Ellis, Shalvey poison the world with sci-fi 'Injection'

Brian Truitt | USA TODAY

Leave it to Warren Ellis and Declan Shalvey to give comic books a shot of multigenre pre-apocalyptic weirdness.

Premiering May 13, the new Image Comics series Injection brings five geniuses back together to fix the world they've poisoned before it's too late. The project, written by Ellis, drawn by Shalvey and colored by Jordie Bellaire, has shades of sci-fi, horror and crime drama, yet it also thematically explores technology and its effect on human lives.

"A lot of what Injection has to do about is, effectively, we are going very fast but we don't know where the hell this will end up," says Shalvey, who previously relaunched Marvel Comics' acclaimed Moon Knight series with Ellis last year.

The characters at the heart of Injection are former agents for the British government who are past their heyday and not really talking to each other anymore, according to Shalvey.

They created something called the Injection years ago, the Irish artist says, and "they realize it's going to destroy the world because it's starting to have rippling effects on the world around us, so they're slowly realizing something has to be done."

How bad off the planet is when the series opens depends on your perspective, Ellis adds. "The world is pretty pre-apocalyptic right now, from some angles, but we just dawdle along without really paying attention.

"The signs of impending doom are mostly under the radar and seen out of the corner of our eye. But they're happening more and more often. Soon enough, people will start noticing, despite the best efforts of our cast."

The first issue focuses on Maria Kilbride, a scientist working for a large multinational corporation. Her job is to troubleshoot the messes caused by the company's experimental research, and she knows Simeon Winters, currently working for a section of Britain's Foreign Office ("You know the one. It goes abroad and kills people," Ellis says), as well as investigator Vivek Headland, technician Brigid Roth and esotericist Robin Morel from a special think tank from some years back.

"It's all their fault," says Ellis, who's using a "rolling point-of-view" structure applied from working on novels and TV projects.

"Each character is the main protagonist of each of the five planned volumes, and that's a new approach for me."

As far as exploring real-life issues, the British writer figures, "once we've established the world and its problems, I'm bound to have some sweeping, obnoxious and largely unsupportable things to say about the present condition.

"But Injection is very heavily about the sort of things I've been discussing in my talks at conferences of late, the connections between deep history and the future, between folklore and technology, the ways in which the present moment is haunted by the future as well as the past."

Within just a few pages in the first issue, Maria goes from English village to science complex to a doorway that opens to a dark otherworldly landscape. Having the surreal just around the corner is "kind of where I live," Ellis reports, and it's like a lot of what he and Shalvey did with Moon Knight, too, balancing a street-ready superhero with gonzo things such as mushroom death gods.

"I love ground-level stuff but at the same time those fantastical elements are great in comics because that's when you get to kick over the table and try to do a fancy dance move," Shalvey says with a laugh. With Injection, "a lot of it is very mundane, with settings like 'a room' or 'a bar.' It grounds the characters very much on an accessible level, so when these more fantastical elements come into it, they're all the more weird."

The artist feels Moon Knight was a test run for a lot of what the creative team of Injection is doing, from Wes Anderson-style cinematic symmetry to an emphasis on clarity over unnecessary bombastic flair.

"A lot of the visuals, I was trying to create a very still mood," Shalvey says. "Like if you watch an episode of House of Cards, it very much sets a tone, and that's what I'm trying to do on the book."

When he found out he'd only get to do six issues before Ellis left Moon Knight, Shalvey recalls he talked to the writer about possibly doing a Vertigo Comics book afterward. "His response was, 'Why don't you let me write something for you and let me take it to Image?' That was pretty much the best offer I was ever going to get."

Injection is filled with Shalvey and Bellaire's DNA, according to Ellis. Before he even had a story idea, the writer asked the two artists to compile everything they adore in various media and what they'd love — and hate — to make.

Shalvey remembers sci-fi, crime and Deadwood being on his list, and Ellis feels the end result thus far could be called "Shalvey Unchained."

"From a vast underground burial chamber covered in fluorescing moss hidden inside a small laboratory to an extended fight scene in a Parisian apartment kitchen to the rise of the Green Man and ancient mystical Britain within a budget hotel room in Wiltshire, he's pretty much taking it in stride and producing amazing, uncontrolled brilliance," Ellis says of the illustrator.

"Also sandwiches. Sandwiches are very important to Injection. We're talking about sandwich-related variant covers."

The series marks Shalvey's first truly creator-owned book, and not having a boss or editor has been ultimately liberating but was overwhelming at first.

"A lot of these cases, there's no one to ask but myself," Shalvey says. "I was drawing this scene recently that had a little bit of violence, and it wasn't particularly violent but I remember thinking, 'Oh I better make sure I don't go too far with this.'

"I realized, actually, I can do whatever the hell I want."