Warren Ellis made an offer on his email list to answer 4 questions for any comics website that responded within 12 hours. SC indicates our question, WE indicates Mr. Ellis's response. Here was our attempt:
SC: Many people (including yourself) have commented on the absurdly small size of the american comic book industry. The one potential upside to this situation is that it could result in greater artistic freedom because of less cost to get involved, less corporate control - but I don't see that happening. Why do you think more creators aren't willing to push these boundaries?
WE: Most people get into this business because they want to write the characters they grew up with. Artistic freedom is therefore redundant.
SC: You've been frequently used as an example of a comics creator that succesfully created a brand for themself, including fans that will purchase your work just because of your name. A lot of this "brand" has come from your forum, website, and email list. How much of this was a conscious effort on your part?
WE: Much of it. Previous to the internet, the way to gather an audience was to go out on the road, hit all the American conventions. With a newborn daughter, I was buggered if I was going to do that. So I wanted to see if I could create the same effect using this new-fangled inertweb thingy...
SC: Lots of online commentators are talking about manga and bookstore markets as potential saviors of the industry. You've been reported as working on a "manga" project in the next year. What do you see as the strengths of the manga market besides its size? What are the dangers that everyone is ignoring?
WE: That's a rumour, I'm afraid.
The thing about translated manga is this: we only see the best stuff. The Japanese industry generates a vast amount of pages every year -- the translation companies have an immense spread of work to cherry-pick from, in a myriad of different genres. That is its unassailable strength.
If there's a weakness, then it's to come, and it's economic -- is there a saturation point, and can the translation companies survive a higher percentage of returned books? We haven't hit it yet. Who knows, maybe we won't.
SC: You mention that you use the Die Puny Humans website as a work journal. You collect a very diverse set of links there - people, music, images, cultural scraps. How has the availability of the internet and related technologies affected your writing?
WE: It's affected the preparation for my writing hugely -- I can do all
my research from my computer. I don't think it's really affected my voice.