Warren Ellis's Blog, page 159
February 8, 2011
An Observation About CASINO ROYALE And James Bond
In CASINO ROYALE, James Bond is the Bond girl. Look at the way they even show him emerging from the ocean like Ursula Andress. Sexual torture, too, if less creepy-glam than being stripped and painted gold. Vesper Lynd is Bond: never not in control, never without a plan, seducing to further her goals. She has to die so Bond can become her.
(originally dropped at my notebook)
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comicsweek 9feb11
New comics are released in most places on Wednesday. Just a brief one this week.
New NORTHLANDERS, #37, with art by Simon Gane. The above art is actually from #38, but what the hell, same artist, same story. I don't know why more of you don't seek out NORTHLANDERS books. Who doesn't love Vikings?
The second issue of CASANOVA: GULA is out on the 9th, continuing the relettered and recoloured presentation of the wonderful Fraction/Moon/Ba series. CASANOVA is basically the best sf comic in the world right now. I've read the script for the first issue of the new series, which follows on the heels of the four issues of GULA, and it's mental.
Also, glory be, the 30th issue of Antony Johnston's WASTELAND, which I love. Hell, I wrote a foreword for the recent bigass collected edition. If you like big sprawling weird post-apoc worldbuilding — and that's a lot of you — then this is a comic you should have looked at years ago. There's an extensive preview of #30 here. This issue comes, as ever, with a lovely Templesmith cover.
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I Do Not Believe In Reports Of The Sun
That Kubrick/2001 New York apartment I showed you yesterday?
I just got a twitterpoke from the designer, thanking me for the "link flood," ha ha, and showing me the following further link, which made me smile.
Someone pointed me to this last night: Pete Venters leaking a bit of the piece he's done for that TRANSMET charity art book thing. I'm pretty sure I used to know Pete Venters, about a million years ago, when we were both doing vampire graphic novellas at Tundra UK…
…or, you know, I'm senile. That happens too. Pete has a good explanation of the charities involved at the link.
Off to the pub for wake-up juice.
February 7, 2011
Bookmarks for 2011-02-07
"NoteSlate is low cost tablet device with true one colour display, real paper look design, long life battery (180h !), together with very handy usage and very simple and helpful interface for pen and paper. This easy, compact and portable gadget is used anywhere you want to make any notes, drafts, sketches, any ideas for future reference. Paper for everyone! Write a note and check it later, save it, or delete it. Maybe send it after. Just one colour is enough to express the basics. Keep your life simple. You will love it. For $99." Five space dollars says this thing will never be made. Shame.
(tags:tech mad )
Novels I will not write: Jesus wants his kidney back – Charlie's Diary
"What about the status of donor organs from other beatified/canonized persons? Especially in light of the Catholic Church's recent trend towards creating new saints much faster than the historic norm." Charlie Stross always wins
(tags:peopleIknow )
Matt Webb speaking in February about the future, robots, and artificial intelligence – Blog – BERG
"Ben Hammersley is curating a series of three lectures at the Royal Institute of Great Britain during February. The RI is a 200-year-old research and public lecture organisation for science. Much of Faraday's work on electricity was done there. One of the lectures is with me!"
(tags:peopleIknow )
Conan! What Is Best In Life?
"Divesting your life of the things you don't use. Like, for instance, nipples."
A very mild Conan! post, I know, but they don't all have to be horrorshows, and this is actually kind of interesting: I haven't seen a nipple nullification after a year's healing before. it's almost like your eyes are playing tricks on you.
Art Addicts In Space
My old friend Suzanne Gerber is looking for investors for her new London art gallery space.
She obtained the premises, and then, due to shenanigans, had to undergo a long and costly legal battle to keep them, wiping out her funds. Since then? Copper thieves on the rooves and then flooding, among other things in an astonishing run of bad luck.
Suzanne's an incredibly experienced young curator and one of the Anglophone world's leading artbloggers: regular readers will know her as Miss Wurzel Tod. More details here, for the curious.
And, yes, she will just stare at you unsettlingly like that until you crack and click the link.
Check out this astonishing minimalist apartment. It's actually owned by an acquaintance of mine and his wife, but since the article doesn't name them, I won't either. But, seriously: total Kubrick 2001.
Becky Cloonan, illustrator on Brian Wood's DEMO and NORTHLANDERS among other things, appears to have a new minicomic due:
Looking for an interesting way to display webcomics? I bet that, if your webcomic was manga/digest size, or some other size that's not as deep as the standard US comic page, treesaver.js could be a fascinating way to show it.
I really need to think about whether or not I'm going to do another webcomic after FREAKANGELS. (I just started work on ep 0126, so there's less than twenty episodes to go.)
And someone on Whitechapel just showed me this. Anyone know what film this is from? Heh.
(oh shut up.)
Stop The Week
ALL of the IEU t-shirts Ariana and I designed are now available in the store, and will remain so until the end of the month.
For this is the month of my birth and there shall be jubilee across the okay no even I can't even begin to sustain that level of bullshit across an entire sentence.
Molly Crabapple confirmed last night that genderqueer adult performer Jiz Lee will be appearing as Spider Jerusalem at the TRANSMETROPOLITAN-themed Dr Sketchy's night in NYC on 27 Feb in support of the TRANSMET charity book mentioned yesterday.
Molly loves Jiz, and is over the moon about this. The very concept of a TRANSMET-themed Dr Sketchy's is still kind of weird for me, but Jiz appears to be extremely cool. I have a sneaking feeling, looking at Molly's twitterfeed, that my drinking partner Ryan Keely is also involved.
I have tons to do, not least because I want to make it out to a book launch in London this week, so I am going to the pub. You should check out Brandon Graham's latest epic blogpost while I'm out.
February 6, 2011
Bookmarks for 2011-02-06
"In a number of places, places rich in history and therefor rich in latent archaeological information, it is too hard to dig. Either the politics, terrain or the need to budget makes even educated guesswork prohibitive. But now, an Australian archaeologist has found almost 2,000 new sites in Saudi Arabia using a program that takes less than a minute to download: Google Earth."
(tags:history web )
DNA engine observed in real-time traveling along base pair track
"In a complex feat of nanoengineering, a team of scientists at Kyoto University and the University of Oxford have succeeded in creating a programable molecular transport system, the workings of which can be observed in real time."
(tags:sci nano )
I Will Die With Damp Bones
The clouds actually parted the other day, and I took a photo and put it on Instagram, and other UK Instagram users thought I'd used a filter to make the sky look blue.
Today I am mostly writing five things at once, including the last draft of my Cognitive Cities talk. Thank god it's the closing keynote, because, I tell you, right around the time I link the whole "digital cities" thing to UFOs and Gary Numan, that room's going to empty out quick.
I'm also supposed to be writing a foreword for a collection of Carla Speed McNeil's FINDER, coming out from Dark Horse. Which I will probably get to tomorrow. Tonight, I need to get down 500 words of introduction to this charity TRANSMETROPOLITAN art book that's been organised by others to benefit the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the Hero Initiative. Molly Crabapple told me last night that she's doing studies of Spider Jerusalem's evil two-headed cat for it, and twitpicced some warm-ups:
Molly also told me about something else TRANSMET-related that I don't believe I can pass on yet, but it amused me to no end.
And, yes, FAQ: I have no connection with the charity TRANSMET art book beyond having had my permission asked for it to happen, and my offering to write a foreword for it. I'm sure it'll be a lovely book. It's my understanding that CBLDF is handling the PR for it at this point, and… ooh, I just clicked over there, and what did I find:
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