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Ruminations of a Very Large Man: Profile on Warren Ellis (author) Jonathan Encarnacion (date) Jul. 18, 2005 (10.41.41am)

Warren Ellis is walking through Artist’s Alley. And everyone's shut the hell up.

A cane remixes the rhyme of his heavy step, causing a skew at the shoulders of his heavy leather coat. Two sharp, black-tipped eyes pierce through his Viking features (a bearded face framed with a shock of ponytailed hair) and roam the tables, scouring for talent to come by. A stoic expression seems to dismiss the sensationalized atmosphere generated by eager buzz.

He hovers over a portfolio and taps a finger on it, dwarfing the 11" x 17" with his massive warlord build. He booms to the artist, revealing his southern English: “I like this – it reminds me of early Kaluta.” The artist's face betrays the effort of keeping cool: there’s an agreeable wrinkle at the edge of his eye caused by a lifted cheek; gratefulness for privileged flattery.

“I’d usually like to take a stroll down the Artist’s Alley when I came to these more often,” Ellis says quietly, passing the table. “I haven’t done this in five years.”

The ambiguities of his live identity have brought out levels of intimidation in excess: his Saturday Q&A, more populated than any other panel at the Paradise Comics Toronto Comicon, was spiked with awkward silences, attendants too afraid to approach the mic. Those that did suffered dearly. Truth of it is, though, that for most the pain was self-inflicted: wobbly voices, rigid shoulders - nervousness presented to a laid-back Ellis who at one point, seemed to wonder why the hell everyone was so frightened. Ellis can make for intimidating company, and not just through his size or popularity. His online presence demonstrates his bold, acerbic British wit powered by fierce, unwavering intellect. He does not tiptoe past an issue: he will call out on redundancies and on a lacking of well-applied thought. It’s this fashion of honesty that scares the hell out of people, so it comes as a surprise to most that in the real world, Ellis does more entertaining than condemning.

Warren Ellis

-

“There are some people in the British comics community who have no limiting system in their brain when it comes to alcohol. And they will drink past the point where normal people would die.”

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Organizers and event staff populate the room sparsely; a more relaxed group, listening to Ellis and Bendis casually trade jokes for bar stories. Bendis reveals that Mike Oeming’s first-ever assignment was on the book Edward Penishands and it gets a cackle out of Ellis: literally, HAW HAW HAW.

From outside, you’d swear there was a heavyset Norseman behind the door. You wouldn’t be far off: Thundersley, where Ellis hails from, is one of two villages of the same name fifty miles apart, both beginning as Norse settlements. As a kid, Ellis took great advantage of the physical size bestowed through his lineage. “I was on the school rugby team; I was on the school football team; I was in the school athletics team, I was a sprinter for a while. Then I moved to javelin, shot put.

“One day I took a tackle run and watched my left leg spin 360 degrees at the knee,” the injury resulting in an occasional need for a cane to assist his stride. “The tendon that holds my kneecap in place – well, holds your kneecap in place; mine is wrapped around the jutting tip of my shinbone – it’s inoperable.

“But – I still pulled the fucker down!” exclaiming it wasn’t all for nothing.

Ellis spent most of his adolescent years, 14 to 18, on painkillers and reacquainting himself with his walk cycle. To this day, there’s no guarantee that the damage won’t someday result in losing the use of his left leg from the knee below. Although out of commission on the athletics front, Ellis is still more than eligible to take part in another ritual central to the southend culture.

He barks over to Bendis: “You don’t drink, do you?”

Bendis: Naw.

“The Americans don’t drink,” Ellis stresses. “The British conventions, they were basically 200 pros who would walk into a bar, drink it, and then go looking for the next one.”

Bendis: Funny thing; I’ve seen the Jersey guys try to keep up with the Scottish guys –

Ellis: Oh, you’re shitting me –

Bendis: – they can’t keep up. ‘No, we’re men!’ Ha! Those fuckers were gone.

“The bars they used to use in Britain,” Ellis starts to tell, “they wouldn’t actually shut. The convention guys would ask around for a license extension. And the pubs would say,” – in an iffy girly voice – “‘Well, that costs a lot of money.’ And the guys would say,” – like some shady street merchant – “‘Don’t worry. You will make more money than you thought possible. Just be ready to hoover around dead bodies.’”

Sometimes there’s a different function to such stimuli; something quite opposite from what results in a Saturday night impairment. Ellis has given formal, passionate talks about the relationship storytelling’s history has to drink, drug and ritual. Storytelling cultures would each have their own processes and practices “intended to get at the subconscious, the dark half of the brain,” he explained during a talk at the Hacienda bar, previous to the con; “the parts that we don’t consciously use and cannot ordinarily get to. And ritual is nothing but a performance – a story. We tell ourselves a story in order to reveal something to ourselves.”

