Switchblade Honey

[sawyl]

Just finished reading Switchblade Honey, Warren Ellis' Star Trek spoof. According to the Great Man's foreword, he came up with the idea whilst,

... taking in ten minutes of an awful, pompous, stupid thing called Star Trek: Voyager. It features an actress who chooses to essay, if you can imagine, Katherine Hepburn impersonating William Shatner. It is uniquely horrible... then I have what is to me suddenly the most entertaining thought: "They should get Ray Winstone as captain."

So, being Warren, he goes off and turns his little spoof into a comic. One where Captain Ryder, jailed for refusing to obey orders to fire on his own side, gets recruited to command a guerrilla unit crewed by drug fiends, conscience freaks, anal retentives — prisoners all — whose job it is to prevent the kookily alien Chasta from wiping out the human race.

All in all, it's amusing enough to enliven an otherwise dull Thursday evening and short enough not to outstay it's welcome. Don't expect deep thoughts though. As Warren says, "Switchblade Honey is, in fact, me drunk and wreathed in fag smoke (shut up) and having a laugh with my girlfriend." Amen.

Comments

[drspleen.livejournal.com]

So how does this compare to his other offerings? Is planetary still the best thing he's done?

[sawyl.livejournal.com]

Switchblade is no where near as clever as Planetary or as savagely satirically funny as Transmet, but it's still amusing. It's worth picking up if you see it, but if you don't see it, then it's not like you're missing Ellis' magnum opus...