In which I rush out some notes on San Diego Comic-Con.

Compared to cinema attendance, comic book sales look small. But I just pulled up North America’s estimated comics-sales figures for May, and the top comic sold 163,000 issues that month. That’s a regular US-style comic single, costing $4 that goes directly to specialist comic-book shops. The top ten comics for that month sold a combined number in excess of a million units. The top 20? Somewhere over 1.6 million. And these estimates are usually lower than the real sales figures. Plus, of course, all these single issues will eventually be reprinted as trade-paperback collections. Tell a book publisher those numbers and see what colour they turn…

EDITED TO ADD: that image was supposed to be hosted elsewhere. Something ate the new URL. Fixed now. Christ.

This is basically a joke that Ariana and I pull regularly 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.

Previously, this was a weekly gag. Summer was a bugger, and made us shift to monthly, and autumn is only looking slightly better. So we’re shifting to fortnightly. Until I either run out of dumb ideas or Ariana’s brain explodes.

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

Anyway. I present to you the ultimate “get out of jail free”/”get medical attention instead of prison time” T-Shirt Of The Fortnight #001: WARREN ELLIS MADE ME DO IT:

We also now offer, at the same link, a great many perennial "legacy" items, which will be added to on a largely random basis. For instance:

Thank you for your kind attention.

(Romi Galie)

My favourite sf magazine has its tenth issue online. New writing by Bruce Sterling, Kek, Annalee Newitz, Ian Watson, John Shirley. Lovely.

EDITED TO ADD: now with working link, yes. Sorry about that. Bit distracted. 3.37am, and I just finished the last draft of a tv pitch that’s been eating my brain for the last two days, and tomorrow I need to get 2000 words of novel down. G’night.

For a while, I had a capture of my twitter feed running here. It ended up doing something weird to my API calls, stopping me from running my desktop client, so I killed it. Which is probably just as well, asI talk a lot of shit on Twitter. It’s basically mental slurry, the wet lumpy bits from a day spent at the keyboard vented off into a trap so the buildup doesn’t blow some crucial valve in my head. Look at these, from the last few months:

* A shot of breakfast whisky, fresh pack of smokes and three cans of Red Bull and off we bloody well go

* And that is how we get out 1000 words at the start of the day. (And also lop 3 months off my life expectancy, but hey)

* The Emmys would be more interesting if Jay Leno arrived on a motorbike made from Johnny Carson’s bones.

* It is so stupidly fucking cold here that I actually had to put on clothes to go to the pub today

* Sometimes I think 50 FIRST DATES was the first great horror film of the 2000’s.

* @xenijardin Minutes ago, I lived in a world without the word "self-hitlerization" in it. Thank you for fixing that.

* I didn’t get online until 1994, at a speed of 1200bps. Which is the speed of getting a badger to fetch mail for you.

* I just opened the front door while naked and apparently I’ve still got it because the UPS man clearly licked his lips. Morning.

* Rules for my new readers: you have to commit a crime & tell the arresting officer I made you do it. Helps me sell books.

* Whenever I’m being threatened by the US Government, the first thing I do to relax is commit serious crimes in Sweden

* SKINWICH http://bit.ly/cTv8eY

* i don’t care if it’s real or not I WANT A SKINWICH NOW and a side of fried human fingers

* I am considering an entirely human version of the SKINWICH. Who do I know who would have delicious skin?

* wow look at all those people unfollowing me YOUR SKIN WOULD HAVE TASTED LIKE SHIT ANYWAY mutter swear drink

* Yes, I did remember to put on clothes today. It’s a bit showy, for a penis sheath, but…

* Ah, rotting lightless carcass city under gunmetal sky; London in the summertime, what joy

* The man sitting in front of me on the train smells so strongly of mackerel that he may be wearing some under his clothes

* Please remember me fondly after I’m found gutted on this train, victim of mystery serial killer The Mackerel Man

* good morning, my lovely little gonorrhea discharges

* Jodie Foster’s got to be wondering if she can CGI Mel Gibson out of THE BEAVER and replace him with Bin Laden or someone

* I can smell perfume. Either I’m being stalked or one of the two binmen sitting out here has a secret. Or both of them.

* I’m going to California to marry everybody! (no wait I think that’s still illegal)

* Huh. @gamoid just tweeted that "Human/Warren Ellis marriage is still illegal in 49 states." Shitballs.

* iTunes: I ignore your username and password. Me: but I want to pay you money! iTunes: your money is inferior. I spit on it.

* Me: iTunes, what’s going on? iTunes: I’m fucking your mother’s bones. Towel me off and I might let you update your apps.

* Always remember: that which does not kill you makes you stronger. Until it does eventually kill you. Good night.

* useful social note: combo-punching real people in the face still doesn’t make them turn into a shower of gold coins

* aaag is this the "morning" of which you speak

* Hey, San Diego, see that grey blanket of rain and misery in the sky? That is the herald of my arrival.

* I am here at San Diego, hovering above you all and urinating freely. You thought that was rain earlier, right?

* An excellent vodka martini is improving my morning no end. What? Everyone loves a drunk on a plane.

* I would pay someone to leave voodoo dolls and half-eaten bagels outside Mel Gibson’s house, just to see his head explode

* I tried to limit myself to one #movieswithbatman joke but then I thought of a hundred more and then my brain exploded

* The thing is, I now really want to see "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Batman." Also "The Batman Who Fell To Earth."

