Interviews: Warren Ellis Answers Your Questions 15
Recently you had a chance to ask acclaimed author of comics, novels, and television, Warren Ellis, about his work and sci-fi in general. Below you'll find his answers to your questions.
Authors in the industry by TWX
I've noticed that some authors are quite happy to see their works adapted into other formats, but some authors like Alan Moore seem upset, to the point of being hostile when this happens, even though they had to license or sell the rights for this to occur. Did you have control over the rights to some of your work that was turned into movies, and if so, how did you feel about that process and the end result? Have there been works by you or other writers that you felt were especially well or poorly executed in their adaptation?
Ellis: If I sell people the right to adapt my work, I don’t get to be upset when they adapt it. If people adapt the work I don’t own or control, then I can either ignore it or view it with curiosity, depending on my mood.
The Alan Moore projects that have been adapted are more complex, and some have aspects that were kind of unprecedented. Outside parties can have opinions, but some of their points are incorrect or irrelevant. I know interviewers like to encourage Alan to be the Grumpy Wizard Of Northampton Cave or whatever, but, really, people need to cut that shit out, because the important facts in many of these situations get completely obscured by the hyperbole elicited.
Adapting your works
by robstout
How do you feel about movie adpatations of your work? Does it annoy you when the look and feel of a book changes significantly between your book, and the resulting movie? The movie Red is much lighter than the comic was.
Ellis: Red is much lighter than the comic, yeah, but the central themes of the book are still in place. See above about selling the rights to adapt. And, as in that Raymond Chandler story I like to tell, it’s not like the books are destroyed or sent away. I wrote the books to tell the story I wanted. Sometimes I’m prepared to sell someone the rights to look at the work in a different way. It’s really not something to stress over.
Self Censorship in Your Industry
by eldavojohn
I've never really enjoyed main stream comics but the imprints that dodge the archaic Comics Code have pulled me in with various titles -- some of yours even. According to your wikipedia page you left Hellblazer after DC refused to print a controversial comic of yours in such an imprint: "He left that series when DC announced, following the Columbine High School massacre, that it would not publish "Shoot", a Hellblazer story about school shootings, although the story had been written and illustrated prior to the Columbine massacre."
Is this common in comic books/graphic novels? Have you experienced this elsewhere in your career? Do you feel that DC and other big publishers are too afraid of another Fredric Wertham to toe the line?
Ellis: This is kind of an archaic thing, now. The Comics Code doesn’t exist any more. Also, if a company owns a property, they get to decide how that property acts, which doesn’t technically count as censorship. Is it censorship if Disney hire me to write Toy Story 4 and then reject the script because I insist on including an anal scene? No. I can insist that they’re wrong, and present my arguments, but ultimately it’s their call. Work-for-hire, as it’s called, is just housepainting. The client gets to fire me if I decide to paint their house in orange and blue polka dots, regardless of my artistic integrity in doing so.
Nobody’s afraid of a new Wertham. In some ways, his worst nightmare happened: violent children’s comics have become the backbone of massive multinational corporations who are too big to shame or threaten.
What would you write if your editors allowed it?
by Khopesh
When writing within a popular series (e.g. X-Men or Hellblazer), there are certain hard limits in what liberties you can take. As a mundane example, you can't kill characters without planning out a large arc that builds up to it and/or quickly bringing them back, all with editorial approval from up on high.
What would you write within a popular series if only you could get permission to do it?
Ellis: To some extent, I would say “see above.” Also: I didn’t actually get into this business to write other people’s characters – it’s an interesting sideline, for me – and so I’ve never really spent a lot of time sitting around thinking about this. If I want to write something “without permission,” as it were, then I create something new that I want to talk about and publish it in a place that agrees to do that with me. It’s a recipe for depression and failure to slump in my chair muttering “if only I could do an X-Men series where giant alien structures fell on the Earth ten years ago and thereby indirectly caused a city in China to have all its cultural restrictions removed so I can do a fish-out-of-water story with a very confused bisexual painter.” That’s just insane. Anyone who is just waiting to do that Batman story where Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson finally get married in Vermont needs to be in another business. Ideally one nowhere near mine.
