Tag Archives: Warren Ellis

May 20 2015

Injection 1

Alternating Currents: Injection 1, Drew and Ryan

Today, Drew and Ryan are discussing Injection 1, originally released May 13th, 2015.

Drew: The conventional wisdom on writing is that you must hook your audience from the very first sentence. “Don’t give the reader a chance to put it down,” my old professor used to say. It’s logical advice, but I always chaffed at how prescribed it felt. The complexity of ideas you can convey in a sentence or two is necessarily limited, and it seems silly to deny ourselves access to more complex ideas for fear of a fickle audience. Maybe it’s because my background is in classical music, where the audience is necessarily more captive, but it always seemed a tad alarmist to presume the audience is constantly looking to stop reading. If we allow that hook come later than the first sentence or two, it’s less tied to a single image, idea, or quote — it can become more about characters, atmosphere, even pacing. This is exactly the kind of approach Warren Ellis, Declan Shavley, and Jordie Bellaire take in their new series, drawing us in as much by what they don’t show us as what they do. Continue reading →

Feb 18 2015

Captain Marvel 12

Alternating Currents: Captain Marvel 12, Drew and Patrick

Today, Drew and Patrick are discussing Captain Marvel 12, originally released February 11th, 2015.

Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle!

Super Mario Bros.

Drew: Ah, the MacGuffin hunt; is there a more straightforward objective in all of fiction? Sure, that may also make it one of the most common objectives in all of fiction, but that hasn’t stopped it from generating some truly great stories. It’s just a clean, simple way to motivate characters to action. “We need the thing for reasons” is the general gist, but there’s actually a cleaner, simpler motivation if the MacGuffin was stolen from the hero. Now the “reasons” don’t need to be mired in mythology about the significance of the “thing” — getting back what is rightly theirs is more than enough justification for action. This is exactly the scenario Carol finds herself in in Captain Marvel 12, jettisoning any need for exposition in favor of high-flying space action. Continue reading →

Jan 14 2015

Trees 8

trees 8

Today, Drew and Ryan are discussing Trees 8, originally released January 7th, 2015.

…like Psycho, it will now effectively recommence, shifting focus to characters who had seemed to be playing supporting roles…

Mike D’Angelo

Drew: As well-known and well-regarded as Psycho is, its form — where the focus of the movie abruptly shifts upon the death of what appeared to be the film’s protagonist — is as jarring today as it was in 1960. Killing the protagonist violates one of our most basic assumptions about a narrative, leaving us without an anchor as the story continues without its lead. Mike D’Angelo’s thought-provoking “How did one of 2014’s most striking scenes get confused with one of its worst?” (quoted above) details how director Zack Palmer negotiates this transition in Proxy, but I’d argue that the most important part of the transition is simply that the story isn’t complete.

If Psycho was truly about Janet Leigh’s thieving secretary, her death would be a totally satisfactory ending, but rather than resolving anything, her death only creates more tension. Who killed her? Why? Will this villain ever meet justice? That Psycho misleads us about those first two questions is inconsequential — Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof is unequivocal about those, leaving only the third question to be resolved in its second half. The point is, while the protagonist’s life is over, the story sure as hell isn’t, which is enough to carry us through any number of unexpected deaths. At least, that’s the presumption Warren Ellis and Jason Howard are banking on as they carry us through their own outsized Psycho moment in Trees 8. Continue reading →

Jan 7 2015

Best of 2014: Best Series Part 2

Best of 2014: Best TitleWe all love a good one-off or anthology, but it’s the thrill of a series that keeps us coming back to our comic shop week-in, week-out. Whether it’s a decades-spanning ongoing or a short-run miniseries, serialized storytelling allows for bigger casts, bigger worlds, and bigger adventures. Indeed, we’re so enamored of serialization that we decided to split our favorite series list into two installments. Here’s part 2 our top 14 series of 2014 (click here for part 1).
Continue reading →

Jan 5 2015

Best of 2014: Best Writer

Best of 2014: Best WriterIn such a collaborative medium as comics, it can be difficult to say where a writer’s influence on the story ends, but there’s no question on where it begins: words on the page. Whether they thrill, elate, chill, or deflate, the best writers create characters, settings, and situations we want to return to, again and again. These are our top 14 writers of 2014. Continue reading →

