Babbling Point

"Be authentic to your dreams. Be authentic to your own idea about yourself. Grind away at your own minds and bodies until you become your own invention. Be Mad Scientists." — Warren Ellis Art by Ivan Despi http://acidhousepost.tumblr.com/ more quotes from warren ellis at: http://www.goodreads.com/search/search?q=warren+ellis&search[source]=goodreads&search_type=quotes&tab=quotes

G.I. JOE RESOLUTE Story by Warren Ellis http://gijoeresolute.com/ 1 2 3&4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Thank you Warren Ellis for making feel like I'm in grade school all over again. (And thank you Hasbro for letting Mr. Ellis play with all those nifty toys in your toy box, even if it meant that some of those toys would get broken.) If my memory serves me right, the very first G.I.JOE toy I made my dad buy was Destro. Back then, me and Brandie still collected Star Wars action figures and were still big fans of the Force. I got Destro because I thought he'd make a cool villain to pit against Luke Skywalker. Couple of weeks later, we saw the Snake-eyes and StormShadow actions figures, and since I was also a big ninja freak, I just had to get those toys as well. Soon enough, the Joes were outnumbering the Rebel Alliance in our toy closet. Then there was that one Sunday when we drove all the way to Magallanes, to visit a small video rental store. That's where we borrowed one VHS tape o...

painting people's house “ … I probably need to explain once again why I don't stay long on company-owned works. It's as simple as this -- if I don't own it, I'm not going to spend my life on it. “Or, if you like: you can only paint someone else's house for so long before you start thinking that it might be nice to own your own house one day. “I'm okay with painting other people's houses for short periods, because I'm good at it and it pays well and on nice days it's fun. But I never ever confuse painting a house for owning that house. And if I spent every waking hour painting other people's houses, I wouldn't be able to build houses of my own. “The more creators who only took on housepainting as a part-time gig, the healthier this medium would be.” – warren ellis Which made me think about the work we do in the agency. Client comes to us and tells us to paint their house. Make it look pretty! Make it red! Make it blue! Make it look bigger ...

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 Cons...

RIDERS OF THE STORM I bought the very first STORMWATCH because I was Jim Lee fanboy. It had an interesting premise of a team of super-powered soldiers sanctioned by the United Nations. Of course, I was disappointed when I found out Jim Lee only did the cover and the inside art was nowhere near as good as Lee’s art style. The stories also felt like I was reading the rejected scripts of “Street Fighter the Movie”, where we just see costumed wrestlers fighting in different parts of the world. The next time I picked up STORMWATCH was their 37th issue , when Warren Ellis and Tom Raney took over the series and I was not disappointed with that run. Ellis made the team for ruthless and made them battle deadlier threats with delusions of bringing about a better world and inject a conspiracy angle that made you not trust Weatherman One, the commander of Stormwatch. Ellis eventually pushed the title towards the direction of the wide-screen, action-packed stories of THE AUTHORITY. The Stormwatch n...

. "Healing America by beating people up" Wouldn't you be curious and pick up a comic book with that kind of a tagline? Yup, that's the promo line for Marvel's new comic book NEXTWAVE. Of course, having Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen guarantees that I'll pick up issue #1. I've always been a sucker for new team books. Right now, the only series that I'm buying are NEW AVENGERS, YOUNG AVENGERS, and THE ULIMATES (which is still about the Avengers). I usually subscribe to the "Chris Claremont School of How to Put Together a Super Team". You must have the leader guy, the wild/rebel with claw guy, the strong guy, the mature leading lady type, the naive school girl who's just discovering her powers, the comic relief guy, and that guy who'll get killed at the start of the series. Which is why it surprised me when I saw Bendis' roster for the NEW AVENGERS. Two Spider-people? A strong guy? Another super strong guy? The leader guy and the t...

. Signal No.1 How do you introduce a new superteam? Start your issue with a burning building full of people that need rescuing or have a group of terrorists hold a building hostage. This allows the new superteam to flex their super-powered muscles and show-off how great they are without getting injured or getting their asses kicked by the main villain. The new LEGION recently did this schtick. The JUSTICE LEAGUE during the 80s did the hostage thing. THE YOUNG AVENGERS did the burning building and hostage situation all in one issue. And almost every Alamat book in the late 90s that featured a superteam did the whole hostage situation thing. (God bless us all!) Anyway, this is all a segue to “What is a good example of a first issue of a new super team?” Well, I’m glad you asked. Below is an article I wrote about Warren Ellis’ “Stormwatch”. In 40-pages, Ellis was able to set-up the world of Stormwatch, introduce the new characters, tell you what they’re all about, and well… he did put in ...