SHOOT!

I am a fan of writer Warren Ellis. He writes fun, intriguing, messed up and sometimes out right disgusting stuff, and makes no apologies for it. It's one of the main reasons I respect him as a writer. This past summer something interesting happened to one of his stories. He has written many comics of his own creation and penned those of others. He wrote for a while for the HELLBLAZER series. His stint there was cut short by one story he wrote called SHOOT about school yard shootings. This story was written well before the Columbine shooting, but was scheduled to come out not long after. At the time, DC said no, it could not be released unless Ellis changed the story. Ellis said no, he was not backing down and he quit, the story was buried and forgotten, until last July. You have to respect a writer for not backing down and editing their own story, no matter how closely it matches with something horrible that happened. As I have mentioned before we shouldn't censor events because they aren't happy and shiny. Perhaps this story would have shed a little light on the horrible subject of school shootings. Why do kids decide to borrow their grandfather's arsenal and shoot up their schools? It's not a pretty scenario, but it is something that needs to be looked at so it isn't repeated. It takes a mind of someone like Warren Ellis to get us to think about things like this.

Why do current events make us censor ourselves? Why, after something happens do we react rather and pro-act? Think about it next time your talking to someone about current events. How do you tell the story? Are you censoring yourself without knowing your doing it? It's an automatic thing for humans, to protect ourselves from harm.