Warren Ellis' Last Laugh?

[chrismarker]

Adi, the art for this final issue was brilliant as usual! Again, there's no doubt you've left your own imprint on the character for years to come. But...

Can you honestly say you're satisfied with the writing of this conclusion? You look at the first several issues of this arc and the writing just blows you away with its narrative and plotting: Warren introduces so many relevant themes and questions that relate to technology and man's extinction, racism and white supremacy, Tony's personal conflict with his own identity and that of Iron Man's, and even the introduction of a powerful female character that is Tony's equal if not superior in terms of technology, and where does it all end up? With a last few pages that feel like so much like an afterthought where we discover that Maya is nothing more than a human monster who via Mallen is directly responsible for the mass murder of hundreds of innocent people! Adi, you going to tell me she deserved that plot line?! But even that is at least more interesting -- though still obvious -- than the comic bromide with which Warren dared to end this otherwise historically significant arc: and, with all due respect, I think he did drain it of its art, to the point where if Marvel does turn Extremis into a graphic novel he should seriously think about a rewrite worthy of both your obviously distinct talents...

This ending we waited almost a year for, an ending which should have been as substantial in conception, thought, articluation, style, and expression as the issues that proceeded it, collapses into nothing more than the most stereotypical of stereotypes, a half baked ready-made of two sentences, uttered from a full page size figure of Iron Man, who with those words is turned into a clunky sort of pious monument to say -- in paraphrase -- "I'm better than you Maya becuase at least I'm trying to be better and you're not SO I CAN LOOK AT MYSELF IN THE MIRROR IN THE MORNING AND YOU CAN'T." ---- The End.

Sorry Adi, but it's like Warren had a last laugh on the whole profession of super hero comic writers -- which he has many times gone public to distance himself from -- and wrote a conclusion here that represents exactly what he probably hates most about the supero-hero genre -- e.g., that it is generic, stilted, unoriginal, and trapped in platitudes, etc., etc....

No disrespect Adi -- again your art is singularly distinct -- but this story line line deserved much better than this...

[Adi Granov]

I really can't speak for Warren and what his thoughts are/were behind this. I am also too close to the story to judge it objectively. But if I try to look at it from a distance I would say that this entire story arc was a vehicle to reboot Iron Man which was becoming irrelevant, I think everything else that happens is a backdrop for that. I see that more clearly now than before, but I also see that that was the intention from the start, otherwise the story would be finite and that is impossible in an ongoing title.

To be honest I think the story ends too quickly. We both agreed to do 6 issues but I think, for the amount of ideas presented it needed 8. But, I have read the next few scripts and they largely take over from where we left off. Except for Mallen ofcourse, which, unfortunatelly was a casualty of the given lenght and other branches of the story which had to be told. But he couldn't be a regular villian because we had to show absolute horror which would force Tony to go to the lenghts he had gone in order to stop it. So that's why he was set up so extenssively and why we had to be scared of him. But in the end it wasn't his story, he was largely a plot device to push Tony over the edge. It only shows Warren's strenght as a writer to bring such a character to life so vividly when a lesser creator would probably just have made him a one dimensional "super-villian".

And the whole mirror thing, it might sound cheesy, but it's an analogy for his hatered for himself as an arms designer and his redemption as the hero. Again, I am too close to it to judge how well that came across, but I know the intentions were right.

I don't know. In the end it's every reader's right to judge it on their own. I am not a writer so I wouldn't attempt to even suggest that I could write anything even near as effective. My focus was the art and truthfuly that is the only thing I can really take resposibility for.

[chrismarker]

Adi, thanks for the candid response. I think you and Warren did reinvigorate Iron Man and no doubt Mallen is a helluva foe/anti-hero...but in the end I think Warren left a lot of people wondering just what he was thinking (or where he was thinking it...).

[marcopedrana]

i was a little let down by the revelation of Maya Hansen being the bad girl, as i really like the character; the first panels in which she shows up, at the bar, were just class and she is very cute. (can it be said of a character in a comic where art aims - largely - at realism, or to a dreamlike version of reallism? ) however, it appeared also as a logical revelaton and Warren Ellis isn't new to this kind of punches in the gut :)
as a whole run, well i can say i have eagerly awaited each number and they were one the better of the last one. i've tryed happily as a curiosity to learn paint the way you do, and decided it's not my cup of tea: i say this because i either get involved in a story as a whole or i don't and the study i've put at it means that simply loved it whole. i don't find let down by the run.
to what Adi Granov says up there about the story being built about a precise mechanism of reset of the character and with loose surroundings, well i say that's perfect with his stle of illustration, it's so economic of movement and centered on the core of the action of the telling that even being realistic it has some kind of dreamwalking value and the borders of the actions get hazy.
to me it's beautiful! i'm getting to admire more and more Warren Ellis' writing.