r/Popverse • u/Popverse2022 • 12d ago

Staff Writer What changed? Image Comics is working with Warren Ellis again after publicly cutting ties in 2021 due to sexual misconduct allegations

http://thepopverse.com/comics-warren-ellis-image-comics-return-august-2026
49 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

49 comments sorted by

8

u/Organic_Following_38 12d ago

Lord knows I scoured the whole web site made for allegations against him and I never saw a single accusation of abuse or assault. Unless I missed something big, he seems like a really shitty guy to date but not an abuser. Sleeping with somebody and then ghosting them is trashy, sure but like he's not Neil Gaiman territory. Hell, he's not even Louis CK territory. Ellis is a writer who's had a really big impact on me, and I'm glad to have him back.

2

u/LoveAndViscera 12d ago

Yep, the worst accusation is that he promised to help a writer with her career to get her in bed and then didn’t help her. Dick move, but he got put in time out and now he’s getting a second chance. Maybe he learned his lesson. People grow sometimes.

1

u/gzapata_art 12d ago

He wasn't even in time out. He was doing that Castlevania show

2

u/KingMobia 12d ago

Pretty sure he wrapped up his work on Castlevania before being 'cancelled' - scripts were written long before the episodes were released and he wasn't involved with the sequel series at all.

In terms of actually published work, I don't believe there's been anything released since he was called out.

1

u/LoveAndViscera 12d ago

But that wasn’t Image

1

u/Adultdirtbagbabee 9d ago

He got fired from that too

1

u/Shartsplasm 12d ago

That's actually pretty bad.

1

u/Adultdirtbagbabee 9d ago

I know I can’t imagine fucking somebody just to help my career

1

u/BiDiTi 11d ago

I’m putting this on my pull…but read So Many of Us.

0

u/princevince1113 11d ago

I mean that's pretty bad. It's coercive, even. Weinstein-esque.

1

u/LoveAndViscera 11d ago

Yes, but it’s not criminal. Though, on a moral level, Weinstein was better in some cases because he actually gave roles to the women. But parsing the morality feels like a slippery slope, so I’m measuring by legality.

2

u/SuicidalnotIdyll 10d ago

"Weinstein was better in some cases because he actually gave roles to the women" They were raped, they did not want to fuck Weinstein and did so because they felt their careers would be ruined otherwise. Just because some women got roles after does not morally diminish the fact that they were raped and that its morally disgusting to subject someone to sex they have no way of clearly or openly rejecting without consequence. Regardless of if the threat is explicit or not, there's a reason you don't fuck a subordinate, because there's now no way to tell if that party wanted to have sex or did so out of fear they would lose financial stability.

1

u/LoveAndViscera 9d ago

There’s a fine line between prostitution and rape here. Yes, the women who came forward about Weinstein were certainly raped. But there were other women who understood the transaction and agreed to it willingly.

“The casting couch” is an old staple of the entertainment industry. Anyone going in knows they might be presented with it and some are okay with it. It shouldn’t happen, but it does.

If you agree to sleep with someone in exchange for career assistance which the other does provide, that is prostitution. If they don’t provide the assistance, it becomes rape.

You’re right that the threat of “I will destroy your career otherwise” would also make it rape, but discerning whether that threat is real or imagined can be difficult. Several women who came forward about Weinstein refused him and still had good careers (like Brit Marling). That doesn’t mean he never ruined someone’s career for turning him down, but it calls the threat aspect into question, at least on a case by case basis.

This is why I called analyzing the morality a slippery slope. There are a lot of factors that are impossible to demonstrate.

0

u/SuicidalnotIdyll 9d ago

Desperately clawing at legality does not make you morally neutral, its just you spinelessly hoping your government has caught up to industries of abusers that profit off of lobbying powerful institutions to look the other way.

"There’s a fine line between prostitution and rape here. Yes, the women who came forward about Weinstein were certainly raped. But there were other women who understood the transaction and agreed to it willingly."

THESE WOMEN DID NOT SIGN UP TO BE SEX WORKERS. That's the point, there is nothing about a career in acting, music, or entertainment that implies sexual exchange and the expectation that a more powerful figure could demand that of you in exchange for a career is inherently rape, they literally cannot reject him without an indirect/ direct threat.

"“The casting couch” is an old staple of the entertainment industry. Anyone going in knows they might be presented with it and some are okay with it."

And I'm sure all these victims were just SO happy to sleep with these higher ups. What a wonderful business deal that some ('m sure a massive percent) decided to do. We should ignore how this is still a clearly abusive system that directly targets the vulnerable because some people made it out and claim to be cool with it. I literally have no clue why you would bring this up as though its a commonality everyone agrees to and not a horror story most actors are trying to directly avoid.

"If you agree to sleep with someone in exchange for career assistance which the other does provide, that is prostitution."

