Last week, as part of our fifth anniversary celebration, we chatted with writer Warren Ellis about his upcoming series “Trees” at Image, with artist Jason Howard. But, as we teased in that initial interview, there was more to it than just that — our conversation continued on to talk about the upcoming “Supreme” revamp, “Blue Rose” with artist Tula Lotay.
It was something that caught many of us off-guard, but is a very welcome relaunch. Just like with Alan Moore in ’96, “Supreme: Blue Rose” affords Ellis a certain amount of freedom when discussing the role of certain iconic ideas and their relevance in our society. Read on as we talk about the revamp, why it was or wasn’t necessary, and much more.
So to get things started, I think an important question to ask up front is: why Supreme?
Warren Ellis: I had the idea, and the idea came with a lot of scenes I really wanted to write, and I had the time, so why the hell not.
The press release for the series mentioned this a little bit, but the pitch for this series was a bit different, especially in its genesis. How did this project come together, and what was it about it that gave you so much clarity about from the start?
WE: I literally just woke up one morning with the idea, the treatment and about six scenes. I realised how the thing could be restarted in a really fun story to write that used elements from both major runs of the book and, perhaps, do something relatively new in that end of the field. There were all kinds of characters littered through the book’s history that could be remixed and played with, and it could be completely different to any other treatment of the property without invalidating any single part of it. It was just one of those lucky things that happens to me every now and then, like “Dead Pig Collector,” where I can open my eyes and see the whole shape of something.
Supreme is certainly a known comic character, but not in the same way as the character he is an analogue for. Given the nature of the book, how is writing a book like Supreme different from other work-for-hire superhero books?
WE: Honestly? Remember that bit in Alan’s first issue where a character says Supreme’s powers are so poorly defined as to be almost limitless? That’s kind of how I feel about the book in general. Aside from the underlying mythos, which can be described in maybe two lines, it’s a thing you can take anywhere — even right outside of superhero fiction itself. You can meander right out into the nature of myths and legends and if you maintain that two-sentence underpinning it’s still “Supreme.”
It might be a bit early to get too in-depth in the book since it’s not out until July, but even with his name on the title this seems more like Diana Dane’s book (who is pictured on the cover). The way it’s delivered makes Supreme feel like a living myth. What was it that appealed to you more about this approach, rather than a more straightforward Supreme story?
WE: A straightforward Supreme story wasn’t interesting. There have been lots of them. Also — and I think that last Superman movie felt this, a bit, but couldn’t quite get to it — a Lois Lane story is always more interesting than a Superman story, because mystery, investigation and revelation are more powerful than binary conflict. There’s more going on, and she gets to be a more complex figure. Make Ethan Crane a mythic figure, a mystery, and he is immediately more compelling by his strangeness.
Also, of course, I wasn’t out to write a straight superhero story of any kind.
This is going to be a big coming-out party for Tula Lotay, who’s work on the book is astounding. What I like about Lotay’s art, though, is that compared to past runs of Supreme, this is the least traditional superhero art we’ve seen. It’s very stylish. Did you and Lotay have discussions about the art of the book beforehand, and did you work together on brainstorming the visual aesthetic?
Continued belowWE: We’d been talking about working together for a while, and — as I tend to do with artists — we’d talked about the things she loves. The conversation became primarily about film, particularly people like David Lynch. And then I think I had a night listening to nothing but Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane and Mater Suspiria Vision, and woke up with this treatment in my head, with Tula’s art. So the whole thing was about Tula as much as anything else, I think, and we’d already had the conversations about aesthetic, so I just headed right into it. About a year ago.
You mentioned Alan’s previous work on the book, but this is very much its own thing. In fact, it’s pretty much a nice, clean reboot of the series. Why did you feel a revamp to the book was necessary, and outside of the characters, are there any story beats or elements that you have carried over to this story?
WE: No revamp is NECESSARY, ever. But the idea came to me, and it seemed a shame to waste it, and I guess the people at Image agreed. I don’t think I carried any story beats over, just a few elements, like “Don’t trust Darius Dax.”
Speaking of, if Alan’s run on the book was a celebration of the Silver Age foundations of the character, would you say the work you and Tula are doing is the modern age answer to that work?
WE: Probably not! Quite a bit of it, looking back (I’ve nearly finished writing the thing), seems quite 80s to me? And there’s a thing in there, I think in the second issue, that is pure 60s/70s, like Sun Ra soundtracking Philippe Druillet. It really doesn’t have a whole hell of a lot to do with any age of comics. It’s more like an assemblage of things that Tula and I are interested in, and most of our influences come from outside the medium. She can bend your ear for hours about “Cutter’s Way” and paperback cover artists of the 1950s.
