Warren Ellis stuff to remember

From his recent Bad Signal:

In summer 2006, I'm going to belaunching an ongoing title at Marvelcalled
newuniversal. No capital N,no capital U. We refer to it in-houseas
NU -- and I might have called itNU, if it didn't always suggestnu-metal to
me.The central concept, these days,also looks kind of generic. WildCards
did it, RISING STARS did it,etc etc. Something called The WhiteEvent
occurs, and afterwards ahandful of people are found to havebeen made
superhuman. So far soblah. But, in looking at this stuff ona webpage
one night, it occurred tome that that's not what happened.What actually happened
was thatthere was this huge astronomicalevent where the skies went whiteall over
the world for a minute, andthe aftermath was that the lawsof physics had been
changed.

There's a sf book by a writer calledVernor Vinge where the laws ofphysics
are radically differentdepending on which part of thegalaxy you're in.
Conventionalphysics' dirty little secret is thatthe speed of light appears
tofluctuate.

There is, as I say, a whole libraryof science fiction
aboutsuperhumanity. These are notsuperhero novels. Some lean
closerthan others, of course -- Zelaznyand Saberhagen's COILS comes tomind, and
SLAN was very clearly aprecedent to the X-Men. Butthere's a lot more that
speaks to,if you like, the superhuman condition. Melding that with
thenotion that suddenly the laws ofphysics can go and stay slightlynuts... In
one six-hour session, Igenerated a bunch of notes abouthow and why this could
happen,with some ideas from some oldabandoned projects of mine (fromthe Loose
Ideas folder) fittingthemselves into it...

Sure, it's not exactly cut from wholecloth. Like I said, it's a
writingchallenge. Blows the cobwebs out abit. Makes you focus on the
craft abit. Sometimes it's worth sittingdown and thinking, what *does*
make a Marvel character work?(Answer: tragedy.)