[comics] Warren Ellis provides a guide to Ordering Comics for August 2001… ‘Okay. Garth Ennis, co-creator of PREACHER, is the writer. Carlos Ezquerra, co-creator of JUDGE DREDD, is the artist. And it’s a World War 2 story. About Hitler’s missing testicle. Which is somewhere in the Middle East, crackling with occult power. Whoever possesses the magic bollock will rule the world. Please buy this, so that Garth and Carlos no longer have to have these wrong thoughts and can rest their sick brains. Please. In the name of God, please.’

[comics] Warren Ellis is interviewed by Fandom about the comic book industry and some new books he’s working on… ‘Patrick Stewart. Patrick bloody Stewart. Not really interested in comics, doesn`t know much about them other than the usual. Someone at his production company says take these, these two things you might be interested in. Now you can`t pry FROM HELL out of his hand and he`s written the introduction to the next TRANSMET trade paperback. Three years ago there wasn`t a comic in his house. He`s the audience we`re not reaching – an intelligent person who just wants to read something that makes his nerve endings crackle.’ [Related: Warren Ellis Website, Ordering Comics Site]

[weblogs] This is interesting… Neil Gaiman is updating a journal about a new book via Blogger and Warren Ellis is doing a what strongly looks like a photo blog…. [via Blogadoon and WEF]

[comics] SFX Magazine interviews Warren Ellis — Part One, Part Two.‘…Marvels trying to make a bit of money, bless ’em. They’re in business and that’s what they are there for, but no-one really needs a Ghost Rider film. It’s not important. Its not going to be a life changing event for anyone and its not going to a life changing event for comics. You are not going to come out of Blade or the X-Men and say “Bugger me, I’ve got to get the Yellow Pages and find a comic shop and buy loads of comics, because this was really good”. It’s more “That was alright, now down the pub.”‘

[comics] Warren Ellis’ Guide To Previews (for comics published in April 2001) — I can’t help but admire Ellis’ efforts to warp the purchasing tastes of his army of fans… ‘What follows are my personal recommendations from this month’s PREVIEWS. I’ll give you a write-up on it, the page number it’s on, and its order code. Talk to your retailer and find out what they need from you to place a pre-order — or, hell, just print this thing off. But, you know, once the order’s in, consider the money spent. You’ve entered into a contract with your shop. When the comic comes in, you buy it. That’s how it works. Onward, my winged monkeys… ‘ [Related Links: Previews Picks — Another Excellent Previews Guide, Warren Ellis Website]

[comics] Warren Ellis is up to something at OrderingComics.com… ‘If you want to make comics better, then you need to ensure the good stuff survives, as a foundation for what is to come. It starts here – with you.’

[warren ellis] The Sermon On The Mount — Warren Ellis’ final column for Comic Book Resources. ‘And you know what? Eventually, one day, when you come to your local comics store, regular as clockwork on delivery day, to pick up your pile of cheap superhero comics that you really don’t read any more anyway, that really don’t change anything, that only ever get good for a little while and never ever end? You’ll come in alone.’ [Related Links: Tom Coates thoughts on the Column]

[comics] Warren Ellis on Stan Lee: ‘That man wanted himself completely identified with Marvel and completely beloved, and did everything short of breaking into peoples’ houses and fucking them in the night to do it. To be honest, I’m sure he considered it and was talked out of it by nervous assistants. “By the hoary hosts of Hoggoth! I’ll do it! I shall dramatically decant myself into the beds of my best beloved brethren, the Mighty Marvel Mavens nationwide, and bring them all to outstandingly overwhelming orgasms with the purposefully pulsating penetrations of my — “‘

[online animation] Warren Ellis does a trailer for an online film called Bad Places… ‘Murder scenes are messy. Just ask Mike Charon, a detective who has seen the worst that killing has to offer. Inevitably, Charon gets called on every D.O.A. He’s the one who sees the stabbings and shootings before the coroner.’

[comics] Warren Ellis on the American Elections… ‘Let me first congratulate my American readers for finally having a President selected for them. My contacts in the American political power structure inform me that the American national anthem will be changed in January to “Duelling Banjos” from the film DELIVERANCE.’ [Related Links: Duelling Banjos MIDI, Deliverance]

[comics] It seems that Kevin Smith does not read many Warren Ellis comics…. ‘I just hope that the comics field never loses its luster for me the same way it seems to have for Ellis. If I ever wind up a githeaded pillock who takes shots at a newcomer who’s sold tens of thousands of more comics than I did their first time up at bat, someone please pull a mylar bag (and board) over my head and cut off my air supply. Life’s too short to keep score like that.’

[comics] Warren Ellis releases PR for his latest comic:. ‘MINISTRY OF SPACE is an English science-fictional idyll: a fantasia on the notion of a British space programme that outraced the rest of the world, as found in such as Dan Dare. Now that Britannia rules the waves of space, a utopian green-field England plies ships to the Moon, to Venus, to Victoria Station in low Earth orbit. This is the Ministry that sent a colonisation flotilla to Mars in 1963. The Ministry that destroyed a city and ran an exploration program unseen in human history. A Golden Age – and what it cost.’

