by Warren Ellis and Raulo Caceres

Avatar Press

“This is a secret history. Everything I tell you is true.
Ionic air propulsion. Electrostatic levitation. Electrogravitics. The Biefield-Brown Effect and electro-fluid-dynamics. Nothing here is invented. It simply appears to be uchronic, counterfactual, sitting in the break of a time out of joint.
Everything I tell you is true. It is everyone else who’s been lying to you. I am Captain Swing.”

Here we go again, another Warren Ellis comic that sounds like an absolute blast, full of the sort of manic, extreme, sharply dialogued stuff I enjoy from Ellis on themes both he and I find continually and repeatedly interesting; experimental science, crime, law and strange history viewed through a steampunk lens.

But I’m not going to be fooled this time. I think Ignition City taught me something, finally, about Ellis comics; never be taken in by a first issue full of inventive ideas, sparse on plot and dialogue but full of potential. So I’m going to hold off on fully appraising Captain Swing until the inevitable collection comes out – only then will I be able to tell if that early promise was fulfilled in a satisfying story.

(Captain Swing? Possibly. Electrical? Certainly. Whoever it is, he’s way ahead of both types of policemen here. From Captain Swing And The Electrical Pirates Of Cindery Island by Ellis and Caceres, published by Avatar)

Captain Swing certainly starts out as extremely promising, the title comes from Captain Swing, the imaginary leader of agricultural riots of the 1830s but Ellis spins this idea and his Captain Swing appears to be an electrically charged character who the locals mistake for Spring Heeled Jack – another bit of 19th Century English folklore. Throw in the competing law enforcement of the time between the amateur, underfunded and incompetent Metropolitan Police Peelers and the far more professional, armed, dangerous and corrupt Bow Street Runners controlled by the Magistrates and we get an intriguing setup.

(Oh, those text pages just scream Ellis don’t they? From Captain Swing And The Electrical Pirates Of Cindery Island by Ellis and Caceres, published by Avatar)

Then add in all the allusions to secret histories, electricity, scientific concepts way ahead of their times and a “galvanic cell that fell into the sands of Baghdad in 250BC” introduced on the text pages that litter the comic and Captain Swing comes across as a mysterious and interesting, if short, read.

It’s an immediately gripping first issue, supplemented by Avatar standard colour art by Raulo Caceres – which is not bad, doing everything it needs to do with a little style and the occasional iffy panel or figure.

Captain Swing And The Electrical Pirates Of Cindery Island – style over content, certainly, but it’s Ellis’ style and I’m a fan. Whether the series lives up to this early promise….. this time I shall wait and see. And if nothing else, the series does have that great title and a beautiful cover.

Captain Swing #2 is due later this month.

by Warren Ellis and Gianluca Pagliarani

Avatar Press

After choosing Warren Ellis as my favourite author for the 5th anniversary post of the FPI blog I can’t help but feel very let down by him after completing Ignition City. It’s a classic example of the sort of writing he’s sometimes capable of, especially with Avatar, who frankly know they’re sitting on a goldmine with anything he writes for them.

Ignition City obviously started out as a fun little idea in Ellis’ mind to combine his oft mentioned ideas that the human race has lessened itself by it’s isolationist, short term thinking when it turns it’s gaze away from the stars with the notion of doing a “what if Flash Gordon was a pissed off, washed up ex-space pilot for whom it all went very wrong?” type of story.

And that’s Ignition City – Flash Gordon gone to seed and the world a worse place because we don’t go to the stars – all done frontier, Western style. With lasers instead of guns. I liked issue 1 and I have to say I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t make the Flash Gordon references at the time – Lightning Bowman? Really? And then there’s the t-shirt with the lightening bolt across it. Plus we have analogs for Ming, Dale and Zarkov and much more in there as well. Was I asleep when I read the first issue?

(Mary Raven gets the bad news about her father and sets off to the wilds of Ignition City. From Ignition City Volume 1. By Ellis and Pagliarani, published Avatar)

So the basic story is that the daughter of a noted space ace finds herself washed up at an early age, space programs are closing down all over and she’s going to be cut off from the stars, a dream she always shared with her big space hero father since she was a babe in daddy’s arms. Daddy meanwhile, has been up to no good in Ignition City – last big space port and operating on some kind of frontier mentality, with the dive bars and corrupt marshalls of the old west. Hell, there’s even old fashioned style gunfights occasionally, except those guns don’t pump lead, they fire lasers.

