THE ISLAND OF DR. ELLIS

I was in FULLY BOOKED last week and wasn’t really planning to buy anything (yeah … right!) when I picked up Warren Ellis’ STRANGE KILLINGS: NECROMANCER. Even though I’ve been a big Ellis fan ever since his Stormwatch run, I haven’t really bought every single thing he’s written.

So, I flipped to the back of the book and read the blurb:

Finally, all six issues of the zombie epic Necromancer collected into one volume! Warren Ellis’ cult hit STRANGE KILLINGS is back with “combat magician” William Gravel’s most gut-wrenching mission yet! Deployed to a steaming Philippine island, Gravel’s assignment is to assassinate an investigative reporter about to expose a chemical weapon lab sanctioned by the British government.

A Warren Ellis character in the Philippines? Well, I just had to read how he portrayed our “steaming islands”.

As mentioned in the blurb, William Gravel is a “combat magician”. Gravel is what you get when you combine the Punisher and John Constantine. He fights dirty and (worse of his opponents) he fights with magic. Gravel can become invisible, teleport to a place called the Body Orchard where he keeps enough weapons for an army, and can easily cast a spell that blasts zombies into a liquid, pink slush. (YUM!)

The whole “Philippine tour” was only seen in the first couple of pages when Gravel walked/teleported to the Hundred Islands. He rode a jeepney which had “Captain Pinoy” and “Fanta” painted on the side, and learned how to say “pare ko”. The British biochemist conducting the experiment was shown drinking a bottle of San Miguel Beer and sacrificed a girl named Kori to the zombies.

I was wondering who Ellis had to consult for those little details about the Philippines. Thanks to Google, I found out that Mike Wolfer, the artist of the book, attended high school at Clark Air Base in the Philippines.

I also found an interview in Comics Bulletin when Wolfer talked about why they thought the Philippines would make for a great setting for Gravel’s mission.

Tim O’Shea: The upcoming Strange Killings: Necromancer is set in the Philippines, a setting with which you're quite well-versed in, having once lived there. What are the benefits/appeal to setting the tale in the Philippines?

Mike Wolfer: With the exception of the Borneo flashback sequence in The Body Orchard, William Gravel's adventures so far have all been in urban environments, so it's fun to see him down and dirty in jungle survival mode. As you mentioned, I spent several years in the Philippines and one thing that struck me about the region was that it was breathtakingly beautiful, yet as you stand on the beach looking into the jungle taking in the sounds and the smells, you realize just how much you don't belong there. Anything could be waiting for you in there and you'd never know it or expect it. This "green hell" backdrop is the perfect enhancement for Necromancer, since we're exploring the most primal conditions of the human experience: life, death, love and sex. William Gravel's in for one hell of a time.

So, if you want to see what happens when you drop Rambo in the middle of the jungle with the entire cast of “Night of the Living Dead”, then pick up STRANGE KILLINGS: NECROMANCER.

Warren Ellis’ STRANGE KILLINGS: NECROMANCER (Sixth in Series) Cover: Mike Wolfer / Story: Warren Ellis / Script Assist & Art: Mike Wolfer / Readership: Mature Readers / Format: B&W, 144 pages, square bound

Two guys walk in a bar…

Well, it doesn’t have to be a bar. It could happen in a café, in the bus, or in the elevator.

… and they start about girls. About the girl they’ve always lusted after, about the girl they loved, about all the trouble they got into because of girls.

You don’t always get the complete story but you hear enough to know enough.

Sometimes, there’s just that one guy who does all the talking and he’s delivering his sermon on girls, he’s laying out his manifesto on the problem with women, he’s confessing why he can’t live without them.

You know what I’m talking about?

Then that’s exactly what you’ll get when you read Alan Navarra’s GIRL TROUBLE.

It reads like a transcript of several guys (or is it just one guy’s) discussion of women. It reads like rambling poem, like two DJs who thought they were off the air and talked about the things that shouldn’t be broadcast.

Aside from the rambling transcript, GIRL TROUBLE is told through a series of black-and-white photos and graphic designed pages. There’s a certain point when the book just shows you all these images and doesn’t make sense (but it does); same way when you see non sequitur visuals in a dream (but it’s now someone else’s dream).

If you’re going to read GIRL TROUBLE, I suggest you don’t try to read all of it in one sitting. Read a couple of pages. Do something else. Then come back to it. Maybe it’ll make more sense that way. It’s as if you were listening to the conversation of the two guys in the next table, but had to leave and when you got on the bus, you start to overhear the conversations of two other guys.



GIRL TROUBLE by Alan Navarra
Published by Visual Print Enterprises