Conducted by Chris Allen
Warren Ellis returns to Avatar Press this month with SCARS, an horrific six-part crime story illustrated by Jacen Burrows, with whom Ellis has worked on DARK BLUE and BAD WORLD. I got to read the first issue’s script, and can attest that this is one of the most disturbing things Ellis has written. This is not a fun Pop comic, not a carefully planned statement, and not a widescreen genre bender. It’s a very dark homicide case with a true emotional core.
I was fortunate enough to catch up with Ellis for a handful of questions about the book:
Allen: Comparing the scripts for SCARS #1 and GLOBAL FREQUENCY #1, it seems that, quality aside, SCARS might have been written with more immediacy. What was the impetus to tell this story, and how quickly did it come together?
Ellis: It's been percolating a few years, I guess. Talking with policemen about the hard edges of their jobs, amassing a library of crime reference, a feeling that I should write something that genuinely made me feel
uncomfortable...It all fit together into something over lunch with a British actor-comedian, about writing a
straight role for him. We eventually went in another direction, but the notion of a crime that was utterly
abhorrent to both of us, and a cop who becomes a monster to catch one...it stayed with me. It needed writing.
Allen: I won't spoil the most shocking plot development in this issue, but do know that it's based on fact, though airport security is trained to discreetly check for this these days. Why did you want to use this (element)?
Ellis: One, it's one of those things that's too disgusting to make up. Two, airport security is nothing like it's cracked up to be.
Allen: Knowing a dark crime or horror project such as this is bound for Avatar, do you write with Jacen Burrows in mind? If so, besides his obvious talents for depicting the gruesome, what else do you try to give him?
Ellis: Yeah, I write with Jacen in mind. He is extraordinarily good with location. I like to give him different sets, and I like to give him big spacious master-shot panels to bring out his cinematic side. He really does make movies-on-paper. His framing of conversations and body language is also excellent -- he has an unstinting and ruthless eye that really nails the figures down and makes them squirm a bit. For this sort of thing, he really is the
complete artist.
Allen: You have a penchant for somewhat larger-than-life names for your characters (Spider Jerusalem, Elijah Snow, Miranda Zero) and now we have John Cain. Not only is his name Biblical, but like the original Cain, he carries a mark or scar. Is this going to be important later, and why do you choose names like these? Might they not on occasion stretch credulity or distract a reader?
Ellis For the former three, they're just fun; they sound and look good and are kind of signifiers of what the
piece is like. I mean, all three of those books are larger than life. John Cain as a name is a bit quieter, there are Cains in the phone book, but it kind of indicates an Old
Testament stress to the character if you're looking for it. Yes, he has a scar, but so does every cop in the book. All homicide detectives have scars.
Conversely, the characters in ORBITER have very average names, because the characters are the anchor for the fantasy element in the plot.
Hopefully someone will stop me before I reach a Don McGregor-like floridity in my naming.
Allen: Cain has experienced a great loss that makes him, well, one of those "cops on the edge" we've seen before, but as a father yourself, are you ever afraid of writing something like this, something so close to home? Or can it be helpful in a way?
Ellis: That's why I wrote it. I wanted to scare myself. I wanted to be uncomfortable. It lets me bring
something real to the work. I had to sit there and seriously imagine how I'd live if I suffered that kind of
loss, and it scared the hell out of me, and I'm trying to get that on the page. It doesn't take flying guts and blood by the bucket to make horror. Sometimes, it's just an idea,
and an absence.
Available from Avatar Press.
SCARS PREVIEW:
