Ruins

Ruins #1-2

by Warren Ellis

Marvel's favorite pessimist looks through his darkest glass yet into a world where 'marvel' is just another word for 'horror.' Nuclear warfare, internment camps, government oppression, drug addiction, degradation, suicide...and those are just the ones we have words for. Have the men and women we know as heroes made the situation better or worse? Here's a hint: In the Ruins, radiation only kills. Collecting RUINS #1-2. 80 PGS. (LOGO VARIANT COVER)

Genres: Comics, Marvel, Graphic Novels, Horror, Superheroes, Comic Book, Science Fiction

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Warren Ellis is the award-winning writer of graphic novels like TRANSMETROPOLITAN, FELL, MINISTRY OF SPACE and PLANETARY, and the author of the NYT-bestselling GUN MACHINE and the “underground classic” novel CROOKED LITTLE VEIN, as well as the digital short-story single DEAD PIG COLLECTOR. His newest book is the novella NORMAL, from FSG Originals, listed as one of Amazon’s Best 100 Books Of 2016.

The movie RED is based on his graphic novel of the same name, its sequel having been released in summer 2013. IRON MAN 3 is based on his Marvel Comics graphic novel IRON MAN: EXTREMIS. He is currently developing his graphic novel sequence with Jason Howard, TREES, for television, in concert with HardySonBaker and NBCU, and continues to work as a screenwriter and producer in film and television, represented by Angela Cheng Caplan and Cheng Caplan Company. He is the creator, writer and co-producer of the Netflix series CASTLEVANIA, recently renewed for its third season, and of the recently-announced Netflix series HEAVEN’S FOREST.

He’s written extensively for VICE, WIRED UK and Reuters on technological and cultural matters, and given keynote speeches and lectures at events like dConstruct, ThingsCon, Improving Reality, SxSW, How The Light Gets In, Haunted Machines and Cognitive Cities.

Warren Ellis has recently developed and curated the revival of the Wildstorm creative library for DC Entertainment with the series THE WILD STORM, and is currently working on the serialising of new graphic novel works TREES: THREE FATES and INJECTION at Image Comics, and the serialised graphic novel THE BATMAN’S GRAVE for DC Comics, while working as a Consulting Producer on another television series.

A documentary about his work, CAPTURED GHOSTS, was released in 2012.

Recognitions include the NUIG Literary and Debating Society’s President’s Medal for service to freedom of speech, the EAGLE AWARDS Roll Of Honour for lifetime achievement in the field of comics & graphic novels, the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire 2010, the Sidewise Award for Alternate History and the International Horror Guild Award for illustrated narrative. He is a Patron of Humanists UK. He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Essex.

Warren Ellis lives outside London, on the south-east coast of England, in case he needs to make a quick getaway.

Reviews

[A.J. · Rating 1 out of 5]

An edgy 12 year old rewrites Marvels to be edgy and dark. This literally feels like the product of a teenger thinking of ways to make the Marvel superpowers gross while he’s at the lunch table with his friends. There isn’t even a story here, it’s just fucked up things happening after one another just because.

Warren Ellis really is a mixed bag of a writer, and my opinions of how perverted and awful of a person he is has nothing to do with it. Dude just peaked at Planetary & Transmetro, and everything else I read by him is middling or just straight up awful.

[Little Timmy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well this was a nice idea, a reverse of the classic Marvels mini series but it failed miserably. The art is horrible and barely viewable and the 2 issues are way to few to tell the story the that needs to be told. The only think that saves this from a 1 star is some of the interesting twists presented in the plot. Not recommended

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a weird little artifact, a kind of bleak meta-“What If...?” for all those who need a dash of cynicism alongside their pleasant main course.

The art of frankly a wreck, like the artists continues to spill his inks at random and decides to make the rest of the page wrap itself around it.

What’s missing is any heart, an appreciation of the subjects - this is ppainful to wade through, makes my Inner fanboy sick with how hard it is to make any sense of the panels.

I have to wonder if this illegible scrawl of an art job is a direct parody of Alex Ross’ amazing paint jobs found in Marvels among others - or are the artists just that mediocre?

The writing’s not much better - not angry enough to be funny, not so insightful that it tells us much profundity about the Marvel universe. Mostly just scribblings to stitch together a bunch of reveals of Ellis thinking about how a couple of dozen iconic heroes could become something awful.

[Venus Maneater · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe I would've given this five stars if I'd read it back during its first release. But now, now it just feels edgy for all the edge and Warren Ellis's hate and pure despise for mainstream comics and (super)heros leak through. He just sounds so, so bitter.