When Daddy ends up dead it’s up to the daughter to head into Ignition City and get his body back. Except she’s just the sort of girl who’ll get herself involved and start extracting revenge for her father’s death and discovering that he may not have been the man she thought he was. And when she does that she accidentally discovers the big, big secret of Ignition City. And then it’s the end.

(Zarkov Dr Vukovic comes to the rescue. Very Ellis. From Ignition City Volume 1. By Ellis and Pagliarani, published Avatar)

There’s good stuff in Ignition City, for any fan of Ellis’ style of writing, it’s snappy, full of great characters, loads of over the top dialogue and a fair bit of good old fashioned action. All done extremely well, but like so much of his recent work, there’s just not enough meat on the bones of his story to make it feel really satisfying. It’s really just half a story and from a writer that I love that’s just a big letdown. The art by Pagliarani is nice, very much in what has become the Avatar style, with a few panels that are great and a fair few that aren’t so great. But overall he does the flimsy story more than justice.

No news on whether there’s a second volume, but there’s always a good chance that there will be with Ellis and Avatar. Fingers crossed that there’s more to it next time than a host of interesting ideas and great moments.

by Alan Moore, adapted by Antony Johnston, illustrated by Felipe Massafera

Avatar Press

(Two covers to Light Of Thy Countenance; left – softcover, right – hardcover)

This slim volume is an adaptation of one of Alan Moore’s old prose stories. It’s become rather a popular thing in the last few years to mine every single piece of work that Moore has ever done, with some more suitable for this treatment than others. One begins to wonder what will happen in a few years time when they’ve covered every work of fiction available. Maybe we’ll start getting the illustrated adaptations of various articles Moore has done over the years or perhaps his numerous introductions to various comics given the deluxe adaptation treatment?

Anyway, Light Of Thy Countenance was written back in ’94 and sees Moore in his very lyrical, poetical phase, which is rather more suited for prose and performance than it is comics, since whilst the lyricism and descriptive prose functions in isolation very well, adding the extra visual information of very descriptive artwork throws the text into the realms of the slightly over-wordy. Like this:

(From Light Of Thy Countenance – Moore’s performance poem / prose story brought to comics.)

Light Of Thy Countenance is very similar in tone and style to his magical performance pieces, almost an essay-poem on the magical power of the medium of television to influence and shape our lives, becoming replacements for every meaningful relationship; love, family, religion – television appropriates them all. The performance aspect of the piece is obviously constraining to the piece in comic form, as everything is written from the point of view of the author and the televisual god, with an essay structure rather than a story and plot, there’s very little room for speech, everything is captioned, all is delivered as voiceover.

Moore brings us in via the familiar, a character in a long running soap opera and then takes us higher and higher into concept and abstract of the god-like position that little square screen occupies in our lives. He also takes us through history, again very similar to one of his performance pieces, tracing both the rise of television to dominate our lives and the actual history of the medium’s development through the last century.

Any adaptation of this kind is a mix of the quality of the original writing, the skill of the adapters to the comic medium and the suitability of the adaptation itself to comic form. Antony Johnston is an old hand at these Alan Moore adaptations and his role is merely to get Moore’s words onto the page with the necessary pacing and layout required for his artist. And Felipe Massafera’s art, lush fully painted pages, panels that merely serve to capture and illustrate moments of Moore’s prose, is decently done and very easy on the eye. It’s only on the last point; the suitability of the material to adaptation to the comic form that Light Of Thy Countenance fails. It’s a better prose story or performance poem or essay than it can ever be a comic adaptation.

In the end, these adaptations of Moore’s supplementary work may well depend on how much you enjoy Moore’s work. They are, by definition, merely extras to his actual writing and consequently only really something to be appreciated by readers familiar with his style and work. Light Of Thy Countenance is a quick, enjoyable read, illustrated nicely and adapted well. It’s a good piece, but perhaps something that really didn’t need the extra sensory stimulation of words and art, sometimes the words are enough.

