So, yeah, Warren Ellis (not that one) seems credibly accused of being a creep , though far less of a monster than Neil Gaiman has been accused of being.
And I might have gone quite some time longer before I re-read anything of his…but John Cassaday, the artist on Planetary passed away last September, so when I was scrolling through things looking for something to re-read (because the world is on fire and it’s hard to concentrate on new stuff), I decided to give it a spin.
It’s still fun, and amongst the mayhem, there’s an impression of a fierce sense of caring that is hard to square with someone who would apparently treat so many people so poorly.
And it’s so, so beautiful. I know John got a lot of grief in the last year or two of his life for some covers he did that weren’t to the impossible standard he set in Planetary. It’s shocking how good it is.
Still, I also realized that in some ways I’ve outgrown Ellis’ work. It has come to feel a little too arch, a little too pleased with its own cleverness. A little too edgelord.
These days I find myself gravitating—at least in the super-hero genre—more towards Tom King and Jonathan Hickman (with sides of Keiron Gillen, G. Willow Wilson and Kelly Thompson). I find they are able to tread an interesting path that acknowledges many things that came before (like the “grittiness” of the back half of the 80’s, or the irony-poisoned 00’s) without being overwhelmed by it.
There’s still a sincerity to the work that I appreciate as an antidote to the clusterfuck of the last few (and probably next few) years.
So when I’m having a down day, I often find myself thinking about the last page of Hickman’s Fantastic Four run, in FF (not Fantastic Four) #23. It actually starts about 8 pages earlier when the time-travelling Franklin Storm is putting his child self to bed before he leaves:
“Franklin. There’s one last thing I want you to remember about today before I go. This door…is more than it appears to be.”
His younger self sleepily acknowledges and then drifts off, and the older version goes off to make other goodbyes. But when you get to the last two pages, which are largely wordless pictures of young Franklin and his friend Artie playing, and the captions read:
This door…is more important than it appears to be.
It separates who you are from who you can be.
You do not have to walk through it…you can run.
I find it helpful to remember that even as a grown-ass adult staring down double-nickels, there are still opportunities to change and grow—and you should embrace them wholeheartedly.