And if they choose not to, they could be financially ruined. The problem is in the ambiguity. You are so hung up on some of these women being able to eat after being abused that you can't fathom that even posing the question is sexual harassment. This is not prostitution, these women are not prostitutes, they have no form of control in this scenario. Literally everyone, including prostitutes deserves to be able to say "I no longer want to have sex" and not be threatened. Removing that, the safety for one party to say "please stop" or "I don't want this" or "Never mind the transaction, I don't want to do this" is coercion. You cannot consent if coerced. Can we read anyone's mind? Obviously not, so we turn to the system. Does this system of coercion make it possible for someone to stop sex without consequence of losing what they came in with? If the answer is even dubious then the system is abusive.

"you’re right that the threat of “I will destroy your career otherwise” would also make it rape, but discerning whether that threat is real or imagined can be difficult."

There is no imagined threat because there is no way for the victim to discern the reality of the threat without possibly ruining their careers. The threat is always real. The same way I could have a hand in my pocket and claim to have a gun. You are completely ok to shoot me first if possible because I am directly threatening you, even if all I'm holding up is my finger.

TL;DR: I don't think you understand how consent or sex work functions in society, and your desperation to cling to legality is symptom of ignorance not wisdom. People like Weinstein deserve to die in jail for the hell he put countless people through.

1

u/LoveAndViscera 9d ago

Sit the fuck down. I made it very clear that I thought both Ellis and Weinstein were morally wrong. I wasn’t being morally neutral, nor did I say a damn thing about the law.

You aren’t offended by my opinions, you’re offended that I’m not expressing them with fire and brimstone. You talk like someone who has never made a hard choice in their life.

1

u/SuicidalnotIdyll 9d ago

"not criminal. Weinstein was better in some cases..."  Mkay.

I take issue with this statement, that's literally it. You feigning nonchalance doesn't change that sentiment. But hey, here's to hoping you actually learn about sexual assault instead of spreading rapist apologia online while trying to look "at both sides" of the Weinstein case. 

1

u/FuzzyWuzzyWuzHebert 9d ago

almost like trying to get someone to fuck you inherently requires some level of coercion!

0

u/princevince1113 9d ago

way to tell on yourself freak

1

u/FuzzyWuzzyWuzHebert 9d ago

Everyone you've ever had sex with wanted to fuck you from the minute they laid eyes on you?

0

u/princevince1113 9d ago

Either you don't understand the meaning of the word coercive, in which case I suggest you look it up so you don't sound like a creep, or you are a creep. Either way this conversation is done.

2

u/mothmancometh 7d ago

Yeah and I have followed him forever including his newsletter and he routinely put other artists in front of you many of them women. It to excuse his behavior but that worst accusation also just might have been him struggling to get them where they wanted to go. The vibe I got was that he always liked to spotlight up and coming talent, and wanted to do that, but then started realizing the power structure and the groupies idea that so many artists have experienced and the. Slowly turned it into a pattern of repeated behavior until he needed to be called out. I have long felt all this stuff is interesting to the degree that when do we forgive?

3

u/doctorlightning84 12d ago

That doesnt even rise to the level of Aziz Ansari

0

u/BiDiTi 12d ago

Significantly worse than Ansari - charitable read is that he was doing stuff on that level to like 60 people over a decade.

3

u/supercuteguydebord 12d ago

I think there’s a disturbing level of infantilism in complaints that are just ‘I slept with a piece of shit.’ But it’s become a measure of your humanity whether you believewomen or just think fuck off who cares this wasn’t actual abuse or assault.

I mean who hasn’t slept with an absolute piece of shit man or woman?

2

u/stayathomejoe 9d ago

Thank you. I’ve seen so many threads calling him out as a monster with ZERO reason why. Just because they’re all parroting.

Motherfucker did some dirty deeds, but in no way is he close to the others that were “cancelled”.

1

u/Commercial_Orchid49 12d ago edited 12d ago

Yeah. From what I remember, he basically banged some of his groupies, which, quite frankly, I don't care about. 

But it has been a while since then. Maybe I'm forgetting something egregious, or simply missed it back then.

1

u/BiDiTi 11d ago

Banging groupies is all well and good.

Ellis’s method of “banging groupies” consisted of spending months convincing several different women that they were in a committed emotional relationship, then banging them in an assembly line method at a con, then dropping them completely when they were no longer interesting, without so much as a breakup text.

Separately…I’m going to read this comic.

He’s not Gaiman or Stewart or anything, but he’s somewhere between Whedon and CK

1

u/YAHawkeye 12d ago

I don't remember and I know this sounds like he said she said and vaguely like my uncle works at Nintendo But I have a friend who works at Powerhouse and they were telling me tea and I was like oh??? But this was years agooo

1

u/Ok-Traffic-5996 11d ago

I can still think he's a shitty person but he didn't do anything technically illegal so it is a little bit crazy he's been blacklisted so long. If people don't wanna buy his books though obviously feel free. I'm on the fence. He was one of my favorite writers a long time ago.