I would've liked it maybe a bit more if the journalist didn't accidentally encounter every.single.marvel.hero. Everyone. Sometimes they just drop dead straight from the sky, bleeding on him.


2.5 stars, because the art is beautiful. That's it. What a waste of time.

[Bingus Boingus · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5, it only got a score this high because I liked the art

[47Time · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philip Sheldon inteds to document what happened with Marvel's superheroes and write a book about it before the infection in his body claims his life. The world was set for a wave of superpowered people, but something happened and it all went wrong. He meets with several characters, heroes and villains in the normal universe. They are all deformed mentally and bodily.

He takes an interview from Mar-Vell, a former captain from the Kree, an alien civilization that tried to conquer the world. Their cloaking technology was negated by energy from the dying Silver Surfer, then they were repelled by Earth's nuclear missiles. Fury turned into a cannibalistic anarchist who kills himself in front of Sheldon. Mystique's multiple personalities rip her body apart. A man with a broken Gauss device strapped to his body causes immense destruction in an airport. Cyclops and other X-Men, all a shadow of their former powerful selves, are imprisoned after losing control of their powers and their minds. Basically, everything that could go wrong, went wrong, very much unlike in the normal Marvel universe.

The ending is tragic for Sheldon. He planned to use the time he had left to write a book about superpowered people based on his interviews and a score of pictures he gathered. He got infected a while ago by Peter Parker with a virus after the latter's encounter with a radioactive spider. Sheldon dies before he can write the book.

[Drew Canole · Rating 1 out of 5]

A really poorly executed look at what the Marvel universe would look like if 'everything went wrong'. We follow a photographer who goes around interviewing superheros and affiliates. This is Ellis's pestimistic alternative world version of Busiek's Marvels which came out the previous year; even the art is a muddy, awful parody of Alex Ross's.

We see how heroes went wrong. For example Hulk, instead of turning into the beast we know him as, has his limbs explode and is incredible pain but still alive and locked up in a secret government location. Most of the explanations make no sense. The Silver Surfer decided to commit suicide and in doing so destroyed the cloaking devices of the alien species the Skrulls - so now the skrulls are dying of cancer and are in a concentration camp, or something like that. Stupid.

This explores some of the themes that Ellis would take up once again in his masterwork Planetary. Please, please, please read that book instead.

[Knigel Holmes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really wish this comic were longer. It was great and has so much potential.

[Eugenio · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

Good story, liked the take throughout with a sick author wanting to write the story of the "ruined" heroes, the end really just fell flat. Adding in 1 last spin and meh.

If you like Marvel What if type stories, its fine. If you aren't a fan of a What If, best to look away.

[leen]

half of the stories make sense towards the characters and their powers
.
the other half were random, and stupid af.

art was creepy tho which aids the story

[Ashish · Rating 4 out of 5]

An awesome interpretation of the bright, shiny happy world of superheroes and how it would react with reality... the dark, deranged cousin of Miracleman, this is not for the faint of heart and for those who love their icons too much. Read it prepared to receive a rude reality slap in the face.
It's kind of like watching a massive, elaborate, beautiful sandcastle get washed away by the sea - beauty in destruction.

[Alec Books · Rating 1 out of 5]

Casi seguro que pudieron haber hecho algo mejor. Solo lo busque porque vi una imagen en Tiktok. Pense que era algo bueno pero no. Es solo una historia confusa y aburrida con datos al azar que no concluyen en nada más que en TODO SALE MAL y en gente con cáncer por todo el mundo. Mutantes siendo literalmente mutantes.

[Gabe Chaves · Rating 5 out of 5]

A depressing picture of everything in the Marvel world going wrong.

[Olav Knardal · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think the art is pretty good and serves well for a comic about a dying world through the perspective of a dying man.

Plot wasn't that interesting though, and seemed like it existed just to give a reason to highlight every twisted and disturbing fate that happened to the iconic marvel superheroes. That premise is interesting but the comic doesn't really do anything beyond "damn, wouldn't it be bad if every super hero just died or got horribly mangled?"

Check it out if you wanna see some beautifully illustrated body horror 😀

[Brett Shupe · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars.
Has interesting darker interpretations of the classic marvel characters but is a bit too edgy and not well thought out for my taste. About half of the ideas are good and the other half feel like a 12 year old writing that loved shadow the hedgehog

[Alex Sarll]

I don't think I realised Ellis' sulky riposte to Marvels had been collected. Arguably a perfect example of grim'n'gritty going too far, but still very funny in places.

