Update--!

I want to have a book of monsters. With all origins and pictures and horrible stuff, but a place that's full of references for horrible creatures that I can flick through when I want to get inspired. I can't find the book that I want, but then I had this awful thought-- what's stopping me from making one?

Probably what's stopping me doing everything else. Time, effort, all this stuff that comes with getting any kind of project out. Wanting! Wanting is so hard to muster a lot of the time what with work being draining and not having much else time for the stuff that's important to you.

Zenith! has stalled but is just waiting on Raj to get back so we can hack at the final draft of the première issue at our Editorial Meetings. I know that Zenith! will be out by the end of the year, and sure, it might come out on an irregular schedule, but it will come out. I can't wait for... #3, I think, which we decided would be our "evil issue". It's going to blow your mind. Hopefully. I mean, this delay after delay thing is all on me, I lost my drive for a few months, and I feel like it affected working with Mort and Raj, but I know it's got to be done, and I'm psyched for it. Hopefully with that coming out it'll lead to enthusiasm across the board.

My novel is being edited. Don has said that hopefully by the weekend he'll have some notes for me. Which is a start, and what I need to get excited again.

Craig told me that The Lucifer Cage (re-re-named back to what we originally intended after a slight deviation before my US trip) is moving forward, and that I should get the scripts sorted, which is fair. We shared an awkward moment about the [last] new name, wherein we just looked at each other, looked away, and I just said: "I don't think that's a good title, I prefer the old one." and Craig said: "Yeah, we'll figure it out." And we did, and it's awesome again. Phew.

So yeah. I could do stuff. I just don't and it gets me down, ha.

"I'm going to make you honest."

Inked Art:

Script:

Page Two:

Panel One:

Captain Richards and Lucy Jones are sitting in the squad room, he's holding his beer bottle, she's got a headphone in one ear, the other dangling in front of her. Her eyes have rolled back into her head, as per whenever she has a clichéd premonition.

1) Caption: NOW.

2) Lucy Jones: oh

3) Lucy Jones: HE'S COMING.

4) Captain Richards: HOW CAN YOU TELL?

Panel Two:

Lucy turns to Richards, her eyes back to normal. She's looking peeved-- jokingly so, so stern eyes, slight smile, and he's drinking from the bottle.

1) Lucy Jones: DO I HAVE TO REMIND YOU ABOUT THE WHOLE PSYCHIC THING AGAIN?

2) Captain Richards: ...MAYBE.

Panel Three:

We're now way back in the past, in Roman Lacuna's torture chamber. We're close up on the man who's about to be tortured to shit, tied to a table by leather straps (maybe more than just the few we had before, maybe he's really, impossibly tied down? Or maybe the straps are really thin and there are dozens of them, indenting his flesh?).

1) Caption: WAY BACK WHEN:

2) Roman Lacuna (off-panel, so no tail?) : WHEN I WAS BUT A BOY...

3) Roman Lacuna (off-panel, so no tail?): ...I USED TO PULL THE WINGS OF FLIES, ONE BY ONE.

Panel Four:

Close on Roman Lacuna as he moves in so close to the torture victim, the closeness between them inherently uncomfortable, Roman's face a twisted expression of honest sharing and the kind of shit-eating evil you could imagine. He's holding a pair of vicious pliers-- razor sharp, jagged, crude, PAINFUL. And he's loving it.

1) Roman Lacuna: DID YOU KNOW THAT EVERY SINGLE FINGER ON YOUR HANDS ARE A LIE?

2) Roman Lacuna: I'M GOING TO MAKE YOU HONEST.