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Underground > Comic Books >

Moore, Morrison... Ellis?

16:14 / 13.12.03

There's lots of discussion gone on and on about Moore and Morrison and being the law and chaos of magic and gritty, postmodern comics, ever destined to complement, dislike and generally take the piss out of one another. But I've always felt like Warren Ellis fit in there, somewhere, and he's posted a lovely piece on letting fiction out into the 'real world', how we fictionalise our lives, and comments on Morrison in the process.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/mistersleepless/9033.html

This is the part where I pretend I have more to say on this, and hopefully other people start talking. Also, feel free to move the damn thread, I have no idea where it should go...

16:44 / 13.12.03

interesting.

ever since i was a kid, i have viewed my life as a story that i am creating as i live. this time now is a particularly boring passage, one that will be dismissed with a casual "for many long years, toksik struggled with not only debt, but a lack of direction. finally, this..."
we are in chapter two, at most.

meaning of life=write a good story

not a happy or fun one necessarily; after all, not all stories can be happy-go-sucky teen novels or luscious fantasy; but a good one.

16:56 / 13.12.03

The reason people speak of the Moore/Morrison dichotomy has to do with their personal similarities: both are huge Silver Age comics fans, both come out of the British comics press (2000AD, WARRIOR, etc.), both are self-identified magicians who use their comics work as an expression or vehicle for their esoteric interests.

Ellis, by contrast, is a latecomer to comics whose first pro work (IIRC) was for Marvel, a hardline materialist and unapologetic populist.

Apples and oranges.

19:31 / 13.12.03

Solid article. It's not really on the level of Morrison or Moore's discourses on the subject, but it's interesting. And, I still really like Planetary 9. I'd heard Morrison wasn't a fan of the story, any truth to that?

21:03 / 13.12.03

GM and I went to the zoo together a while back and while we were checking out the tiger exhibit he told me that he hates Ellis' guts.

02:13 / 14.12.03

That's funny, I was playing tennis with Warren just this past Sunday and he said that after the initial breakup Grant hated him but now they talk to each other and are friends.

04:12 / 14.12.03

Very funny guys.

Anyone what this is really all about? I meant to ask about the Planetary issue Ellis dedicated to Grant but forgot. So what about that?

I think Ellis is hardly in the same class as Moore and Morrison. He can on occasion be an excellent diarist but the bulk of his comics work is shite.

13:25 / 15.12.03

I think Ellis is hardly in the same class as Moore and Morrison. He can on occasion be an excellent diarist but the bulk of his comics work is shite.

I haven't read much of the comic work, just his non-comic rantings, which tend to make me think a bit in the same way as the others, but with more unecessary gore and less hurting about the brain. Sometimes I need less hurting to let the ideas come out. I'm a wimp like that.

14:50 / 15.12.03

Was Grant wielding a chain when he visited the tiger cage, Bio K9? I bet you could seriously tame some tiger's shit with some bad-ass chains.

22:43 / 15.12.03

And, I still really like Planetary 9.

Was that the issue where the team chased around John Constantine and met up with all the old Vertigo characters? My reaction was basically "cool, but nine years too late". Seriously, this would've been classic stuff had it been published some time before '95, but at this point it just reiterates a now-hackneyed critique that was old well before the turn of the millenium. I was positively cringing when the angry superhero showed up ranting/complaining about the dark'n'gritty update of his origin... That's really characterized my reaction to Planetary generally--it's tight, stylish and well crafted, but sorely lacking in originality in terms of its metafictional subtext/critique.

00:02 / 16.12.03

Funny you should mention that, HunterWolf.

We went to the zoo because Grant wanted to see a real live tiger (I guess they don't have any in Sheffield or wherever the fuck hes from) but all the tigers in the exhibit were sleeping at the time. Grant got all pissed off and started banging on the glass and screaming "Warren Ellis got to see the tigers eat! This isn't fair!" It was quite the scene. One of the tigers raised its head and look to see what all the fuss was about but Grant missed it because he was holding his head and sobbing into his hands. Anyway, after I got him out of the tiger exhibit he told me that he hated Ellis because "Warren gets to write all the good books" like Doom 2099 and because Warren ran his own web forum and he couldn't even sign up to be a member of Barbelith because registration was closed.

He also said that there are no chain fights planned for the last few issues of NXM. When I asked him why he had ignored the will of the people he reminded me that he couldn't log on to see Barbelith so he had no idea that the people wanted to see chain fights. I was shocked. "What do you mean you didn't know? Everyone loves a chain fight!" He said he'd never seen one.

So I thrashed him with the chain I had wrapped around my waist and left him in a bloody heap.

