First Step Into Scatterlands: Warren Ellis Debuts Daily Webcomic

A few weeks ago, Warren Ellis teased some kind of a new comics project, named Scatterlands, with Super Dinosaur artist Jason Howard… and he did it without mentioning any further detail about what it was. Oh sure, he had previously Tweeted that he missed doing a free Web-based project like FreakAngels, but as a teaser, that really didn’t mean anything. After all, the man has also Tweeted about the gastronomic delights of the common infant, occasionally combined with the pastime refreshment value of Col. Werner Von Braun’s Old No. Nein! Stuttgart Slurpin’ Partially Gelatinous Booster Fuel. So it’s best to take Ellis’s 140-character pronouncements with a grain of salt. At least, I sincerely hope it is.

However, in this case, those announcements were at least semi-accurate, because Ellis has announced the nature of the Scatterlands project: it will be a Web-based, daily, single-panel comic strip, with new panels every weekday.

And by “it will be,” I mean that “it is.” The first panel debuted today on Ellis’s Web site.

So whaddya got in store for us, Warren?

So I’d been talking about newspaper strips, and an idea that amused me: to lay a daily single-panel strip down on the website.  I mean, I’d been talking about various options, but that one did kind of make me smile.  And then Jason Howard, a frequent collaborator with Robert Kirkman, emailed and said “I could fancy that.”  So we got to talking, and discovered that certain musics and certain kinds of science fiction were mutual pleasures, guilty and otherwise.  And we came up with SCATTERLANDS.

Ellis says that the strip will run daily for several weeks at a time, with an occasional break, presumably so Howard can rest his drawing hand and Ellis can dynamite something and eat whatever remains.

And actually, the break makes sense, as doing a daily strip, even a single-panel one, seems like a lot of work for a guy who’s also nursing a book deal or two and (hopefully) another mainstream comic project again…

I’m tempted to do a second [daily comic] and bookend each weekday with a panel.

…with God as my witness, that man terrifies me. I sincerely believe that he shits amphetamines.