The Department of Midnight

Warren Ellis is a clever writer. 

His heroes are often too clever for their own good, haunted by their mysterious past mistakes and tasked with stalking down and defeating clever, evil and murderous monsters. 

At least that’s how I remember it. Ellis burst into the comic book scene in the 1990s with a book about a righteous journalist in the future called Transmetropolitan. Artist Darrick Robinson provided stunning visuals and the comic was in the conversation with other legendary comics like Preacher and Sandman. 

I was in high school, I was studying to be a journalist and as you can imagine Ellis became on of my favorite authors. 

After a wildly successful career in comics and recent success as the creator/writer of the Netflix Castlevania show Ellis is moving into … podcasting. 

Thankfully, it’s not politics or sports. Instead, Ellis is doing what he does best, telling interesting stories that fall somewhere between mystery, action and horror. 

The Department of Midnight is an audio drama about a scientist turned investigator tasked with dealing with outbreaks of hmmm evil science? Macabre, mad physicists? Old demons breaking into our world using tech instead of magic? Something like that.

Every episode features James Callis (Battlestar Galactica) as Dr. John Carnack who “is employed as a crash site investigator by the Department Of Experimental Oversight.”

The agency is often called The Department of Midnight much to Carnack’s chagrin.

And while mad science might be the order of the day Ellis manages to bring in his other obsession — English folklore. 

Each episode is about 20 minutes and Callis is joined by a guest star. The first two episodes are self contained but there is obviously something important going on in the background. 

Following Ellis career remains entertaining because you never know where he will end up. As a comic writer he frequently argued for more original graphic novels but the format never took hold. Then he had a hit with artist Ben Templesmith on Fell. 

There instead of leaving the American format of single issue comics he and Templesmith went for a smaller page count and a cheaper price. 

I don’t know how much credit for these things Ellis deserves but anytime I spot a writer with an email newsletter and a strong social media presence I’m reminded of how in the early days of the Internet Ellis was out there building a community of his people any way he could. 

And that graphic novel push? Well Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips have a nice business of single volume graphic novels. They put out two of them or so a year and they sell like gangbusters. And they’re wonderful. 

Brubaker and Phillips deserve all the credit in the world, of course, but I do think about how Ellis and others kept trying to bring publishers and comic book shops to the water just to watch them refuse to drink. 

And now there’s this. Make no mistake, the Castlevania show sounded like Ellis. But The Department of Midnight is exactly what I would expect from the writer who gave us Global Frequency and Planetary. Especially when he’s given an clean canvas.

Anyway, Callis sounds like he’s having a blast and the stories are tight, tension filled bits of humor and horror. 

I’ll be interested to see how this experiment ends both in Ellis’ fictional world and in our world where most writers are not yet making a living doing audio dramas.