What's he on about now?

In case the articles, essays and opinions throughtout this site just weren't enough for you, here's my online diary (a.k.a. 'blog'). It's as close as you'll come to the inside of my head, so don't say I didn't warn you
(and remember, you can always e-mail me if you love or loathe anything you're about to read)...


   Friday, April 07, 2006

   WARREN ELLIS DISTURBS

About a decade back, writer Warren Ellis took over the dull comic-book "Excalibur" (the British X-Men) and suddenly made it fun and clever. Then, along with writers Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison and Garth Ennis, he did nothing less than transform the entire industry by creating brilliant and subversive mainstream comics that exploded the superhero limits imposed on them. Ellis' "Planetary," "The Authority" and especially "Transmetropolitan" permanently erased the notion that comic books are merely for kids and made him a geek icon.

In his regular column "The Ministry" last week, Ellis explains that

...Vertigo books from the '90s -- INVISIBLES, PREACHER, TRANSMETROPOLITAN -- were books about ideas. The three of us were writing about our discrete areas of interest, and, in large part, we were telling you about the things we knew. Which isn't a bad thing. Some people balk at writers having any opinion, interest or intent beyond banging out a neutral yarn, but, you know, fuck that noise. Comics are an educational tool, used for anything from instructional pamphlets for civil disobedience to workplace hygiene. The best fiction, like the best reportage, is about the writer telling the reader where they think they are today, and what they think it looks like.

This week, he carried that theme forward, along with a challenge:

But, certainly, when I look for something to read, I want it to be something from someone who's aware of their world and is telling me something new about what's in it and how they perceive it. "Public intellectuals" is a clunky term with lots of weird baggage. But it'll do for this minute. Quit muttering and tell me where you think you are today, and what you think it looks like.

Reading that struck me, since it's what I'm attempting (and perhaps failing) to do with this blog. I'm telling you who I am, what I see, what I think and do, but I'm not sure how much of it is "new." I don't feel filled with bold revolutionary new ideas but rather carrying on solid, time-honoured wisdom that I don't see a lot of right now. I'm struggling with my own sense of impotence in the world right now and Warren shames me.

But then he goes and puts this on this website today:

He's a complicated guy, that Warren, and wherever he found that photo, it's just nine shades of wrong! I laugh, I feel better, I get a move on...

Labels: comic books