14:35 / 16.12.03

simplist, that 'Vertigo' issue was clearly not meant to have been done while the imprint was all the rage in the mid 90s. that - as most of PLANETARY's plots - is Ellis making both commentary [by ways of authopsy sometimes] on Comics' trends from the past and homage [even if it sounds like he's taking the piss in some passages].

regarding the livejournal entry: very cool analysis but I tend to disagree with him. there are good and bad ways to bring 'reality' and 'fiction' together. most of the time, the rich part of the world uses it on their benefit by means of others' losses. I'm all for melting reality and fiction via memetic engineering/chaos magick without harming any other person than myself.

Ellis has already posed himself - in the Slashdot interview, for example - not in the level of writing of Morrison nor Moore [who both blend more than one layer to their narratives] and it shows in the Worldview he usually shows in his stories - but he gets by. I see both Ms as fucked up shamans in the tribe's boundaries screaming prophecies of big changes and Ellis as one of the tribe's members mumbling to himself how both those shamans are mad. and then he uses what he hears from the shamans to scare the kool kids from the tribe with stories.

Haus of Mystery

15:27 / 16.12.03

That particular Planetary issue really got on my tits, which is a shame as i really like the rest of the series. It was self-important smug tripe, the kind that Ellis so often falls into producing. He's a patchy writer at best, but when he's on the money he can deliver satisfying comics. He is blessed with working with some amazing artists which can disguise his paucity of genuinely stimulating ideas.

17:46 / 16.12.03

Warren Ellis' greatest stength as a comic book writer = sitting back and letting his artists shine. This might sound like a dig, but I genuinely believe it to be true and I wish he'd do it more often.

And yeah, that Vertigo issue of Planetary is pretty much the worst issue of the series so far, probably because it tried to get into the commentary a bit more, and had very little in the way of big, shiny spectacle.

God, it was awfull...

--

18:07 / 16.12.03

I thought that Transmet was really well-written until issue #49 or so, but that's probably a minority opinion around here. I haven't really read any of Ellis' other stuff.

18:16 / 16.12.03

>> He also said that there are no chain fights planned for the last few issues of NXM. When I asked him why he had ignored the will of the people he reminded me that he couldn't log on to see Barbelith so he had no idea that the people wanted to see chain fights. I was shocked. "What do you mean you didn't know? Everyone loves a chain fight!" He said he'd never seen one.

>> So I thrashed him with the chain I had wrapped around my waist and left him in a bloody heap.

And then you said "NOW you've seen one, mate, ey?" Didn't you???

18:33 / 16.12.03

I like Planetary fine just don't think it's the best book since, say Shade the Changing Man.

I was in love with Transmet until the fourth trade. It's all been downhill from there.

18:56 / 16.12.03

simplist, that 'Vertigo' issue was clearly not meant to have been done while the imprint was all the rage in the mid 90s. that - as most of PLANETARY's plots - is Ellis making both commentary [by ways of authopsy sometimes] on Comics' trends from the past and homage [even if it sounds like he's taking the piss in some passages].

Yes, I get that. My point is that what he's doing, for all its stylistic coolness, has been done numerous times before, ie. essentially the same commentary has already been made by other authors, to the extent that some of it is quite cliched (the ranting "updated" superhero in the Vertigo issue being a case in point). The Planetary/Batman special was a particularly egregious example--flitting about meeting different versions of Batman as comics metacommentary has been done how many freaking times now? Sure, Ellis arguably did it "better" in terms of sheer craftmanship than many of the previous versions, but a well-excuted cliche is still a cliche.

XXII:X:II = XXX

18:59 / 16.12.03

I was having a conversation a few weeks ago with a friend who's also the manager of my preferred comic shop. We were discussing analogies between comic writers and iconic rock groups. I think you can guess several of those we came up with: Moore = Beatles, Morrison = Rolling Stones, Gaiman = Bowie, etc. (There's obviously not a "right" or "wrong" answer to this question, so don't respond with "no, no, no, that's not it at all"; your mileage may vary.) I finally said, "I'm afraid to ask who Ellis is supposed to be." My friend was generally so nonplussed by Ellis that he couldn't bring himself to come up with any allusion.

Last week, another friend and I were talking at the same shop, and he came up with a beaut: Ellis is KISS. Yes, he's a lot of fun to read and puts on a helluva show, and if that's all you want, bless you and go in peace. But taken on his own merits, he really breaks no new ground and he doesn't do much that others don't do, and that many do better. It's all about the quasi-Satanic makeup and costumes as a distraction from what in the end equation is little more than average content.

That all said, I am staying with PLANETARY through the end, in part because I think it's the last great thing he created, and in part because he's so obviously uncomfortable "stooping" to write superheros, no matter how compellingly he may do so, that I wish to watch him SQUIRM.

