WARREN ELLIS's IGNITION CITY

[ultramandingo]

not sure whos publishing but......

bad signal
WARREN ELLIS


Working up IGNITION CITY. The old
space heroes never died: they got
deported. A 13-episode first
season, like an HBO series. Finding
the language is a struggle: it needs
to be filthy, and it needs to dance
like DEADWOOD's, but not to *sound*
like DEADWOOD, if you see what I
mean. I can't just ape it. It needs to
have its own pattern. There's a
certain joy, probably childish, in
having Flash Gordon say "f***,"
and in recasting Yuri Gagarin as a
town drunk. People pulling ageing
ray guns in the street. Dr Zarkov
as a miserable Tesla in his room
of lightning, forbidden from building
spaceships. Space heroes with
nowhere left to go, living in the
barren center of Earth's only
spaceport... Buck Rogers back from
the future, trying to drink away
all the history-to-come that he
remembers from his time in the 25th
Century... It's all a bit meta, and I
feel like I'm channelling Alan Moore
a bit, but I've never tried that Big
Post-Modern Graphic Novel before
(Rian Hughes calls me The Last
Modernist), and I feel like giving it
a go, if only to say I've done it...

Also, it's a big ensemble piece, with
a large lead "cast", which is
something I've never really done
before -- I've always been more
comfortable with single leads. I'm
terrified that I'm going to end up
plotting character "arcs" on a big
sheet of paper...

---
Sent via mobile device
probably in the pub


Flash Gordon says "fuck," im there!!!!!

[Viking Bastard]

It's not being published yet. He's just playing with ideas.

[ultramandingo]

i just put on the abc thread so it would be the first thing up there HA! cus im all megolmianical ( sp?) and stuff , plus some one should get off there butts and give ellis some dough , plus flash gordon says f***

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

It just sounds like League of Extrodanry Gentlemen meets Planetary meets Marvels MAX line meets Sleeper.

I thought he already did most of this in Switchblade Honey.

Why can't he just create his own characters instead of using/riffing over peoples one's?

[Tadhg]

Jack Cross? Desolation Jones? Richard Fell?

[Charles RB]

Why can't he just create his own characters instead of using/riffing over peoples one's?

Fell, Desolation Jones, Transmetropolitan, Reload, Jack Cross, Jenny Sparks, Lazarus Churchyard.

[The Adventurer]

Why can't he just create his own characters instead of using/riffing over peoples one's?

To be fair there is a certain allure to these kinds of projects. Taking your classic archtypes, infusing them with modern storytelling, and a twist of cynisism.

I'll definitly be checking it out, if only to make sure my "Fallen from grace Space Heroes" writing project doesnt' step on too many toes.

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

Fell, Desolation Jones, Transmetropolitan, Reload, Jack Cross, Jenny Sparks, Lazarus Churchyard.

A rather scattered list there....

And I haven't read the most recent stuff (I'm a trade man) but Transmet featured Hunter S Thompson in the future....

Jenny Sparks, apart from appearing in every Ellis book since, did appear in a team where half of them were based on other superheroes - and damn near every threat they fought was as well.

But I take the point, he does do original stuff, but then there's stuff like Planetary, which started strong but is now just about re-telling Pulp heroes stories.

[ultramandingo]

FIVE GUNS will adjust back to late
summer. BLACKGAS ( ellis does zombies!!!!)is January.
IGNITION CITY might launch
mid-summer -- we're doing some
format costings on that.

so there...

and in other "using/riffing over peoples " ideas news....

bad signal
WARREN ELLIS

I'm doing an extra job for Avatar
in the next six months. William
came to me with such an outlandish
and alien fucking idea that I
couldn't resist trying it.

"I want a barbarian book," he said.
"Like Conan and all that."

Now, I tend to think the 30K or so
who're reading CONAN in English
are an unassailable audience. (I
qualify that simply because I know
that Conan has been hugely popular
for decades in Norway.) And I
really have very little feeling for
fantasy at all. I read all the Conan
paperbacks as kids, that huge line
of reprints and fix-ups organised
by L Sprague DeCamp and Lin Carter.
I remember kind of enjoying the
John Milius flick with Arnie. All I
remember of the sequel is that
Grace Jones put half a dozen stunt
men in hospital. (I will always have
time for the brave and intelligent
Dolph Lundgren, he who impregnated
Grace Jones and somehow lived to
tell the tale.) But, God, I haven't
thought about this stuff in more
than 20 years. Gil Kane practically
lost his shirt on "barbarian comics"
in the 70s. And the process fills me
with horror. Mike Moorcock always
began his quickie fantasy novels by
drawing up the maps. Maps, for
Christ's sake.

