Warren Ellis
British author of comic books and graphic novels.
You're confessing to murder. Two people just confessed murder to me in the same minute. Why aren't I happy? I swear I had masturbation fantasies about this.
After this there's nothing. Do you see? There's no sin, no Hell for our bastards to burn in. No great punishment in the next life for the killers and rapists.
I don't drive, myself: couldn't afford to learn when I was a kid, and discovered by the time I was 18 that girls drove. For years, when people asked me if I drove, I told them that that was what girls were for. This means, however, that I'm totally stranded when in California, where taxis are apparently considered the work of the devil or something. New York; there's a civilised town. London, of course, has the best cabmen in the world.
In cultural news from here in the old country, Pete Doherty is apparently still a "genius," which presumably means we have a hidden race of intellectuals who express their sheer brilliance by rubbing crack rocks into their eyes, stealing all their mates' stuff and failing to get it up for their girlfriends. Oh, and Kate Bush is making a comeback, which I would imagine means that Tori Amos will have to go into some kind of witness protection scheme.
Spoke briefly with my family after the interminable service, during which the priest manfully ignored the fact that I wasn't singing or praying (they don't always), and then took off. I don't do the after- funeral. It tends to be a bunch of old people you don't know drinking all the booze, and then a lot of messy drama.
On convention appearances: I actually thought about attending San Diego a couple of years ago, and talked to a publisher about it. I told them I'd need a business-class flight (better air filters — otherwise I spend a day on an inhaler) and a decent-sized hotel room. They said: "But if we give you that, what will Neil Gaiman ask for?"
Shots of whisky between finishing a magnum of champagne? Don't do that again. I think I've woken up with motor neurone disease.
So fuck 2005 right in the eyesocket. Horrible year. Will 2006 be any better? I'll settle for not having to bury any more of my friends for a year. Hoping to travel more. Also, forming a religion of some kind would be good. Embracing my destiny as Internet Jesus. (Or, at the very least, Wise Man Of The Internet Forest, who appears half-clothed at the treeline every day to make Proclamations And Propheses. You all want to fuck me now, eh?)
Portable culture is crucial to any society in motion. Manga in all its indigenous forms has been a thing built for Japanese commuters. Part of why that style of anthology doesn't play so well in America is that it's a culture of private cars, not public transport.
(On Timothy McVeigh references) In terms of DOKTOR SLEEPLESS (I don't remember much of TRANSMET), it's just a nod to how quickly we assimilate our monsters. How many years was it between Charlie Manson being the terror of California and Charlie Manson being an image on joke t-shirts? I have a shirt somewhere with a pic of his face and, underneath it, the words CHARLIE DON'T SURF. Hitler's a cartoon figure now. Eminem dressed up as bin Laden within a couple of years of 9/11. It's interesting to me how we defang our nightmares -- by mocking them, but also by wearing their skins.
Damn, I love drinking. Drinking and watching rugby. I note it's your Superbowl this weekend, my Yanqui friends. I think it's really nice that in your otherwise primitive society you make such a big deal about men playing a Girl's game. Which must not be mistaken for rugby, as you know, for rugby is a game for Men and Women. American football? Girl's game. Right up there with netball. England are about to play Wales at rugby, and it's on here at the pub. Camera closes in on the England team: scarred mutants to a man, with big weird bald patches where the hair has been ripped right out of their scalps in handfuls.
On the year in music, 2005: This year, the US got The Go!Team, whom I've been listening to since the Junior Kickstart EP. Which makes up for exporting Coldplay, I guess, for which we should have been prosecuted under international war crimes law. But, you know, you keep fucking with us at airports and we'll keep sending you educationally subnormal ponces with socks for hats.
UK TV is worse than it's ever been. For every piece of evil brilliance like ABSOLUTE POWER (which I don't think I've told you non-Brits about before), there's five things like WIFE SWAP. The one I saw had an obvious sub, whose husband had entrained her to dress in a hip-slit cheongsam and black stockings for dinner, swapped into a family where the man of the house was a monosyllabic chav whose head would have had a Victorian anthropologist proclaim a whole new species of subhuman. I'm not entirely sure how Channel 4 hasn't lost its license.
On the impending release of Nextwave #1: But if you're one of those real frightening anal sticklers for Marvel continuity? And you get genuinely angry about people playing fast and loose with Marvel comics canon? Please don't pick it up. You'll have a heart attack, and I don't need that on my conscience, despite the wonders it'd do for my reputation.
I have decided that I shall be referred to only as Love Swami for the rest of the week, and shall delete any email not headed with the term.
I'm feeling harder than Jesus and sexier than Buddha.
I really need about six more hours in every day. Ten past two in the afternoon and I can barely keep my eyes open already. I miss dexies, I really do.
on the success of Fell #1: A lot of people — including some respected professionals — told me that lowering the price of a comic was suicide. We're probably going to top out at around 25,000. So, basically, up your arses.
It is so fucking cold. Outside, the sky's cut in half. There's this huge black cloudbank covering half the sky, just radiating cold and rain and doom, waiting for me to step outside. And it's not moving. It's waiting. The other half? Blue sky. Every erg of heat in England just flying up through it into space. There's some Russian bastard on the ISS right now looking down and saying, see, my country is saved, the Russian winter is moving east to FREEZE WARREN'S NUTS OFF.
Stress has finally caught up with me. I know this because I have spent the last ten minutes considering whether or not the theme music to HAWAII 5-0 is in fact the greatest TV theme music ever. Or whether it is in fact the theme to VAN DER VALK... And have downloaded both of them off the internet. In the name of God. Someone help me think about sex or death or something. Thank you.