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Kieron Gillen on Why DIE is Not like Stranger Things. Much.

Published Tue, 11 Sep 2018 08:08:49 -0500

Last updated Wed, 12 Sep 2018 08:24:12 -0500

Everyone who knows Kieron Gillen knows he delights in tortuous tangential puns. Everyone who follows him on Twitter gets that mainlined to their frontal lobes. Well, with the title of his new comic with Stephanie Hans and Clayton Cowles, he has weaponised that.

"DIE is an ongoing dark fantasy comic. We think you'll like it." – Kieron Gillen

Because DIE (as opposed to Robert Kirkman's three-sided DIE DIE DIE) is a comic book about dangerous role-playing board gaming. Has there been a more on the nose pun in three letters before?

"Goth Jumanji" – Kieron Gillen

Someone stop him.

"At least part of the reason why I burst into tears was realizing that part of me was kidnapped into a fantasy world at the age of 16, and wondering how my love of all this stuff has emotionally ruined me." – Kieron Gillen, talking to THR

Okay, maybe not then. Out in December from Image Comics. And intriguingly, when Kieron was referring to DIE as SPANGLY NEW THING in his mailing list, he wrote;

I recently had the experience of the new idea I'd just had, and the monday after I had it anew TV show was released which, when boiled down to the three-word high concept was 100% identical. I watched it, and realised that we were miles away after that first scene. I'm continuing to develop it, but will twisting how I explain it to people so that the TV show doesn't come to mind. It will when people read the opening of the comic… but by page 10 we've gone down a completely different route and it simply won't be an issue any more.

That would have been in July 2016. When Stranger Things came out on Netflix. Here's the preview…