Hawksmoor
Amazing Spiderfan
Everyone always has one; someone who stands out for them as the best thing since sliced bread (not that there are many things these days which couldn't compete for that title on some level, with most of them being more sophisticated and/or useful than the aforementioned sliced bread).
So, who will you choose?
My own personal favourite is Warren Ellis; as far as I'm concerned, they don't come better. The main reason for this, I feel, lies within his approach to comic book writing in the first place. Ellis has admitted that he is not a comic-book fan, on the whole, and enjoys very little out of the industry; this means that when he writes, he finds some way to twist or reshape genres, all in an effort to make something that he would consider reading, were he just another fan in the store.
This approach is well-known in his tranformation of the application of the comic-book deconstructionist genre using the United Nations super-team StormWatch, finally killing them and letting The Authority rise from the ashes, and in Planetary, perhaps the antithesis of The Authority in style, since it is incredibly subtle, understated and downplayed.
But whilst these works are excellent, and many of his lesser-known works are also incredible, it was his work on Transmetropolitan, a series of his own design, that made me realise his true brilliance. Set in a truly dystopian future (made so by the jarring resemblances to current culture, and the extremes that it might reach), in a megalopolis known only as The City, it centers on Spider Jerusalem, an outlaw journalist who seems to be the last man alive who is willing to search for truth in the corrupt and dirty world.
It is fairly clear from the outset that Spider is in some way an avatar of Ellis, a means of communicating his love and hate for this world, and the people in it. This is a true work of love and passion; it allows the reader to see exactly what Ellis thinks of the world, and the populace who inhabit it, the populace who cannot truly afford to inhabit it, and those bastards who, intentionally or otherwise, manage to somehow make the lives of those around them that little bit worse.
Using allegorical plotlines and devices, Transmetropolitan may be a fictional tale, but the issues and personalities it depicts are very real indeed; it is a masterowrk, and only a true master could have conceived of it, let alone executed it in such a flawless fashion.
So, over to you...
So, who will you choose?
My own personal favourite is Warren Ellis; as far as I'm concerned, they don't come better. The main reason for this, I feel, lies within his approach to comic book writing in the first place. Ellis has admitted that he is not a comic-book fan, on the whole, and enjoys very little out of the industry; this means that when he writes, he finds some way to twist or reshape genres, all in an effort to make something that he would consider reading, were he just another fan in the store.
This approach is well-known in his tranformation of the application of the comic-book deconstructionist genre using the United Nations super-team StormWatch, finally killing them and letting The Authority rise from the ashes, and in Planetary, perhaps the antithesis of The Authority in style, since it is incredibly subtle, understated and downplayed.
But whilst these works are excellent, and many of his lesser-known works are also incredible, it was his work on Transmetropolitan, a series of his own design, that made me realise his true brilliance. Set in a truly dystopian future (made so by the jarring resemblances to current culture, and the extremes that it might reach), in a megalopolis known only as The City, it centers on Spider Jerusalem, an outlaw journalist who seems to be the last man alive who is willing to search for truth in the corrupt and dirty world.
It is fairly clear from the outset that Spider is in some way an avatar of Ellis, a means of communicating his love and hate for this world, and the people in it. This is a true work of love and passion; it allows the reader to see exactly what Ellis thinks of the world, and the populace who inhabit it, the populace who cannot truly afford to inhabit it, and those bastards who, intentionally or otherwise, manage to somehow make the lives of those around them that little bit worse.
Using allegorical plotlines and devices, Transmetropolitan may be a fictional tale, but the issues and personalities it depicts are very real indeed; it is a masterowrk, and only a true master could have conceived of it, let alone executed it in such a flawless fashion.
So, over to you...
