By Warren Ellis & JH Williams III, coloured by Jose Villarubia & lettered by Todd Klein (WildStorm/DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1150-9 (TPB/Digital edition)
This book includes Discriminatory Content produced specifically to challenge and upset you.
Los Angeles is a dump and a dumping ground. Personal opinions aside, that’s the premise of this deep, dark, debauched espionage thriller from Warren Ellis and graphic illuminator J.H. Williams III. When used up MI6 screw-up Michael Jones is no longer capable of doing his job, he’s offered a comfy and supposedly sedentary testing role as his ticket out.
No one in their right mind should ever trust security service types, but that’s the point; the burnt out, alcoholic agent just isn’t all that or all there anymore. As sole survivor of a truly appalling enhancement project, former Agent Jones is parcelled off to an international sin bin/ dumping ground for intel ops and all those failed experiments beloved by spooks and their tech toadies to live or die well away from the great game.
After a year of unspeakable atrocities ostensibly intended to create better operatives – up to and including the bizarre and inexplicable Desolation Test – the ravaged somehow still-ambulatory remains of Michael Jones are consigned to the reservation provided by the West’s Intelligence Agencies to warehouse retired, rejected and discarded assets, as well as all the experiments that didn’t measure up but didn’t become expired… Los Angeles, USA.
Thanks to his experiences for Queen and Country, it’s not a hard call to make. Jones is a sunlight-averse, joyless living corpse, unable to feel anything physical or emotional. He can’t even suck booze; or even digest or taste. All he has is his (notional) will to survive, cold rationality, uncontrollable curiosity and hair-trigger killer instincts… and perhaps just a hint of deeply submerged humanity and staggering outrage…
The land of freaks and weirdoes is his only alternative to the grave. In LaLa land, he and all the other overused, burned out, dangerous living secrets can live out their remaining years as they see fit, but can never, EVER leave the city’s environs. There’s no pension scheme, but the rejected dregs and cast-offs can do whatever they need to make a living – just as long as it’s all done within city limits.
It cannot be said enough: Jones is a mess, physically and mentally. He can’t drink, won’t sleep and takes too many illegal drugs. He must avoid daylight, constantly hallucinates possible memories and is numb to all sensation and feeling. In “The Community” he freelances as a private eye and fixer, sorting out problems that can’t be resolved through legitimate methods or through contact with the civilian world.
Of course there are institutions and hierarchies. One such is living exception Jeronimus Corneliszoon: an ultra-shady Intel agency lawyer who manages the interface with the outer world and is the only Community member allowed outside the city, albeit always under armed guard due to his own freakish biology and murderous condition: another example of CIA-crafted improvements…
A regular go-between for Jones, his profitable and immediate problem du jour is a retired NSA spook who’s being blackmailed by three new additions to The Community. These bad boys have somehow stolen the Holy Grail of pornography and the dying super-rich pervert who possessed it wants it back at all costs. Ravaged, dissolute, dying Colonel Nigh wants Adolf Hitler’s homemade cinematic sex tape back and will do anything to get it. Now, after paying off the thieves many times over has not got him any closer to retrieving what is lost, he’s trying another solution. Sadly, so are the other filthy rich deviants populating Tinseltown, and just asking about the films nearly gets Jones and sort-of ally Robina killed within minutes of mentioning it.
However, even in this grimy hidden arena, something just isn’t right. Jones may not feel, but knows that there is more than he’s been told going on and hiding behind all the subterfuge and depravity. Something far worse than porn, abuse, victimisation and sudden casual death…
Jones doggedly pursues the thieves and learns too much about the adult film industry but also that everyone has been lying to him (no surprise there) and there is far more in play and at stake than even his jaded soul, jaundiced eye and nonfunctioning gut can stomach…
Even as he purposely endangers his last remaining tolerable human contacts, lies pile upon lies, and bodies drop. As always, the shadowy top ranks of the Intel game are trying to keep a tight lid on and themselves well hidden, but are nevertheless tenaciously, gradually exposed as still pulling all the strings, making new monsters and deciding who will live and what innocent lives aren’t really necessary…
So Jones decides to stop the rot…
Sardonic, wry, decidedly bleak and ferociously world-weary, this caustic, tension-soaked, trauma-packed action caper dwells on the nasty side of the espionage genre whilst disturbingly revealing everything you did not want to know about the porn industry and fetish culture: a thriller with plenty of twists and a solid mystery to intrigue the most jaded reader. The content is astoundingly ultra-violent and strictly adults only – and by that, I mean that the subtext of duty, love and honour are assaults on the traditions of the hero-spy in as brutal a manner as the sex and torture underscore the dark side of the American Dream-town.
This lost spy story is strictly for cynical adults, not horny kids with appropriately modified IDs: a highly charged, starkly compelling, beautifully conceived and magically limned thriller that will delight fans of shows like Slow Horses and is long overdue for a new edition if not belated continuance.
© 2005, 2006 compilation Warren Ellis & J.H. Williams III. All Rights Reserved. Desolation Jones, the distinctive likenesses thereof and all related elements are trademarks of Warren Ellis and J.H. Williams III.
Today in 1920, Mad Magazine veteran humourist Dave Berg (The Lighter Side of…) was born, sharing the date with writer/editor Len Wein (Swamp Thing, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Hulk, X-Men, Superman, Batman, Green Lantern) in 1948.
Today in 1971 the nigh-unkillable Fusspot debuted in UK weekly Knockout, surviving mergers with Whizzer and Chips and Buster to finally fade away when Buster folded in 2000. In 2002 Jen Van Meter’s Hopeless Savages began. That year we lost Carlo Boscarato artist and co-creator of influential Italian western Larry Yuma. In 2010 this date saw the passing of the astounding Al Williamson (Star Wars, Secret Agent X-9, Creepy, Eerie, Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, Flash Gordon, Jann of the Jungle, Daredevil) and in 2023 the ubiquitous and irreplaceable John Romita Sr.