warren_ellis

People often ask me what comics scripts look like — or, at least, what my comics scripts look like, as there is no industry standard for comics scriptwriting. I have a few scripts up here on the site, and you’re welcome to download them. I write in OpenOffice and save in RTF. Beginning writers may find it instructive to compare the scripts with the published work.

(Please, don’t ask to be shown other scripts instead. These are the ones I have available. Okay?)

MINISTRY OF SPACE #1.

DESOLATION JONES #1.

DESOLATION JONES #7.

(Yes, JONES will be back one day.)

FELL #1.

(And so will FELL.)

warren_ellis

At my shithole today:

* The MATT FRACTION Interrogation 2009 - comics writer Matt Fraction kindly taking questions from the proletariat

* REMAKE/REMODEL: Zero

* Whitechapel Radio Is On

* Warren’s Ancient Jukebox - fear

* Warren’s Work FAQ (Revised Nov 2009)

* Eliza Gauger’s SWEATSHOP

warren_ellis

This, on the other hand, is amazing.

The remains of a mighty Persian army said to have drowned in the sands of the western Egyptian desert 2,500 years ago might have been finally located, solving one of archaeology’s biggest outstanding mysteries, according to Italian researchers.

Bronze weapons, a silver bracelet, an earring and hundreds of human bones found in the vast desolate wilderness of the Sahara desert have raised hopes of finally finding the lost army of Persian King Cambyses II. The 50,000 warriors were said to be buried by a cataclysmic sandstorm in 525 B.C.

"We have found the first archaeological evidence of a story reported by the Greek historian Herodotus," Dario Del Bufalo, a member of the expedition from the University of Lecce, told Discovery News…

warren_ellis

Matt Jones on his generation of the GET EXCITED AND MAKE THINGS graphic: the point of it, its brief history, and its new Creative Commons license. All of which just gives me an excuse to post it again:

warren_ellis

Ariana Osborne, designer of this place, SHIVERING SANDS, etc., talking about POD and the book, because:

…apparently, there’s a bunch of folks paying close attention to how Shivering Sands does so they can figure out if POD is “worth their time.”

And I have absolutely no fucking clue what that means, so I’ve just got to talk about it…

warren_ellis

1. Entrance to the Hotel Rivington, 2. prejuice, 3. New Hair, 4. New print: Honeydrip, 5. FA choker, 6. On final approach

warren_ellis

THE SPOILS by Zola Jesus is one of my favourite albums of this year.  But it’s kind of hard to find on CD.  (The mp3 download is easy to find, I’ve even seen it on Amazon, and got mine at eMusic.)  But now there’s a store open at zolajesus.com, where you can buy it, her other records, and a t-shirt that I’m going to pick up for Lili.

warren_ellis

Nick Barrucci from Dynamite Comics asked me to do him the favour of posting this. This seems like an entirely worthy charity, well deserving of your investigation:

Saved Whiskers Rescue Organization, Inc. announced today that world renowned painter Alex Ross has donated an original piece of classic Catwoman art to Saved Whiskers Rescue Organization, Inc. (S.W.R.O.). The piece was created exclusively for Saved Whiskers Rescue Organization to raise money to help rescue animals. The piece will be auctioned through Ebay at the following URL: eBayISAPI.dll-ViewItem&item=250524615645 . The piece is signed by Alex Ross and measures 10.75 inches wide by 23 inches tall and has never been seen anywhere…

Full press release at the link.

warren_ellis

TOTW is basically a joke that Ariana and I pull each week in our joint guise as the International Electrophonic Unit. Basically, we take some of the stupider things I’ve said on Twitter and elsewhere, often in a state of extreme alcoholic refreshment or severe sleep deprivation, and put them on a t-shirt. Ariana set up a Cafe Press store (because this is a joke and engaging with a serious maker of t-shirts would be less funny to us), and… well, once a week, here we are.

Through this website and this Cafe Press store, we’re going to release one t-shirt a week. It’ll go live on Monday… and it’ll die Sunday night — midnight UK time, more often than not. Each one lives for a week, and then it’s replaced by the next week’s shirt. Until I either run out of dumb ideas or Ariana’s brain explodes.

