In 2007, Whedon expressed his outrage above the murder of Du'a Khalil Aswad, and simply because the act was caught on online video, was prompted to attack the underlying perspective he felt led to the murder, comparing the video clip to torture porn. He completed a 24 issue run in 2008 and then handed over the reins as a writer to Warren Ellis. He conceived the strategy in the early 1990s, and had composed drafts of the screenplay since then.