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Black Summer
DouglasDanger
PennsylvaniaRegistered User regular
PennsylvaniaRegistered User regular
Ellis's new comic, or at least one of them, is here!
BLACK SUMMER
Writer: Warren Ellis
Art: Juan Jose Ryp
Readership: MR
Format: Full Color, 16 page 99 cent #0 issue in June (w/ original story) followed by $2.99 7-issue series.
This summer, the world goes black as Warren Ellis unveils his all-new super-powered heroes and villains epic that promises to be the biggest event of 2007! With art by the genius Juan Jose Ryp, no fan of The Authority or Wanted will want to miss this bleeding-edge eight issue masterpiece. The #0 features an original story that leads directly into the full-size monthly series that starts in August priced at just $2.99 per issue! When the political situation in the USA becomes more than Horus can stand, he moves to take matters into his own hands. But since not all his other team-mates aren’t so eager to throw the world into chaos, an epic conflict starts to form. And no one will be safe as the bodies start to fall.
CBR interview
@newsarama
@ wizard
warren talks about the concept
So issue 0 finally came out. What does everyone think?
Very awesome book, so far. I have no idea what will happen in the next issue, and that in itself is awesome.
I did not see the execution/massacre so much as offing Bush and pals, but as someone daring to holding the established authority accountable-- something the founders of the United States did back in the day.
Will Horus try to shape the next step of the USA? He says there will be elections and stuff, but what if the nation turns to anarchy? The bad kind, not the kind wherein society evolves to the point of not needing government. Will smashing the head of the established government making the rest of it any better? Your typical congressperson is in an entirely different social class than the common person, many of them from birth. Where does Horus want America to go?
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Here's a short version of why I won't be buying this series: super-beings, same as normal beings, who murder heads of state because they think those heads of state are criminals are nothing more than criminals themselves. Nothing about assassinating an elected government official is part of "standing up for what's right." And, as I already mentioned, this has been done by Ellis himself already.
uuurggh.
But yeah, I enjoyed it so far.
When did he do this before? The Authority did it, but that was not Ellis's Authority.
I like how Warren keeps Horus far enough away so that we do not exactly see this through his eyes. It makes this a lot less power fantasy and something a little more interesting. Is Horus nuts? What will happen if he doesn't like what the public does next? What will happen if society just falls apart and chaos results? Will another part of the establishment seize control before anything can happen?
I am really loving Horus's costume. The jacket and boots really remind me of something from the (United States')Civil War mixed with some scifi pulp.
You're dumb and missing the point.
My mistake. I knew it was in Authority, but didn't realize it wasn't during his run. Even if Ellis hasn't done it before himself, it's been done quite well by others. I haven't heard anything yet that would convince that, besides the gory executions, Ellis is really taking an enormously different tack on this kind of story.
I will probably try to grab this issue, because I'd like to confirm or dispel my suspicions.
I love Horus' design too. I wonder what all those funky little orbs are for.
Braireos, I don't know what to tell you. It is on 99 cents, just go buy it if you are interested.
Isn't that a Sgt Pepper's jacket?
I hope not
He's supposed to come to my LCS to sign shit at the end of July
Also, is there any word on when Doktor Sleepless is coming out?
...or, for that matter, Desolation Jones #9?
That last bit would really be the worst case scenario.
EDIT:
I, along with droves of other lawyers I'm sure, would be happy to volunteer my services pro bono to Avatar to defend their rights of freedom of speech and expression. Their ability to pay for their defense would be a non-issue.
Black Summer is almost expected of him.
Except he gets to decide what 'true freedom and democracy' means. If you take the universe setting seriously, what newly elected president isn't going to be shitting his pants that something might set this guy off again (since he is shown espousing 9-11 conspirisy theory, that they were moved out of the country so that it could happen).
I am a freaking nerd.
Me neither, although I will say I disagree with anyone trying to shut them down (And no, criticizing the content, and saying people shouldn't buy it IS NOT censorship. Censorship is suing the company, or trying to pass laws to make the comics illegal) since some people seem to assume that if you don't like the content you want to shut them down.
I am a freaking nerd.
This is pretty much the sort of question that Ellis wants people to ask as a result of reading the story. He's not saying whether Horus is a hero or villain.
Um, why is it crazy conspiracy-theory stuff, in that universe? We have no idea at this point whether that assertion is true in the comics because however true or false it is in our world, our world doesn't include John Horus et al.
In the comic, that might be entirely true.
Granted, we're bumping into some pragmatic issues - how can superheroes like this EVER coincide with acts like 9/11 - but I think we need to wait for a bit longer to find out if he's a rational thinking psychopath, or a lunatic psychopath. In other words, we need to wait and see whether he's done a horrible thing for all the right reasons, or a horrible thing for all the wrong reasons.
