The Batman's Grave #6

[laughing_tree]

The forensic crime show has become just freakish. The detective who makes a psychological and emotional connection with suspects, victims and landscapes is gone. It's all about the chill computation of the evidence. And when it transpires the evidence can lie, they simply throw more computers at it. Fractionating farts with lasers. And what is to me the core of crime fiction gets lost. It's about people. It's about people and their actions and emotions and patterns and places. -- Warren Ellis

Comments

[cricharddavies]

"Things I like are being replaced by things I don't like! Doesn't anyone understand how this is a tremendous injustice?!" -- Warren Ellis, translated.

[silverhammerman]

I'm more struck by the fact that Ellis' comments up top seem kind of outdated. I'm not exactly plugged into network TV and bog-standard police procedurals anymore, but my impression is that an emphasis on forensics is pretty out of fashion these days. I wonder exactly where/when he said this.

I'd go into a whole thing about "copaganda" but Ellis seems to mostly feel that the issue is lazy writing and technobabble, which, remembering the 30-odd seasons of CSI and its various spinoffs, is hardly an inaccurate charge.

[alliterator]

It's because his comments aren't from an interview about The Batman's Grave, they are from the backmatter of Frank Ironwine, one of the "Apparat Singles" that was published in 2004.

[silverhammerman]

That makes a lot of sense. Judging by the direction of detective fiction in the years since, it seems like a lot of people felt similarly.

[bruinsfan]

Completely trivial note, but I think the dead guy on the bed is the first figure I can recall Hitch drawing where the feet and ankles are proportional to the body as a whole (one of my recurring peeves with his overall excellent artwork).