Available Light
Words and pictures by Warren Ellis
Published by Ait-Planetlar
Available Light is not a comic book, and yet is does what the best of Ellis's comics have done over the years. It delivers his unique voice and creative vision with words and pictures, economy and elegant design. Available Light is compact and elegant, hard and haunting.
This hardcover art book, accompanied by short, spare, text pieces, represents a real stretch both for its creator and its publisher. AiT-Planetlar uberguru Larry Young hinted at his ambitions with the recent Public Domain, a "making of" book by Brian Wood dedicated to revealing the creative process behind Wood's singular Channel Zero. Wood is back on Available Light, providing design for Ellis's project that elevates it from mere art book into the realm of fetish art object. The stark artistry of Wood's unmistakable iconography combined with Ellis's strangely beautiful pictures create a thin, vital work that would not be out of place in the gift shop of any museum in the world.
The pictures are a story in themselves, all by Ellis, and all shot with his "eyemodule," a low-rez digital camera that connects to his Handsrping Visor and creates for him fast and dirty pixellated interpretations of the world as he experiences it. Signs, gates, statues, lamps, and even his own young daughter are all seen through the lens of his nearly-disposable chosen medium, and all are recreated in the glow of the available light, where what you see is only the smallest part of the picture, and what you get is largely dependent on what you bring to the party, helped along by Ellis's texts.
Those texts vary from genuine autobiographical reminiscences to fictional character sketches to a grotesque urban horror story that would not be at all out of place as a description of the world seen by Ellis's Spider Jerusalem in the pages of Transmetropolitan. Most welcome to me were the pieces of his life history that Ellis chose to reveal. For all his cynicism and ability to shock and horrify in his comics work, words here like "He hated me forever. Or about two weeks, which is the same as forever when you're six," pull back the curtain to show the self-titled "Old Bastard" not only remembers what it was like to be a child, but doesn't have all that hard a time putting himself back in that place.
No doubt that's due in large part to the same thing which has put many of us of a certain age back in touch with our childhoods: Our own children. This is a book dedicated to Ellis's daughter Lili, and it begins with a lovely photo and a wondrous memory of her birth. I think this piece, the most revealing and compelling in the volume, best demonstrates the dual elements of hope and cynicism that have always been a part of Ellis's greatest works over his career; in the beginning, vomit-filled toilet bowls and "The Inseminator" jokes set the scene, but by the end of the tale, Ellis is a new father, startled and grateful for his infant daughter, already extraordinary, already exceeding expecations, already justifying Ellis's unkillable hope for a better world. As a testament to his creative powers, both reproductive and artistic, Available Light is an essential work of words and pictures, and beauty and drama. Grade: 5/5