Doktor Sleepless #11

Written by Warren Ellis
Art by Ivan Rodriguez

Warren Ellis Week continues with Doktor Sleepless! This book is turning into Ellis's personal playground for trying out interesting ideas and theories of social development.

This issues has two areas of focus: gang divisions in Heavenside, and the death of journalism. For the first topic, he introduces the LO/C - the London Chinese triad gangs that control the drugs in their neighbourhood, and bump up against the gwei lo grinders to the north of them.

As to journalism - the character of Sarah from New York meets up with one of the imminent.sea bloggers, and they talk about the state of things in town, specifically with respect to journalism, and the actions of Doktor Sleepless.

I like that the Doktor doesn't really appear in this book any more - I think the series works better when he is just an idea and an unseen hand, not guiding the action, but providing building blocks for future events, over which, he takes no control.

The backmatter in this issue is an interesting rant about the difference between journalism, citizen journalism, and blogging. I agree with much of what Ellis writes, and like that he references David Simon so much. I don't know how he wrote it without mentioning the Huffington Post though.....