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Desolation Jones

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04:40 / 15.09.05

DJ [read up until #2 so far] is one of the best things Ellis' written lately. although the noirish story is a parade of characters in interrogation scenes, it's very tightly plotted.

almost a condensation of the subjects archived on his blog into comic form, beatifully rendered by JHJIII and the colorist. the art delves into 3D AND 4D sometimes, like all the good comics in the past - and in the future - do.

08:16 / 20.09.05

It occurs to me that Warren Ellis is sort of a shit writer if this is the "best thing he's written in a long time" which is very true.
Also I can't agree with Ms. Triplets. Every word. JHW3's art is astonishing but parts of it are atrocious and only forgivable for the mystery of the Desolation Project and pretty pictures. The goth bit in the issue comes to mind.

I hohumed through the porn star gives revealing interview. Is it just me or does it seem like another Ellis cliche?

08:24 / 20.09.05

Apart from other typos, that's couldn't agree MORE with Ms. Triplets.

Are Being Stolen By Bandits

14:18 / 20.09.05

You might want to re-read what Ms. Triplets actually said, then, because you seem to have missed the important qualifier in hir first post: Don't get me wrong, this is good work. Clearly, this is a sentiment you don't agree with at all.

23:27 / 20.09.05

Liking this. Was extremely dubious after issue 1 but held on for JH3's art. Was not disappointed, although I sometimes wish he'd never broken with Mick Gray.

Jones may be more rounded than the usual Ellis character, seems so but it could be the "mystery of 'the desolation test'". The design's good, and it might not be sophisticated, but, Hell... Hitler porn makes me smile.

First story arc ends next issue. Wonder what happens then? JH3, how long you signed up for this thing?

23:27 / 20.09.05

Liking this. Was extremely dubious after issue 1 but held on for JH3's art. Was not disappointed, although I sometimes wish he'd never broken with Mick Gray.

Jones may be more rounded than the usual Ellis character, seems so but it could be the "mystery of 'the desolation test'". The design's good, and it might not be sophisticated, but, Hell... Hitler porn makes me smile.

First story arc ends next issue. Wonder what happens then? JH3, how long you signed up for this thing?

Are Being Stolen By Bandits

23:41 / 20.09.05

I thought the first arc was a six-parter?

According to Ellis (he mentioned it on his new forum, The Engine), JHW was originally intended to be the first of a rotating set of artists, but requested to be kept on the book for the long run, and Ellis agreed - so, for the time being it looks like he's going to be with the book indefinitely. Which is fine by me, because to my way of looking at it, he's turning a good-but-not-amazing book into something a little more special.

Phex: Dorset Doom

02:31 / 21.09.05

I'm really, really liking the art. Apart from the overall niceness of the inks and colors, JHW3 knows how to make pretty people pretty and ugly people (like Jones himself) ugly (this is actually quite a skill, just look at Frank Quietly's art where everyone is chubby and squinting). Side note: does anyone think that DJ looks a little like pale, dishevelled John Lydon?
But the script... I've read Ellis for a long time; he was one of the big-three Vertigo writers I read in my teens who got me back into comics, the others being Garth Ennis, who I've grown to deeply despise, and Grant Morrison, whose quirks I can live with. I loved Transmet for a while, but as the issues wore on and I read more widely and deeply I got tired of it. Now reading it seems as appealing as reading Preacher again, or being the submissive in an S/M relationship with a Polar Bear. Still, I find myself reading Planetary, and now Desolation Jones, month after month.
It's the, to quote somebody earlier, 'reproducing an article from New Scientist and adding a few 'fucks'' thing that gets me, though in DJ#3 it's some expose on the porn industry that's being quoted verbatim. And it's the dry 'I'm going to fuck your corpse and leave you in the streets as a warning for others' stuff. Maybe as a quirk for one character it might not grate so much, but you can find a similar line for Spider Jeruselum, Elijah Snow, Jack Hawksmoor, Midnighter and probably every other Ellis character there is. And the smoking- I'm trying to quit you bastard! Does this guy get paid by Phillip-Morris or something!?!
Okay, I've taken up enough of your time-
Oh, and Tokyo Storm Neon Genesis Crash Warning or whatever it was called was the worst comic I have ever read in my life and-
Okay. Rant over.

