Comments | uvula_fr_b4: First look at the GOP's probable 2016 campaign strategy.

uvula_fr_b4

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

Nov 23, 2012 14:42

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 ( Read more... )

paranoia, politics, comic books, science fiction, satire

Comments 3

marlowe1 November 23 2012, 21:10:56 UTC

When I was in my 20s, this seemed like the most awesome comic ever. Then I grew up and grew to hate Warren Ellis as the leftwing version of Frank Miller - a hopped up moralist with no particular idea except for unfocused rage to bitch and moan about how much he hates society repeatedly.

Rereading Transmetropolitan with that perspective was fairly painful.

I was actually thinking about Harlan Ellison and Warren Ellis in that "when I grew up I put away childish things" way and how much these guys' work is tainted by their horrible personalities. There are other artists who are terrible people and great artists (Richard Wagner and Cat Stevens and Roman Polanski) and then there are artists whose art sucks because of their terrible personalities.

uvula_fr_b4 November 24 2012, 02:45:31 UTC

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 ( ... )

Oh yeah.... uvula_fr_b4 November 24 2012, 03:03:52 UTC

It's something of a cliche that being a creative type means that you're also an insufferable person; not sure if it's a great idea to only read / enjoy the work of people who were actually nice people.

Archie Goodwin got mad props across the spectrum for being a super nice guy, and maybe he was one of comicdom's best editors ever; but his stories that I've read never rose above middlebrow entertainment, and often didn't quite reach that level. (Although I quite liked his two-part arc with the Vulture and the Hitman in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man Vol. 1, #4-5.)

John Byrne and Jim Shooter seem to be asshats of the highest degree, and yet I still like Byrne's Fantastic Four and his art on pretty much everything I've seen, while Shooter mostly succeeded with his "Korvac Saga" in The Avengers (although I could do without the endless homages/pastiches/iterations of it, at both Marvel and DC...), and had a short run on The Avengers afterwards wherein he had Hank Pym flip out, get divorced by Janet Van Dyne, and ( ... )