First look at the GOP's probable 2016 campaign strategy.

[uvula_fr_b4]

I've been gradually picking my way through Warren Ellis's and Darick Robertson's much-ballyhooed Transmetropolitan series as my whims and the vagaries of the inter-library lending network permit; I think I'm a little too old and a little too inoculated by having read a fair bit of Harlan Ellison for this series to really hit me where I live, but it

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[uvula_fr_b4]

I've found that I really like Planetary -- I've managed to read the first three TPs, and I guess there's only two more to go -- and I've just discovered that I also really like Global Frequency (albeit for different reasons; it's sort of like X-Files as an action movie version of Mission Impossible, with each issue complete in and of itself and with virtually no recurring characters, so pretty much anyone can die), which apparently has had one produced pilot (for WB) and one pending pilot (for CW -- ohhhh, I so hope that this one doesn't get picked up....).

I also like The Authority and, to a lesser extent, Ellis's run on The Authority's predecessor, Stormwatch. (Although if Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary didn't draw most of Ellis's run on The Authority, I probably wouldn't have liked it as much.) His stints at Marvel (Iron Man: Extremis; Nextwave)? Not so much.

I think I've come to realize that Ellis is at his best when he limits the amount of his screeds and "humor" (which isn't to say that there aren't funny bits in Planetary or Global Frequency; there just aren't any bowel disruptors or the sheer volume of "jokes" that Ellis has in Transmetropolitan or Nextwave), keeps the dialogue clipped and mostly expository (although not in a classic pulp sci-fi "As you know, Bob..." sort of way), and works closely with the artist(s) to propel the story.

Ministry of Space wasn't bad either; that one's a Dan Dare / Thunderbirds-looking three issue mini-series premised on Britain nabbing the Nazi rocket scientists instead of the Americans and Soviets. I'm a fan of Chris Weston's art (Vertigo's The Filth; Marvel's The Twelve), and he was perfect for this series, given that he excels at drawing people who are sneering, smug, enraged, or perverse -- kind of like Frank Quitely, actually -- and always slightly unreal-looking, again like Quitely. The punchline is a bit improbable, but only logistically so, I think.

It takes heroic self-restraint for a comic book writer to know when to STFU and stop cluttering up the panels with dialogue balloons and captions; it's unusual to see a writer who isn't drawing his own script to have this self-restraint (Greg Rucka, on his Queen & Country series for Oni, is a notable exception), but Ellis can practice it. He just didn't do so on Transmetropolitan. Then again, Darick Robertson's ugly-cartoony artwork sort of begs for dialogue to soften the harsh edges of it (see also: The Boys, drawn by Robertson and written by Garth Ennis).

Frank Miller after The Dark Knight Returns is pretty much a joke; his Sin City arcs could've, and should've been great, but they were misfires, IMHO. His Hard Boiled is only good for Geof Darrow's in-freakin'-credible artwork; the less said about 300 and Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again (or DK2), the better. But his run on Daredevil (initially with Roger McKenzie writing) still holds up, for me; I was always ambivalent about the graphic novel Elektra Lives Again. I thought that Miller & Bill Sienkiewicz's Elektra: Assassin mini-series for Marvel's Epic imprint was a hilarious political satire when I read it off the rack -- sort of a book-end to The Dark Knight Returns, given that it attacked the left-wing in the U.S., where DKR savaged the right -- but I'd have to read it again to see how it's stood the test of time.

I didn't mind Give Me Liberty too much; but the sequel mini-series featuring Martha Washington brought ever-diminishing returns, IMHO.