Posts Tagged ‘warren ellis’

Recommended Web Comic: Freak Angels

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Warren Ellis is the mad SF prophet of the comics indus­try. The man lives on the edge of the now, and has a vora­cious appetite for new things. This makes read­ing his blog a must. His comics range from gonzo SF future sto­ries like Transmetropolitan to noir detec­tive sto­ries like Desolation Jones. And right now, you can read his lat­est piece, Freak Angels, for free.

Freak Angels is about purple-​​eyed psy­chic peo­ple who ended the world when they were teenagers.  Now they hold a small civ­i­liza­tion together in Whitechapel London.  This is a quiet and thought­ful comic, mov­ing at a very leisurely pace, and I love it.  I love the hints at their pow­ers and I love the steam tech. There are hints of very bad things to come.  One of their for­mer mem­bers is out to kill them all.  Did I men­tion that London is under water?

It’s free, and it’s good, so you should read it, okay?  Let me know if you like it or even if you don’t.  I’m curi­ous to see what oth­ers think of it.

Fantastika

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Fantastika

Today, in his email newslet­ter, Warren Ellis offered this word as the Russian equiv­a­lent of spec­u­la­tive fic­tion: fan­tastika. I love it lots for rea­sons I can­not explain. The word has the mouth-​​feel that I want from a word describ­ing what I do. Would it be pre­ten­tious of me to adopt this word as my genre? Probably so. I will try it out for a while any­way. To see if it fits.

Been doing writ­ing most days on my lunch break from the day job lately. It’s about all my poor tired brain can stand, maybe 45 min­utes of sus­tained work. The prob­lem is, the piece I am work­ing on is lack­ing in the gonzo imag­i­na­tion that I want. I’ve been think­ing too much inside the greater box. I need to break out and really go side­ways with this one. For instance, I was writ­ing a small inter­ro­ga­tion scene, and I ended up writ­ing it straight cliche. I real­ized that most of the story was com­ing out that way. I wasn’t think­ing hard enough. I shall go to din­ner now and talk it over with Sarah and see what I can do to break free of my own medi­oc­rity this time. I’ve done it before. I know it can be done. I just need to moti­vate myself.