I am not a comics geek (I know about popular culture too, watch while I show you)

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Yes, this is a thread about Warren Ellis and how his obsessive desire to prove how in touch with modern society dominates his comics. List examples here!

To start:

Global Frequency #12 - "This mission is teh suck." "We are so fuXored." "w00t!"
Iron Man #1 - There's an extended section of dialogue as Tony looks out of the window that's directly lifted from "Murray Ostril (They Don't Sleep Anymore On The Beach)" by godspeed you! black emperor.

Also to discuss predecessors of this, as Silver Age creators react hilariously to the Beat Generation. (e.g. Snapper Carr)

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 12:34 (twenty-one years ago)

See also Garth "Isn't Bill Hicks brill" Ennis.

― Ray (Ray), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 12:54 (twenty-one years ago)

I am pretty sure that Grant Morrison used to be like this when he was writing vertigo style titles, but I can't think of any good examples. doh.

whenever people say pop culture + comix, I always think of the Disco Dazzler!!!! How I loved her roller-skates and bacofoil flares combo. Though on reflection, the ability to convert groovy disco beatz into flashing lights would not actually be very handy in an actual disco (unless it was a shit community centre style mobile disco...)

― Mark C (Markco), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 13:25 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, I hate that stuff, but I guess a comics writer has as much right to use it as anyone anywhere else does... and arguably, having characters spout this rubbish is slightly less naff than spouting it yourself. (Though only slightly, I stress.)

I think seeing embarrassing cultural references in old comics can be funny. In new comics, it's just crap. Maybe Warren Ellis gets to be funny in 30 years.

― _chrissie (chrissie1068), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 13:43 (twenty-one years ago)

I totally can't tell the difference between Ellis and Ennis, even though I really like Planetary and some of the Hellblazer stuff.

― Huk-L, Tuesday, 16 November 2004 14:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Ellis - smoking characters half-jokingly threaten to rip each others spines out, against the background of aint-it-cool technology that wouldn't work. Issues will be late.
Ennis - characters punch and shoot each other in superficially amusing ways. The nature of 'real men' and Irishness will be examined (and will turn out to be incompatible with homosexuality). Steve Dillon will do the art.

― Ray (Ray), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 14:38 (twenty-one years ago)

So which one wrote the Dangerous Habits story in Hellblazer, which contains all of the above, except technology and shooting.

― Huk-L, Tuesday, 16 November 2004 14:45 (twenty-one years ago)

No technology + Irish wizard -> Ennis

― Ray (Ray), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 14:48 (twenty-one years ago)

So Ellis did Transmetropolitan, then? I've read the first one, and wasn't impressed by anything other than the sheer dick-waggery of it, which I suppose has its merits. Ennis is Planetary?

― Huk-L, Tuesday, 16 November 2004 14:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Ellis did Transmet and Planetary.

x-post

Hellblazer with masonic conspiracy resulting in the death of Diana + reams of technobabble = Ellis.

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 14:56 (twenty-one years ago)

No, Planetary and Transmet are both Ellis. (Smoking Spider Jerusalem = Smoking Elijah Snow, Transmet has gene therapies and nanoclouds, Planetary has snowflakes and quantum.
Transmet is very 'I know about popular culture too, watch while I show you', because its basically Hunter S Thompson and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail.

― Ray (Ray), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 15:00 (twenty-one years ago)

But there's so much less screaming in in Planetary!

― Huk-L, Tuesday, 16 November 2004 15:02 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm calling BS on all you folks complaining about pop.cult references / jargon (AND CRAP SCIENCE) (like, geez, welcome to ComicBookVille, here's your costume of unstable molecules, welcome to the Negative Zone). Even if something's a period piece, there's going to be unavoidable references to the time & place from which it (the writing) sprung, and there's nothing wrong with putting in things from modern times in a book set in modern times, you technophobic crankaholics.

FWIW, Ellis also drops some pwnage in Ultimate Nightmare #1. Whatever - all writers have their ticks & foibles; I just take that stuff in stride. I roll my eyes at that stuff just as much as I roll my eyes at the X-Men wandering into a beatnik bar wearing bowties and spats.

― David R. (popshots75`), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 15:12 (twenty-one years ago)

They both have a tendency toward juvenile gross-out humor (or even worse, juvenile gross-out seriousness), but for some reason it bothers me a lot more in Ellis than in Ennis. Possibly because the Ellis work I like the most is completely free of it (like Planetary and Oceans, for ex.)?

Re: h4ck3r sl4ng, Warren Ellis has clearly been spending too much time on livejournal.

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 15:14 (twenty-one years ago)

masonic conspiracy resulting in the death of Diana

Wait, didn't this happen in the Invisibles too?

Speak of which, for all his, um, futurism and general po-mo-ness, Grant Morrison doesn't really strike me in the same way. Where Ellis would be cyberpunk, Morrison would be 60s Beatlemania, psychedelia, and crazy Kirbytech.

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 15:17 (twenty-one years ago)

There are good and bad ways of dropping in your pop culture references. Good ways are posters on walls in the background, characters putting down books when someone else comes in. Bad ways include two-page monologues about why Bill Hicks is so cool. A heavy hand is a bad thing, whether its signalling a plot twist, pointing to a theme/moral, or throwing in a pop-culture reference.