Just talk about Planetary for a bit
by c0d3g33k
Mr Ellis, I enjoy all your work, but I view Planetary as a "love letter to the things I love". I would appreciate it if you just wrote a little bit about what you were thinking/feeling when you were working on Planetary. That work covers a lot of territory, but my reaction on first reading was to weep because you captured so perfectly the essence of all those wonderful stories that I loved as a young man. I didn't think anyone loved that shit as much as I did, but Planetary seemed to capture the essence of all those great stories whilst bringing them in to the modern age and reminding us why they were relevant and maybe still are.
So, if you would, just riff a bit on Planetary and all the things you had in your head when you were working that all out. Planetary as the finished work we have as a reference - I'm interested in the stew in your mind containing all that wonderful stuff that eventually was distilled into Planetary. Talk about that a bit, if you are so inclined.
Thanks.
Ellis: Well, my memories of it aren’t as fond as yours. I got so sick during the extended production of that book that I was at one point briefly speculatively diagnosed with a brain tumour. After my dad died, I was guided to a thread on a message board where people were trying to put together a class action suit against DC to compel me to write Planetary for them, citing in part the “fact” that I had taken too much time off previous to and during my father’s death. That sort of thing. On and on. Including the times people tried to remove my collaborators. It was an uphill battle. So I don’t really remember the book with a smile!
A lot of Planetary came down to my having to learn the superhero genre during my early years at Marvel, as I was never particularly a student of that genre. Which meant that, by 1998 or thereabouts, my head was just rammed full of this stuff and I needed to get it out. Reading seventy years’ worth of superhero material in a couple of years gives you, I would imagine, a peculiar perspective on the genre, and it seemed to me that I could clearly see the progression of the genre from its non-comics roots to the fairly debased form that existed in the 90s. I found that I just wanted to try and scrape away all those barnacles to see the thing that charmed and fascinated people right at the start. I still don’t know that I managed that to anyone’s satisfaction, but the act of it seemed to me to reveal a story about the genre itself. Which sounds wanky, I know, but it was the turn of the century, and we were all about the looking-back and the meta. Comics-about-comics should probably be some kind of felony.
It was an awfully pretty comic, though.
Transmetropolitan Adaptation
by Verdatum
I don't know very much about comic books. With the exception of my parents' Mad Magazines and silver age Superman comics, I never got into them. Transmet has been one of very few exceptions. By about volume 3, I was rather terrified that this might get horribly adapted into a movie. I just couldn't imagine any way the story could be decently converted into a 90-120 minute format. The animated series adaptation idea, on the other hand, rather intrigued me. I was bummed to see it fall through; the animation looked quite promising (I seem to recall Chris Prynoski/Titmouse Inc. was somehow involved, but can't find confirmation on that). I realize nothing is currently in production, but is there any chance of another attempt at such an adaptation in the future?
Ellis: There are occasionally movements in the direction of Transmet, but, right now, I don’t see anyone doing it. In a lot of ways, that book is more relevant than it’s been in years (ignoring, please, the obvious datedness that creeps into all science fiction). But, ultimately, nobody is going to commission an R-rated film or language-uncensored tv series that is also an incredibly expensive and fully-immersed science fiction setting. You can either have it look like Transmet or you can retain Spider’s voice, but you can’t do both. As some famous American tv networks have told me. And adult-oriented animation that isn’t outright comedy? Forget it.
And, yes, those animation tests were Titmouse. I actually wrote one of those. In success, Patrick Stewart would have voiced Spider. But that all fell apart, as these things do.
Who do you enjoy reading?
by TJ_Phazerhacki
What authors (or writers, or artists) do you enjoy reading most? I often find that the people I like to read like to read the people I should be reading.
Also, thank you for Spider.
Ellis: I read a lot, and mostly non-fiction or literary stuff. I also re-read quite a lot – The Rings of Saturn by WG Sebald, for instance, is a book I go back to annually. Lemme pull up this year on Kindle
Okay, this year so far I’ve read and re-read some Thoreau: I have especial fondness for the language in Walking. Iain Sinclair’s new one was good. I re-read Tarkovsky’s Sculpting In Time, because it is, perversely, a good way to get back into thinking about comics. I read Rene Redzepi’s A Work In Process and Noma: Time and Place In Nordic Cuisine, and Magnus Nilsson’s Faviken and North: The New Nordic Cuisine of Iceland by Gunnar Karl Gislason, because the New Nordic style reads like science fiction to me, and anyone who works creatively for a living should read Work In Progress anyway.
