And then this happened.
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Product Placement
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
todays bird
hello vonnie
DEAR READER
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Peter Solarz
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AnasAbdin
wallacepolsom

Kiana Khansmith
Three Goblin Art

ellievsbear
taylor price
Cosimo Galluzzi
Mike Driver
i don't do bad sauce passes
seen from United States

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seen from Brazil
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seen from United States

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@xmenlegacy
And then this happened.
...

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NYCC 2015 - WHERE IāLL BE
This is a work-in-progress, so itās worth checking back before hitting the show. Iāll almost certainly be adding more signing slots, probably at either the Avatar Press booth or the Titan (Doctor Who) booth. Or both.
Preamble:Ā Iām attending this year primarily as a guest of Boom! StudiosĀ -Ā presently celebrating their 10th year of publishing comics - who of course are responsible for my (recently reprinted!) book The Spire (with Jeff Stokely), and last yearās Six-Gun Gorilla.Ā I am however also popping up here and there wearing the hats of other publishers. All details below. Ā
THURSDAY 8TH OCTOBER:Ā
11am - 12 midday - Room #1A06 - Panel:Ā BOOM! 1O YEARS / PUSH COMICS FORWARD
7pm - 9pm - MASS SIGNING: FORBIDDEN PLANET
This is the main event for me this year: a big signing party for a whole bunch of Boom! Studio alumni over in the East Village. Note that a NYCC badge is NOT required.Ā Expect to find, amongst the signature-scribblers:
Brooke Allen (Lumberjanes) Frank Barbiere (Broken World, Black Market) Matthew Daley (Lantern City) Michael Dialynas (The Woods) Eryk Donovan (Cognetic, Memetic) Brian Joines (Imagine Agents) Simon Spurrier (The Spire, Six-Gun Gorilla) S.M. Vidaurri (Iscariot, Iron: Or, the War After) Shannon Watters (Lumberjanes)
Forbidden Planet is located at 832 Broadway, between 12th and 13th St.Ā (212-473-1576, fpnyc.com)
FRIDAY 9TH OCTOBER:
5.30pm - 6.30pm - Room #1A18 - Panel: AVATAR PRESS, CREATIVITY UNLEASHED
SUNDAY 11TH OCTOBER:
2.45pm - 3.45pm - Room #1A01 - Panel: HORRIFIC VISIONS OF THE CROSSED
Within Days:
Four years ago I was as close to rock bottom as Iāve ever been.
I spent something like two solid months sitting in coffee shops in and around the City of London (which is not the same as London City), broken but breathing, mostly failing to work. Ā Watching and listening.
Unusual ConcentrationsĀ is a novella. Itās not about me, per se, but it is about that time. Or at least, itās about some of the things I saw and heard and daydreamed during those dark days, and what I wish Iād done about them. Ā
I think itās funny. And sweet. And dark. And extremely odd.
Itās about crime, coffee and careless talk.
Iāve been meaning to work back round to prose for several years, and there are in fact a few (more conventional) irons in that fire right now, about which more soon. But this peculiar little story felt like the perfect artefact with which to experiment in self publishing.
So thatās what Iām doing. Later this week (or possibly next, because life) itāll be online in .mobi, .epub and .pdf formats, for a ridiculously low price. Ā Couple of bucks, probably. Iāll let you know.
-S.x
Oh go on then, have another sneak peek at episode 1.
Fans of XML will, I think, get a big kick out ofĀ āCry Havocā.
We couldnāt make it to the Image Expo to announce this project, so we got Si to monotone down a camera lens. Itās his special talent.
Plenty of sneak-peeks of the artwork in there too.

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Preview: Marvel Zombies (feat. Elsa Bloodstone).
Fullly lettered preview of the new Marvel Zombies series, featuring the splendid Elsa Bloodstone. Wrap your squints round this:
PAGE ONE
PAGE TWO
PAGES THREE & FOUR
PAGE FIVE
In stores Wednesday June 10th, with a cover a little something like this:
Got asked recently to put together a quick essay about my approach to the Marvel Zombies franchise. Instead I went ahead and wrote about undead history, revenant culture and the shambling metaphor that is the zombi.
An abridged version went live with some tasty illustrations over on
First look: Kev Walkerās interior art for the Secret WarsĀ āMarvel Zombiesā serial.
A new interview just went live over at Comicbookresources.Ā
A lot of fun waffle about the rules of zombiedom, genre, my career at Marvel and the inexpressible joy of working with Kev Walker, one of my comics heroes.
CBR also has the great honour of giving us our first look at Kevās interior artwork. I include three pieces herein:
Marvel Zombies hits stores on June 10th. Remember to reserve your copy at your LCS.Ā
x
Comics readers & retailers: straw poll time. What dāyou look for in a solicit text? Story-detail? Attitude? Genre? Credentials? Comparisons?
ā¦is a question I asked over on Twitter earlier today.
Previews solicitation-text is one of the eccentric little curiosities unique to comics, and the subject of no little debate and contemplation amongst publishers, editors and creators. Ostensibly intended as a guide to help retailers make purchasing decisions about forthcoming comics, the Gestalt Age has seen the humble solicit take on a far more visible and pervasive role.
ā¦Or so we suppose. And thatās rather the point. Thereās no unanimity about just how important these little 80-word splats really are, nor how best to tool or aim them. Some books scrupulously use them as descriptors of content (analogous to the blurb on the back of a prose novel, I guess). Some take a less formal approach, playing with voice and brand in (ideally) eye-catching ways, often at the expense of content detail. Some pay them the merest and most grudging lip-service possible, presumably regarding them as pointless.
So I thought Iād conduct a little unofficial brainsieving. Please please pass this along, and stick your own preferences and thoughts into the mix as it goes. How important are solicits to you? Which are the most successful?Ā
(Iāve been fascinated to learn, for instance, how many readers regard fun and energy as infinitely more important than story points. I wonder if retailers feel the same way? And I wonder how the current crop of snappy solicits would play if applied to a darker spectrum of genres?)
Those interested in the answers given earlier via twitter will find an assortment of views from The Morning Contingent and The Afternoon ContingentĀ by making clicky on the bold bits.
This is all in preparation for a forthcoming creator-owned gig, by the way, with some enormous talent aboard, which Iāll be writing more about very soon.
Splurge me with your wisdom.
(via sispurrier)
"Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men" is one of my favourite podcasts. You donāt need to be a frothing X-fan, or even toāve read the specific episodes theyāre dealing with, to be infected by their enthusiasm, wit and charm.
This week I did my bit to drag said enthusiasm, wit and charm into the mud by joining them on-air to talk about my run on X-Men Legacy. With multifarious asides on such cogent topics as the NHS, mental health, bacon sandwiches and the ineffable nature of reality.
Itās good fun. Stick it in your earbits and enjoy.

