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Warren EllisAt Avatar Press, Ellis has done Strange Kiss and Stranger Kisses with Mike Wolfer, and Dark Blue and Bad World with Jacen Burrows. Avatar has also published two volumes of his popular internet writings, From the Desk of Warren Ellis, as well as script collections for Strange Kiss and Dark Blue. Upcoming Warren Ellis projects from Avatar Press include Scars, with art by Jacen Burrows, and Strange Killings, a major "series of mini-series" plotmastered by Ellis with art by Mike Wolfer. |
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“Only Steven Grant can write stories that punch you in the face and steal your keys. He remains the best crime writer in comics.” -- Warren Ellis comments on the work of Steven Grant, from the Mortal Souls press release.
"Collapsing over his whisky and setting fire to his beard, he continued..." night-radio.com gets its start. For immediate release NIGHT RADIO is an limited-series anthology edited by Warren Ellis; four 48-page issues, without ads, in black and white, to be published by Avatar Press in the late summer of 2002. Matt Fraction is a webdesigner and filmmaker. Antony Johnston is an author and graphic designer. Micaela Petersen is an artist and musician. They all write comics. It's just that not many people know that yet. Warren Ellis wants to change that. NIGHT RADIO is four four-part serials. One by Warren Ellis, one by Fraction, one by Johnston, one by Micaela. "New voices seem to be emerging much more slowly, in the last couple of years," says Ellis. "Too many of the new writers on my end of the business seem to sound like the old writers, and seem interested only in talking about old things. That's not why I got into comics writing, and those aren't the sort of comics I want to read. But, as we're all aware, the majority of publishers won't look at new writers until they're published somewhere else first; the long-standing Catch-22 for the new writer. It takes a publisher with the guts and madness of Avatar to say, okay, fine, we're going to take these new writers and we're going to treat them like professionals and give them creator-owned deals and do the job right." Collapsing over his whisky and setting fire to his beard, he continued: "I associate night radio with newness. Back in my youth, when dinosaurs ruled the earth, late-night radio was the time when new bands were broken, new musical forms were allowed out, and novelty was the point and not the exception. NIGHT RADIO is me trying to broadcast future music." NIGHT RADIO will make transmissions on a monthly basis from now until the book's launch, providing new information on the title and its creators. An announcements-only email list has been set up to broadcast: go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nightradio/ or email nightradio-subscribe@yahoogroups.com to receive the monthly NIGHT RADIO updates. Further details will emerge in January's transmission.
Warren Ellis Masterminds Series of Continuing Mini Series at Avatar with Strange KillingsThe creator of Transmet and The Authority will add another major project to his endeavors with Strange Killings, a continuing series of mini series by Warren Ellis and Mike Wolfer. Planned to progress as an ongoing saga of successive, self-contained mini series of several issues each, the project will launch in January from Avatar Press. "I think William Gravel stands with Transmet's Spider Jerusalem as being among the best of Warren's characters," says Avatar Press editor in chief William Christensen, speaking of the hard-boiled combat magician readers first saw in Strange Kiss. "But Gravel's world is distinct among Warren's many diverse and exceptional creations. And it's a place that makes Sin City look like Disney World sometimes, so to launch this project Ellis has turned in an amazing tale that I think may be one of his best yet. His treatment for Mike was perfect, giving Mike some room to do his fantastic work on the action scenes yet also providing the tight layout and dialogue for all the character development scenes. After doing so many books together, I think these two have started sharing some brain waves and the final pages are fantastic. Really, the best of all worlds." "Avatar and Mike Wolfer wanted to do more William Gravel stories," Ellis explains. "The dodgy bastard seems to get a grip on people like that. I, on the other hand, wanted to see Mike working his own inimitable storytelling. So here's what we're doing. It's like the "Plotmaster" gig I did for Marvel a couple of years ago. I'm writing detailed treatments for new William Gravel stories, which Mike will break down and adapt. My words, his storytelling. Mike tells stories in a tense, staccato way, which gives these new William Gravel pieces a real freshness. It's a good reason to do these." "Plus, I like seeing mutant vaginas embedded in tongues and old men giving birth to lizards through their anus," adds Ellis. "You really can't get enough of that sort of thing. It's important." "The vision of Strange Killings is Warren's," notes series artist and collaborator Mike Wolfer. "He will lay various scenarios before us and challenge us to believe that what we know of our world is the whole truth. We will see, hear and feel things that are beyond depravity, all the while knowing that these atrocities could be happening while we are asleep in our beds... And that they could quite possibly be happening in the house next door. The visualization of Strange Killings will be my own. I am taking Warren's ideas and breathing dark, two-dimensional life into them. It is a joy that is tempered with unease, as I sometimes can't believe that I'm actually going to draw some of the vile and controversial scenes with which Warren has chosen to entertain us." Strange Killings is the story of Sergeant Major William Gravel, a brilliant soldier of Britain's SAS. He's also the only known combat magician in the occult sphere. Placed on "K" duty - deniable operations - when he's found to be taking unofficial black market jobs for money due to mysterious personal reasons, Gravel is plunged into the dirty life of a secret black-ops world. Still, with his power Gravel could probably change the world if he was capable of actually getting his life together. Instead, he's constantly involved in other people's lives and dirty secrets, running headlong towards the day when he hits something he can't escape from, shoot, or wish away. Avatar Press has carved a niche for itself as a publisher that pushes the boundaries between mainstream and independent with titles such as Strange Kiss and Dark Blue from Warren Ellis, Alan Moore's Glory, Avengelyne, The Coven, company owned characters such as Pandora and The Ravening, and long-running anthology title Threshold. Now entering its fifth year, Avatar has published nearly 300 comic books since 1997. Warren Ellis' Strange Killings begins in January 2002 with art
plus regular and wraparound covers by Mike Wolfer. The debut
saga will be a three issue mini series for mature readers.
For more information, email info@avatarpress.net or see our
web site at www.avatarpress.com.
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Warren Ellis' Strange
Killings #1 Wraparound cover
Warren
Ellis' Scars Promotional Artwork