So, every Monday, I’ll post the new shirt here, and you can peer at it more at http://www.cafepress.com/electrophonic.

Anyway. I present to you T-Shirt Of The Week #003: FUCKABLE ZOMBIE:

We also offer a couple of perennial items. Mostly because I wanted one of these for myself:

(And also a MAN COOK MEAT WITH FIRE "splatter-shield", because Ariana’s crazy)

Thank you for your kind attention.

warren_ellis

I told you. I told you all. The Dog is the Enemy of the Human. But you wouldn’t believe me. Now look.

…dogs have a greater eco-footprint than gas-guzzling SUVs.

See? SEE?

warren_ellis

• Oldest American artefact unearthed : Nature News
  "The tool shows that people were living in North America well before the widespread Clovis culture of 12,900 to 12,400 years ago"
  (tags:history )
• Brazil crime wars: Spiderman’s story of drugs and Jesus in Rio’s slums | World news | The Guardian
  ""If you add them all up I control 15 communities," boasted Spiderman as his shiny 4×4 hurtled through the narrow backstreets of western Rio de Janeiro. Behind the wheel was Juarez Mendes da Silva, 28, one of the Brazilian capital's most wanted drug lords, better known by the nickname Spiderman. The words "Jesus" and "Christ" were tattooed on to his forearms in black. In the boot his pet dog, Bloodsucker, shared space with an M-16 assault rifle."
  (tags:crime drugs pol )
• Detroit: Urban Laboratory and the New American Frontier | Newgeography.com
  Not a lot new for Detroit watchers, but I love the phrase therein: "urban prairie"
  (tags:cities )
• New podcast: Shift Run Stop ? Roo Reynolds
  Roo says: "I?ve been working with Leila Johnston on a new thing. It?s a fortnightly podcast called Shift Run Stop and as she explains it?s ?an ambient soundscape sort of production, an undulation of chatter and noise, ideas, games and food?."
  (tags:podcasts )
• re-inhabited circle-k?s - mammoth // building nothing out of something
  "photographer Paho Mann documents the diverse array of stores that re-inhabit the empty shells abandoned by the national corporation Circle-K; the current lives of Circle-K's include "a dry cleaners, a couple of florist shops, a tattoo parlor, a tuxedo rental place, several mini-marts and dollar stores, and Bridgett?s Last Laugh Karaoke and Fish Fry." "
  (tags:architecture culture )
• The Psychedelic Review Archives 1963-1971
  "MAPS has posted PDF scans of The Psychedelic Review Archives 1963-1971."
  (tags:magazine history drugs )

warren_ellis

The self-portrait photographer/"caricature artist" Kristamas Klousch finally has a website up for her wonderful, ghostly and irreal work.

trowatreize

Remember remember the fifth of november. The gun powder treason and plot.

I can think of no reason why the gun power treason, should ever be forgot.

Tallgeese ...
 

warren_ellis

In which I make a case for Paul Morley as national treasure, champion of music journalism and the oldest digital pioneer in newspapers. And also I make a pitch for a TV job. And a statue:

I think we can all agree that I should have been given The South Bank Show after Melvyn Bragg retired from it. If nothing else, it is way past time that the serious arts media gave coverage to those elements of the Japanese film industry that produce such inventive, beautifully designed and thematically muscular works as The Octopus Invades the Vagina, The Fish That Has is Crunched And The Wound is Received [sic] and The Eel and Loach to Attack in Lasciviousness are Insane [sic].

You don’t really want to search those terms from work. Which is why one requires the piercing artistic gaze of a South Bank Show to discover and present such items for the engaged viewer’s consideration. Frankly, I’m the only real choice to replace Bragg when he retires…

warren_ellis

There’s something powerfully weird about this beautiful photoset by Marta Lamovsek, not least in this image, where the model really does look like an alien landed in eastern Europe.

warren_ellis

Superb new prints from Laurenn McCubbin:

warren_ellis

Wonderful.  The first of three interviews, this one with Michael Butterworth, about the glorious and fraught history of what remains Britain’s most ambitious and most hated alternative publishing company, Savoy Books.  I’m even delighted by the page scans that decorate the piece.  I’m quoted in there somewhere, talking about the time they sent the co-publisher to prison…