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As a holiday gift B gave me the deluxe hardcover collection of the complete collection of Warren Ellis' work on Hellstorm, Druid, and previous unpublished stories of Satana!
First, some history and background info.
Some of you may remember comics back in the nineties. It was a strange and exciting time, best and worst, as they say. Anyway, the comics industry was a bit divided. On one side there was the "Multiple collectible cover/speculator/bad art & costumes with lots of pouches" boom. Ugh. But on the other...on the other there was the birth of Vertigo, and creator owned comics in the mainstream, and mature readers books that weren't merely salacious, but were thoughtful and groundbreaking. DC/Vertigo had the lock on the comics British Invasion - charming mystic Neil Gaiman, metaphysical guru Grant Morrison, and foul mouthed drinking buddy Garth Ennis. At that point, Marvel wasn't much on innovation - they were racking it in with upwards of 13 X-titles a month.
HOWEVER...in a dark, seedy little corner of Marvel, a character whose pedigree was difficult to market as a hero, and yet, they kept trying, had sales that were circling the drain. Damien Hellstrom, the Son of Satan, then married to Patsy Walker, a former model who became the heroine Hellcat, were in a book in which the Son of Satan was kind of a hero, albeit of the dark variety (see also Blade, Morbius the Living Vampire, and a few others.) Anyway, the sales were bad, the book was going to be canceled, and NO ONE at Marvel gave a crap what was done with the book.
Enter young editor Marie Javins (sidebar, before this, B interned with her at Marvel for a summer! Whaddaya know?!) who had the inspired notion to bring in another British writer, Warren Ellis. Now if the three I mentioned above were who they were, Ellis was the cranky uncle muttering into his whiskey & given to unpredictable violent outbursts. He and Javins threw out the ongoing SoS storyline altogether, and with his first issue, #12, brought in a new, utterly twisted, violent a depraved storyline that truly embraced the concept that this character is the Son of the frikkin' devil, and is going to be dealing with ugly, wretched occult horror, and that even the good guys are not very nice. He kind of made John Constantine look like a choir boy.
And that is where the collection begins. You don't have to know any of the prior storyline, because they binned it!
At the time the comic came out, it blew my mind even as it horrified me, and I loved it. (it's funny, b/c these days I avoid "dark" comics like the plague - I want my comics sweet, and funny and to bring me joy. If this came out now I likely wouldn't read it.) And being that girls with big black hair and smeary dark eyeliner were all the rage those days, Ellis introduced one of his own, Jaine Cutter, the "occult assassin." This was apparently her job. Not sure who paid her for this and how, though.) In it she cut deals with demons, and killed angels and demons alike, refusing to be a pawn in the war between heaven and hell. Which is good sense. And this brings her into contact with Hellstorm (or Hellstrom, depending.) and they fall into battle and into bed. And there's lots of torture and blood. And for the time it was groundbreaking and brilliant and utterly no holds barred.
And Ellis went on to write Druid (included in this volume), a reimagining of another obscure Marvel mystic character, and then Ruins, an utterly venal backhand at Marvels, a "full of hope" look at the dawn of the Age of Heroes in the Marvel Universe. And then he shifted over to DC/Wildstorm and reimagined Stormwatch and created such amazing characters as Apollo and Midnighter, Jenny Sparks, Rose Tattoo, and more. And then he wrote Planetary, which remains about my second favorite series of all time. Oh yeah, and Transmetropolitan, which most people love more than I do. (I don't hate it, and I adore the cat, it just doesn't get to me as much as it does to other people, or as much as Ellis' other work does. See Fell, Desolation Jones, Global Frequency, etc)
So the Hellstorm collection - both a snapshot of an era, and an in-depth look into the mind and early writing of one of comics' most brilliant creators. List price is 75$, but it can be found for much less if you shop around.
First, some history and background info.
Some of you may remember comics back in the nineties. It was a strange and exciting time, best and worst, as they say. Anyway, the comics industry was a bit divided. On one side there was the "Multiple collectible cover/speculator/bad art & costumes with lots of pouches" boom. Ugh. But on the other...on the other there was the birth of Vertigo, and creator owned comics in the mainstream, and mature readers books that weren't merely salacious, but were thoughtful and groundbreaking. DC/Vertigo had the lock on the comics British Invasion - charming mystic Neil Gaiman, metaphysical guru Grant Morrison, and foul mouthed drinking buddy Garth Ennis. At that point, Marvel wasn't much on innovation - they were racking it in with upwards of 13 X-titles a month.
HOWEVER...in a dark, seedy little corner of Marvel, a character whose pedigree was difficult to market as a hero, and yet, they kept trying, had sales that were circling the drain. Damien Hellstrom, the Son of Satan, then married to Patsy Walker, a former model who became the heroine Hellcat, were in a book in which the Son of Satan was kind of a hero, albeit of the dark variety (see also Blade, Morbius the Living Vampire, and a few others.) Anyway, the sales were bad, the book was going to be canceled, and NO ONE at Marvel gave a crap what was done with the book.
Enter young editor Marie Javins (sidebar, before this, B interned with her at Marvel for a summer! Whaddaya know?!) who had the inspired notion to bring in another British writer, Warren Ellis. Now if the three I mentioned above were who they were, Ellis was the cranky uncle muttering into his whiskey & given to unpredictable violent outbursts. He and Javins threw out the ongoing SoS storyline altogether, and with his first issue, #12, brought in a new, utterly twisted, violent a depraved storyline that truly embraced the concept that this character is the Son of the frikkin' devil, and is going to be dealing with ugly, wretched occult horror, and that even the good guys are not very nice. He kind of made John Constantine look like a choir boy.
And that is where the collection begins. You don't have to know any of the prior storyline, because they binned it!
At the time the comic came out, it blew my mind even as it horrified me, and I loved it. (it's funny, b/c these days I avoid "dark" comics like the plague - I want my comics sweet, and funny and to bring me joy. If this came out now I likely wouldn't read it.) And being that girls with big black hair and smeary dark eyeliner were all the rage those days, Ellis introduced one of his own, Jaine Cutter, the "occult assassin." This was apparently her job. Not sure who paid her for this and how, though.) In it she cut deals with demons, and killed angels and demons alike, refusing to be a pawn in the war between heaven and hell. Which is good sense. And this brings her into contact with Hellstorm (or Hellstrom, depending.) and they fall into battle and into bed. And there's lots of torture and blood. And for the time it was groundbreaking and brilliant and utterly no holds barred.
And Ellis went on to write Druid (included in this volume), a reimagining of another obscure Marvel mystic character, and then Ruins, an utterly venal backhand at Marvels, a "full of hope" look at the dawn of the Age of Heroes in the Marvel Universe. And then he shifted over to DC/Wildstorm and reimagined Stormwatch and created such amazing characters as Apollo and Midnighter, Jenny Sparks, Rose Tattoo, and more. And then he wrote Planetary, which remains about my second favorite series of all time. Oh yeah, and Transmetropolitan, which most people love more than I do. (I don't hate it, and I adore the cat, it just doesn't get to me as much as it does to other people, or as much as Ellis' other work does. See Fell, Desolation Jones, Global Frequency, etc)
So the Hellstorm collection - both a snapshot of an era, and an in-depth look into the mind and early writing of one of comics' most brilliant creators. List price is 75$, but it can be found for much less if you shop around.
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