Apparat comics by Warren Ellis.

 A while back I reviewed Simon Spectre by Warren Ellis which I quite enjoyed. In that review I said that I’d chase down the other three books in the series.

The basic premise is Warren Ellis had a though experiment what if the various genres of pulps directly transferred to comics without the influence of super-heroes. 

Simon Spectre was the hero pulp and I liked it.

Let’s look at the other three experiments and if they lived up to that first comic.

Firstly there is no links between the books these are four one shots with a self contained story.

Angel Stomp Future (art by Juan Jose Rip)

What if Pulp Sci Fi continued.. Ellis rightly points out that it did in magazines like Galaxy, Analog, Interzone, etc but he felt that the wild imagination had gone along with the wild covers that screamed PICK ME UP!  

To me, Angel Stomp Future didn’t work.  We follow Dr Angel Antimony in this weird dystopian future – Lord knows how far in the future where cyber implants and biohacking are passe – children do amputations and surgery in first grade. 

And there is this idea of memes not genes.  There’s a lot of talking about concepts but not much story.

We open with a pregnant Dr Antimony, pregnant with an angel baby complete with wings.  How she got pregnant no idea.  The pregnant woman steps in front of a train and a not pregnant Dr Antimony steps out of the train.. and it gets odder from there.

Ryp’s artwork is fantastic but the story doesn’t work for me.

Frank Ironwine (art by Carla Speed McNeil)

What if hard-boiled detective/Crime stories continued…Another one that didn’t go away – I can find crime fiction in almost every book store.  Hard Case crime has made a whole line of books reprinting classic crime fiction, lost works by masters of the genre and given new works a chance.  TV shows like the Law and Order Franchise, FBI franchise, NCIS, The Rookie and more all play in that crime/detective genre with various levels of hard boiled crime. -

Ellis seems to have an issue with CSI elevating the forensic detective to solving crime with interacting with people – dissecting farts he calls it .

Frank Ironwine is an old school cop, in many ways he reminds me of Det John Munch or Dannie Reagan.  Ironwine is the hard drinking detective who talks to people, knows the history of the city and the patterns of crime.  There is nothing new under the sun. 

Coming off a three day bender, Ironwine is woken from his slumber in a dumpster by his new partner De Groot to solve a murder.

Of the three books, I liked this one the best – not as much as Simon Spectre but a solid second place.

Quit City (art by Laurenn McCubbin)

What if the aviator hero continued…I agree with Ellis that airflight has become mundane and there are significantly less stories about aviator heroes but there are still some out there Top Gun (1984), the Iron Eagle series (4 movies 1986-1995), Airwolf (1984-1987), Blue Thunder (1983 movie, 1984 TV Series).  Science fiction still brings us the pilot as space adventurer – tell me that Han Solo isn’t an aviation hero.

The success of Top Gun Maverick (2022) and forthcoming sequels would suggest the genre isn’t dead.

Ellis was not doing anything to really bring the genre back with this one. The heroine Emma Pierson returns home after quitting Aeropiratika, a Blackhawk style group that were told has cool aviator adventures but we don’t see that.  Emma is introduced landing her plane in her home town and not returning to it instead talking to old friends and confronting the ghost of an old boyfriend.  A deconstruction of the aviator hero – “counterintuitive” Ellis calls it in the postscript essay.  Ellis tells us that the hero abandons the mission and verse into the postmodern action story. Except Quit City doesn’t have any action.

I can think of two series that give us the aviator hero forced to retire from flying and does something else.

JAG (1995-2005) was described as Top Gun meets A Few Good Men as the lead hero Harmon Rabb Jnr (played the David James Elliot) is a former Naval Aviator forced out of combat flying because he suffers from night blindness.  Harm then became a JAG lawyer but is still able to fly as part of his investigations.

In the Scarecrow series by Matthew Reilly (1998 to 2012 and a cameo or two in other Reilly works), Shane Schofield is a former Marine aviator shot down, captured and tortured.  His eyes were injured during the torture and he is no longer able to fly, instead he retrains to lead a Marine Recon Team.  Like Harm he still has the ability to fly as part of his adventures.

Both these were exciting stories – I don’t know what Quit City is.

I didn't enjoy McCubbins' work in the Sable & Fortune miniseries more because the stark contrast it was to original artist's work.  Here I liked it better but wished it was in a story I liked better.

