Ian McQue – I haven’t seen the film of Mortal Engines yet, but this collection of McQue’s concept art for it is beautiful. Can’t beat a good sci-fi dirigible. Also worth checking out, his designs for the underrated Solo.
The Happy Reader – Somehow Penguin’s fabulous literary zine is already up to issue thirteen. It’s a particularly good one too; partly down to the involvement of Owen Wilson and Martin Parr and fresh-faced up-and-comer Marcus Aurelius (he’s so hot right now), but mostly because they’ve printed my letter to the editor.
SW High – Artist Denis Medri is great at shifting the context of well-known comics into other genres, fitting the characters into analogous archetypes: 1950s greaser Batman; medieval/fantasy Avengers; Steampunk Spidey; Western Justice League. Particularly well done is his transposition of Star Wars into a high school cliches. Nerd-droids, teacher-jedis, jock-sith, vending-carbonite – it just fits perfectly.
Vertical Futures – New collection of Nick Coupland’s stunning pen-and-ink drawings of British modernist architecture, just begging for frames and a big blank wall.
List of lists of lists – “This is a list of articles that are lists of list articles on the English Wikipedia. In other words, each of the articles linked here is an index to multiple lists on a topic. Some of the linked articles are themselves lists of lists of lists. This article is also a list of lists.”
Film Stories Jnr – Den of Geek/Film Stories founder Simon Brew is kickstarting a new film magazine written by and for under 15-year-olds. The best thing about this is that the writers will be rewarded for their contributions, showing them that their words have value beyond “exposure”.
Evolution of the humblebrag – One of the little highlights of my week: seeing how Stephen Collins’ brain has digested the state of the world into a few panels of on-the-nose absurdity. The bee made me snort into my coffee.
Day of the Tentacle – Fantastic long read on the making of one of the greatest games of all time (hyperbole be damned, it’s just true). Disney are sitting on this and a few other point-and-click classics (notably Monkey Island games and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis) – it’ll be interesting to see if they have any Bandersnatch-style plans to remake them for Disney+.
Slow is fast – How old-school writing tools will boost your creativity, concentration and speed. Totally related to this. I spend far too much time succumbing to the “freedom” of the computer; copying and pasting and shuffling things around, rather than actually writing. I can’t remember the last time I started something at the beginning and then wrote a linear progression of thoughts until I reached the end. I spiral around a subject, my thoughts unable to … sorry, you’re basically just reading me talk myself into going typewriter shopping now.
That is all.