A cynical, highly intelligent and highly damaged person (along with his sexy female assistant) investigates mysteries of the weird all the while talking about obscure social theories and theoretical technology. Quick, which Warren Ellis book did I just describe? If your answer was "almost all of them," then you've spotted the one glaring flaw of Desolation Jones, which is that like most Ellis work of late, it reads like a collection of the cliches and writing habits he's picked up and honed into something between a style and a bad habit since he entered the industry. The good news is, while Desolation Jones reads a little bit too much like everything else Ellis has done, it's still full of interesting ideas, snappy and fun dialogue and a generally f-ed up sensibility which, combined with Williams' unusual and beautiful artwork, makes for an intriguing first issue at the least.
Desolation Jones is a protagonist very much in the mold of Spider Jerusalem, Jenny Sparks, Elijah Snow or Miranda Zero. He's smart, he's sarcastic and he has the same fascination with technology (real or imagined) as Warren Ellis does. He's basically an avatar of Warren Ellis's online bastard persona, and while it's a little tiresome that almost all of Ellis's works feature this character, it is undeniably an interesting character. There's plenty of mileage to be gotten out of Ellis's ever-quotable dialogue like "Hitler porn, you bastard. It's going to be a nightmare" or "Jones, jones. Everything goes better with bukkake." And certainly there's something life-affirming and yes, maybe even a little bit cathartic about seeing someone smart and funny kick the crap out of a few bastards who desperately deserve it.
Ellis is also full of ideas and comments on technology or sociology. Too often they feel crammed into the work, as with Jones commenting on "supermodernism" during his drive just so Ellis can introduce the concept, but when the big ideas in the mainstream seem to be "who can we rape or kill this week?" and "everything you know is wrong!" it's always nice to know somebody at least is coming up with new ideas. Whether it's big ideas like a spy who was tortured and killed over and over again until he was broken into something else, another spy who has to eat whole cows four times a year to make his freaky-ass sci-fi stomach work or smaller, funny ones like the Brooklyn native pretending to be English so he can keep a butler gig, Desolation Jones is full of fun, mad, disturbing ideas.
It is also a joy to look at, as JH Williams III takes on his next big project after the end of Promethea, where his work went from gorgeous and evocative to truly transcendent, capable of keeping up with the wildest ideas that Alan Moore could deliver. I'll admit that I have a fondness for Williams' very early work on Chase, which was much more restrained and comparable to other work, but I can't deny that he's found a more original voice now, and his mixture of almost photo-realistic people (without the stiffness that comes with a lot of photo-realistic art these days) and wild, imaginative collage type design is perfect for the messed-up world of Desolation Jones. He's capable of handling the extreme violence of Jones's attack on an assailant as well as the haunting beauty of the "lost angels of Los Angeles" and everything in between.
So in the end, I guess Desolation Jones is a first issue strong enough to hook me, on the basis not of concept but of strong work from the creative team. Ellis fans will no doubt love it, as it hews very closely to the style and approach of Global Frequency, Planetary and Transmetropolitan in a lot of ways. Those who find Ellis's style a little grating, on the other hand, will find nothing to change their mind here, as this book might push the boundaries of conventional comics but it's still well within the niche that Ellis has carved out for himself in the medium. 8/10
