You Really Should Read - RTOTD #766

Day  766

If you read, and you love completely ridiculous shit, you should really go and buy Gun Machine from Warren Ellis. I've been a fan of this guy's stuff forever. His comic work, his columns/blogs/articles, his video game and animated work, and his first novel from a few years back. The man is completely brilliant and batshit fucking crazy. And as he is often noted as saying... no, he is NOT the Warren Ellis that has worked with Nick Cave and was a member of the Bad Seed. He writes comic books and scripts and books and opinion columns.

I mean... you read what I write and I don't hold a candle to this guy. Fuck, the premise for his first novel was that the monkey-shit-heroine-addicted White House Chief of Staff hires a lifetime fuck-up PI to find the Secret Constitution of the United States which had been written by our Founding Fathers on the skin of an alien parasite that had grown on Benjamin Frankin's ass because it had a hypnotic ability to mind-control all listeners into being moral/God-fearing people. And that's just in the first 20 pages. Two Words: Godzilla Bukkake. More words? Testicular Saline Infusion Fetishists. Yeah, you read that. Read the fucking book. It's amazing.

I couldn't even MAKE that kinda shit up.

And that's not even talking about his comic work.

In my opinion, his Planetary and Authority are the most important pieces of work in the Superhero genre in the past 20 years. Without a doubt. The only other thing that even comes close on impact to the entire superhero concept in that time is Wildcats Version 3.0. But that's just because it was a concept 8-10 years ahead of its time and was cancelled before it reached fruition. Planetary is easily the most perfect love letter to 20th Century fiction I've ever read. ALL 20th century fiction. From John Woo action films to japanese monster movies to 50's American Sci-Fi to turn-of-the-century British and European literature to Looney Tunes to the American Superhero Comic. And everything inbetween. It is as imporant to the American comic book medium as Watchmen. And honestly, it's not nearly as much of a pretentious masturbatory experiment as Watchmen can been seen as. Plus, the Fantastic Four are effectively the villains.

And don't even get me started on Transmetropolitan, which is just about the perfect commentary on the American political machine. Where the main character gets to spend 60-odd issues doing exactly what many citizens wish they could do. Expose the bullshit hypocrisy and shoot asshole politicians with a bowel disruptor gun while acting like a futuristic Hunter S Thompson on only a few less drugs.

And the thing is, the execution on his crazy shit somehow makes it seem plausible. Even the most silly and riduclous things Ellis writes has a feeling to them of the deeper meaning behind them.

But I think I'm getting off track here.

Buy Ellis' new book. I got my copy yesterday and in the first few pages, it's already amazing. And if you've never read anything by Warren Ellis... consider this your opportunity to try some of his work. It's sarcastic and funny and hopeful and sullen and angry and brilliant and silly all at once. And you'll absolutely love it.

This IS the same guy that created the comic that the movie RED is based on. And we all loved watching retired geriatric CIA agents kill things, didn't we?