The only successful "barbarian"
character in modern comics that
I can think of, outside of Conan, is
Pat Mills' Slaine. Mills is one of
comics' best researchers, and it was
all there waiting for him in the
legends of Cuchullain, including the
bizarre "warp-spasm" that turned
the Irish berserker warriors literally
inside-out with rage and bloodlust.

It is, in fact, such a horribly difficult
prospect that I think I should try it.

.........he should do a grace jones book

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

FIVE GUNS will adjust back to late
summer. BLACKGAS ( ellis does zombies!!!!)is January.
IGNITION CITY might launch
mid-summer -- we're doing some
format costings on that.

so there...

and in other "using/riffing over peoples " ideas news....

bad signal
WARREN ELLIS

I'm doing an extra job for Avatar
in the next six months. William
came to me with such an outlandish
and alien fucking idea that I
couldn't resist trying it.

"I want a barbarian book," he said.
"Like Conan and all that."

Now, I tend to think the 30K or so
who're reading CONAN in English
are an unassailable audience. (I
qualify that simply because I know
that Conan has been hugely popular
for decades in Norway.) And I
really have very little feeling for
fantasy at all. I read all the Conan
paperbacks as kids, that huge line
of reprints and fix-ups organised
by L Sprague DeCamp and Lin Carter.
I remember kind of enjoying the
John Milius flick with Arnie. All I
remember of the sequel is that
Grace Jones put half a dozen stunt
men in hospital. (I will always have
time for the brave and intelligent
Dolph Lundgren, he who impregnated
Grace Jones and somehow lived to
tell the tale.) But, God, I haven't
thought about this stuff in more
than 20 years. Gil Kane practically
lost his shirt on "barbarian comics"
in the 70s. And the process fills me
with horror. Mike Moorcock always
began his quickie fantasy novels by
drawing up the maps. Maps, for
Christ's sake.

The only successful "barbarian"
character in modern comics that
I can think of, outside of Conan, is
Pat Mills' Slaine. Mills is one of
comics' best researchers, and it was
all there waiting for him in the
legends of Cuchullain, including the
bizarre "warp-spasm" that turned
the Irish berserker warriors literally
inside-out with rage and bloodlust.

It is, in fact, such a horribly difficult
prospect that I think I should try it.

.........he should do a grace jones book

See this one gets me excited, if only because of the potential.

hopefully he'll find somthing original to do with it, rather than just make fun of it.

[ultramandingo]

more ellis

* New project has gone on the
schedule: WOLFSKIN, a three-issue
serial with Juan Jose Ryp at Avatar.
It's me trying to break another of
the genres I've never really gotten
a stab at or gotten along with. It's
your actual Barbarian Fantasy. Big
blokes with swords. Except it also
contains my love of Norse culture,
samurai drama, history and what
is now called entheobotany. No
elves, hobbits or anything cute.
Three issues of skullcrushing and
the point where Conan, Slaine and
Yojimbo meet. I believe it's set for
April, the month after BLACKGAS
concludes.
As I wrap WOLFSKIN #1, I'm amused
to note that Wildstorm have
announced a fantasy line called, I
believe, Storm & Sorcery. We were
talking on the Engine the other day
about The Next Big Thing, and some
people came down on the side of
Vikings. I already had WOLFSKIN,
which has heavy Viking overtones,
in at Avatar. So it's big blokes with
no shirts and swords called Leg-Biter
for the foreseeable.

* You LOST nerds need to quit
bugging me.

* I placed IGNITION CITY with a
publisher, but that's the last you're
going to hear of the project for a
while.

* The Robin Hood graphic novella is
also placed, and I think it has an
artist, but that's also going to
proceed on the quiet for the next
several months.



Robin Hood!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ultramandingo]

WARREN ELLIS

Gah. No matter what I do, IGNITION CITY won't
leave me alone. I really, really didn't want to do
another retro book, but this story just keeps
nagging and scratching and clawing at me. And
when a story does that, you just have to ride
with it.

What I'm doing now is building stuff into it that
makes it richer, that makes it somewhat more
relevant. In a lot of ways, it ties into early
21st C "future ennui" -- the whole "where's my
fucking jetpack" thing, which still applies and
is still being said. I think a lot of the heavy
futurism and political stuff I wanted to talk about
will now go into MISTER SLEEPLESS.

I put the blame for all this on Magdalene
Veen, space gypsy, and her flight hat.

http://www.myspace.com/magdaleneveen

I need to work this goddamn book out of
my system. It's getting in the way of all my
thinking. The thing I was aiming for will
have to wait until next year.

So you heard it here first: something called
IGNITION CITY will go on the schedule sometime
in the next six months

[ultramandingo]

It's not being published yet. He's just playing with ideas.

http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=3090

"Fucking rabbit shit."