Final Thoughts

Hands down Simon Spectre is the best of the four stories with Frank Ironwine my second favourite.  It’s not necessarily that the stories are bad but I think that Ellis and I are coming from this thought experiment from different angles and frames of reference.  In 2025, I have the benefit of over 20 years of stories that appeared after these comics were published in 2004 to round out my perspective including the new pulp movement. 

Ellis’ distain for CSI science makes more sense as there were three CSI series on the air in 2004- the recent revival series CSI: Vegas was cancelled after three seasons in 2024.    Forensics do play a role in modern detective fiction but they are not the be all and end all. There is limited forensics in the Benoit Blanc movies or Rian Johnson’s other project Poker Face.

I think Ellis takes his personal piloting experience too seriously (he got to hold the controls for a few minutes and he is the last great figure in aviation history).  I gave two examples of how one might play with the pulp aviator and there are more set the series in a remote community, Alaska, outback Australia, the middle of the Gobi desert. 

The aviator becomes a heroic figure as they are the lifeline to these communities – the Australian comic strip Airhawk and the Flying Doctors (1959- 1986 and a 1981 TV movie) operated on such a premise.

It may simply be that I cannot see what Ellis was trying to do or that Ellis missed the mark.  There were no further adventures in these worlds. 

Ellis would print the one shots Crecy (historical fiction), Aetheric Mechanics (steampunk/Sherlock Holmes), Frankenstein’s Womb (Mary Shelley meeting a monster at Castle Frankenstein) and the sixteen issue series Doktor Sleepless (a mad scientist tale) under the Apparat imprint.

Simon Spector (2004) written Warren Ellis, art by Jack Burrows

Last year I wrote a review of Mark Millar's Prodigy, which I really enjoyed.

I was looking at the comments for that post and Alan Blank posted his review of the series on Goodreads which can be found here

In that review he mentions Simon Spector, a character I'd never heard of - a modern pulp character I'd never heard of.  Naturally, this was something that had to be rectified.

Simon Spector was part of Ellis' Apparat line for Avatar Comics.  The quick version is Ellis had a thought experiment - what if the pulp influence on comics was a little stronger and superheroes hadn't been as dominant.  What might comics of various pulp genres look like?  Science Fiction adventure, detective stories, aviator adventures and pulp vigilantes were the four genres picked and Angel Stomp Future, Frank Ironwine, Quit City and Simon Spector were the results.

Four one shots -  it sounded intriguing.  If I could find Simon Spector I wasn't off on a long term quest it was one and done. If I liked it then there were three more of similar style to track down.

And I found a reasonably priced copy and promptly bought it.

In the back of the book, Ellis talks of his inspiration for the line and this book in particular.  How he would read Doc Savage, The Shadow and The Spider and speculate about the pharmacutical assistance these heroes must have.

It's an interesting idea, not one I'd be keen to see used for a proper Doc Savage or Shadow adventure but intriguing.

In fact now that I think about it, Ellis is running not quite in the same groove as Philip Jose Farmer in A Feast Unknown but a parallel track.  Farmer isn't mentioned in his essay but ......

Simon Spector is a modern day riff on Doc Savage.  He operates out what appears to be the spire at the top of the Chrysler Building.

The story opens when a woman comes to Spector's office telling about her kidnapped husband who works for a weapons manufacturer. She mentions that one of the kidnappers was named Cristos. 

Cristos we discover is Spector's archenemy who was believed dead (first villian rule - if you don't see a body they are not dead) when the plane which he was locked in the cockpit crashed. 

Spector takes a pill that effectively speeds up his brain (Not unlike NZT in Limitless movie and TV series and the drug in Lucy)  There's a nice five page sequence after he takes the pill, where he asks for the lady's address and through deduction and knowledge of Cristos' MO is able to determine the villian's lair. 

Spector grabs his custom made weapons (because a number of pulp vigilantes had custom made weapons) made with his parent's wedding rings. 

He then makes his way to the hideout, where he battles Cristos. 

There's a surprise or two in the confrontation that I won't spoil.

I really loved this book - it was perfectly self contained giving us everything we need to know about Simon Spector yet also managing to tantalise us with hints of a larger story.  We don't know what happened to his parents, the nature of his earlier encounters with Cristos, what other villians has he faced, does he always need the tablets? Where did he meet his bodyguard and his doctor? Is Simon Spector his real name?

You could write a whole series of hundreds of adventures with this character and yet in this single adventure we know all that we need. 

This was a really good comic I enjoyed it immensely.  I'll have to see if I can find the other three Apparat books.