Okay, so Fraction's an artbomb.net writer. Of course, he doesn't have the faintest idea I'm writing this.
You really, really wouldn't know that LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS was his first graphic novel. He shows a native understanding of the form. It's filmic -- it's a fine blueprint for the best caper flick you'll never see, in fact -- but it never loses sight of being a graphic novel and exploiting the effects that are only available to graphic novels.
Kieron Dwyer, who's been around for many years, is born again. These are probably the best damn pages he's ever drawn, every crappy paying-yer-dues lesson learned and stood on its head and owned.
It's big and small, this book about love and death and cash and crime: Fraction and Dwyer can never quite hold in their brain-damaged sense of humour, and there's some huge mad set-pieces. But the book's anchored in real things, the small stories that make a book breathe. It's funny and dirty and it swaggers and it's very sad and stuff blows up and I had a hell of a time with it. So will you.
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.
