You want me to do TWO things??

a creative manifesto for Critical Lit Publishing and an important pre-launch page

[Alternate title: Why not both?]

Earlier this month I attended Gen Con in Indianapolis, and I caught something even more infectious than COVID — I caught a fever for throwing some revitalized energy into my creative projects. (I also caught COVID.)

This is exactly what I was hoping would happen (not the COVID part). I almost always have a blast at Gen Con but I think this one was an all-timer for pushing my personal trajectory forward.

One of the big catalysts of that feeling was the opportunity to share some time with one of my major creative heroes, Kieron Gillen. Kieron has made a huge impact in the RPG space lately as the writer behind Die. He’s probably most widely known right now for being the architect of some of the X-Men’s biggest woes. But for me, Kieron’s key text will always be Phonogram.

Phonogram is a tremendous comic about phonomancers — occultists who use music to perform magic. The premise of Phonogram vol. 1, Rue Britannia, is that some dark sect has been mucking with the goddess of Britpop for their own selfish, retromantic ends, and our hero David Kohl — whose abilities and identity itself is rooted in Britpop — has to decide whether he can stop them and, if he can’t, whether he can stand to reroot his identity in something else before it’s too late and he’s irrevocably changed.

So you can see why I love this. There’s a lot of Eric-bait here — the preoccupation with music, the intense questions of whether your identity is recontextualized when the niche things you love are reevaluated by society (I love that David’s core conflict is not if he should change his identity but if he even thinks he can. As one of his companions explains to him, no one even cares about his version of Britpop anymore, so what does it matter? But David responds that it’s everything to him).

But beyond all that, I think Phonogram is a fascinating example of a text that operates on multiple levels — it’s a fantasy comic book, but it’s also a super effective analysis of the Britpop scene. You can pick up this book with only the vaguest notions of who Oasis and Blur are and walk away with a pretty reasonable understanding of what the ‘90s felt like in the UK musically. I’m emphasizing feel here because even though the book conveys its share of facts, its fictionalized narrative is what really allows it to impart that specific feeling of time and place that a more clinical account would struggle with.

Kieron Gillen has been doing stuff like this his whole career. Phonogram vol 3 is a meditation on constructed identity via the early days of the music video. The Die comic gives an incredible history of the TTRPG form while telling a D&D-meets-Jumanji story. The Wicked + The Divine, while spotlighting a narrative of pop star gods who ignite every 90 years only to flame out and die in three, could accompany a history of mass media course in the way it tracks the delivery of popular art across human existence. Each of these books (every one a banger) serves as insightful media critique alongside super slick sequential storytelling, and it’s mighty impressive.

I hold Phonogram volume 1 up as the ur-text for how I want my work under Critical Lit Publishing to feel. After all, we’re all products of our influences, and I think there’s a real honesty in using our own creations to engage critically with those influences. All art is a conversation; this is just a conversation happening across a couple different channels.

You can see that goal manifest, I hope, in a lot of what I’ve put out so far — Blackmore, for instance, was advertised as an object that merged the earliest D&D modules with the earliest power metal records. In telling a story of a group of fantasy adventurers who end up being trapped by a powerful spellcaster in the mundane real world, it also tracks my experience of listening to those first three Rainbow records that start out magical and, by the time of Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll, left me feeling wildly disappointed and confused that I had to ask “wait, why is Dio singing about trains?” (BTW, Kieron hipped me to the fact that the original Blackmoor module is an isekai starring adventurers from the real world — accidentally double-clever of me, then, to make Blackmoor a reverse-isekai.)

Blackmoor, meet Blackmore, meet Blackmore

Saved by the Morph, too, is pretty obviously a piece of media exploration alongside a system-agnostic game setting, excavating a connection between two iconic ‘90s teen shows as well as how media of the Super Sentai persuasion in particular provides its heroes such a tasty, unsubtle formula for working through whatever anxieties they feel each week.

Morpher/pager art by Brandon Kirkman

All of this is probably very obvious, but I’m putting it down in words here because my chat with Kieron plus other Gen Con events has me feeling invigorated in my creative pursuits, and I’ve got a couple other mighty silly projects in the chamber that’ll fit into my library nicely.

Which, speaking of — I think it’s time to start thinking about Rock & Roll Greatest Hits again. That link just takes you to a pre-launch page — we’re going to take our time with marketing and promotion this time around — but if you wanted to “follow” it, I’d be mighty appreciative. No obligation to back implied if you do, but the larger the follower number, the better the algorithm treats me when I actually launch.

As always, your support is super appreciated — I’m really excited for the future and deeply appreciative of your support!

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Speaking of folks creating stuff, I’ve got a few plugs I have to mention:

• Last week I was on the Critical Hit Parader podcast to talk about my history in the games industry, which is a story I don’t know that I’ve told in full since ~the summer of 2020~ happened. Host Matt Thompson is the coolest, nicest guy, and it just so happens that we’re both making TTRPG content that intersects with rock music. His Critical Hit Parader zine also rules, with a kickass adventure based on the music of Blue Oyster Cult. Highly recommended! (And hey, sign up for his Substack over at the podcast link too!)

• My friend Marcus was kind enough to invite me to contribute to his latest Kickstarter, a sci-fi comics magazine called Critical Mass. This thing looks AMAZING. By the time this post goes out, there’s about one day left to help make the book come alive, so if you can, please check it out and give it a back!