― Ray (Ray), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 15:17 (twenty-one years ago)

xpost a couple up to DavidR,

I know what you're saying, there isn't wrong with putting anything modern in something. It's when it's done deliberately and comes off as awkward:

Snapper Carr is clearly the product of men from a different generation trying to incorporate something they fail to understand in the most ham-fisted of ways; one can only assume in the belief it might sell more copy.

Warren Ellis is dick-waving, plain and simple. I am more modernist/I like more obscure music/I am better read. No wonder Bendis calls him out over it in Powers #7. (Don't get me wrong here, it's part of what makes him the writer he is and I don't object to it - but he comes off as 'trendy dad' a lot of the time.)

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 15:21 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, The Invisibles has more cultural references per issue than any Warren Ellis book I can think of (particularly Transmetropolitan, where the count lies around zero), but not in an intrusive way.

The Bill Hicks issue of Preacher is one of the medium's low points, and I really like Bill Hicks and Preacher.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 15:22 (twenty-one years ago)

I was about to bring up Livejournal, yeah -- Ellis spends more time on there than anyone I know except the girl I dropped ages ago who'd post when she was putting the dishes in the dishwasher and post again when they were done. I have no idea when or how he writes, he seems to have become a full-time net presence.

― Tep (ktepi), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 15:25 (twenty-one years ago)

He comes across more "quasi-goth chicks keep sending me photos of themselves, let me talkie their lingo" than he does trendy dad, though.

― Tep (ktepi), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 15:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Ha.

Does Bendis really 'call him out' in that Powers issue? Surely he did it with Ellis' permission, and I could believe that Ellis is just like that in person (nice guy, drones on a bit about comics & culture, doesn't handle being held at gunpoint well).

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 15:47 (twenty-one years ago)

That said, Ellis' blog sometimes turns up interesting stuff under the rocks.

Oh yes, and goffgirls...

I'm generally not much a fan of Mr. Ellis' writing, though. Planetary could be great, but without pop culture to pastiche, it's not offering too much (I'm only reading it in trades, so it could be that volume three is some kind of revelation other than "superheroes are fucking killing the medium".)

And Morrison, as much as I love him, went through a total technohippiepagan phase that seemed straight out of the pages of Mondo 2000 that drove me nuts. Or at least I think he did...

― Matt Maxwell (Matt M.), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 15:49 (twenty-one years ago)

xpost
Bendis clearly implies "it's no wonder people want to shoot you, the site that comes out of your mouth" and makes even greater hints to that end in the lettercol in that issue and the next couple. Ellis is clearly in on the interpretation though.

― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 15:51 (twenty-one years ago)

Ellis's dialogue (or at least that monologue) in Powers is word for word something he wrote elsewhere (probably on his journal).

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 15:53 (twenty-one years ago)

Is Planetary really anti-superhero? Except for my pet theory that 'The Four' are the Fantastic Four, I just read it as a good irony-free story.

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 15:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Spoiler for Planetary:

The Four ARE The Fantastic Four. It was obvious to me from the description and the way they laid out the panels/sets for them.

The DC superheroes tried to kill Doc Bronze in the first story arc fer cryin' out loud.

Superheroes are rewriting the history of the medium and controlling it, and only Mary Sue and his faithful helpers can stop it!

― Matt Maxwell (Matt M.), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 16:04 (twenty-one years ago)

There might be some subtext re: pulpy precedents (i.e. Elijah Snow & the other folks born on 1/1/1900 - that was the birthdate, right?) and the modern hero types (i.e. The Four, clearly an FF analogue, albeit a meglomaniacal one), but I'm in Jordan's boat. Batten down those hatches!

x-post with MM!

― David R. (popshots75`), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 16:06 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm interested to see where it goes after this most recent issue, the gist of which was basically, "Shouldn't you have more important things to worry about than the Four, Elijah Snow?"

Aren't there only a few issues left?

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 16:10 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, aldo (& Ray), you're right, but, for my money, that part of Ellis' work (the pop.science & "modern" bits) intrigues me - I know eff all about the mystic/physiotechno stuff, so even if it's bullspunk, it's intriguing (if only on a theoretical mondoKirbyTech level). And, like I said, I take the jargon usage in stride. I'll take Ellis' grasp at haX0r appropriation (likely a result of what Tep's talking about) over, say, a writer trying to get down w/ the grunge on the level of a Hi & Lois strip.

Actually, the comparison implied at the beginning of the thread (comparing Ellis' appropriation of kewl slang & Silver Age artists grappling with & chuckling @ hipster doofi) isn't appropriate - Ellis seems to be interacting w/ this stuff as a PEER, making a "legitimate" attempt to understand that world (& co-opt it / co-exist within it); Kirby et. al. are the workweek dads shaking their heads & clucking their thick tongues at the goatees & berets & crazy bongo beats like missionaries dismissing savages. One cat's Snapper Carr could be another person's Pieface.

― David R. (popshots75`), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 16:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Warren Ellis linked to a site of mine once and said nice things about it. This both makes me approve of him and proves his Disco Dadditude more.

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 16 November 2004 23:54 (twenty-one years ago)

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