VJB2

19:58 / 16.12.03

Young Liefeld was the Sex Pistols!

01:18 / 17.12.03

Planetary 9, IIRC, was the issue in which a fictional character downloads into reality, and a big gun battle ensues as the group tries to capture it, not the Vertigo issue. As for the Vertigo issue, I enjoyed it, but it was a bit too self-consciously meta, to the point that if you aren't familiar with years of comic history, you just can't get it. Issue 9 on the other hand, was some of the best action I've seen in comics, and one of my favorite issues of the series.

14:03 / 17.12.03

Planetary #7 was the Vertigo satire. #9 was the metafiction issue.

I'm not really sure that "breaking new ground" is the be-all, end-all criterion for a comics writer.

I mean, has anyone really criticized Morrisson's run on NewXmeN by saying, Well, it's just more stories involving new additions to the team, former villains becoming heroes, Shi'ar invasion fleets and Jean turning into Phoenix. Again. Sure, arguably it's "better" in terms of sheer craftsmanship than many of the previous versions, but a well-executed cliche is still a cliche.???

Having new ideas is A Good Thing. I doubt anyone will quibble over that. But being able to present older ideas, or ideas which incorporate pieces of older ideas (arguably by building on them) is not such a bad thing either.

And if someone did post something like the above about GM's NXM work they'd get jumped all over by posters telling them that the new approach to handling the cliches is the new idea. I don't think I disagree with that.

In all of these terms, then, I think that Planetary has been a significant contributor to what I'm terming "the New Pulp". It's a solid concept for a series and quite a lot of fun. What I think that it's explicitly not is a metafictional treatise on the state of the comics universe, any more than you can say Kill Bill is a serious commentary on '70's TV serials.

It's using these genre tropes for the purposes of play and in service to an overall story which is aimed at being entertainment, not scholarship.

That said, I'll agree with VJB2 (or at least claim that I see agreement for my ideas in his words) in saying that I think Ellis is, ironically, at his best when he's writing superheroes. For me, his StormWatch, Authority and Planetary efforts have been successful, whereas Transmet has left me colder and all the body horror stuff just bores me silly.

14:26 / 17.12.03

I'd agree with you houdini, in that I think Planetary is, at best, a good slice of pulp fun. That's why I find issue #7 so boring - it tries way too hard on the commentary front.

I like a lot of Ellis' superhero work, and the first couple of Transmet trades, which were indulgent, but in an energetic, funny way.

As for the rest of his stuff... meh. Most of it does little for me.

As an internet commentator Ellis runs hot and cold for me: I tend to think that he writes a fair bit of interesting stuff about the comic book medium (particularly when he gets into the mechanics of writing), but is also prone to undercutting his own arguments by virtue of his rather tired internet personna.

Also: watching him get so worked up about how, like, fake modern pop music is can be pretty funny at times. It's kinda like seeing a 30-odd-year-old man turn into an angry 15-year-old boy in front of your face.

14:38 / 17.12.03

Sorry, that bit at the end of the last post should have read - "...how empty modern pop music is..."

My mistake!

15:47 / 17.12.03

I mean, has anyone really criticized Morrisson's run on NewXmeN by saying, Well, it's just more stories involving new additions to the team, former villains becoming heroes, Shi'ar invasion fleets and Jean turning into Phoenix. Again. Sure, arguably it's "better" in terms of sheer craftsmanship than many of the previous versions, but a well-executed cliche is still a cliche.

I didn't buy the book at all, and was loud in my outlining my reasons why: because it seemed to me that, for a writer as hugely ambitious and talented as Grant Morrison, servicing a corporate trademark was wholly retrogressive.

From what I've read about the content of Grant's run, it sounds like I was pretty much right.

17:45 / 17.12.03

Rubbish. It's not completely unfettered Morrison, but there's a wodge of great stuff there. It's far from 'wholly retrogressive', anyway.

iirc, Ellis' first comic work was Lazarus Churchyard, for Tundra. He's not what I'd categorise as a Marvel-populist writer, really.

07:53 / 22.02.07

16:47 / 22.02.07

Has anyone ever seen them in the same room together? A long beard-wig could easily be placed upon a bald head, if my physics are correct. I'm in college now, so I assume they are. Actually, I don't take physics, and I steal lunch money from the kids that do.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

16:57 / 22.02.07

Denfeld's collage work is shockingly sweet.

17:05 / 22.02.07

Actually, now that you mention it...

Note the location of the pic...

00:05 / 23.02.07

I feel like I have to pitch in with this.

The bad photoshopping towards the end is the most relevant bit...