Day: April 6, 2020

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Ugly Cover, Great Book: go read The Captured Ghosts Interview with Warren Ellis

The great irony of Warren Ellis: The Captured Ghosts Interviews is this: it’s an interviewer with a comics writer who thinks very carefully about the design and packaging of the written product, and yet it’s released with an incredibly ugly , half-arsed cover that’s seemingly designed to discourage purchasing. Which is a pity, because the contents of the book offer some fascinating insights into Ellis’ mindset, work processes, and usage of the internet, circa 2010/2011. We live in an age where access to interviews with creators are at an all-time peak right now, what with the plethora of websites, podcasts, and livestreams devoted to archiving creative insights. What marks The Captured Ghosts Interviews as something special is it’s origins: these are the full transcripts of the interviews Meaney and Thurman did while making a documentary about Ellis and his work, which means you’re getting all the messy asides and digressions rather than the best sound-bytes. It also means they have