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Notes -
I think it deserves higher praise here than you're giving it(though I'll confess that I'm a shameless Warren Ellis fan) if only for the fact that it basically subverts the entire expectation of what a political assassination entails and why they're always bad('Lots of people hated John F Kennedy. He barely got elected. But Lee Harvey Oswald isn't remembered as an American hero. Just a prick with a gun who killed a president. That's you now, John.')
The last moment where all the surviving Heros were all girls and all that implies was still a little cringe, though.
Yeah, especially given the broader zeitgiest at the time, it was a genuinely surprising take, and the level and degree of conflict between the heroes and the government is a much more nuanced take than the "you people are young" summary he'd give in interviews. As an exploration of political philosophy or philosophy of war, it does a pretty good job, if limited by its time and its awareness.
My big complaint's just that it doesn't really feel great about its characters. It's a comic book, and a short-run series at that, so expectations are never high to begin with, but the ending is undermined not just because It's Woke, but because it doesn't really feel like a conclusion for the characters that got to it. Tom feels very Batman-inspired and Horus very Superman, and that's a classic for a reason. Do their perspectives actually say anything about Truth, Justice, and the American Way? About
assassinscriminals being a cowardly and superstitious lot? Or if they're working as alternative company counterparts to Captain America and Iron Man, anything about their political philosophy? Artemis pointedly compares the US government with the Nazis in one argument with Dominic: did he persuade her before his death, or was her violent persona and facing always an act?You don't need this sort of deeper layering. Black Summer benefits in the sense that not doing it means you can't do it poorly, like No Hero or The Boys and their utterly wretched X-Men parodies. But it's frustratingly noticeable given how little else there is to say about the characters.
That said, I do think it's one of, if not the best, Ellis short series. So part of it's probably me not clicking with him as a writer in general.
Black Summer(and Supergod, and No Hero) probably work alot better in the overall context of the time - not the political context, but that of comics overall.
Warren Ellis is one of those writers where he does something completely new and off the wall - sometimes it works, sometimes it stumbles - and then everyone around him scrambles to copy it because 'holy shit this is actually something new and innovative and exciting and' rather than doing anything new and exciting they just copy/paste until it's a bad parody(See: Extremis, Nextwave, Authority, probably a few others that I missed.)
Warren Ellis is pretty much a Comic Book Writer's Comic Book Writer. I have no idea if the stuff he wrote on his blog still exists in any sort of form nowadays, but several times he went all-in describing the creative process and history and what he has to do not only to write comic books but what it takes to get it published.
And he was very, very big on the concept of using comics as a medium to push out new ideas, and do them cheaply. He actually wrote a comic with this entire goal in mind - Fell - and I think it's worth checking out.
So, yeah. Warren Ellis doesn't really do characters. He does ideas, concepts, lobbing them out like hand grenades before moving on to something new - which, again, when the comic book environment is focused on reboots and milking the same characters for endless decades, makes for quite the refreshing change.
So, it's a fair criticism. I think he can do characters - stuff like Transmetropolitan, Doktor Sleepless, arguably Planetary with Elijah Snow - he just... doesn't. Most of the time.
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