[comics] Warren Ellis writes about his adventures at Garth Ennis’ Stag Weekend… ‘As indicated by other people in previous editions of this column: comics are a first love affair, the one that sinks its teeth into you and won’t let go, because of its freedoms and its glories. The sex is great, but everything else is shit. And I’m reminded of a quote from Neil Gaiman: “I stopped doing comics because I wanted it to continue being fun, I wanted to continue to love and care for comics, and I wanted to leave while I was still in love.”‘

[comics] Long, fascinating interview and profile of Warren Ellis from PopImage. ‘And yeah, I think I do suffer a backlash in terms of personal regard – it really doesn’t affect the sales, sales continue to go up, whatever I do, which if anything probably indicates that the comic fans who hate me the most are insincere swine and buy the shit anyway. [Laughs] I mean, it happens all the time. When I was back on HELLSTORM I’d get these letters from hillbilly Christians who live up in the mountains, they’d say “YOUR COMIC MAKES US HURL. WE BUY IT EVERY MONTH”. I’ve actually got that letter at home from these hillbilly Christians who were genuinely sickened by the work, and bought it every month to be sickened. And that’s the comics fan.’ [Related Links: warrenellis.com]

[comics] Warren Ellis talks about the early years of 2000AD. ‘I started reading it when it began, just about a week after my ninth birthday, in 1977. Available in every newsagent’s in the country. The cover and back cover were colour. So was the centrespread. The rest of it was black-and-white, all inky on pulp paper. Your hands used to get sooty if you re-read it too much. The ink was so badly fixed that you could lift entire images off the page with Blu-Tack. There’d be five stories in each issue. JUDGE DREDD was in there every week, of course – it got the colour centrespread as well as the three or four pages that followed. At least three of the four other stories would be episodes from serials. Usually, one of the stories was a “Future Shock”, or one of its variants like “Time Twisters” – a self-contained science fiction short, usually with a hard twist in the tail.’ [Related Links: 2000AD Links Project]

[comics] Warren Ellis talks about children and comics… ‘This has all been kickstarted by a conversation on my message forum. An intelligent and kind woman gave out comics as treats to little Hallowe’en trick-or-treaters. (Our street was full of children drenched in burning lighter fluid and someone yelling “Trick, you little fucks! Trick, I say!” Sounded like me, but I’m sure it wasn’t.) (This is something many of the Forum members did, by the way.) (Gave away free comics, not squirted children with lighter fluid and chucked lit matches at them.)’ [Related Links: Warren’s Message Forum]

[comics] Warren Ellis predicts the imminent death of Marvel Comics… ‘Marvel Enterprises doesn’t exist on the money it makes out of comics. It exists on a raft of junk bonds valued at $250 million, lashed together by Morgan Stanley. Oh, and by the way: Morgan Stanley stocks just fell around twenty percent.’

[comics] Maggots, Scum, Filth and Turds. Warren Ellis takes a few well aimed pot-shots at the sad and pathetic world of comic price speculation… ‘Speculation on comics prices is shit. Let me say that again for the hard of thinking. Speculation on comics prices is shit. It is for the emotionally and ethically retarded. It is a game for human filth. Rabid speculation led directly to the state of the comics market today. I’m amazed that anyone needs reminding of this. Specifically WIZARD Magazine, which was around to report on it all. And now WIZARD Magazine is promoting speculation once again, jabbering about “portfolios” of collectible comics, its founder Gareb Shamus frothing at the mouth on live TV in his comparisons of comics to stocks and outrageously unsupportable claims of the probable financial returns of comics speculation.’

[comics] Warren Ellis interviews Mark Waid. “Look, I’ve said this before: you can make fun of my less-than-lofty goals all you like, but from the time I was 17, writing Superman – or, more accurately, being able to give back to someone who, fictional or not, quite literally saved my suicidal young life – was all I ever really wanted to do. I had no grand aspirations to transform the medium. I was perfectly happy being a journeyman. But the day I was told that I would never, ever, ever be allowed to fulfill that dream – well, that’s when I finally came to my senses and stopped trying to do what a 17 year old wanted to do. Now at least I’m on a road.”

[comic] Transmetropolitan — website covering the comic of the same name…. ‘Transmetropolitan follows Spider as he harasses people with the ugly, painful truth until they are practically driven insane, fill their pants up with defication wrought of abject terror, or simply kick his ass. Then he writes articles about them.’ [Related Link: Warren Ellis]

[comics] SAVANT Magazine. Warren Ellis recommends it… so it must be good. ‘Never went to San Diego. Have the same feelings about heroin, quite frankly, which I’ve haven’t done either. There’s a little tiny nag to do it once, just once, and never again but deep down inside I’m terrified that one time wouldn’t be enough. Of course, the chances of meeting compulsively masturbating momma’s boys who want to yak my fucking ear off about Aquaman as I try to urinate in peace while in the midst of a grand-mal heroin binge are considerably slimmer.’