We got a sneak peek at the first issue, and I found myself getting seduced by the new Darius Dax (who is hiring Diana at the start of the series), particularly when he identifies himself with, “I work in the field of tactical foresight.” From what we know of technology and data sharing, I have to wonder if maybe not the exact kind of person, but someone like Dax, is someone that could exist in today’s world. What do you think someone like this version of Dax says about today’s society, especially given the strangely believable nature of his existence?
WE: This version of Dax is a bit of a nod to William Gibson’s Hubertus Bigend, as well as to the “businessman” incarnations of Lex Luthor. But there are absolutely people a little like this version of Dax in the world. One of my private Twitter lists is basically just watching some of these people move around in the world. I’ve known people in the futurism dodge who hire ex-CIA field agents as personal contractors. I’ve met people living in the space between strategic foresight, diplomacy and spook work. Corporate foresight is a big field. If it seems strangely believable, it’s because it’s well within the realms of current reality. I’m fascinated by the ghostly, half-invisible maps and wakes of cultural power projection, and “our” Darius Dax is one expression of that. This is something I could ramble on about at length.
We knew Diana as a journalist previously, but with mentions of kitten photos outweighing the ad revenue generation of quality investigative journalism and Diana’s option of working for a linkbait farm, this book very much feels as if it has venom for the state of modern journalism, but in an organic way. If Supreme: Blue Rose is a look at the myth of the superhero, then what do you think it has to say about the role of someone like Diana Dane in today’s world?
WE: Not venom, so much as a few brief comments about the conditions for journalists right now. It’s a rough time for journos right now, especially the passionate and engaged ones, because investigative journalism in particular is really hard to get funded at the moment. Greg Palast’s had to throw up an entire ad hoc infrastructure from scratch to support his work, and even that option isn’t really open to the younger writers, like the brilliant Sarah Jaffe. The Guardian does its work by actually losing money — and, even then, during the top of the phone-hacking scandal, Nick Davies talked about getting resistance inside his own office from digging into it. I was crueler and more dismissive of Nick Denton in the piece than I needed to be, I’m sure, but from a certain perspective, things like the Gawker network and Buzzfeed can be incredibly disheartening for a journalist who entered the field to do strong investigative work. The disrupted journalism space is still figuring out how to thrive again.
Continued belowIt seems like you’re taking the characters away from who they used to be more obvious analogues of and reshaping them for the modern world. Given the world of reboots we live in, all things considered, do you find that characters like Supreme have to essentially “evolve or die” to stay relevant?
WE: I think any open-ended serial property needs to do that, surely? If these things don’t reflect their times in some way, they lose their relevance and hit the downslide of the Darwinian market curve, if nothing else.
That relevance, though, can take many forms. I mean, Alan’s reboot of “Supreme” clearly sourced much of his popularity in speaking to a need in a section of the audience to return to simpler storytelling times with an intelligent, but, crucially, unironic eye. A whole chunk of people were ready for that. Maybe relevance is relative after all. There’s an aside in one of Terence McKenna’s talks where he says something to an audience member that’s terribly hippie but probably also true on some level: “Everybody has their own news.”
I’m sitting in the woods and mountains drinking a giant smoothie. Somebody should probably come and put me to sleep.
Something strikes me in your answers, in that the superhero idea is being morphed by many elements of today’s world. There’s a lot of conversation around this, on what it means to be a hero and such, but our world isn’t necessarily as optimistic as it once was. Where do you find the idea of the superhero fits into today’s fast-paced world, if at all?
WE: I did a public thing with MIT Media Lab in Austin the other month where I talked about how science fiction, incubated inside genre walls for so long, has burst out of its cell to infect everything. Science fiction lives in the mainstream now, in all strata of culture, to the point where we barely even notice any more — it’s just part of the fabric of the modern world. The superhero is part science fiction and part crime story, both of which are forms of social fiction. It’s been said, a lot, that the superhero is ad hoc mythmaking for the contemporary era. And a fraught and culture-shocked society needs and demands rescue stories. Look at how both UFO sightings and angel sightings peaked in the run-up to the millennium: a wish to seek and solve the mystery of the Other that might swoop down from the sky to save us.
I’ve noticed you’ve brought up music quite a bit so far and the pages we’ve seen are certainly very flowing, very lyrical, so I’m curious — to what extent does music influence the writing process of this series?
WE: Music influences the process of everything I write. Sometimes music is the reason I write something
So I take it that the book is a mini-series, but do you have bigger plans for Supreme and his universe if all goes well? Or is this more of a situation of having this singular idea you’re a fan of and then maybe setting the ball up for someone else?
WE: Well, what’s happening is that the first story is a serial of indeterminate length. I’m pretty sure I’m homing in on the end of this particular story, at this point — there was always a rough structure, but I’m letting it unfold at its own pace. So we are not sure, right now, how long the first series is. We’ll see if I have another story after this one is done. Hell, we’ll see if anyone WANTS another story once this one is done.
