There are comics creators who can sell product only on the basis of their “name.” More and more, the creators supersede the work as a selling point. In sports terms, the names of the back of the jerseys matter more than those on the front. Sometimes these “brand” creators are multi-media moguls. Some of them are industry staples and have held their posts for multiple years. There are those who toil within the industry until they break out, and there are those who break out near instantly. People self-publish, or enter after finding success in other forms of entertainment like fiction writing, television, or film. Some work on young readers’ books, and others work office jobs within the industry. Every comics creator has one thing in common; they all had to start, and start strong. Everybody had to cut their teeth somewhere, prove their worth and talent, and continue to merit a career in a creative field. Frank Miller had to make Daredevil into a success before he could do The Dark Knight Returns. Alan Moore crafted stories of inter-dimensional intrigue for the C-list Captain Britain before becoming the man who wrote Watchmen. And in the highly competitive field of comics’ writing many will enter, few will win. Flip through some random back issues and you will find many more creators out of the business than those still employed. Like a professional athlete, the average career length is short, but the ceiling can be high. This is because comics are hard.

It stands to reason that anyone who finds success must have had some sort of innate talent. With the luxury of hindsight, we will analyze some of the earliest available work of current writers, and evaluate it alongside their later work. Comparing the early, perhaps purer and more primal, vision of the creator’s abilities to the later professional work should provide insight both into what aptitude was inherent, and what growth was necessary to sustain a career. Every week dozens of comics throw a ton of stuff against the wall, reflection offers a better position to see what stuck and why. After all, it isn’t the ability to land a first job that separates the strong from the weak. Not until the second gig is there an assurance that not only can you do the job, but you’ve proven to do it well. This is Why… will evaluate the early works of many top creative talents to assess their evolution and skill.

Warren Ellis has been one of comics’ most prolific writers of the last decade. He has remained a controversial figure not only for his writing, but also for his strong and pioneering web presence. He has hosted numerous forums that have been a haven for comics discussion, and even been (self) proclaimed as the “Internet Jesus.” His market predictions have repeatedly proven true, most notably in the rise of the graphic novel and trade paperback market. He was also an early proponent of what has been come to be known as “decompression,” the expansion of traditional comic stories into an installment-based form designed for the secondary sustainable collection market. More important than his secondary writings and theory, of course, his work has become synonymous with quality storytelling, boundary-pushing, and high level entertainment. Notable among his work are: Transmetropolitan, the report of a cynical journalist in a dystopian future; Planetary, a deeply layered exploration of the twentieth century via the fictional tropes that defined it; and The Authority, an edgy introspection of superheroes and their supposed responsibility in a globalized world. This minor sampling is only the most visible of the writer’s massive production slate. Unwilling to remain in one genre for a prolonged period of time, and always seemingly one step ahead of the curve, Ellis has worked for almost every functioning comics’ publisher creating an ocean of concepts for the industry to explore. He seems to wisely utilize each publisher and their varied strengths, either by expanding his own name as a brand in his work-for-hire at DC and Marvel, telling a sprawling multiple volume story for DC’s Vertigo imprint, showing comics’ graphic side for edgy publisher Avatar, or creating original graphic novels for AiT/PlanetLar. Despite a claimed distaste for what is most often considered the “mainstream” of comics, he has worked largely within the superhero genre, working on Marvel’s Ultimate line on both Ultimate Fantastic Four and the eighteen part Ultimate Galactus saga.

There is an unmistakable quality to an Ellis book. Ellis’ inimitable voice seeps through any work he creates. In an effort to better define this enigmatic quality, I recently read Ellis’ earliest available work, Lazarus Churchyard: The Final Cut, by Image Comics. This is a collection of the shorts that Ellis wrote for the now defunct British magazine BLAST! starting in the early 1990s. Entertaining but raw, Lazarus Churchyard truly is the prototype for what makes Ellis tick and tick successfully as a writer.

Lazarus Churchyard just wants to die. After four hundred years of walking the Earth, he’s just sick and goddamn tired of it. He can’t, of course, as he is 90% composed of a super-plastic that adapts to any dangerous input near instantaneously and keeps him going. Like any sane individual, this immortality drives Lazarus towards drugs and general self destructive behavior. Oh, and he looks like a zombified Jim Morrison. The Final Cut collects six Churchyard short stories, the final of which was a new tale conceived for this collection. While there were other stories published that followed the exploits of the walking undead, Ellis cites the collaborations with artist and co-creator D’Israeli as the definitive stories. For the purposes of this text, we will regard the work collected in Final Cut as a complete story. Churchyard walks the length of his bleak Earth in search of a release, but only finding that he is more alive than he is willing to admit.

It all begins with Virtual Kiss. Before we even meet Churchyard, a murder occurs in the lawless pre-web concept of the “Datasea.” “You’re in the Datasea,” a narrator explains to us, “Which means you’re in me. That’s practically rape, you know.” While technology is seemingly finding a connection to humanity, Lazarus is losing his. We meet him in a Mos Eisley-ish bar of cosmetic skeletal surgery addicts, necrophiliac “Frostygirls,” and Scottish bartenders with broken television sets for faces. Ellis’ imagination seeps off of the page in the world of surely super science and sex.

There is an immediate parallel to be drawn that ties together much of Ellis’ work. The frustrated British protagonist, constantly overwhelmed by his surroundings but fighting back by drawing slowly on his cigarette, is a near constant. From Planetary’s Elijah Snow, Fell’s Detective Fell, the Thor run’s Detective Curzon, or The Authority’s Jenny Sparks, the similarity of these characters and their voices can seem like the voice of Ellis himself, as he immerses himself into the work and reacts accordingly. It is this irritable protagonist that allows us as the readers to pace our journey through Ellis’ often overwhelming environments. The “hero” is ever the pessimist, and always slow to act. Slow to act, but always willing when the cause is just.