I’ll always read a new Bruce Sterling, and his Epic Struggle of the Internet of Things was great. Same with Daniel Suarez’ Kill Decision. Finally got around to Alan Garner’s Boneland, which was revelatory. I read a lot of history: The King In the North was very good. Slavoj Zizek’s Event, like most of the Zizek I’ve read, started off great and ended up in a patch of philosophic quicksand somewhere outside Ljubljana. Peter Bebergal’s Season of the Witch was good, as was Blake Butler’s Three Hundred Million. Re-read some of Against the Day, the Pynchon that I return to again and again. Started reading the collected Samuel Beckett from the beginning. And I think that I’ll stop there because the eleven people still reading this have fallen into a coma.
What cybernetic implant would you choose first?
by hawkinspeter
You obviously have an interest in the boundary of society and technology, so if cybernetic implants became common, what would be your favourite upgrade and why?
Ellis: Well, I’m 46 now, so I’m in the market for a full-body upgrade at this point. I’ve never used contact lenses, but I was always interested in a head-up-display contact lens, not least because that would be less stupid and intrusive than HUD glasses (which I also don’t wear). I’d dismissed glasses as useful long before Google Glass – the ones in Transmet were just a gag, after all. Possibly what I’d be most interested in is a brain/internet connection, two-way, not least because I could use both a rolling log for surfaced thoughts and a separate Dropbox folder for cohesive trains of thought labelled with a strongly visualized hashtag.
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I do. So that's at least one.
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Notable works? Most popular recognizable work? I'm not gonna go googling so do your fucking job editors
If you have no idea who Warren Ellis is and have no intention of actually doing any research, what possible benefit could listing any of his works be to having any appreciation or context to an interview?
In any case, three of his most well known works are actually *mentioned* in the interview; namely Planetary, Transmetropolian, and his run on Hellblazer. I'm also fond of his work on The Authority which is also very well known. I also know he scripted the animated Justice League Unlimited episode called "
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Interesting. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: full-body upgrade at this point? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do we glorify aging?
It beats the alternative.
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I'm just about to turn 40, and I can't say physically I feel that off yet. No way would I say I'm better than 20, but I'm not that much worse.
Now mentally, that's a whole different ballgame. Other than the fact I felt a little smarter back then and I feel less smart now, nearly every other single thing is better mentally. There's emotional stability, the comfort of years of experience, a much broader view, and I know how to get things done. There's a little distraction/forgetfulness, but I'm blaming two tod
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Anyway, middle-age is the best time to be delusional about aging. It's when some things start to go s
Cookbooks?! (Score:2)
Warren, in the event you're reading the comments (and at a threshold low enough to see this...),
Can you speak more to why you listed so many cookbooks? I can understand René Redzepi's Work In Progress because, as Amazon notes [amazon.com], "it includes a personal journal written by René himself over a full year in which he explores creativity, innovation, and the meaning and challenges of success," but are all of the books on cuisine in the same light? Or are you an avid amateur chef? You've definitely gi
Thank you, Mr. Ellis (Score:3)
Thanks for responding to my off-the-cuff question (Talk about Planetary for a bit).
I found that I just wanted to try and scrape away all those barnacles to see the thing that charmed and fascinated people right at the start. I still don’t know that I managed that to anyone’s satisfaction, but the act of it seemed to me to reveal a story about the genre itself.
If you don't know that you managed it to anyone's satisfaction you're either stupid or deliberately humble and obtuse. I'm guessing the latter. What you describe is the very reason many people love this work. You scraped away the barnacles and managed to produce something that identified what people love about this stuff. Look, back when I was a kid, I KNEW that Godzilla was a guy in a rubber suit, but it was still cool. The same thinking applies to all popular culture. We KNOW there is a man behind the curtain - we're not stupid. The all powerful OZ is just a sham - we get it. But the illusion he's weaving is kind of cool. That's the part we love. I know I'm never going to be Carson of Venus, Superman, Doc Savage, or Tarzan, Lord of the (Ebola-ridden) Jungle. But the fact that I can imagine those ideals inspires me to be a better person, just a little bit. That's what these stories are all about. When faced with the issue of the day, having these stories in the back of my mind helps me to be just a little better. Given the behavior of many that don't have this kind of value system in this world, I recognize that these stories have brought some good to the world.
So scraping off the barnacles and distilling the essence of what people loved about these stories managed to remind me of why they were interesting and important in the first place. And so I try to be a better person with renewed vigor, thanks to you. You have my gratitude.
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It was an awfully pretty comic, though.
Yes, that it was. And we all like pretty, pretty things.