Has thou ever looked at thine hammer?
I mean really looked at thine hammer?
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Thorsday Returns
I’m not the biggest fan of self-inserts. Usually, they’re clumsy and annoying, pulling you out of the story.
A good example of some bad self inserts from an otherwise good writer can be found in the early career of Warren Ellis. There was a time when it felt like every title he took over suddenly featured a chain-smoking, leather-wearing, overcoat clad tough guy, generally British. Examples include Morphine Summers in Doom 2099 and Pete Wisdom in Excalibur. Eventually he started breaking up the chain smoking/leather/British to different characters (He did this in Ultraforce and StormWatch), but it was still a “tell”.
The thing is, almost every character he created in this formula was interesting in one way or another. They were self-inserts yes, but at least they weren’t Mary Sues.
Except this guy:
When Ellis wrote the World Engine arc of Thor, he threw in this guy ? a brilliant, bad ass British chain-smoking Detective “on loan” to Code Blue. Smarter, funnier, and tougher than everyone else, of course.
Painful to read. If you want to read some good Ellis, I suggest you get Nextwave instead.
Then again, I suggest Nextwave on general pinciple.
Our digital camera done gone and died. Dangit.