(horrible here doesn't mean he's wrong or right, but rather just describes the brutality of violating the rule of law and slaughtering a half-dozen people, government leaders or otherwise).
Hence the Ultimates answering to Gee Dubya.
For a guy who insists to know the law so well, I figured you'd be the FIRST to point out that neither one is right. At all. Under any circumstances.
No I'm pretty sure murdering the president is wrong.
Do you guys any respectable journalist in a world of Warren Ellis' making is going to just go along with this?
That said, I'm glad this isn't a situation in which there's some sort of legal vagueness surrounding the events portrayed therin. It's illegal to kill presidents.
Now we're left with the burning question...was he right to do so?
Pfft.
Why not?
July, just like all the solicitations have said.
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Um, no?
Not only is he wrong, he's also an enormous hypocrite. So, he's going to show that the president isn't above the law by making himself above it? I hope he gets taken down hard.
What's your point?
That comics shouldn't be about very bad things?
I also think it's not just a question of whether or not this Horus guy was right to do what he did, but whether or not the evil he has committed can be overshadowed by the good he has done by giving Americans the chance to have a legitimate election.
Frankly, considering the fact that wars have been fought for this very right, I think the lives of a group of people who would do everything in their power to prevent us from utilizing this right are a fucking bargain in terms of cost.
No, my point was in the first sentence. Try reading it next time.
The law ain't in this house no more, son. As I said, it's not a matter of that anymore. But the ideas you espouse, however crudely put do pose an interesting question.
Would I approve of this actually happening? No.
But how far does justice actually go? Do you stop at thugs?
First of all, Maus was directly inspired by real life events and is regularly hailed as one of the finest works of literature the medium of comics has ever produced.
So clearly, comics and real life are not completely incompatible. If anything, you must mean superhero comics.
Second of all, I get that you think comics should stay away from real life. The only justification you offered, though, was that vigilantes are a very bad thing.
Therefore, it follows that you think comics shouldn't be about vigilantes in real life, doing bad things, because there's something wrong with comics being about bad things.
And I thought that was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard on this particular subject, so I asked you for a clarification that was met with a snarky, and wholly undeserved response.
Plus, I don't think we're supposed to sympathize or cheer for John Horus. He's not even the main character. Tom Noir is. John Horus seems to represent one extreme and Tom Noir could be the more sensible side.
You're just assuming he meant that the US government was in charge of the conspiracy, AND you're assuming that in the comics the US government didn't do it. It's fiction: in that universe, John Horus may be 100% correct. You have no more basis for saying he's wrong than you have a basis for saying he's lying about killing the president himself.
See, my point was that I wasn't getting into the full-on discussion of the moral and legal issues of murder in general, assassination of a government leader, etc. I was just saying that Horus' context points out the difficulty in trying to juxtapose real-world terrorist acts (or even normal military acts, e.g. WWII) with superheroes, given that there's no reason usually why those heroes couldn't have prevented/fixed these things.
I think it's an incredibly in-depth argument about whether killing the president is 100% morally and legally wrong, given that we'd have to have a correspondingly in-depth argument about legal positivism/realism before we can even talk about the legality of such a thing. As such, I'm just not getting into it here: I don't think many people would be interested. Maybe as the series progresses, people will want that, and then we'll see.
The point of the book is that if you do have powers and you do place yourself outside of the law to fight crime, where do you stop?
Superheroes have always been above the law.
If that's all the point of this book is, why read it? Mark Gruenwald wrote about the same thing, and he did it without any sensationalistic, brutal, head-of-state murders. Millar wrote about it with possibly the same amount of gratuitous gore. Alan Moore wrote about it with even more gore and destruction. Mark Waid wrote about it and nuked Kansas. J. Michael Strazcynski wrote about it. Mark Millar wrote about it again in Civil War. And I'm sure that there are many other comic book writers that have explored this theme. It's old news.
You do realize that this story isn't special or ground-breaking, right? Even the violence isn't special. The only thing surprising about this comic is that it actually shows a president who looks a lot like our current president being brutally and bloodily murdered by a superhero. Big deal, Mr. Ellis, you aren't winning any points here with your sensationalism.
Besides, we've had 16 pages of story so far, we don't even know where he's going to take this.
Quit being brash and retarded.
You do realize that all we know about the story is a barest fucking hint of a premise from a #0 preview issue, right?
If you somehow HAVE read the comic, there is something wrong with your eyes and I suggest getting glasses, or if you already have glasses, getting some better ones.
Because some of those expressions are very goofy
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After that, everyone needs to remember this is essentially a preview. At most it is a first chapter. We have no idea what will happen next, other than meeting more of the Seven Guns, and probably the government trying to slaughter them.