-

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Ellis sets his cane in front of him, reaches for the Red Bull at his side (a recurring Our random theme on this trip), and uncaps a silver gel pen. He pulls toward him the first pile of winners books, and starts to run through the stacks systematically – un-bag, sign, re-bag – without a need for focused thought. A few issues from his run on Hellblazer pass; selection there’s his Avatar book, Scars, and a copy of his OGN from Alt/Planet Lar, Switchblade Honey. The pace breaks when he hits Ultimate Nightmare and Ultimate system could Fantastic Four, where he opens the book up to sign on the first page. choose you

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“Ultimate stuff, it’s glossy cover stock. Signature can rub off,” he notes in passing.

Somewhere in the pile he encounters something of a jewel: small, photocopied, with a cover printed on yellow paper, one of Ellis' very first comics, “extremely small press”, crafted before the industry ever gave a shit about him. “Way, way, waaay the fuck back when. I don’t remember; ‘83, maybe? Long time ago – I just remember I was a kid. And everyone was doing this back then; Eddie Campbell was doing it, too. Back then we would all use local photocopiers. We’d take the original pages, paste them together and run them off. And we’d staple them. But long-arm staplers were expensive – only offices had them.”

So with the base materials they assembled each book by hand. “We had the thing laid down flat. And we’d just drive the staples right the way through, flip the book over and fold over the staples with our thumbs, then fold the fuckers over. Runs of three hundred. file:///D:/BACKUPS/DATA/2009-02-17/From%20Previous%20'C'%20Drive%20-%20My%20Documents/SilverBulletComics%20work/543%20-%20Warr… 3/9 12/8/2017 Welcome to Silver Bullet Comics! // THE source, nuff said! // Comics, Subscriptions, News, Previews, Reviews, Events, Forums, Manga, CCG, …

“Then every two months we’d be at the comic mart, with everyone at the pub like this:” He puts up both hands with skewed thumbs raised. “Paralyzed thumbs.”

“I’d always been doing small press as a kid,” he continues, un-bag, sign, re-bag. “I was running a book shoppe – I must have been 20, maybe 22.” The shop carried comics of all kinds, including 'inkies', tabloid-sized comics on newsprint that would leave on the reader's hands black stains of ink. He remembers reading a story that “was so extraordinarily bad” – he starts to snicker – “that I wrote them a filthy letter.”

The review was printed in the back of a forthcoming issue; regardless of how unfavorable, “it’s what they did in those days. And another magazine, Speakeasy, calls and says ‘We just read your letter; and if you’re so fucking clever, why don’t you write reviews for us? We’ll pay ya.

“So in between running the book shop, comics, and all that, I was writing comics journalism for a little while.”

His run in the field succeeded in getting him noticed again. John Brown Publishing, Britain’s biggest magazine publisher at the time, came across a lot of revenue from their heightened sales, and was looking to print a serial comic anthology.

“And they rung me up and said ‘If you think you’re so fucking clever, why don’t you start writing comics instead of writing about them?

“And… I went on to starve over the next several years.”

Ellis contributed Lazarus Churchyard to the Blast! Magazine endeavor. While the stories within Blast! received critical acclaim, the sales for the magazine were modest, and eventually the publication was halted. Soon after it dissolved, Ellis continued Lazarus over at Tundra UK; just as he and his girlfriend committed to a flat, “Tundra UK collapsed and I got a phone call saying I got only the last three invoices I sent them. That was it; no money. Nothing.”

Cut back to 18 months earlier: it’s 1992, and Warren is talking with the most renowned editor in comics, Archie Goodwin. Goodwin invites him to send a pitch based on Warren’s ideas for Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight.

Back to ’93, a week after Tundra’s collapse. “Phone rings. It’s Archie Goodwin. file:///D:/BACKUPS/DATA/2009-02-17/From%20Previous%20'C'%20Drive%20-%20My%20Documents/SilverBulletComics%20work/543%20-%20Warr… 4/9 12/8/2017 Welcome to Silver Bullet Comics! // THE source, nuff said! // Comics, Subscriptions, News, Previews, Reviews, Events, Forums, Manga, CCG, …

“ ‘Finally got ‘round to reading that pitch you sent me. Can I buy it?’ “I suppose I didn’t say, ‘I sent it to you 18 months ago, you bastard; you’re only readin’ it now?’"

There brought Ellis’ crossover into American comics. “Weird thing is,” he notes, “the Batman that I wrote didn’t see print for several years because DC’s commissions were maxed out.”

It wasn’t until 1996 that the story would appear in Legends of the Dark Knight #83- 84. The lapse caused no halt in momentum, however; getting accepted into Goodwin’s graces alone was already creating a whirlwind stir about the British newcomer. “If Archie hired you,” Ellis explains, “there had to be something going on, because Archie was known as the single best editor in the business. If Archie liked you, then you were gold.”

Marvel calls Ellis. “ ‘We hear Archie’s commissioned two issues off you. You wanna do something for us?’ ” He got stints on Hellstorm and Doom 2099, and the first of his widely noted runs, Excalibur. Everyone knows exactly who he is from there on. “That’s the way it happens.”

