THE METABARONS very nearly defies description. It's a piece of European space-opera science fiction in comics form. Accent on the opera in that last sentence. In its vast sets, broad gestures and hysterical pitch, it is nothing less than operatic. It is astonishingly beautiful and completely mad.
It is a generational saga: the story of a line of crazed aristocratic mercenaries, each of whom brings his son to manhood through mutilation and bizarre prosthetic experiments... each of whom experiences a doomed love affair and has to commit immense war crimes simply to reproduce. It is resolutely Not Normal, as you may expect from a writer who was also the director of cult movies El Topo and Santa Sangre.
What keeps me going back to THE METABARONS is the immense volume and speed of its innovation. There is literally a new and mad idea on every page, framed by the bleak, poisonous male energy of the Metabarons and their crushing romance. There is nothing else like this book.
Warren Ellis has written around thirty graphic novels, comics, prose fiction, journalism, videogames and screenplays. Sometimes he take photographs. He also creates and co-creates websites, including this one. He has awards and stuff, he's been in big magazines and newspapers, and he's been published in Nature, which he always mentions because it makes him laugh. He's on the web at warrenellis.com and diepunyhumans.com.