And so Churchyard is, of course, brought in to help solve the mystery of the virtual murders. The character’s main motivation is exploited, being promised that if he is successful in bringing in the murderer, he will be rewarded with his ultimate desire, death. In fact, it isn’t just a desire to die that defines Laz’s character, but rather his first line and concern, “Nobody kisses me anymore.” It isn’t the immortality that alienates him. Unlike Pinocchio, who desires to become “real,” for validation, Churchyard has lived a life as a human. He knows exactly what he’s missing out on due to his unfortunate “plasborging.” Rather than stifling his development, which is the Pinocchio dilemma, Lazarus has become an infinite run-on sentence, with no closure on the horizon. He plays along with his skeletal guide, PJ Proby, and exposes us to the defeated future of mass plague, utter lack of organic life, and corporate excess. There is classic Ellis imagination evident in the work, such as the creatures that were bred to urinate heroin and spawn bacterial engines that serve as nanotech for the world, or the digital and corrupted Eden. This illustrates a knack for proposing interesting visuals that comes through even just the design and concept for Lazarus. There is also the direct dialogue that can make Ellis so much fun to read, with lines like “Now there will be violence,” or “Time for beatings,” that seem directly linked to his more current work in Marvel’s Nextwave. While the dialogue can be exposition-heavy at times, it is fresh enough that it carries without burden and is obviously the only way to relate the amount of back story involved. The mystery of Virtual Kiss is only partially satisfying, but the elliptical structure of the story, along with the pure, uncut, undiluted imported lunacy of the tale more than makes it worthwhile.

The first tale, while setting the stage for the world, is ultimately the least centered of any of the stories. The rest each explore the various levels of Churchyard’s humanity, despite his physiology and surroundings. Alraune is an exploration of the transformation of man’s lust for information into more dangerous religious zeal. Lucy is the story of his plastic predecessor and how her human creator stole her innocence. In Women, as Lazarus himself is transmogrifying into a female, we learn of the betrayal of a woman close to him. Inspector Sleep is a tale of empty vengeance spanning four hundred years. Sleep also gives insight into the man Churchyard was before his transformation, suggesting that the loss of his natural body was key to Churchyard’s own redemption.

In each story, it is made more and more evident that Churchyard has no reason to remain human. He can transform his body, he will live forever, and the humans that surround him seem to represent the worst we have to offer. Yet he can’t help it. He partakes in endless unimaginable drugs, but only in an attempt to feel something. Like the best drug addicts, he’s really only trying to hurt himself. With each story we see how despite the many stimuli that drive Lazarus, or anyone, away from humanity, the connections and empathy inherent to our species ensure we remain linked. While the idea that no man can detach himself from humanity is not a new one, it is executed in a deft enough manner with an original protagonist and environment that it feels like a fresh take.

This seems to be a unifying trait of many of Ellis’ protagonists. While they are surely a lot, almost all of whom claim great disdain for humanity, they all are intrinsically linked to an aspect of the greater human whole. Jenny Sparks hates you, but she wants to protect you. Elijah Snow is colder than ice, but he believes humanity has a right to fully know itself. Even when writing Gen13’s illegitimate cousins DV8, he still has time to redeem even his most rotten characters. It all leads to the feeling that Ellis himself is a man who wishes desperately to be a bastard, a man who feels as though humanity is more trouble than it is worth, but cannot bring himself to fully embrace his contempt because he understands our weakness all too well.

Of course, Ellis is a better writer now than he was fifteen years ago. Likely, the motivations that drive his current characters are much more subtle than Lazarus the man who wished he could die. Some of it, likely, is considerably less personal than this early venture, and he may not care about Norman Osborn of Thunderbolts the way he did this first creation. All artists learn shortcuts, the ones that make creating for a living possible. But Ellis always manages to bring something new to the table. He always introduces a character spin, or an unforeseen plot twist, and takes what may be a tried and true formula and makes it fresher than a newborn baby’s ass.

The last chapter, Finality, serves as a perfect close to the Lazarus adventures. Produced a full ten years after the rest of the stories, the progress of Ellis as a writer is self-evident. Everything from strength of theme, dialogue, and even more subtle issues like panels per page are noticeably more polished in the tale. Brilliantly, the final story of Churchyard and his world concerns mostly his origins and conception, and the inevitability of his tragedy. The degenerate child of degenerate parents, he was cast to the world as the least likely of champions, but will likely stand as the last of our kind. At the end of days it is Churchyard’s loneliness that makes him sympathetic.

There is a cynicism that rings through Ellis’ work. It is destructive and seemingly mean-spirited at times. This is only skin deep, however, and when inspected closer we see the true substance of Ellis’ writing is that we remain human beings throughout. Whether we are hundred year old planetary white blood cells, robots who crave only beer, aliens who fall in love with the human race as a whole, or not-quite human cyborgs desperate to die, we all want the same basic things. This is perhaps never better illustrated than in Ellis’ latest work Fell. Detective Richard Fell is new to Snowtown, and each issue gives us a peek into its underbelly as we try and find what the hell is wrong with it. But, for all the rotten human scum that Fell finds, he cannot help but come back again and again, and fight for them.

It is fifteen years later, and the structural similarities in Ellis’ work are blindingly apparent. For all the many similarities to be found among Ellis’ work, however, they are only obvious because we are privy to so damn much of it. There is such a large library of what he has produced that we cannot help but note the tropes he falls back upon. And while all creators have demons that they wrestle with throughout their career, it is the ability to wrestle in a new way that allows one to sustain a career in creativity.