It's never a dull day, being a magician. Now you can read the collected history of William Gravel in all it's strange glory in this gigantic signed hardcover! All 24 original B&W issues of the adventures of William Gravel are finally together in this super-sized hardcover volume! From lizard women to armies of the undead, bad juju and worse military secrets, strange love and stranger death, this is the ultimate Gravel collectible. As an added bonus, every single copy is signed by the amazing creative team of Warren Ellis and Mike Wolfer, the two guys responsible for all the madness! Collected herein are these six Strange Kiss , Stranger Kisses , Strange Killings , Body Orchard , Strong Medicine , and Necromancer!
Warren Ellis is the award-winning writer of graphic novels like TRANSMETROPOLITAN, FELL, MINISTRY OF SPACE and PLANETARY, and the author of the NYT-bestselling GUN MACHINE and the “underground classic” novel CROOKED LITTLE VEIN, as well as the digital short-story single DEAD PIG COLLECTOR. His newest book is the novella NORMAL, from FSG Originals, listed as one of Amazon’s Best 100 Books Of 2016.
The movie RED is based on his graphic novel of the same name, its sequel having been released in summer 2013. IRON MAN 3 is based on his Marvel Comics graphic novel IRON MAN: EXTREMIS. He is currently developing his graphic novel sequence with Jason Howard, TREES, for television, in concert with HardySonBaker and NBCU, and continues to work as a screenwriter and producer in film and television, represented by Angela Cheng Caplan and Cheng Caplan Company. He is the creator, writer and co-producer of the Netflix series CASTLEVANIA, recently renewed for its third season, and of the recently-announced Netflix series HEAVEN’S FOREST.
He’s written extensively for VICE, WIRED UK and Reuters on technological and cultural matters, and given keynote speeches and lectures at events like dConstruct, ThingsCon, Improving Reality, SxSW, How The Light Gets In, Haunted Machines and Cognitive Cities.
Warren Ellis has recently developed and curated the revival of the Wildstorm creative library for DC Entertainment with the series THE WILD STORM, and is currently working on the serialising of new graphic novel works TREES: THREE FATES and INJECTION at Image Comics, and the serialised graphic novel THE BATMAN’S GRAVE for DC Comics, while working as a Consulting Producer on another television series.
A documentary about his work, CAPTURED GHOSTS, was released in 2012.
Recognitions include the NUIG Literary and Debating Society’s President’s Medal for service to freedom of speech, the EAGLE AWARDS Roll Of Honour for lifetime achievement in the field of comics & graphic novels, the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire 2010, the Sidewise Award for Alternate History and the International Horror Guild Award for illustrated narrative. He is a Patron of Humanists UK. He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Essex.
Warren Ellis lives outside London, on the south-east coast of England, in case he needs to make a quick getaway.
Great, detailed, realistic art and bloooody good depictions of gore and violence by Wolfer unfortunately don't salvage for me boring plot, character and worldbuilding. Titular character Gravel is like a Constantine, but does his magick mostly by "thought" (so no interesting magic rituals or invocations), has no alcohol problem and is absolutely indestructible so I never felt any kind of stakes. Oh, and flashy gore which I mentioned is used just too often for my tastes, making it quickly feel like forced filler. If you are reading Ellis comics for big, interesting ideas, there none here. Since this is a collection of loosely connected stories, I recommend to skip Body Orchard, since it's a biggest stinker here.
Pretty bad ass and typically awesome Warren Ellis stuff! It felt like the first two stories were so shocking (and I don't shock easily) and disgusting and horrific, everything after strangely didn't quite live up to them. But overall this was super fun to read and full of a lot of wit and actually strange action sequences (the main character being a "combat magician" who utilizes magic in his fight scenes.) Thank you to the kind ebay person who sold this to me for so much less than everybody else was selling it!
Too much violence, gore, and sexuality without a purpose. I was unable to stay interested in Gravel's character when he was virtually flawless. I could not understand the rules of the universe, since they always seemed to work for Gravel's advantage. Perhaps I needed to read something else first to understand everything.