* But "The Sweet Smell Of Batman" and "The Cook, The Batman, His Wife And Her Lover" may not be improvements on the originals

* God, I hope I never have to hear a bloody vuvuzela again. I didn’t believe in Satan until I heard that thing.

* There’s atemporality for you: it’s 2010 and yet there are still sitcoms about vicars on the BBC.

* I believe Mel Gibson should be the next Batman, and he should end his every line with "…but you will blow me first."

* The part of Warren Ellis will be played today by Squadron Leader Sir Harvest Chopnecke-Deth, Retd., deceased

Every week at my message board, I set artists a redesign challenge. Because artists need to be tormented. This week, I said this to them:

A Time Lord can regenerate twelve times before dying. Thirteen incarnations in all.

Design the thirteenth incarnation of the Doctor.

You may additionally redesign the DOCTOR WHO logo, the TARDIS and other elements of the property should you so wish.

And then Ben Templesmith sort of committed an airstrike:

The good Doctor is now in a vague military type jacket with a T-shirt underneath, that ideally changes logo/style each episode, showing off something cool and British or, I don’t know, Sciency.

And he’s addicted to sucking on lollipops.

K9 is now a know-it-all cyborg Pomeranian.

The Thirteenth Doctor Remake/Remodel runs until Sunday.

Memory9 – Crash by Outpost Music PR

(Marie Rameau)

Posted via email from warrenellis’s posterous

(edited to fix image because apparently Posterous is completely fucked today.)

UK Kindle. Probably the easiest way to find it in the UK, too. US Kindle. Much easier to find in print over there, but you might want to fill your little slate up.

The rain’s finally died off enough for me to be able to sit in my own back garden with the netbook on the garden furniture I purchased about four weeks ago. The rain started a day later. Ha ha.

National holiday here today. Lili’s off having her annual photos taken by our photographer friend Paula, who’s been shooting her once a year since she was born. I’ve got a WIRED UK column to file by the 3rd, and a large and pressing job to get on an editor’s desk before then that’ll determine much of what I’m doing between now and New Year’s Day.

And I’d really like to be developing a new comics project or two, as well.

So, of course, I’m writing a blog entry.

This week’s art challenge at Whitechapel was envisioning a new cover and style for WEIRD TALES. Which is a bit cheeky, as WEIRD TALES’ outgoing editor Stephen Segal hangs out there.

But this week’s entries were a bit good. Here’s Raid’s, go and see the rest.

(Also worth noting that Paul Sizer, a Whitechapel regular, was hired to illustrate a story for WEIRD TALES on the strength of his entries in previous versions of the remake/remodel artist challenges at Whitechapel.)

I love things like this.

Notes on the back of a 400-year-old letter have revealed a previously unknown language once spoken by indigenous peoples of northern Peru, an archaeologist says.

Penned by an unknown Spanish author and lost for four centuries, the battered piece of paper was pulled from the ruins of an ancient Spanish colonial church in 2008.

But a team of scientists and linguists has only recently revealed the importance of the words written on the flip side of the letter.

The early 17th-century author had translated Spanish numbers-uno, dos, tres-and Arabic numerals into a mysterious language never seen by modern scholars…

Lovely Bloodflow from BATHS on Vimeo.

I currently grab the following podcasts:

* Avant-Avant

* Broken20

* The Economist: Videography

* Electronic Explorations

* In Our Time

* KEXP Song Of The Day

* Psychedelic Salon

* Reith Lectures 2010

* TEDTalks (video)

* TouchRadio

* 3VOOR12 Viral Radio

I like music podcasts. I like video podcasts so long as they are short. I like odd things. I like learning about weird stuff. I find most science podcasts very boring or annoying. I live in Britain, so "This American Life" is useless to me (for some reason, it’s always the first one people suggest).

Recommendations? Thoughts? Shameless plugs? I’m up for them. Speak.

Delighted to see my friend Ryan Keely interviewed at AICN about comics. Important note: Ryan Keely also buys her round, and can match an Englishman drink for drink.

“Roland W. Haas, a senior intelligence officer in the U.S. Army Reserve who claimed in a 2007 memoir that he was a CIA assassin, died over the weekend when he accidentally shot himself…”

I just found this on the Sculpture blog:

Also, I am declaring this as today’s theme, as I feel a bit slow and fragile and am now crawling to the pub. "Endless Spring," by Houses.

Houses – Endless Spring from Houses on Vimeo.

Back on the air, after Paul’s illness.

AND THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN HIS ACTUAL UNIFORM, TOO

(memo image via Katie)

Apparently you can buy FELL issues one and two for the iPhone (and probably the iPad) through the Comixology app. I don’t have a press release to quote from, I noticed someone mention it somewhere…

This is the "international" trailer for RED, it says.

Whom I really have to finally get a drink with, this year, all attempts so far having been thwarted. Link.

And that, I believe, concludes the "attention economy" portion of our day. Clever women and pretty pictures. We now return you to your normal programming, wherein one stupid bald man shouts at you over the internets.

(who can be found here)

(model is the itinerant Magdalene Veen, whom many believed to have died of the space clap behind the bins outside an airport in Germany)