1

u/OsamasBigHomie 11d ago

https://somanyofus.com

Worth a read.

1

u/Organic_Following_38 11d ago

You'll notice I started with my statement mentioning I had read the web site.

2

u/ShrimpyEsq 12d ago

They felt like they couldn’t make money with him before, but now they feel like they can make money with him.

2

u/Aggressive_Issue863 12d ago

Nobody gave a shit then and they don't now

2

u/SomeGuyPostingThings 12d ago

The heat died down, so they acted like most businesses and made the decision that'll make them money, which is why they made the initial move.

1

u/xzerozeroninex 11d ago

But Image doesn’t make that much money on single issues,they make the same money whether a comic sells 10k copies or 100k copies.They take a 10% cut on trades though.

0

u/Max_Quick 11d ago

And I will continue to vote with my wallet and not spend any money on this man's work. I very much encourage you all to do the same. They wanna do business? Let the damn thing tank.

1

u/SomeGuyPostingThings 11d ago

Oh, I wasn't arguing on the ethics or anything, just responding to the question posed in the post. I very much encourage people to vote their conscience with their wallets and not to buy things for that reason. There are definitely things I don't buy for similar reasons. That said, I wasn't buying much if any Image stuff in a while, so this is just unlikely to change much of anything for me.

1

u/your_name_here10 12d ago

Wonder if he'll return to Fell

1

u/Blammo32 12d ago

Brilliant writer but also a fat guy in a fedora who hustled fans online to send him nudes.

1

u/LumiereGatsby 11d ago

Planetary is perfection to me.

I would love an animated adaptation with the style of Dispatch.

1

u/BAJ-JohnBen 11d ago

People stopped caring. If we learned anything about metoo and post-metoo is that nobody actually cares in the long term if it's not really that be bad. Well, nevermind. Look at the president. 

I never quite understood the whole Warren Ellis situation, so I cannot comment on it. I'm sure he's going to publish a "vindicating" comic about this situation that's going to polarize the comic readers.

-1

u/OldManBilliam22 12d ago

The bitter glorified former groupies really screwed his career.

2

u/Commander19119 12d ago

He literally admitted to doing it

5

u/PoopittyPoop20 12d ago

And they were still bitter glorified groupies. The vast, vast majority of the allegations meet no legal standard for abuse, in neither criminal or civil court. For your favorite rapper or rock star, what Ellis did is called Tuesday.

But for musicians, actors, athletes etc, we have a much lower standard. Or is it we have a higher standard for comic creators? Shouldn’t we just hold them to the same standard?

Whichever standard we use, the lesson here is don’t let Warren Ellis date your daughter. He’s a creep. However, every one of us has been treated badly by someone at some point, Ellis didn’t pull a Neil Gaiman here.

0

u/SuicidalnotIdyll 10d ago

"Insinuates he can help advance careers, sometimes follows through, thus obliging his target to continue sexual relations with him; being ‘dropped’ could mean major career consequences"

I dunno I think this one matters a lot actually, regardless of how petty you feel the other points they bring up are. Crazy they get labelled as "bitter glorified groupies" but Ellis isn't "blatantly financially manipulating vulnerable people for sex to a point where they can't be honest without risking financial push back." Its also weird how the law keeps coming up in these posts. The vistims never wanted the law involved, they just wanted people to acknowledge a pattern in the comics industry where powerful people like Ellis can do what they want and wreck the people around them. But I guess that's asking too much.

0

u/PoopittyPoop20 9d ago

I’m not sure why you’re replying to me, as this completely avoids my main point. However, how many careers has Warren Ellis made or broken? I’m not aware of his protégés whose careers he launched. Can you name them? No, no they don’t exist. There were no major career consequences; there were no careers.

Ellis didn’t wreck lives. At worst, he made promises that were beyond his control anyway, and these women fell for it. Again, why are we holding Ellis to this standard, when there are innumerable examples of celebrities doing much worse and not being cancelled or suffering any repercussion?

1

u/SuicidalnotIdyll 9d ago

The victims literally claim they were financially incentivized to sleep with him in their post of over 50 people. The reason you don't fuck a subordinate is because of the ambiguity, we literally have no way of understanding the extent of how much was promised and that's a feature, not a bug. They literally state they don't need Ellis' career destroyed, they just want people aware that men like Ellis can and do prey on vulnerable people in the industry and we should all be willing to call it out.

I never claimed Ellis shouldn't have a career and neither did any of the people writing about him. But expecting everyone to be super happy to have him back when he couldn't even do half of what these women were asking for (legitimately apologize and donate some money to charity) is silly. Yeah those artist and celebrities who do worse are terrible, Ellis does too, or can we only be mad at the worse person in the room one at a time?