Bit different, this week. I’m off on the road first thing Monday morning, beginning an intensive ten days of travel and meetings. So, a few changes, just for this offering:

1) We (Ariana and I, in our joint comedy guise as the International Electrophonic Unit) are offering this shirt for two weeks, rather than the usual one. Because, see above.

2) This shirt is returning by popular request, but in a different form. It was in fact Shirt #001, in a simple black-on-white.

3) And the request was that we offer it for Valentine’s shopping. Not that I have much truck with Valentine’s, or, as I prefer to think of it, Horny Werewolf Day. But lots and lots of people asked.

You may therefore now go to our store, and inspect LOVE (RED):

As you can see, it’s offered this time as red-on-white and red-on-black. Because we love you.

http://www.cafepress.com/electrophonic.

We also offer a couple of perennial items. Such as:

(And also a MAN COOK MEAT WITH FIRE "splatter-shield", because Ariana’s crazy)

Thank you for your kind attention.

In which I actually do some dialogue scenes again, honest.

In which I talk about information and crapping:

Some guy from my ISP phoned me earlier — thereby buggering the afternoon’s work, and therein lies a link — to ask nicely if they could upgrade my broadband and take over my landline telephone provision for a small increase in my monthly fee. He then asked me something that actually stopped me dead for a moment. He asked me how much I download, on average. And I found that I had no idea…

TOTW is basically a joke that Ariana and I pull each week 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. Ariana set up a Cafe Press store (because this is a joke and engaging with a serious maker of t-shirts would be less funny to us), and… well, once a week, here we are.

Through this website and this Cafe Press store, we’re going to release one t-shirt a week. It’ll go live on Monday… and it’ll die Sunday night — midnight UK time, more often than not. Each one lives for a week, and then it’s replaced by the next week’s shirt. Until I either run out of dumb ideas or Ariana’s brain explodes.

So, every Monday, 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 T-Shirt Of The Week #011: SCIENCE GANGSTER:

Available in many colours and sizes, including a reversed-out version for white tees.

We also offer a few perennial items. Including one of these, perfect for NASA buffs who need something larger than usual for pouring their booze into today:

(And also a MAN COOK MEAT WITH FIRE "splatter-shield", because Ariana’s crazy)

Thank you for your kind attention.

By the American Museum Of Natural History:

AUGH CHRIST NO GET YOUR FINGERS OUT OF THERE GET YOUR FINGERS OUT OF THERE

What is best in life? That moment when your too-curious friend takes their goddamn fingers out of there, I would imagine.

Free to air.

This appears to be video of (part of) an art installation: a particularly hermetic and surreal piece of design fiction. Described as:

reconstructions of prototypes of inventions used during the creation of "The Telepathic Motion Picture of THE LOST TRIBES"

TOTW is basically a joke that Ariana and I pull each week 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. Ariana set up a Cafe Press store (because this is a joke and engaging with a serious maker of t-shirts would be less funny to us), and… well, once a week, here we are.

Through this website and this Cafe Press store, we’re going to release one t-shirt a week. Until I either run out of dumb ideas or Ariana’s brain explodes.

Now. Bit of a change here. Previously, the shirt lived for one week only, and then we put up a new design. Because we were using the Cafe Press free store, which allows for only one design at a time. Which we rolled with, because this was a joke, right? But then Cafe Press noticed us, for some reason. And instead of kicking us off the site entirely, they very kindly gifted us with a free upgrade to their premium store structure. So you may soon notice a small change in the way we offer our stupid tat to you.

Every Monday, 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 T-Shirt Of The Week #010: THE CIGARETTE OF VICTORY:

(Just in case anyone remembers the old FALCONER shorts I wrote!)

We also now offer several perennial items, including:

(Yes, the old WHERE’S MY FUCKING COFFEE mug is still there. And other stuff.)

(And also a MAN COOK MEAT WITH FIRE "splatter-shield", because Ariana’s crazy)

Thank you for your kind attention.

Guess who’s back.

TOTW is basically a joke that Ariana and I pull each week 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. Ariana set up a Cafe Press store (because this is a joke and engaging with a serious maker of t-shirts would be less funny to us), and… well, once a week, here we are.

Through this website and this Cafe Press store, we’re going to release one t-shirt a week. It’ll go live on Monday… and it’ll die Sunday night — midnight UK time, more often than not. Each one lives for a week, and then it’s replaced by the next week’s shirt. Until I either run out of dumb ideas or Ariana’s brain explodes.

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

This week, though, we do something different. Far and away the most popular shirt we’ve done so far has been SPACE BASTARD, and every single week since then I’ve had a bunch of people asking if it’ll ever come back. So this week, TOTW is SPACE BASTARD RE-ENTRY. At the store, you’ll find the original SPACE BASTARD t-shirt, and, FOR ONE WEEK ONLY, a SPACE BASTARD MUG, badges, magnets and other such wondrous tat.

I present to you T-Shirt Of The Week: The Return Of SPACE BASTARD:

Thank you for your kind attention.