03:43 / 21.09.05

Most of the smoking is Js. Don't think Mister P. Morris has a chokehold on that particular product yet.

The fuck your skull stuff read to me like Jones putting on an act, doing his "scarier than you" routine to get the job done.

01:07 / 23.09.05

Bandits I got a bit carried away. I do think it's good work aside from the handful of Ellisisms.

02:44 / 23.09.05

A great part of the discussion on the porn scene was obviously transcribed word by word. It was like dead weight, and didn't even have the feel of a writer trying to hide the exposition. But fuck, the art was nice.

12:44 / 21.05.06

(ok, so did a search, and this is the only thread. C'mon people where's the tawdry love for Des?)

So, I've just been able to pick up the final issue of the arc...

I quite enjoyed this series. I hadn't intended to pick it up but the JHW3 artwork got the better of me when I saw a preview for the 1st ish online.

I haven't read much Ellis before, so the whole 'tic' thing wasn't bugging me. I just thought the artwork was sublime the whole way through, and the supporting cast were really well fleshed out. Emily, the 'spider-response'girl is just a fantastic character. The issue where Jones spent the night with her is just profoundly human. I also like Robina (even if at 1st it was just in a "Hey, she looks like Stacia vandeveer from Promethea kinda way."

I'll add that a friend of mine who read this said that he wasn't really into the "weird violence" of the series. It was a little strange coming from someone who loves violent action flicks.

Anyway, I'm hoping there is a new arc (there are def seeds for it in ish 6), and hoping even further that JHW3 is on art.

Withiel: DALI'S ROTTWEILER

12:54 / 21.05.06

Oh. Is anyone still reading this? I've just finished reading the "Made in England" story arc, and my appreciation for the book (and indeed Ellis) has gone through the roof. This is one of the most impressively /nasty/ things I've read for a while - Issue #5, where we get to see more details of the Desolation Test (And hints at another subject... Desolation Smith perhaps?) is deeply squicky with lots of unpleasant surgery, but it's the callousness of the doctors and the shot of a young-looking, healthy (for a given value of liver poisoning) Michael Jones that really did me in. Issue Six (possible spoilers) was a fantastic and astonishingly vicious pastiche of the Poirot-eque denouement trope, and demonstrates some very interesting things about Jones as a character while setting up the next story arc. I especially like the James-Bond-Gone-Wrong vibe that's starting to turn up - looks like Ellis has some sort of grudge against Bond this month, actually, considering what happens to John Stone in Planetary #25... I'm very interested to know what happens next, although cautious about the replacement artist (I'll miss JHWIII's fantastic 2-page spreads) and really hope its not a Kubert or someone unpleasant like that. It looks like Ellis is back on his game, really, especially in context with Nextwave and the recent issues of Planetary.

18:14 / 21.05.06

I've quite liked DJ so far. Ellis' work is hit or miss for me, but I generally enjoy his stuff more often than not even if a lot of the criticisms lobbed his way ring true. I think him and jhw3 make a great team, not only because jhw3's art and storytelling abilities are so good, but because from what I've seen of his posts here jhw3's calm and thoughtful attitude make for a nice balance to Ellis' highly-caffeinated one.

"As usual, Smithers, your the sober Yin to my raging Yang." - Mr. Burns

The Timaximus, The!

18:22 / 21.05.06

Will there be a replacement artist, or will the series wait, Planetary-style, for JHW3? I mean, he is credited as co-creator, isn't he?

I'm kind of bummed. I like Desolation Jones, but I'm not sure I would keep reading it with a weaker artist. At the same time, I think JHW3 is doing some of his best work yet, but do I really want to read Batman? On top of that, A writer I like (Grant, duh) is doing another Batman book with an artist I don't care for. Sigh.

18:37 / 21.05.06

The series was always, to my memory, intended to shift artist every storyline. Williams mentioned liking to've been on longer than that, but between schedules and the actual original intent, losing him for now, isn't really going to cut the legs out from the series.

