[BAD SIGNAL] November
Subj: [BAD SIGNAL]November
Date: 4/2/04 1:53:46 PM GMT Daylight Time
From: regis@diepunyhumans.com
Reply-to: warrene@aol.com
To: badsignal@lists.flirble.org
bad signal
WARREN ELLIS
Years ago, I sat down and thought about what adventure comics might've looked like today if superhero comics hadn't have happened. If, in fact, the pulp tradition of Weird Thrillers had jumped straight into comics form without mutating into the superhero subgenre we know today.
And then, a couple of years later, Alan Moore went ahead and did it with the America's Best Comics line.
Years ago, I sat down and wondered what the regular 32-page adventure comics single would look like if you took away preconceptions about design and the dominant single form.
And then, a couple of years later, Dan Jurgens went ahead and did it with the Tangent line at DC.
The other day, I was thinking about response songs. Rappers taking shots at each other, covers that answer something in the original, art made in reaction to art. Which, you kind of hope, is not the same as being reactionary.
The small music labels 555 Recordings and Dark Beloved Cloud have singles clubs. People play down the importance of singles these days -- they don't sell the way they used to, downloads bother the music business -- but I love them. Sometimes one song contained on one object is all you need to move the axis of the world. Self-contained and saying all that needs to be said.
Singles and Tangent and ABC all kind of stuck together in my head, and I began conceiving of a response. The Singles Group was the working title -- not permanent, as after a while it starts to sound like a dodgy online adult dating service. An imaginary line of comics singles. Sitting in that peculiarity of comics distribution, the fifth week. A couple of times a year, a month has five weeks, but publishersschedule in four-week cycles, so the fifth week is often kind of empty. It's the imaginary week of comics publishing. And that's where you put an imaginary line of comics. A fifth-week event has always been on my list of Things To Do In Comics.
And then someone checked the calendar for me, and showed me that the next available fifth week window is the last week of December. Which is just a deadzone. No-one's got any money. I'd be taking the piss if I put it there.
So the plan changed a little. Five imaginary first issues of imaginary series from an imaginary line of comics released on an imaginary fifth week.
We're going to put it in the middle of November.
More next month.
-- W
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sent from Warren's handheld
[ posted Tuesday, May 11, 2004 6:26:48 PM | permanent link to this item ]
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