Do you like Warren Ellis?
 

Do you like Warren Ellis? You may know him from his work on Transmetropolitan, Stormwatch, Planetary, Authority, and apparently a lenghty run of Excalibur which I was unaware of.

I loved Stormwatch and Authority, but aside from those two, I just have a hard time getting into his work. I don't hate it, but for whatever reason his writing and my brain don't mesh well. Strange, because I think he has a similar style to Grant Morrison, who I do enjoy.

Anyway, I bring up this topic because I'm dropping Astonishing X-Men from my pull list now that Ellis is writing it. I just don't have any interest in reading it.

My english is... ah, not so good.
:p

Also, Warren Ellis wrote some Doom 2099 if that will change your vote one way or the other.

Let me just offer this: if you get a chance to see him in person doing a 1-2 hour talk-about, check it out, he's very entertaining in person.

Now, his actual comic writing? His work-for-hire stuff is so-so (I also dropped Astonishing X-Men now that he's writing it), and isn't a must-read writer for me, but he does better with his creator-owned projects.

I am looking forward to the final Planetary issue to come out (hopefully at year's end if Cassaday can finish up the pages, as Ellis has turned the script over to him, and Cassaday is working on the issue).

I would say 9 times out of 10 I enjoy Ellis' writing. I've enjoyed his run on Thunderbolts, Doktor Sleepless and Fell(so far) among others. I'm also quite excited as he's doing the script for the straight to DVD Castlevania movie(which is my favourite game series)

I would probably drop AXM if it were not for Simone's art. I really don't like this "direction".

I love Ellis' stuff, but sometimes I think he just coasts on reputation (GIJoe, Crooked Little Vein, etc)

I occasionally enjoy Ellis' stories.

My two major problems with his writing:

1) He strikes me as a rather limited creator. He has certain themes and certain stock characters that it seems like he just constantly comes back to.

2) He appears to suffer from some kind of creative ADD. It seems like he loses interest in projects after he's done them for a while -- Transmetropolitan started coasting on fumes during its second year, his books are frequently late...

But Warren Ellis can market himself like nobody else in the industry. Without his talent for self-promotion, I doubt Ellis' career would have lasted as long as it has.

I usually enjoy Ellis's writing. I love almost everything he puts out through Avatar/Apparat, but his Marvel writing as of late has been woefully inconsistent. I enjoyed AXM and Thunderbolts, but his work on newuniversal has been iffy and just about everything he's done in the Ultimate universe has been terrible.

Planetary is absolute brilliance, but this is the biggest underlying problem with the book - most of the time I can't frickin remember what happened in the last issue! Issue 26 came out what, 2 years ago?

I also greatly enjoyed his first novel, Crooked Little Vein, and will be picking up his next novel, Listener, in August.

I like some of his stuff, but I wish he wouldn't write superhero comics given his obvious contempt for the genre.

I really, really enjoyed his Stormwatch, which evolved into the Authority, as well as Planetary, so I guess I like his Wildstorm work (which is a little weird to say).

I read Excalibur when he was on it... the Pete Wisdom years, right? I think I collected it mainly for Pacheco's art, and it was so different from the Excalibur I was familiar with (mainly the Alan Davis years) that I didn't like it all that much. Of his Marvel work, I also read Doom 2099, the Storm miniseries, Ultimate Fantastic Four, Ultimate Galactus Trilogy, new Universal, and his brief x-title run which went nowhere. Nothing really stood out.

I have been very curious to read his Thunderbolts, as I hadn't followed Civil War much at all and Speedball's transformation into this Penance character sounds intriguing.