Except one[1].
To the delight of many, Warren Ellis has been tapped to take over Astonishing X-Men when Joss Whedon's latest arc winds up. That this news was greeted by mass fandom with near-unanimous glee wasn't surprising at all. What surprised me this weekend were the scores of online postings proclaiming, "Oh, Good Christ! Finally, the Scary X-Men we've been begging for!" And if not that, then "I can't wait to see the fetishist uniforms and weird piercings everyone's gonna get. This is the best news ever!"
And if you take the close of Ellis' Newsarama interview from Friday on its own, this is a perfectly reasonable expectation to operate under:
NRAMA: Rounding out this interview, is there anything specific that fans can be looking forward to reading when they read Warren Ellis' Astonishing X-Men?
WE: Oh, the usual, you know. Raping your childhoods, using my position to destroy everything you love, displaying opinions you may not agree with and writing with my own voice and personality. All the things people hate in commercial comics these days. And yet, all the things I am specifically hired for. It's a funny old world.
Me? I don't believe he's serious for a minute. "All the things [Ellis is] specifically hired for", when Marvel Comics is doing the hiring, is to write one of their bread-and-butter titles in a way that will sell multiple copies of each issue without alienating any reader past present or future. He's no more likely to rape anyone's childhood writing the X-Men than he was when he was writing "Dracula gets his balls kicked out" in Planetary.
I wouldn't think there's some strict Warren Ellis Standard Operating Procedure that mandates a "scary" approach to dealing with established characters and (to a reasonable extent) their continuity and history. I also don't think we readers doubt his ability to craft a traditional superhero story without 100% observance of those traditions. So why the rush to assumption that an A-list work-for-hire Marvel Comic will suddenly turn darker or thrust itself in some unsettling direction just because he's writing it? Are many readers simply superimposing his message board quips, social commentary, his novel, or his various posts on topics or images that interest him, over his mainstream work?
I wonder if he's had a chance to sample the online reaction just in his own forum? And if he has, I wonder if it delights him or maybe worries him a little: "JESUS! Do people think I'm 100% depraved?"
Looking past the exaggerated Ellis-speak of the earlier interview excerpt, he seems to be mostly thoughtful and jazzed about getting the keys to Marvel's Ferrari during the rest of his talk:
Warren Ellis:...I want to see what it actually means in the 21st Century. This, to me, is interesting work: to take a sounding of a franchise that has meant so much and so many things to so many people over the years, and to see what else it still has to say; to look forward and see how this badge of X -- which didn't have the cultural load it carries today when Lee and Kirby generated the idea -- can be made to mean.
...So when this came up, and when the degree of creative freedom that comes with it became clear, I thought, why the hell not? I mean, you never get to make your "stamp" on these things, because the franchise needs to keep running and everything gets dug over and re-invented in the end. But I like the technical challenge in these commercial gigs: to bring the property into the era of its production, as it were, and to write stories I'd like to read.
I'm as excited as the next comics fan about the future of Astonishing X-Men, and mostly because Mr. Ellis is striving to "write stories [he'd] like to read". Not because I have this preconceived notion that he'll finally be able to "weird up" some characters that have plenty of weirdness built in already that he (or any other competent, observant, and quick-witted writer) discovered before he typed Page 1.
I'm excited because I can bet on wanting to turn the page as quickly as possible. I'm excited because I'll probably find it maddening to have to wait 30-60 days for the next installment, because the ending of the current issue is so good. Not because I associate "Written by Warren Ellis" with "out there" or "scary".
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[1]Most of my commentary was part of my post at Warren Ellis' Engine.net. I cross-posted here because as is common in 95% of my message-boarding, my expressed opinion stopped the discussion stone cold dead. I have the suckiest mutant power ever.
4 comments:
Ellis probably loves the reaction.
He said those statements, in all likelyhood, just to annoy people.
More power to him.
Ellis probably loves the reaction.
He said those statements, in all likelyhood, just to annoy people.
More power to him."
I agree, [Next time go ahead and leave a name].
It just struck me odd that so many fans seem to expect some bizarre rampaging mutant book, as if Ellis doesn't ever write pretty straight up superhero comics. Just because they're usually of higher quality doesn't mean there's something inherently weird in his approach or execution.
And Nextwave.
Who doesn't love Nextwave?
"And Nextwave.
Who doesn't love Nextwave?"
Nextwave is indeed colored paper folded into the shape of awesome.
And a straight-up super-hero book.
Though I may turn an eyebrow up if he throws a "XORN PUT YOU IN HIS PANTS!" in there.
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