For free, because it’s Friday and we love you.

My short superhero-fiction-nightmare serial NO HERO is released this week in collected form from Avatar Press.  Over at Bleeding Cool, you can read the first chapter of the book for free.

TOTW is basically a joke that Ariana and I pull each week 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. Ariana set up a Cafe Press store (because this is a joke and engaging with a serious maker of t-shirts would be less funny to us), and… well, once a week, here we are.

Through this website and this Cafe Press store, we’re going to release one t-shirt a week. It’ll go live on Monday… and it’ll die Sunday night — midnight UK time, more often than not. Each one lives for a week, and then it’s replaced by the next week’s shirt. Until I either run out of dumb ideas or Ariana’s brain explodes.

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

Anyway. We’re back from the holiday hiatus, and so I present to you T-Shirt Of The Week #009: GOOD MORNING SINNERS:

We also offer a couple of perennial items. Mostly because I wanted one of these for myself:

(And also a MAN COOK MEAT WITH FIRE "splatter-shield", because Ariana’s crazy)

Thank you for your kind attention.

FREAKANGELS, free to air: because it’s what Fridays are for. Tell your friends.

In which I attempt to lay my own personal headstone on the unquiet grave of musical hauntology:

…it also falls within what the wonderful Moon Wiring Club are pleased to call “confusing English electronic music”, whose most famous early proponent today might be the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and its most deified member, Delia Derbyshire. You’ve all heard her work. The original Doctor Who theme was written by Ron Grainer, but Derbyshire’s interpretation was so radical that he tried to get her co-credited as composer. The BBC, however, preferred to keep membership of the Workshop anonymous. This is an idea that’s followed through today in hauntological units like Moon Wiring Club, who go to lengths to remain anonymous, presenting a list of entirely and obviously fictional members in their materials…

Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited, which is where you can read a shitload of Marvel comics for between five and ten Yanqui dollars a month, is sorting their inventory by creator.

Which means there’s a Warren Ellis page on Marvel Digital.

A lot of it is, of course, appalling shit that I was hoping might disappear forever. But, on the other hand, you can spend ten bucks on joining for one month and read all of NEXTWAVE and all of my THUNDERBOLTS run (which was quite funny in places, and apparently my having the Green Goblin give monologues while naked was somewhat influential on the development of the Marvel universe or something)…

The serial version of the first DO ANYTHING book concluded today. It’ll be out in print in April, and it’ll look something like this:

Concluding the first volume.

Very nearly completing the first volume, at Bleeding Cool:

(And there’s an error in there that should read: "…crossing the four hundred miles from Berlin to Metz")

Variety says:

Summit Entertainment has set Oct. 22 as the release date for "Red," its espionage thriller starring Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren.

Red," based on the WildStorm/DC comicbook…

…because apparently reading the names on the spine is hard work.

The joy of Fridays.

Nearly to the end of the first volume, now:

…Alan Moore who’s also in the audience at an early Roxy Music gig and watching Brian Eno in some insane costume making music with Science, Alan Moore, whose early career could easily be described as trying to find out what might happen if Brian Eno had written the Fantastic Four, Brian Eno, who conceived of his generative art software project 77 MILLION PAINTINGS as “visual music,” which is as good a term for “comics” as any I’ve seen…

TOTW is basically a joke that Ariana and I pull each week 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. Ariana set up a Cafe Press store (because this is a joke and engaging with a serious maker of t-shirts would be less funny to us), and… well, once a week, here we are.

Through this website and this Cafe Press store, we’re going to release one t-shirt a week. It’ll go live on Monday… and it’ll die Sunday night — midnight UK time, more often than not. Each one lives for a week, and then it’s replaced by the next week’s shirt. Until I either run out of dumb ideas or Ariana’s brain explodes.

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

HOWEVER, THIS WEEK: it’ll run ’til next Monday, as we’ve been running late today due to my being in London for meetings. Okay?

This one needs some explaining. I once opined on Twitter that the word "scrotum" ruins everything. And proved it by providing the helpful example "scrotumpunk." And then, um…

…I present to you T-Shirt Of The Week #008: SCROTUMPUNK:

We also offer a couple of perennial items. Mostly because I wanted one of these for myself:

(And also a MAN COOK MEAT WITH FIRE "splatter-shield", because Ariana’s crazy)

Thank you for your kind attention.

Because it’s Friday.

I’ve had a bunch of questions on the forthcoming movie version of mine and Cully Hamner’s graphic novel RED, which starts shooting next month (I think). Let me try to field a couple of them.

First off: RED, the book, is 66 pages long. If you were to film 66 pages of comics, you might, might just about get 40 minutes of film out of it. If you added a musical number. The comics-page to film-minute ratio is pretty bad. A straight adaptation of a 150-page graphic novel might, if you squint at it, get you a 100-minute film. But it’s unlikely, because comics and films use time so differently. One page with four lines of dialogue on it can be slowed to a crawl to the point where you have to spend several minutes digesting the information on it. In film, however, four lines of dialogue is four lines of dialogue, and you can’t just pronounce it very slowly for the same time consumption. Beyond filmic/dramatic effects like the pause or montage or whatever, film is timelocked.