[comics] Yet another interview with Warren Ellis… “I suspect that, to successfully write superhero books through your thirties and forties, you either have to have genuine brain damage — Grant Morrison and Alan Moore come to mind — or be genuinely infantile. Grant and Alan and a bunch of others write great superhero comics because they are mad and that sick energy infuses the work. Too many others look more and more to me like confused, ageing writers-become-hacks making a vampiric living off the young. I’d rather not end up as the comics version of Art Linkletter. Or Krusty The Klown.”

[comics] Warren Ellis discusses if corporate-owned comic icons like Batman should be “saved”. ‘Superheroes are ultimately difficult to take seriously. And a mass audience wants, on some level, to take its mass-market violent action entertainment with a degree of seriousness. And what we’re talking about here is a virgin who can run up walls after being bitten by a nuked spider and a bald rich single old man who lives in a big remote house with his leather-clad “students.”‘

[comics] Warren Ellis talks about the best comics you don’t read. ‘Harvey Pekar is as fucked a human as you’ll find, put bluntly. And he’s honest about it.’

[comics] Warren Ellis interviews Grant Morrison. “Fans of comics like INVISIBLES and JLA may be interested to know that I was Mr. DeFalco’s unwilling ‘bitch’ for most of the late 80s. Because I was quite young-looking and fairly skinny, I could quickly be done up with a bit of curtain as an ideal ‘visiting niece’ whenever one of Tom’s morbid testosterone build-ups was giving him grief.”

[comics] Warren Ellis asks: Why Comics? “Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.” — Harvey Pekar.

[comics] Rich Johnson on The Cult of Warren Ellis. “And the thin and wiry Our Lord Warren Ellis was no longer thin and wiry, and started to buy Armani suits and some of his followers thought to themselves, hang on, he’s raking it in with this Excalibur lark.”

[comics] Old Warren Ellis interview. “Hm. Jamie’s one with the monkey was brilliant. The first episode of his FEAR MACHINE sequence was marvellously solid, too. Several of Garth’s issues were standouts, including the Special, “Confessional.” Gaiman’s “Hold Me” was, to my mind, one of the most honest and natural things he’s ever done, certainly among his best work. I’d be hard pressed to choose a single issue.” – what’s his favourite issue of Hellblazer.

[comics] Warren Ellis seems to be doing a lot of little bits of writing for themestream. Of special note: Warren Ellis: Why I Write Comics and England, In The Summertime: LIQUID CITY

[comics] Warren Ellis talks about David Icke. [Icke’s Web Site] “There is an essential piece of this obviously quite decent man’s brain that is missing; the Quality Control function that allows most of us to cross the street when badly deluded people walk towards us waving a matchbox shouting “Do you want to see my bomb?””

[comics] Warren Ellis talks about Cerebus. “Dave Sim is more than a little mad, as I think anyone who’s read a great deal of CEREBUS would attest to. Us old lefties instinctively shy away from someone who communicates what is at best gynephobia and at worst pure bloody misanthropy in the way that Sim does, even allowing for the dichotomy between auctorial intent and personal belief. But as a creator I keep coming back to Sim for his masterful, hugely inventive storytelling. Creatively, he’s the mutant bastard child of Will Eisner, The Studio artists (Barry Windsor-Smith and those guys) and Chuck Jones.”

[comics] Warren Ellis reports that he will produce a run of three-issue serials, original graphic novels and trade paperbacks for Image Comics.

[comics] Warren Ellis reviews Eddie Campbell’s Alec stories in the new Come In Alone.

[WE] New column from Warren Ellis. He recommends you go read Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. I agree… one of the best comics ever…

[Comics] I’ve been buying the Stormwatch TPB’s that cover most of Warren Ellis’ run on the book. It’s good stuff — but I was totally confused about which order to read them in. There are four books… anyway I found this posting and all is suddenly clear… Oh yeah, Warren’s just posted a new Come In Alone column as well…

[Comics] I am a reformed X-Men fan. I have not picked up a copy of this comic since the early ’90’s and my peak X-Men reading year was probably 1988-89. That was until last week… when I picked up an issue of Generation-X scripted by Warren Ellis. Here’s a trailer for the X-Men film which comes out this summer. I don’t want to be a born again X-Fan. I’m nearly thirty…. I’m too old for this shit….

[Comics] New “Come In Alone” column by Warren Ellis in CBR. “Comics are plain, conservative, old-looking objects. And this sacred bloody ugliness bores into the brains of people immersed in the culture too long, until they see nothing wrong with it.”

Warren Ellis writes some of my favourite comics at the moment. His website has just got a redesign.