Ten Stupid Questions with Warren Ellis

1) In which city do you work? I work in a town called Southend, on the south-east coast of England. If you ever saw the video for Morrissey's "Every Day Is Like Sunday," then you've seen Southend: the seaside town they forgot to shut down.
2) What got you into comics? My dad brought home a copy of COUNTDOWN comic when I was two years old. And that was that.
3) Where do babies come from?Me.
4) Where do you see yourself in five years? So obscure that you'll wonder why you asked me to do this questionnaire.
5) What do you feel you have yet to do? Watch the rest of my hair fall out.
6) Does this make me look fat? Colostomy bags make everyone look fat. There's nothing you can do about it.
7) Which of your projects are you the most proud of? Probably TRANSMETROPOLITAN. In hindsight, I kind of wonder why I thought it was a good idea to write a 1300-page graphic novel over five years. Also ORBITER.
8) Who are your influences, inside or outside of comics? Oh, God. I don't think I have time to list them. Everything's an influence. And mine is probably the same shopping list as everyone else's anyway. Off the top of my head: Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Alfred Bester, Philip K Dick, Hunter Thompson, My Bloody Valentine, a bunch of the mid-80s music journalists like Chris Roberts and Simon Reynolds, Lydia Lunch, Dennis Potter, Troy Kennedy Martin...more recently, Aaron Sorkin and David Milch for their dialogue... Tom Wolfe, Peter Greenaway, Mike Moorcock, JG Ballard, David Cronenberg, Nic Roeg... Can I stop now?
9) Does this look infected to you? I try not to talk about people's faces like that.
10) What advice would you give a person trying to break into the industry? Firstly, if you want to break into comics just to do the company-owned characters, sod off. We have enough people like you in the business as it is. That sort of thing should only ever be a sidebar to your career. Second, focus on getting published, not on where you're getting published. A published book is your calling card. Study the independent publishers yourself -- with the advent of the net, that's a hell of a lot easier to do now than it was when I was starting out. Doesn't matter how small they are; they simply need to be on your wavelength. Your goal isn't loads of money at this point: it's retaining rights and getting 25 copies of the printed book. Because handing over one of those shows another publisher that someone else was prepared to gamble their money on your work. Which makes you a safer bet than the person with a handful of photocopies. That's the trick. But please, in the name of god, have something to say. I want more good comics. Bring the New. Put me out of work.