Apparently This Is A Souvenir isn’t actually out this week. Shipping problem, apparently. Hopefully next. And there’s something else worth talking about. I didn’t link to the solicit for 2.6 because… oh, it’s not relevant, is it? Anyway, here it is. It’s not actually the real cover. It’s a place-holder one Jamie made impressively quickly for Previews. This is another - er - concept issue, so the cover may show that. We’ll see, eh?

PHONOGRAM #6 (of 7)
story KIERON GILLEN
art & cover JAMIE McKELVIE
AUGUST 26
32 PAGES / FC
$3.50

Lloyd believes as much as a boy ever has. As such, he’s ready to be heartbroken. In the sixth of seven stories set around a single club night, we join the fledgling phonomancer as he sifts through the evening’s wreckage and tries to piece together meaning with glue, scissors and magic. Complete with two back-up stories with art from PJ HOLDEN (2000AD, FEARLESS) and ADAM CADWELL (The Everyday).

It’ll be a fun issue, if it pulls off. And it’ll be fun for us even if it doesn’t. Muhahaetc.

*****

The big news in my corner of the world in the last few days has been that Plan B magazine’s next issue is going to be its final one.

There’s a lot to say and I haven’t time to say it. Which has been me and Plan B all over. Over the years, I’ve turned down more features than I ever got to write. Especially in the last two years, I’ve been so busy to turn-down interviews even with personal heroes - though at least one of those heroes I think I dodged primarily out of intimidation. Still - I enjoyed what I managed to do for it, and Plan B looms on my psychic map as much as anything. Hell, its close may actually be the final plot element I was looking for in the still-pretty-theoretical third series of PG3. Print The Myth and all that.

Here’s Everett’s piece on its close, which gives lots of rightful props to Frances May Morgan. Here’s Ned Raggett putting Plan B in context, which does a good job of hailing it without wiping out its real, awkward, beautifully infuriating nature. I dunno. There’s something in the mythologist in me which likes that the CTCL/Loose-Lips-Sinks-Ships/Plan B troika didn’t extend past the 00s, but pretty much filled it (2002-2009). In its own perverse way, it was a very 00s magazine, if that makes sense. “00s-magazine” being a deliberate contradiction in terms, of course. Yeah, it was a dinosaur. But it was a dinosaur in the late Cretaceous - which any kid could tell you are the best dinosaurs.

It was one of the short list of things which I’m actively proud of having written for. It’ll be missed, to say the least.