And it was nice to see Ellis deal with Chandler right out the gate, rather than dancing around him. That is LA mystery and crime. And sidekick getting it at the end was nice. What'll be splendid, is if it actually doesn't have any sort of effect on Jones outside of cutting into efficiency. Actual lack of affect, pure un-giving-a-shit-ness, is hard to manage and keep an audience, but maybe Ellis, who often clearly cares much, can keep it locked down and just play Jones straight and to concept. Until the eventual emotional recovery moment we all want to see. 'Smile for us, you depressed robot, you' and all that.

Essential Dazzler

18:41 / 21.05.06

There's going to be a new artist, they were supposed to be announced at the Bristol Convention last weekend, but the announcement was postponed to to "technical difficulties".

I'm not sure what to expect. On Bad Signal Ellis has said he hasn't needed to re-write much of the script for the next arc to make it work for the artist, which is a little reassuring.

Spoilers?

Wasn't that last issue great though? 5 issues of Jones banging on about what a bastard he is, and 1 issue proving he isn't fronting. The last few pages came as a shock, you really don't expect things like that to happen to supporting characters that have been fleshed out as well as Robina had.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

09:59 / 22.05.06

The women in refridgerators complaint about the death of Robina is valid though. I felt the story was about one issue too long, especially as there are two points where the story is recapped with nothing much extra happening in between. At least Ellis is reining in the decompression in his work, possibly a side-effect of writing Fell, where it just wouldn't work at all.

Essential Dazzler

19:03 / 31.05.06

Never come across the "women in refridgerators" complaint before, what exactly is it?

20:21 / 31.05.06

Chao: It's a reference to Kyle Rayner's girlfriend, who was killed and stuffed in a refrigerator in pretty much the second issue of his stint as Green Lantern. It's become the general shorthand for the despicable deaths / cripplings / de-powerings / etc. of female supporting characters throughout comics, specifically in superhero books. Gail Simone actually rose to prominence in fan circles as the keeper of a website entitled Women In Refrigerators that catalogued every incidence of such gratuitous violence against women.

22:26 / 31.05.06

Women In Refrigerators.

Wikipedia's article on the site and the pop-culture moment that it spawned.

Withiel: DALI'S ROTTWEILER

23:43 / 31.05.06

Is it, though? It's certainly a female character death intended to give the male lead "depth", or something along those lines, but this is just following his murder in cold blood of at least one more or less innocent woman. Moreover, I honestly doubt that one can inject much more tragedy into the life of a man who even before the Desolation Test, snapped the neck of a ten-year-old girl. That's not to say that I'm not slightly wary of the amount of violence that is meted out to women in Desolation Jones (although I think I should probably work out the exact numbers), but I'm not sure the criticism applies as much when the protagonist is as resolutely anti-heroic as Michael Jones. Moreover, I felt Robina's death as tragic but ultimately pointless - she's a casualty of a war Jones dragged her into, certainly, but I can't see it affecting him particularly, considering his history and recent actions.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

00:49 / 01.06.06

Well, I'd argue in the case of Jones, it's more about the fact that the potentially quite interesting supporting female character is killed off before she could possibly be used to her potential and serves in no way. She, and most of the primary female characters in the story are rather brutally killed and despite the nature of Jones on one level being beyond "depth," it still is being used in an incidental way.

In a weird way, part of my problem with the ending of Jones is that he needs a supporting cast regardless of being an anti-hero. It works with the structure of the L.A. Village and the series was enriched by characters like Robina - who was aces - Jeronimus, and Emily.

Withiel: DALI'S ROTTWEILER

10:22 / 01.06.06

Well, that was the thing - I really liked Robina, but her death felt oddly empty after what Jones did the Nighs and their associates. I mean, fucked-up beyond belief as it is, you can understand why Jones shot the two Nigh daughters, but Robina's death was more a case of Filthy Sanchez completely missing the point, I feel. I don't want to seem like I'm defending excessive violence against women in fiction as a throway signifier for something really really bad, but I'm not sure this is precisely "Women in Refrigerators". Of the supporting cast, only Jeronimus, Emily, Filthy Sanchez, and Angela? Nigh are still alive after #6. In this case I don't think it's so much "It's dangerous to be a female character in comics" as "It's dangerous to be a character who is not the protagonist in Desolation Jones.