[Mischief · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boring but I loved the art style and the horror :3

[John Pistelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember wanting to read this in 1995, but I couldn't for some reason—I think it was sold out at my comics shop—so when I saw that it was collected in The Marvels Companion I sat around and read it in a half hour at the library as a gift to my 13-year-old self. Ellis gives us a gruesomely amusing two-way satire. Its picture of a Murphy's Law Marvel Universe, where the Hulk is a cancer and the Black Panther has been jailed and Professor X is an evil president and radioactive spider bites cause incurable disease, is a nice rebuke to Kurt Busiek/Alex Ross's Silver Age Rockwellian revanchist optimism of Marvels, while Ruins's very excess of violent grotesquery takes to a self-parodying limit the cynical grimness of the British Invasion writers' approach to super-heroes.

[Keith Davis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ruins is edgelord garbage. The book was created as a sort of counterpoint to Alex Ross' Marvels, but instead of the photographer documenting a world of wonders and optimism he is touring a world of despair and corruption. Ellis takes all the iconic Marvel characters and reduces them to junkies, prostitutes, and twisted monsters. It is a alternate reality story, so I would be fine with the creative decisions if it was in support of a good story, but there is no story here at all. A man travels around and witnesses degrading horrors, that is the whole story. I have enjoyed a lot of Warren Ellis' work, such as Planetary and Nextwave, but this is one of the most nihilistic things I have ever seen and I can't believe someone at Marvel thought it was a good idea to publish it.

[Ondra Král · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nápad otočit Zázraky o 180 stupňů je fajn, ale provedení příliš nezaujalo. Celé je to jen přehlídka všech výrazných hrdinů v co situacích, kdy jsou buď mrtví nebo zmrzačení (u hrdinů je to většinou originem, u mutantů špatně fungujícíma schopnosti). Až mě to někdy přišlo jako výsledek nějaké debaty v hospodě "Jak by hrdina X mohl dopadnout co nejhůr." Novinář tu pak jen funguje pojítko mezi všemi hrdiny.
Kresba je hnusná.

[Johnny Andrews · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most bleakest two issue story I think I have ever read in Marvel. The art work suits the depressing feel as it's kinda a what if ... everything was wrong. Like when Bruce Banner saved Rick Jones and just became this living cancerous being they locked away and Rick through guilt became a drug addict.
Professor Xavier is president. They had to blind Cyclops.
Rather than in Marvels showing a wonderous world it is the polar opposite.

[Darren · Rating 1 out of 5]

How did this even get made? The whole thing is a fuck you to Marvels, and to superhero fiction in its entirety. Which is totally fine and not all that unique, I'm just shocked that Marvel actually got behind it.

[Riley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hoped for more to this story. It seemed just a very dark book with the sole purpose of being “what if marvel was dark.” I wish it would build on this idea of a bleak world, instead the book uses shock value by showing iconic heroes in a grotesque way which does nothing but make the reader go “wow i cant believe Spiderman died of cancer.” The whole story is very forgettable but the art is good

[Joshua Imafidon · Rating 1 out of 5]

this kind of sucks i cant lie its just overly edgy and not that interesting. theres merit to the art but the story is honestly trying so hard to be negative in every possible way that its not even interesting. everything is just 'what if x superhero got cancer and died instead of getting superpowers' what if the accident killed them? what if he went evil and became a cannibal?

[Berslon Pank · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of this was fun, but not enough of it for me to like it a whole lot.

[Drew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining as a concept to contemplate, but not actually a fun read in any way. This was blackly humorous at points, but mostly just bleak. Glad I read it, won't read it again.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty much the "dark and edgy" trend of 90s comics taken to its extreme in an alternative take on the Marvel universe. Fun enough as a quick read.

[Oscar Timmerby · Rating 1 out of 5]

Trash just pure trash

[E · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've read both books multiple times and I'm honesty not sure what's going on, there isn't much of a story just random super hero's give wrong. Terrible ending too.

[Vigneswara Prabhu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, that was, Dark to say the least. But still, there is something about this story, that makes it appealing. Similar to some other titles I've read, such as, Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe #1 or Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe. I wonder what it might be.

Other than that, can't say I'm a particular fan of this fade away, blurred, air brush manner of artwork. Perhaps the head honchos didn't want to show the body horrors presented in too much clarity.

Other than it being a macabre fever dream of some crazed homicidal serial killer, the plot doesn't have much to speak of it. Just a series of vignettes, presenting the next freak show waiting in line.