So it’s 2:00 in the morning, and I take a break from Page 63 to go check out the Engine…

I love Warren Ellis.

It’s not just his books–although I love PLANETARY and TRANSMETROPOLITAN and DESOLATION JONES and all kinds of projects that he does. It’s that he THINKS about making comics. He doesn’t just think about the business of comics, or the plotlines, or the characters–he thinks about MAKING comics. And he wants other people to do the same.

If you read his message board posts and his email lists, and you watch how he comes up with new projects, it’s amazing to see how he’s always working on the process. At this point, he could probably just write the same old thing in his sleep, and sell a fixed amount of copies, but he doesn’t. (Now, I obviously talked earlier about how some of his characters seemed to have the same voice and characteristics, but that’s probably got more to do with my perceptions as a reader than how he has approached it as a writer…) Instead, he’s always thinking of new applications of the storytelling tools most other people just seem to take for granted. And often, he succeeds to such an extent that it’s not even obvious to most of the audience that what he did was different…

I’m sure I sound crazy, but I in my mind you can compare AUTHORITY to Neal Adams’ early Batman stuff, or even Led Zeppelin… it was so well accepted, and became so much a part of everything that followed–changing the landscape as everyone assimilated and imitated it–that later on, it’s hard to remember that when it first came out, it WASN’T normal to have something like that on the shelf.

These days, show a teenage comics fan Neal Adams’ Brave and Bold work, and they’ll say, “Looks alright.” They don’t realize that before Adams, you were talking about Dick Sprang… (and I really like Sprang–but Sprang-to-Adams–come on, that’s a jump). They don’t realize that the fact that it “looks alright” to them forty years later is amazing.

That’s how AUTHORITY is. Forty years from now, some kid can pick it up, and think, “Pretty cool meanspirited masochistic superhero slugfest…”, without realizing that what you had before it was Louise Simonson writing X-Factor Judgement Wars. The decompressed storytelling of AUTHORITY hit with such strength at the time that it was instantly incorporated into every superhero book on the shelf, until a couple of years later, it was hard for the average fan to remember what made AUTHORITY so different in the first place.

But I’m rambling.

The whole point is, that’s only one example. FELL is another great one–Ellis conciously trying to find new ways to communicate with his audience. GLOBAL FREQUENCY. The APPARAT line.

He doesn’t have to do this–he could just keep banging out new plot after new plot, and collecting the paychecks. But instead he’s spending time trying to examine, and bend, and shape comics into new fresh things. He’s got threads on his message boards asking creators to think about and discuss what cover designs they like, what graphic novels most influence them, where and how they get their creative ideas, and how they harness and tame them into something usable.

That’s why I love Warren Ellis. He doesn’t just write comics. He thinks about comics, and he cares about comics, and he’s the kind of incessant craftsman artist that makes me care and think about comics more, too.

I’m going to bed.

Moonshine Page Count: 63 (but almost 64, I swear)