Withiel: DALI'S ROTTWEILER

10:27 / 01.06.06

To clarify my rather confused post - Robina's death prevents her from developing as a character and serves in no way to advance plot &c. because it is a futile and saddening moment - if anything, it's Filthy Sanchez* who is initiating the "Women in Refrigerators" moment from within the plot, whereas on a meta-level it -ah. I see what you mean. She's being offed to demonstrate something to the reader about the bleakness of LA &c. That makes a lot more sense if the next arc doesn't involve FS increasingly trying to destroy Jones.

*Gods, I feel silly typing that out

10:48 / 01.06.06

In this case I don't think it's so much "It's dangerous to be a female character in comics" as "It's dangerous to be a character who is not the protagonist in Desolation Jones.

I think that's nearer the mark, yeah. Ellis mentioned something on his message-board about how we houldn't get too comfortable with the supporting cast. Jones's world is brutal; life is cheap. And it turns on its head the model of TRANSMETROPOLITAN, where the Filthy Assistants could be counted on to step to the fore whenever something arose that was beyond Spider's abilities.

Jones is a terribly vulnerable character—far moreso than the usual Ellis protagonist, I think. He has no reliable backup, no master plan, no clear goal beyond survival. For cryin' out loud, he hasn't even got any actual investigative skills as such., beyond a willingness to hurt people until they tell him things (making JONES the anti-FELL, as well—I'm thinking that writing these two books simultaneously allows Ellis to exercise both sides of his brain). By his own admission, Jones is not even very bright. He's stuck in a city he does not fully understand, and his only defense (when he can summon it) is brute indifference.

He's in over his head pretty much from the start.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

15:46 / 01.06.06

It's also worth pointing out that Robina was shot because someone aiming for Jones missed. So they weren't shooting her to make a point to him, though he doesn't know that.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

04:11 / 02.06.06

I had a thought earlier today; possibly Robina's death will fuel the next story arc with Jones going after her killer. Now, this could be a straightforward women-in-fridges righteous indignation quest, or Ellis could use it to develop Robina posthumously through flashback and such. I'm hoping we can see more of her because I liked her a lot.

13:49 / 02.06.06

I got bored with this around issue 3/4, despite the gorgeous art....people's comments here have renewed my curiosity about checking out #s 4 and 5. Maybe when it's in trade paperback...

13:59 / 02.06.06

I had a thought earlier today; possibly Robina's death will fuel the next story arc with Jones going after her killer.

Seems a little too pat, and therefore unlikely. (Would also retread old TRANSMET ground.)

Remember #1? "Death is ordinary. It is not special. Your life is not special... I am incapable of caring if anyone in this room lives or dies." Most likely. Jones is gonna shrug his shoulders and move on, chalking the whole thing up to the cost of doing business.

And seriously—did the Warren Ellis comics oeuvre really require yet another tough-girl sidekick?

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:59 / 02.06.06

Not when there's a sexy goth girl who is utterly unattractive to any man other than the protagonist, yet is beautiful, no.

What? I'm just sayin'.

Jared Louderback

03:57 / 05.06.06

It might just be me, but I thought she died simply to show that Jones was a cold, apathetic emmeffer. I mean, we had been led to believe that he was quite close to Robina, even apperently saving her live from Sanchez. But when she dies, his reaction seems to one of utter "meh." Maybe this is just another way Ellis is trying to make Jones seem like a total bastard?

18:11 / 05.06.06

Rich Johnston reports that the artist for the next arc of JONES will be Danijel Zezelj.

Which is... well, it's a far cry from JHW3, that's for sure.

I can see it working very well indeed, actually, but it'll take some getting used to.

Essential Dazzler

18:52 / 06.06.06

I just dug out a few short stories zezelj did for vertigo anthologies, and I'm impressed. One in particular struck as an perfect fit for Desolation, descent in Flinch #16

Essential Dazzler

18:52 / 06.06.06

I just dug out a few short stories zezelj did for vertigo anthologies, and I'm impressed. One in particular struck as an perfect fit for Desolation, descent in Flinch #16

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