Dec 31 2014

Best of 2014: Best Issue

Best of 2014: Best IssueEpisodic storytelling is the name of the game in monthly comics. Month- or even multi-year-long arcs are fine, but a series lives and dies by its individual chapters. From self-contained one-offs to issues that recontextualize their respective series, this year had a ton of great issues. Whittling down those issues to a list was no easy task (and we look forward to hearing how your lists differ in the comments), but we would gladly recommend any (and all) of these issues without hesitation. These are our top 14 issues of 2014.
Continue reading →

Dec 2 2014

Trees 7

Alternating Currents: Trees 7, Ryan and DrewToday, Ryan and Drew are discussing Trees 7, originally released November 26th, 2014. Ryan: In Trees 7, we hear rumblings in the distance, like heat-lightning on a quiet summer night. We also see the rumblings present, like the book shelf in Jumanji which gets obliterated by the stampede. After a somewhat polarizing issue 6, Ellis and Howard return to us with some big happenings and continue to set the stage for what promises to be a hellacious climax. Continue reading →

Oct 22 2014

Trees 6

Alternating Currents: Trees 6, Ryan and DrewToday, Ryan and Drew are discussing Trees 6, originally released October 15th, 2014. Ryan: Remember watching Dragon Ball Z when you were younger? Remember how you would be so excited for the final confrontations, but shake your fist of the television screen when an entire episode stretched by and nary a punch was thrown? Well, anime, like manga, like comics, like Dickensian 19th century literature, is serialized. The objective of serialization is to keep readers or viewers invested enough to buy the next installment. Sometimes this can lead to frustrating lulls in action which hide under the guise of building exposition. In many ways, I felt this way about Trees 6. While we receive some rumblings of future events and some fall-out from past occurrences, this issue moves the plot forward the smallest amount possible. Continue reading →

Sep 22 2014

Trees 5

Alternating Currents: Trees 5, Drew and RyanToday, Drew and Ryan are discussing Trees 5, originally released September 17th, 2014.

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Drew: I kind of resent that works of art need titles. I appreciate the necessity of distinguishing one book from another, but titles seem to always inelegantly summarize or gracelessly fix some piece of authorial intent I’d rather not be privy to. I’m the least offended by more utilitarian titles, (coincidentally) like Romeo and Juliet, which doesn’t assert anything beyond the play’s focus on those two characters. With Trees, writer Warren Ellis certainly captured that utilitarian spirit by simply naming the thing that makes his science fictional world unique, but then he goes and re-muddies the waters by ending each issue with a pull quote. He removes them from any context, stripping them of any attribution or even punctuation — as if to hint at some kind of greater truth in his characters’ words — but that repetition alone is enough to lend those words an unwieldy significance that asserts someone’s subjectivity. As issue 5 takes an even closer over-the-shoulder view of many of the characters, the nature of that subjectivity becomes a central concern. Continue reading →

Aug 8 2014

Moon Knight 6

moon knight 6
Today, Drew and Patrick are discussing Moon Knight 6, originally released August 6th, 2014.

Drew: One of the biggest challenges in analyzing any work of art is understanding the parameters on which it should be judged. There aren’t “right” and “wrong” ways to appreciate a work of art, but it is possible to select aesthetics that are more appropriate than others. That Picasso and Da Vinci or Hemingway and Melville were working in the same medium doesn’t mean that they should (or even could) be assessed using the same metrics. We’re used to those metrics being dictated by social tastes, but there are certain works of art that seem to be defined only by internal parameters — crystalized nuggets of simplicity that belies the true complexity of the piece. My list of examples is short — I honestly can’t think of one beyond Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony — but that makes the company Moon Knight 6 occupies all the more rarified, as the issue refracts and clarifies its respective series. Warren Ellis, Declan Shalvey, and Jordie Bellaire distill their hero down to his absolute essence, only to stretch that essence out to the size of a whole issue. It’s absolutely beautiful. Continue reading →