Warren Ellis Exposes Scars at Avatar

How much of a monster do you have to become to catch one?

Warren Ellis faces the terror of that question in Scars, a major new six issue mini-series launching this fall from Avatar Press. Art on the series is provided by acclaimed Ellis collaborator Jacen Burrows (Dark Blue, Bad World), and Avatar will preview the saga in a 75 cent sampler in May.

"Scars is my first major attempt at producing a straight police story -- as straight as I can tell it, anyway," says Warren Ellis. "The one thing that stays with me from my conversations with police officers is that the job is scary, scarier than most people ever find out, and that the job marks you. Marks everybody. Sanitised crime fiction desentitises the reader to the extreme emotional reaction engendered by proximity to the result of violent crime. This is a story about the scars of a policeman, and about how terrifying the things that people do to other people really are."

"As the work on Scars has come in from Warren and Jacen over the past several months, it's been clear that this is one of Warren's most powerful, terrifying, and gut-wrenching works," notes Avatar Press editor in chief William Christensen. "It's a concept that almost seems to compel him to get the story down on paper. And Jacen Burrows is rendering that story with a skill that Dark Blue and Bad World readers have only begun to glimpse."

"We are also trying some new things promotionally with this series," adds Christensen. "I'm told that the 75 cent Scars sampler is the cheapest comic item in the Previews catalog for May, and we're driving the price down even further by offering bundles of the Sampler to retailers at an even better price. This is one of Warren's best series yet and we're going to get the work into people's hands well in advance of the series to prove it." Launching this Fall, the six issue Scars series promises to be one of the greatest Ellis works yet, and the ultra-cheap Scars sampler is a perfect way to get a sneak peek months before the first issue is released. He's a cop trying to deal with the extremes of homicide detail and the realities of the chaotic world he works in ? who finally falls on a case that doesn't fit into his coping mechanism. A case that speaks directly to the one question he's tried never to ask himself. How much of a monster do you have to become in order to stop one?

The Scars sampler shows six sequential pages of the series as well as an all-new four page essay from Warren Ellis. Warren Ellis' Scars Sampler retails for 75 cents and is scheduled for release in May from Avatar Press.