And kept continuing to happen. He broke ground with several more landmark runs: he took Wildstorm’s UN-funded supergroup, StormWatch, made it a more accurate multi-national jam, and re-envisioned the superhero approach by converting them into The Authority. Becoming synonymous with good writing, his creator-owned work Planetary (archaeological sci-fi investigations playing on the concept of the superhero) and Global Frequency (flirtations with technocracy) have found mainstream draws. His following brought more than impressive sales numbers the indie label Avatar via Strange Killings (SAS Black-ops soldier who also happens to know magic), Dark Blue (cop on a serious breakdown), and his make-believe imprint Apparat (comics from an alternate timeline where 30s pulps, not superheroes, became the mainstream of the medium).

The concepts are diverse, the more esoteric components reflective of the subjects that interest him. Ellis makes it a point to take in as much information as he can, injecting it into stories as they fit: memes, zero-point energy, traveling down the Devachanic realm at a speed of twenty-five dreams per second. Thematically, “I try not to think too much about what I think I’m thinking about in the story, simply because everyone draws their own perception from it; you can’t control what people think it’s about once it’s out of your hands and into theirs.”

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Planetary

That said, if there’s a desperate need to find a common ground wire link that links all Ellis’ works, “In general, coming from the ‘80s I think everything is political.

“I try to write being aware of and being engaged in that environment, be it political, social, psychological, it’s all the same to me. ‘Cause that’s what I want to read about, and those are the people I want to know. People who are aware of the world they’re living in.”

The most blatant example of this sensibility is Transmetropolitan, a sadistic satire on politics and society that proved to be one of the most intelligent and successful reads in DC’s Vertigo line. A 60-issue series following the exploits of Thompson-esque journalist Spider Jerusalem in a cesspool of a near future, the work has left its mark in more ways than one.

Ellis has been known for displaying a cheeky theatricality through his Internet persona, something many of his fans this side of the Atlantic take a little too seriously. “I had to create and maintain that persona when I was running the message boards for all those years,” he remarks. “To maintain Order.” The result: “Everyone thinks I’m Spider – they don’t realize I won’t give that bastard houseroom. He’s an emotional cripple. He lies, he cheats, he steals; he mutilates, he cripples, he kills. He’s just an asshole. And people just assume that he’s me.”

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Bad Signal, a newsletter by subscription from Warren Ellis, will give the first scoop on anything Desolation Jones and Fell; readers are also privy to his on again/off again courtship with producing a webcomic, and the details on the cool concepts he’ll play with for the format of the graphic novel Dead Channel, provided it finds a publisher.

These among other things:

On Sun, Jun 12, 2005 at 6:59 PM, Ellis writes:

[BAD SIGNAL] About the GLOBAL FREQUENCY Pilot

I haven’t seen it, and I’m not going to see it, okay? Quit sending me torrent links and asking.

Why? Fuck you, that’s why.

The end.

--W

Translation: He’s appreciative about the buzz. Really.

On Mon, Jun 20, 2005 at 1:46 PM, Ellis writes:

Please stop sending me the two-headed cat news link. I just received it for the two hundredth time. Thank you, my darlings.

--W

Follow up, same day, twelve minutes later:

AND NOW I’VE BEEN SENT THE SIX-LEGGED TWO COCKED DOG LINK THIRTY TIMES

I WILL COME TO ALL YOUR HOUSES AND SHIT IN YOUR PILLOWS

Thank you, my loves.

Cough. file:///D:/BACKUPS/DATA/2009-02-17/From%20Previous%20'C'%20Drive%20-%20My%20Documents/SilverBulletComics%20work/543%20-%20Warr… 7/9 12/8/2017 Welcome to Silver Bullet Comics! // THE source, nuff said! // Comics, Subscriptions, News, Previews, Reviews, Events, Forums, Manga, CCG, …

--W

Translation: Ellis finds this bizarre shit intriguing. Have a laugh.

It's Ellis transmitting ideas to you free of charge, right to your inbox, daily almost. And it scares some people shitless of him. “I have no idea why; maybe it’s the hairline. And I haven’t been to many shows, so, you know.”

He sighs. “You have to be prepared to be hated if you’re going to be a comics creator on the Internet.”

-

The mass signing finished, Ellis leans back in his char, stretches his back, and tells another story. “I was in the airport on Wednesday: London, Gatwick,” he begins. He then paints a picture of peril with a boom fit to lead soldiers from atop cliff face. “Looked out the window: hail and lightning. Okay, god hates me, I’m going to die.”

The weather’s wreaking havoc on his knee; he’s going to Toronto, though, where the weather is apparently very nice. “If I am not incinerated by sky electricity on the way, everything will be fine.”

The plane leaves LGW and arrives successfully in YYZ. “Get to the hotel; go to sleep; wake up; look out the window. Hailstorms and motherfucking lightning. God is now chasing me across oceans.” For a man whose physical size is on par with both his capacity to drink and the mass of his creative intellect, it’s no surprise that The Creator is on the short list of those capable of intimidating this rather intimidating man.

Find more Warren Ellis products here. For more on Warren Ellis, check out his online blog at www.warrenellis.com. Subscribe to his newsletter, Bad Signal, here.

Send your comments, praise, and/o r Discuss this story with our community curses to the author of this article. in the Crossfire™ forums.

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