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Plans for Image Comics to publish new work from writer Warren Ellis after breaking ties with him over sexual misconduct allegations have now been discovered to have been underway for years. Although the publisher announced its first new Ellis project in August 2026, Popverse has confirmed that the two have been working together towards this for at least the past three years, with publication originally anticipated to begin in 2024.

On August 11 of this year, Image Comics announced that it was ending its abeyance of new work with Warren Ellis after five years to publish a new OGN called Ghost Drive Station by Ellis and artist Lordess Foudre. The news came as a surprise to many, considering that in 2021 Image Comics publicly broke ties with the writer until "he has made amends to the satisfaction of those involved," then referring specifically to SoManyOfUs.com, the 60+ women and non-binary individuals who had spoken out in 2020 with allegations of sexual misconduct and coercion by him going back 20 years.

In the intervening time, neither Image, SoManyOfUs, or Ellis came forward with any public message that could be seen as the writer making those "amends" that Image said it would publicly hold him to had been achieved. This is despite it having been possible in some other instances of celebrities and individuals who had been traumatized similarly. Popverse has reached out to the various parties involved on several occasions looking for any additional information on that front.

In the days since, Popverse has uncovered that plans for Image and Ellis to reignite their long-running relationship had been underway for years, going back to at least April 2023 by Ellis’ own account.

"So a few years back Lordess Foudre asked me to write a book for her," Ellis wrote in his newsletter published August 16, 2026. "A few decades in age divide us, but before I knew it we were, by her initiation, talking about Fassbinder’s World On A Wire and McGoohan’s The Prisoner, Steve McQueen and a certain kind of male protagonist. As well as, of course, her art and collage work, which you have all enjoyed here as The News for many years now. A couple of months later, I came up with Ghost Drive Station. And she’s spent the last two years drawing it."

For decades, Ellis has made a habit of talking about unannounced projects by giving them codenames. In this newsletter, he said Ghost Drive Station "was previously codename PROJECT LOST SIERRA..." In the past he's used it for Netflix's CastleVania series (Project Kronstadt) and DC's The Batman's Grave (Project Tricorner).

Based on that, we discovered that back in May 2023, according to him in his newsletter, "executed contracts for [Ghost Drive Station] came back..." Later that month, Ellis repeats that statement but says those "executed contracts" are complete, and "now our publisher is trapped..."

While Ellis himself didn't reveal the publisher, two sources familiar with the agreement have independently confirmed to Popverse that the publisher in 2023 was Image Comics. 

At the time, Ellis wrote that the publisher (which Popverse has identified as Image Comics) seemed up for publishing Ghost Drive Station as soon as 2024 if the artwork was finished in time, and would be "the first announced of my new publishing slate" with other projects, each with codenames, in the pipeline. Those 2024 launch plans fell through, as in October 2025 Ellis writes that Ghost Drive Station is a project that he and artist Lordess Foudre have joked about being "cursed"; in that case he refers to an unspecified "bizarre Fortean accident" that is said to have happened earlier in the process.

It remains unclear, what happened between 2021 and 2023 to cause Image Comics to re-start its relationship with Warren Ellis for new work after having such serious concerns that it made a public statement. None of the parties has said that Ellis successfully "made amends to the satisfaction of those involved". While in some respects matters such as these might be considered best left private, given Image made a public statement setting that bar, it's understandable that now that relationship has resumed that word of some sort of positive closure for those affected would be welcome, if it existed.

Popverse reached out to Image Comics about this story, and the company declined to comment.

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