Come In Alone is a series of columns by Warren Ellis written over the period of the year 2000 on the subject of what's going on with comics and the comics sales industry, how it needs to change, what's wrong with it, etc.
The collection includes The Old Bastard's Manifesto, a diatribe on the state of comics today, interviews with various writers and artists from the medium, as well as discussing on how to create a comic, how to become a comic writer, etc.
The collection is fairly mind blowing...in the same way that Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics opens up one's understanding of how the comic art is achieved and maintained, Come In Alone expands one's consciousness of what comics should be, could be, and have remained. Ellis challenges the reader not just to change comics, but their outreach to non-readers, their accessiblity, their sales... everything about them.
He also ends every column with a book to read (stating early on that you can't write comics unless you read books, so that you can know where plot and conversation come from), a CD to listen to, a website to view, and a Graphic Novel to indulge in.
Ellis posits that having a field made up of mostly Superhero comics is much like walking into a book store and having to wade through, say, a wall of Oprah books to get to anything else. Which it's certainly possible that there are good Oprah books out there, there are other books of other genres that are just as worth reading...but if new readers never find them, they'll never get hooked.
He also goes into detail about DC and Marvel, and how they really make their money, and what comics really mean to them. It's very instructive, and rather frightening, and when, at the end of the book, he quotes Neil Gaiman as saying "I stopped doing comics because I wanted it to continue being fun, I wanted to continue to love and care for comics, and I wanted to leave while I was still in love", you totally understand what he means.