Richard Bruton.

Interesting little compare and contrast pointed out over on Jeff Smith’s website.

(the highly detailed and collectable AMP Suit Maquette from James Cameron’s Avatar)

Warren Ellis already has his Wildstorm series’ Red (with Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman) and Ocean optioned and in development with film studios but neither of those movies will feature Ellis in any writing capacity. Instead, Ellis is getting his first crack at transferring his characters from page to screen with one of his lesser known titles….

From Variety:

“Legendary Pictures plans to delve into the world of the occult with “Gravel,” picking up the rights to the comicbook series created by Warren Ellis and published by Avatar Press. Project revolves around the character William Gravel, a soldier in the British S.A.S. who uses his skills in dark magic to moonlight and battle supernatural beings for clients in order to make some extra cash. Ellis introduced the character in a 1999 limited series of graphic novels published under the title “Strange Kiss.” He will pen the initial draft of the screenplay for the pic and serve as executive producer on the project.”

Yep, Avatar do it again. They really are the little company that thinks big aren’t they? Strange Kiss and the various follow up series and then the Gravel books have been strong and steady sellers over the years and have a simple and instantly cinematic storyline. They’re just the sort of thing that you can see transferring to screen really well, especially if Ellis’ first draft makes it through the film-making process relatively unscathed. Of course, it could all go horribly wrong – after all, I can still remember the excitement when we heard that Frank Miller was going to be scriptwriting for Robocop2. It would certainly be interesting to see how Hollywood copes with Ellis’ booze, Red Bull and fag dependancy. Coke they can handle, but someone wanting to light up in public – that may be too much.

Over at the Previews site, Warren Ellis has a little introductory essay for his new Avatar series: Supergod. Now, anyone reading the reviews over the years will realise I have a love/love/hate/disappointment relationship with Ellis’ work. Most of the time he’s good, sometimes he’s great, sometimes it’s just not good enough. And it’s his Avatar work that I often find myself most disappointed with. Now Avatar know a good thing when they see it and having Ellis’ name on anything he throws their way is going to mean sales and profile. But all too often I get the impression he throws out an idea and a series is quickly developed for Avatar.

However over the last year or so, the hit rate for his Avatar series has been very good indeed, with things like Aetheric Mechanics, Anna Mercury, Ignition City, Crecy, Freakangels and Black Summer being very good indeed. So here’s his latest series: Supergod. Which, as with most of Ellis’ series for Avatar, has a really strong hook. But it’s always about how that hook tranlates into actual reading that the comics stand or fall. But based on the hook and his recent strong showing, this essay makes me think I’ll be picking it up:

Supergod is the story of what an actual superhuman arms race might be like. It’s a simple thing to imagine. Humans have been fashioning their own gods with their own hands since the dawn of our time on Earth. We can’t help ourselves…. Stewart Brand once paraphrased Edward Leach: “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.” And, perhaps, there’s still that little scratchy voice in the middle of the night: I don’t want to be alone. I want there to be something bigger, something that moves in mysterious ways and wants only the best for us. And I will forgive it, the disgusting state of this world, and all the things in it that want to crush and kill me, and have faith that something incredible and invisible and unknowable will make things better. And so (in Supergod), just to make sure, I will build it and keep it by me. I will pretend it’s a weapon, a defensive capability, a computing object or a construction machine — but really it is a Messiah.

But the Messiah, remember, is a very naughty boy.

And that was the line that had me spluttering out the coffee over the keyboard and made it worthy of sharing. Supergod #1 ships in October.

And on the subject of Ellis, he’s also announce a new 4 issue series for January 2010 and this is one of those that just pushes all of the right buttons for me: Captain Swing & The Electrical Pirates Of Cindery Island.

The Glasgow Science Centre folks tell us they are showing the fifteen minute 3-D trailer for James Cameron’s much-anticipated, highly secretive (let’s hope the finished work equals the hype!) return to feature films, the science fiction movie Avatar on August 23rd. They’re also offering one lucky soul a chance to win a pair of tickets to the event – details on their website here. Since the actual movie won’t be out for several months yet getting to see this – let alone in IMAX – would be pretty fab; apparently when the chance of some similar preview tickets in the US was offered the resulting tidal wave of fans overloaded the official Avatar movie site.

by Warren Ellis & Facundo Percio

Avatar Press. Available as a hardcover and softcover edition.

