Warren Ellis's Blog, page 162
February 1, 2011
On Killing Stories
And then sometimes this happens: you have to strangle a story in its crib.
I'd been offered a slot in an anthology, which was interesting to me, and had been talking to an artist who very much fancied the rural and spooky and really didn't like things like cities or technology. There's a challenge for a short series, I thought.
But sometimes you just can't make your brain go in the right direction. Due to being in the middle of some big city-related jobs right now, I seem to be very much in the mindspace of urbanity and density and people, and not so much about the sparse and barren. A year or eighteen months ago, I would have had a lot to say about the rural and the English landscape and so forth. But last night? Last night I realised all I had was a weak and crappy Quatermass And The Pit ripoff crossed with a Belbury Poly record.
I then did a thing I've very rarely had to do in my career: wrote to all concerned and said, sorry, I fucked up, this thing just isn't working and so I've killed it. I knew that the artist was still finishing up something else and had the option to go straight to another gig, which made me feel a little better for the massive inconvenience. But not much.
The lesson is simply this: you just have to recognise that, no matter how much weight you put behind it and how much you tart it up,sometimes a story just doesn't bloody work, and you have to take it behind the stables and shoot it through the head. No writer is perfect. We all have dead bodies to our names.
The corpse gets thrown in the Loose Ideas folder, where one day it will doubtless be cannibalised for its more interesting/less ripoffy parts and interpolated into something new and better. Storage of corpses is important. As in life, you never know when bits of them will come in handy.
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Libby Bulloff
Haven't run a shot by Libby in ages. You can find her print store here.
(photo by and © Libby Bulloff: link w/details)
And now, the first of the Spider Jerusalem (from TRANSMET...
And now, the first of the Spider Jerusalem (from TRANSMETROPOLITAN) tattoos I've been sent…
John Dubrish, Richard Bouchard, Cara Walton
comicsweek 2feb11
New comics are released on Wednesday 2 Feb in most places. Here's a few things I'd draw your attention to:
VIETNAMERICA has gotten some good reviews: a memoir in graphic novel form of the author's attempts to make sense of the lives of his family, who fled Viet Nam for America during the fall of Saigon. often crude, always atmospheric and evocative, sometimes kaleidoscopic to the point of psychedelia in its construction and formal invention.
CROSSED: FAMILY VALUES #7 concludes Dave Lapham's spinoff from Garth's original CROSSED book. It's been grotesque. Quite deliberately. It wasn't the constant sledgehammer of doom that CROSSED was, but it does manage to outsleaze the parent book.
DAOMU #1 translates a popular Chinese comic for the Anglophone market. Very goofy-looking, but with some nice digital art, if you can get past the big plastic sound effects.
WITCHFINDER – LOST AND GONE FOREVER #1 (of 5): "In the hellish frontiers of the American Wild West, nineteenth-century occult investigator Edward Grey hunts down a fiendish member of the Heliopic Brotherhood of Ra. What he finds is a town harboring bloodthirsty criminals and terrible supernatural horrors!" Why do you care? Because it's co-written by Mike (HELLBOY) Mignola and illustrated by classic American comics artist John Severin. And John Severin is fucking brilliant. Also? "Heliopic Brotherhood of Ra."
DAYTRIPPER gets a collection. I don't know what to say about Ba and Moon's book that wouldn't spoil it for a new reader. All I'm going to say is that it's a wonderful, low-key, warm read; an inventive, often troubling device for exploring a man's life and relationships in full. I'll be honest, and say that it didn't always work for me… but also that it left me with a pain in my chest. That is a recommendation.
Nice linework in Sarah Oleksyk's IVY. Fancy a quiet little story about an artistic girl trying to escape her cold and spare Maine life? You can judge for yourself, because the first chapter's online for free.
PANDORA EYES: haven't read it, but it's illustrated by the legendary "good girl" artist Milo Manara, whose ability to draw beautiful women has overshadowed his other skills. Which is probably as much his fault as anyone else's. But I'd flip through this book, in which he collaborates with a writer, to see how he does here. And if you're not aware of Manara's stuff, you should experience his exquisite linework at least once.
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Gorgeous cover. Coming soon, apparently.
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Gorgeous cover. Coming soon, apparently.
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January 31, 2011
And the first round of Spider Jerusalem "spider" tattoos ...
And the first round of Spider Jerusalem "spider" tattoos from mine and Darick's TRANSMETROPOLITAN.
Louise, Jamaica MacDonald, and Katt Davignon.
There are a LOT of people out there with TRANSMET-related ink.
Congrats, Heidi
Tomorrow marks one year of independent comicsblogging from Heidi MacDonald, whose name some of you will recognise as one of the editors of TRANSMETROPOLITAN. (Heidi was also the one, when working at DC Vertigo, who believed in a curious little project called Y THE LAST MAN from a little-known writer called Brian K Vaughan.) Heidi's The Beat is one of the mainstays of modern comics news and commentary, not the least of its value being that Heidi's worked all across the comics field and has a depth of industry and artform knowledge that is quite unique in the comicsblogging arena. I believe she commences celebrations over on www.comicsbeat.com in the morning.
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This is nice: Glyn Williams has a tat of the robot head J...
This is nice: Glyn Williams has a tat of the robot head Jacen Burrows drew for the cover of my book DO ANYTHING: Jack Kirby Ripped My Flesh.
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