(estou a reciclar um texto que escrevi há um ano, no âmbito da workshop da Kingpin Books mas nunca tinha publicado)

"Este é o meu segundo texto para este site, e é o segundo em que falo do Warren Ellis. Há boas razões para isso. Para já, ele é um dos melhores escritores de banda desenhada a trabalhar actualmente.Depois, é também um dos mais versáteis." (Luís Alves, "O outro lado dos comics", 2006).

Vamos lá ver como o tipo trabalha

"In a feral city social services are all but nonexistent, and the vast majority of the city's occupants have no access to even the most basic health or security assistance. There is no social safety net. Human security is for the most part a matter of individual initiative. Yet a feral city does not descend into complete, random chaos. Some elements, be they criminals, armed resistance groups, clans, tribes, or neighborhood associations, exert various degrees of control over portions of the city. Intercity, city-state, and even international commercial transactions occur, but corruption, avarice, and violence are their hallmarks. A feral city experiences massive levels of disease and creates enough pollution to qualify as an international environmental disaster zone. Most feral cities would suffer from massive urban hypertrophy, covering vast expanses of land. The city's structures range from once-great buildings symbolic of state power to the meanest shantytowns and slums. Yet even under these conditions, these cities continue to grow, and the majority of occupants do not voluntarily leave." (Richard Norton, 2003, "Feral cities - The New Strategic Environment")

"He was perfect for the sort of thing I wanted to attempt: something accessible, with clear storytelling, but full of the visual experimentation found in the envelope-pushing comics of the 80s, when people like Bill Sienkiewicz and Jon J Muth were on stage. With Ben, I know that if I want to cut out three panels of exposition and just stick a bit of map down with routes and placenames scrawled on it, I know Ben is there. I know that if I need a one-panel flashback of Fell as a kid looking up at his dad, Ben will execute that child's perception. His work is a perfect mix of Sienkiewicz/Storey American experimentation, manga cartooning and European perspective. It's a unique-looking book, and writing for someone like Ben is like having eight different artists -- there's nothing I can write that won't be illustrated eight times as well as I imagined." (Warren Ellis)

"O resultado de tudo isto é uma experiência que, na minha opinião, é simplesmente única. FELL é, neste momento, o comic a ler por quem se interessa pela mecânica e arte dos comics, e acima de tudo, por quem gosta de histórias policiais curtas, densas, inteligentes, absorventes, e claro, baratas."

"NEXTWAVE is not about Character Arcs and Learning and Morals and Hugs. It is about cramming an insane movie into 44 pages at a time. It is about the mad things underpinning Marvel Comics, and it is about special effects out of Asian cinema and absurd levels of destruction and a skewed sense of humour and Spectacle and things blowing up and people getting kicked. It is most especially about THINGS BLOWING UP and PEOPLE GETTING KICKED.
It is about humanoid Clone Things made out of engine oil and broccoli being smacked to death by a woman with a guitar. NEXTWAVE. Healing America by beating people up." (Warren Ellis, no "Director's Cut" do número 1)

"Warren Ellis, o escritor desta série, detesta super-heróis. Odeia-os. Despreza-os. Quando, por exigências profissionais, os tem que escrever, arranja sempre maneira de subverter o género, e usar os super-heróis como pretexto para escrever outro tipo de história qualquer. E normalmente, sai-se muito bem. Mas a Marvel contratou-o como escritor exclusivo, e deu-lhe rédea solta." (Luís Alves, No Outro Lado dos Comics)