I’ve already reviewed Anna Mercury twice; (issue 1 and issue 2), so I’ll be quick here. This is some of what I said about issue 2:

With Anna Mercury #1 I put forward the hope that this was going to be one of the good ones and wasn’t going to repeat Black Summer’s trick of a great first issue followed by a huge comedown from issue two onwards. Certainly there were enough good moments in that first issue to raise my hopes. And enough hints in the book that this wasn’t going to be as straightforward a tale as some of his Avatar work.

And thankfully, with issue 2, I can safely say that this is definitely shaping up to be something very good indeed. The setup throughout issue 1 has paid off nicely, with Anna revealed to be acting as some cross dimensional secret agent type racing around trying to save the planet from some form of all out destruction. This is the big show and tell issue, with Ellis setting out the peculiar science behind the world in the first few pages of this issue. In fact it’s all conveniently explained, complete with easy to follow diagrams to the prime minister of the day by the head of Anna’s department. it seems that Anna works for a department tasked with keeping everything in order. Because Anna’s earth sits in the middle of the constellation project:

“Nine half constructed worlds hanging in invisible orbit around Earth. All of which have human beings on them. None of whom are aware of the other worlds or the existence of Earth. This constitutes the greatest mystery, and the greatest secret of our time.”

And with that reveal, Ellis makes Anna Mercury far more interesting than anything he’s written for Avatar so far.

(Anna Mercury in her best Matrix style leap. Ellis is back on form and the art by Facundo Percio isn’t bad either.)

And everything above written for issue 2 certainly holds true for the remaining three issues included here in the Cutter. In fact, once issue 2 is over, with Anna trying to figure the best way to prevent a one city’s super-gun wiping out the other city on this particular half constructed partial earth, the rest of the book is a hyperactive rush to finish, lots of racing around, lots of shooting things, kinetic artwork flowing freely. There’s only one major bit of downtime in the second half of the book as Anna and her boss sit down to brief the new Prime Minister on the situation he’s just walked into. Just like the conversation between the Prime Minister and Anna’s boss in issue 2, this time is used by Ellis to allow all his exposition to be thrown at us at once, detaching it from the action sequences in a simple yet effective way:

“In 1943, The USS Eldridge – three hundred feet long and twelve hundred tons of electromagnetically active metal – appeared right in the middle of New Ataraxia. It was kind of hard to miss. And it sat there for at least twenty minutes. Ataraxian society was irrevocably warped. God turned up in his own sailing boat and changed everything.”

Yep, the USS Eldridge. So you can see the sort of thing Ellis is going for here; this world gets royally screwed up when the Philadelphia Experiment works too well and with nine of these partial earths to play around with one wonders what famous conspiracy theory or mythical tech experiment Ellis will use next time. (I haven’t picked up any of  the second Anna Mercury series yet).

(Pretty much the entire series in one page thematically: Anna running, fighting and swearing. Her boss and the Prime Minister having a chat about everything that’s going on. It’s a cliched formula for getting your story out, but it works in Anna Mercury. Art by Facundo Percio)

In the end, Anna Mercury is just pure fun escapist sci-fi spy thriller, very Matrix like but without all of the cod philosophy. Ellis is having a blast writing every sci-fi cliche he can think of lately throughout the various books he’s doing but it seems to be on Anna Mercury where it all comes together and works best. Similarly, the artwork by Facundo Percio, although very much “Avatar house style” (and if you read more than 3 Avatar books you know exactly what I’m talking about) and even though he takes a little while to settle and does have a few stumbles along the way, is some of the best colour work that’s graced Ellis’ Avatar material yet.

It’s by far the best thing he’s writing right now, yet even here there’s still the feeling that he’s not really stretching himself. On one hand it’s a sickening realisation that he’s got so much more in the tank. On the other hand I find myself getting frustrated with Ellis’ inability to really push himself to make truly great comics. Anna Mercury is bloody good stuff, but even here, I think Ellis can give us better. But for now, Anna Mercury will certainly do.

Richard Bruton.