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For more Legion, click through to the visual companion to Episode 44 - Assembling Legion, with Si Spurrier!
NEW-VELLA - your publishing opinions, please.
So⦠itās now official. Within the next few months Iām going to self-publish a prose novella. [To those who didnāt know: I was a crime author long before I was a comicist.] Ā I could use your thoughts on the matter.
This new piece is something of an experiment on my part, as is the self-publication process. There are elements to this story which make it almost impossible to publish in a more conventional way, not to mention a lot of very personal content. After a great deal of uhmming and ahhing Iāve decided I want to be in sole control of its destiny.Ā
My aim is to price-point the thing around $2, which is a steal for a 40k word novella. Thatās - what? - a weekās worth of commuter-journeys, or a couple of really long sessions in the bath.Ā
Worth every cent and every wrinkled patch of skin.
In the wake of recent āVATMOSSā legislation here in the UK the choice of digital outlets has become a rather more thorny issue - I wonāt bore my American readers with that just now. The upshot is that I have to think long and hard about point-of-sale. Iāve been doing some straw-polling about this over on Twitter (very interesting results) and Iād really appreciate your thoughts and comments on the topic too. Ā Itās essentially this:
Would you be more inclined to buy digital fiction if *not* released via Amazon, or does the ubiquity of the Kindle reign supreme?
And:
Is the option to āpay whatever you likeā a turn on or a turn off?
Do please let me know how you feel about that - itāll be a great help.
Anyway⦠Iāll write more about this project over the coming weeks as things take better shape⦠ All Iāll say for now is that itās essentially a story about empty lives, populist fiction, indecent smugness and high-quality coffee.
[Semi-autobiographical, naturally.]
So these arenāt completely finished (I need to trim the edges, add a few more coats of modpodge and smooth the bubbles out) but look! I made myself some X-Men Legacy shoes <3 I couldnāt bare to cut up issues 23-24 because while I managed to find copies of the other issues, my local comic store didnāt have any spares in stock :( So no dream dancing shoes sigh. But Iām happy with them :)!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAmazing
Axis Revolutions #1, out today. Featuring a fun little oneshot, with Tan Eng Huat on art, in which Doctor Strange gets hits by a hate ray (because comics) and glory ensues.
A few more preview moments - some of them potentially spoilery, beware - over HERE.Ā
Limited edition Six Gun Gorilla print available at Thought Bubble 2014 in Leeds next month.Ā Si Spurrier and myself will have these on hand.Ā Signed and hand numbered - Limited to 100

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Fulfilled a lifelong ambition and got to write some Doctor Strange. Artist is my inestimableĀ X-Men LegacyĀ buddy Tan Eng Huat. Ā
This is fromĀ AXIS: REVOLUTIONS #1, apparently thatās out on the 29th October. Full solicit HERE.Ā
Itās fun.
Incidentally, while Iām here, hereās the cover for X-Force #10, out next week (Wednesday 8th October). Art by Rock-He Kim. Itās rather lovely, no? Ā A clear and fitting tribute to the covers of X-Men Legacy's Mike Del Mundo, since it's drawn by regular LegacyĀ artist Tan Eng Huat, andĀ guest-stars one of my favouriteĀ LegacyĀ characters: ForgetMeNot - the man with the uncanny mutant power of being Impossible To Remember.Ā
As Doc Nemesis puts it: āHeās literally written out of the story, over and over.ā
ForgetMeNot, and the tale he appeared in (X-Men Legacy #300) is one of the favourite things Iāve created with Marvel (the latter being all the sweeter for the collaboration of Mike Carey and Christos Gage). So it feels right that this episode of X-Force should - I think - be the best one yet.Ā
In (because, hi, me) a very unconventional sort of way.