So, yes, RED the film is very different. Not least because it needed to generate more material than the book itself actually constituted.

It is in fact best to consider RED as a short story being adapted into film.

Next, and related: RED-the-book is also something of a chamber piece. There are essentially only four characters. (And a lot of people who get killed.) Now, while you can perfectly well make a film with only four characters in — or even just one character — those films tend not to be massive commercial propositions. And Summit is in the business of making commercial films. Also, they needed to expand RED from a half-hour to an hour-and-a-half. So, yes, there are a lot of new characters.

The new characters are all in theme, all in the same line of work as (Paul in the book, Frank in the film) Moses. The theme being, in part (and also poked at in my other books GLOBAL FREQUENCY and RELOAD) the unexploded bombs of the 20th Century.

(This actually gave the Hoebers the excuse to have fun with old spy tropes like CIA Nutter Guy — there’s a lovely piece of business with him in the first half-hour that amused me no end.)

I don’t think any of them are bad. Also, did you see the goddamn cast list that’s signed on for those characters? Bruce Willis as Moses, yes. But also: Morgan Freeman, Mary-Louise Parker, John C Reilly, Helen Mirren, Julian McMahon, Brian Cox, Ernest Borgnine and Richard Dreyfus. It reminds me a bit of those 70s films like THE TOWERING INFERNO, that had in them everyone you wanted to see in a film, all at once. RED is a bit like that, only with more automatic weapons.

Bruce Willis: when you look back over his filmography, that man’s actually had an incredibly weird career. DIE HARD and all that, sure… but also FIFTH ELEMENT, TWELVE MONKEYS, PULP FICTION, an adaptation of a Harlan Ellison short story for TV and getting a film adaptation of a Kurt Vonnegut book made by sheer force of will. Not bad.

The tone: no, the film isn’t as grim as the book. The book is pretty grim. But it’s also pretty small. When I sell the rights to a book, they buy the right to adapt it in whatever way they see fit. I can accept that they wanted a lighter film, and, as I’ve said before, the script is very enjoyable and tight as a drum. They haven’t adapted it badly, by any means. People who’ve enjoyed the graphic novel will have to accept that it’s an adaptation and that by definition means that it’s going to be a different beast from the book. The film has the same DNA. It retains bits that are very clearly from the book, as well as, of course, the overall plotline. But it is, yes, lighter, and funnier. And if anyone has a real problem with that, I say to you once again:

Helen Mirren with a sniper rifle.

I mean, if you don’t want to see a film with Helen Mirren with a sniper rifle, I’m not sure I want to know you.

–

The editor of FILAMENT magazine thought it’d be funny to have me answer several reader questions on the general subject of Etiquette. Apparently my written responses made her proofreader cry. The issue in question, number three, is out now (preview page) and can be purchased at this link here for a very small number of pennies for such a clever and classy-looking object.

And, before anyone asks: no, my piece isn’t online. FILAMENT are in business to sell copies of magazines. But I will give you a brief preview:

"At what age is it best to crush a child’s dreams so that they have an easier time stepping in to the status quo?"

You fool. You do not do such things to children. A child is like a poison missile you aim at the Future. You encourage, fund and resource their dreams to the fullest extent of your capability, knowing that your reward will be the pain and misery of generations yet unborn.

(Also in issue three: Gala Darling and Zoe Margolis. Not bad company to be keeping.)

Back after a short break:

Alan Moore once told me that, in conversation with Julie Schwartz, it has come up that Schwartz, who started out as a literary agent during the pulp years, had met HP Lovecraft. As Alan retells it, he couldn’t help but ask Schwartz what Lovecraft was like. And Schwartz said, “y’know, when I met him, I said to myself, I gotta remember what this guy’s like because in fifty fuckin’ years Alan Moore’s gonna ask me…”

TOTW is basically a joke that Ariana and I pull each week 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. Ariana set up a Cafe Press store (because this is a joke and engaging with a serious maker of t-shirts would be less funny to us), and… well, once a week, here we are.

Through this website and this Cafe Press store, we’re going to release one t-shirt a week. It’ll go live on Monday… and it’ll die Sunday night — midnight UK time, more often than not. Each one lives for a week, and then it’s replaced by the next week’s shirt. Until I either run out of dumb ideas or Ariana’s brain explodes.

So, every Monday, 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 T-Shirt Of The Week #007: I ATE THE BABY:

(apologies to the spinning ghost of William Carlos Williams, yes)

We also offer a couple of perennial items. Mostly because I wanted one of these for myself:

(And also a MAN COOK MEAT WITH FIRE "splatter-shield", because Ariana’s crazy)

Thank you for your kind attention.

Did you want a print copy of SHIVERING SANDS before Xmas?

Here’s Lulu’s shipping guide,which helpfully points out the dates you need to order by in order to receive a copy before that hated day.

There is still time.

And once you’ve done that, here’s the storefront for the book.