I have a few things I want to blog about this weekend, but I guess I might as well get this one out of the way first: Warren Ellis has been accused of multiple instances of “sexual misconduct.” I started seeing stuff about this popping up in my Twitter feed earlier this week. It was all a bit confusing. He’s released a statement addressing the allegations, and The Beat has a write-up on that. There’s also an article on Bleeding Cool. And I see that a short story of his that was supposed to be in an upcoming Batman one-shot has been pulled. I am in no way qualified to evaluate and/or judge any of this mess. All I can say is that I’m really disappointed.
I’ve been a really big fan of Ellis for a while now. Searching for his name on my blog, I found 38 mentions, going back to 2005. I’ve been subscribing to his weekly newsletter since 2016, and I’ve really gotten a lot out of it. (He’s ended the newsletter now, of course.) Selfishly, I’m wondering if the rest of Batman’s Grave is going to be published. I haven’t started reading it yet, but the reviews have been good.
It’s weird to say that I looked up to him, but I guess I kind of did? He seemed to be a successful guy who’d figured out how to deal with things and get a lot of good work done despite a number of obstacles. He was always self-deprecating in his newsletter and recommended a lot of good work from other writers, artists, and musicians. And he had a lot of good general life advice in there too. I don’t really know where all of this is going to go. And I don’t really know how to feel about it. But I thought I should at least acknowledge it here.
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