That one hit close to home, you understand. Over a hundred women telling about Warren creeping on them? I don't know any of those women. Not one. I read some of his daughter's work, I remember. But I don't remember it, I don't remember her, and I don't know her. But I know Warren, I think, a little, from liberal readings of his many works and blog posts and newsletters. Which I fucking love. Really. Almost all of it.
I think Warren Ellis is the fourth or fifth best writer out there. He's a tremendously, amazingly creative guy. He's a fearless thinker of the kind I think science fiction needs many. He's got a real gift for the telling phrase - the one line of dialogue that tells a whole story in itself as well as tells you a whole lot about the character who says it and/or who they say it to. And he's a fucking creeper. A dirty old man with too much power and no compunctions of using it against vulnerable young women.
It's shitty, yes, Warren has done nothing to my knowledge that we have laws against. He has just been straddling the line between inappropriate and illegal for as long as I've been a fan. He has just used every possible loophole to take every possible advantage of young women. Especially the lonely, the struggling, the ones with the least power to speak against him. As a predator, Warren has been very patient, very careful. Almost respectful. As long as he gets as much of what he wants with as little repercussions as possible.
Now if I liked the guy so much, why do I care about some unsubstantiated rumors? Why do I believe there is any more than, if you take Warren's own summary of events, a handful of occasions where he has acted with no consideration of how famous he is? Because I do not abandon the scientific method just because I like a guy. Because I do not elect to stop believing women just because I like the guy.
Transmetropolitan. Nextwave. Freakangels. Desolation Jones. Fell. The Wild Storm. Ministry of Space. Anna Mercury. No Hero. Black Summer. Black Gas. Wolfskin. Supergod. Trees. Doktor Sleepless. Ignition City. Normal. Ocean. Planetary. Aetheric Mechanics. Castlevania. Wildstorm that became The Authority that became The Wild Storm. Even Gravel and Global Frequency and Red, a little bit, if you know to look for it. So many great stories he's penned, and you'd never even notice the one common thread if you didn't listen to the women. How many of these stories contain a curmudgeonly old man who holds a position of power over at least one young woman and uses it to make himself look clever without her having any say in it?
Yeah it's all of them. I may even have forgotten or neglected to ever read some. I don't remember much of Warren's few issues of Hellblazer, for instance.
Nothing definite, nothing provable. The pattern I'm describing is vague enough to fit at least fifty other writers just as well. It's not exactly as damning a fingerprint as Woody Allen's prediction for stories about young isolated vulnerable women fucking old clever misunderstood men. Just enough to make it impossible to just pick up one of Warren's many, many comics I have in my bookshelves without hearing the stories of the women who got used to write them.
See, I don't know a single one of the Many. I don't know all of them together as well as I know Warren. I do not want for them to spoil my enjoyment of so many great stories. And, here's the important part, they don't.
Warren Ellis ruined everything.
Only him.
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