Warren Ellis's Blog, page 35

FAQ 4dec12: How NEXTWAVE Was Conceived

How did the idea for Nextwave (Or is it NEXTWAVE?) come about? I’m just getting into the series and it’s pretty much one of the most amazing comics I’ve ever read.

afriendtosell

Oh, god, that was a few years ago.  Nick Lowe at Marvel wanted me to do a book in his office.  I know I’d been thinking about something Brian Bendis said, about hoping his work on the AVENGERS comic would start a conversation about that kind of superhero-team comic.  This was, what, seven years after THE AUTHORITY and Grant’s JLA and all, at this point, so it was a fair conversation to have.  And Brian was presenting his take on that.  Brian’s very interested in David Mamet, and Mamet’s often used as a stick to beat him with, but his approach in AVENGERS is probably easier to understand as being like Tarantino going to crime fiction in RESERVOIR DOGS — turning a greying “action genre” formula thing into a hyper-verbal ensemble piece.

So, well, I obviously couldn’t do that.  I wanted to engage that work in conversation, but I had to come in from another angle.  And since this was to be a company-owned book, and my job at Marvel was really to service their extant creative library, coming up with something brand new would have been counterproductive.

Which brought me to this: taking just a ton of those old characters and ideas that were currently useless to Marvel, throwing them in a pot like thepotboiler catmeat they were, and just driving them down over high heat until you had something pure.  Or at least concentrated.  While watching FLCL on repeat.  Just boiling and mixing and throwing more old Marvel ideas in there and remixing and sampling and remixing some more.  Taking out all the sticky tendon and unmelted bone of, you know, plot, and character, and continuity, and anything else that people think should belong in superhero comics.

And that would be my contribution to the conversation.  There’s a quote that’s stuck with me for, oh, 25 years, that I’ve used a few times to describe a certain kind of work, and it was probably never more fitting than used for NEXTWAVE.  It was my motto for the job as I was writing it.  Nik Cohn describing “Tutti Frutti” by Little Richard:

“A glorious burst of incoherent noise.”

I doubt I ever lived up to it, but that was the target.

i have no idea if i’ve answered the question NEXTWAVE IS LOVE send

Also Stuart Immonen is a genius.

NIGHT MUSIC: Difference Clouds

This is a nice peaceful sound to end the night on.  Click over here for a faster piece, with video. See you on the other side.

This Is Gun Machine Dot Com

Mulholland Books have launched a website for the book, updating daily with bits and pieces until the launch of the book in January.  There are posts up already.  It’s built on Tumblr, so you can add it on your dashboard there too.  thisisgunmachine.com.

The Usual Short “Still Alive, Yes” Entry

So this got read, in order to review it for NEW HUMANIST.  Haven’t read anything by Seth Grahame-Smith before, and was pleasantly surprised.

I am pausing New Book for a couple of days because I have to do some other things, not least of which is stay on top of the PR effort for GUN MACHINE.  Interviews, creative development and management, schedules, that kind of thing.  Weirdly hard to put in sustained novel-writing hours and do that stuff at the same time: it seems to steal from the same pool of energy, and I’m not sure why.

Also I’ve had a headache for a couple of days now, which either means blood pressure or maggots are hatching in my brain.  Your call.

I have a piece in VICE MAGAZINE UK’s tenth anniversary issue.  Not sure when that’s out. And for those of you who weren’t around at the weekend, I pushed a new podcast live.

Ellen Rogers: The Esper Shoot

I love Ellen.  She did my author headshots.  With a bit of luck, I’ll be seeing her this month.  You can see more of this shoot at her site.

A GUN MACHINE Gift From Ben Templesmith & Jim Batt

They knocked this up during the creation of GUN MACHINE Trailer 1, about which more soon.

STATION IDENT: Jussi Pennanen

 

Jussi Pennanen

SPEKTRMODULE: Podcast 15 – Celestial Navigation

SPEKTRMODULE
15
Celestial Navigation
32 minutes and 29 seconds

Sorry for the long hiatus.  Hopefully back on a regular basis.  Now I need to remember how to do this all over again!  If you don’t know what you’re looking at: SPEKTRMODULE is a podcast of haunted, ambient and sleepy music I compile for my own amusement.

Direct mp3 link.  Or press Play on the player.  iTunes link.

@warrenellis / warrenellis@gmail.com / t-shirt? mug?

Hello new listeners.  Feel free to tell other people about this podcast for sleepy people if you like it.

#SPEKTRMODULE

1.  logotone

2.  “Triple Concerto” –  William Orbit   (album: Pieces In A Modern Style)

3.  “The Ocean After a Storm” – Ken Seeno  (album:  Invisible Surfer On An Invisible Wave)

4.  “Lateral Thought” – M. Sage  (album:  Chautauqua (loops))

5.  “Meeting of the Three Seas” – High Wolf  (album:  Ascension)

6.  “On Ships Of Gold”  – The Black Heart Procession  (Album:   3 )

7.  logotone

 

PREVIOUSLY: 1 – Fire Axes In Space | 2 – The Lane | 3 – Comfort And Joy | 4 – Long Count| 5 – Underfoot | 6 – The Chamber | 7 – Spark Gap | 8 – Death Is No Obstacle | 9 – Misty Eyed | 10 – Dirt Launchpad | 11 – Dreams Of The Woodland Cult | 12 – Dispatch Render Ghosts | 13 – Hull Oxide | 14 – Galactocentric

Bookmarks for 2012-11-28

Brian Eno 1971-1977: The Man Who Fell To Earth (2011) – YouTube
"This film explores his life, influences and creative output, from Eno's debut with Roxy Music through to his last rock album, Before and After Science."
(tags:music interviews video )
Open the Future: Interview at Singularity 1 on 1
"Roughly hour-long interview, wherein I talk about my educational background, humanizing the Singularity concept, and why "meat fetishism" isn't so bad."
(tags:peopleIknow interviews video )

So Publishers Weekly Reviewed GUN MACHINE

In this week’s issue of Publishers Weekly, the American book trade magazine, my next novel GUN MACHINE received a “Signature Review” from one Jason Starr.  I got sent a scan, and it’s an awfully long image, so I cropped it on my iPad to get the text in, sacrificing the headers and footers.  Apologies to them and to Jason.  But here’s what they said.

Which was really very nice of him, I thought.

[amazon.com] [amazon.co.uk] [b&n]

[Amazon.com link to the audiobook, as read by Reg E.Cathey, from THE WIRE and OZ]