Brendan Riley, Warren Ellis is the Future of Superhero Comics: How to Write Superhero Stories That Aren't Superhero Stories

(In The Amazing Transforming Superhero)

I've got to read some of Ellis' comics. Between this article and a presentation I saw by Steven Shaviro about Doktor Sleepless. But I digress.

Riley, as indicated by the title, basically argues that Ellis' work is consistently and effectively engaged with the mythology, form and function of the superhero in the post-revisionist era begun by Frank Miller and Alan Moore which, according to Riley, Ellis helped to end with Transmetropolitan, Planetary and The Authority.

What I find particularly interesting about the argument is that Ellis' reconfigurations exist alongside very traditional, very mainstream superhero narratives - including some written by Ellis himself. Riley discusses the "anxiety of influence" and suggests that creators in franchises and genres (particularly large, long-running ones) cannot but be influenced by the mainstream history of the franchise/genre. Therefore comic book creators, even when not explicitly working within the superhero mode, are inevitably engaged in the discourse of superheroes - a fact which is apparently embraced by Ellis in his work.

He also quoted somebody quoted by somebody else, who said: "There are no texts, but only relationships between texts." Obviously I need to track down that person and read their stuff, because that's a key point for my thesis.

I'm totally going to quote somebody, quoted in somebody, quoted in somebody. Is that allowed?