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Millar's not a penis, but he is a tireless self-publiciser, like Morrison. However, while Morrison's recent interviews are aimed at a broadsheet audience, Millar's remain aimed at a tabloid audience, as Morrison's early interviews were. Morrison and Millar's associations with Craig McGill, a journalist on the Glasgow Evening Times amongst other tabloid newspapers explain the content and tone of their early interviews, but Morrison is aiming now at a different audience, while Millar continues to court what he may consider to be a broader audience.
The relentless publicity surrounding his work serves to promote it in the short term, but over the long term the promotion exceeds the product to create an audience that has become dissatisfied by the cycle of expectation and disappointment accompanying the promotion and publication. Thus desensitised to the hyperbole surrounding the work, the audience then begins to examine the work itself and decides on the value of the work within the context of what Millar is continually telling his audience.
However, the product can never fulfil its promotion, especially when the work is hindered by publication delays that inevitably lead to increased expectation in the audience. Millar appears not to have considered this dichotomy, although Morrison is now more circumspect about how his work is promoted.
*cough*
Having been initially impressed by The Ultimates, I've found that beyond the interesting reinterpretations of the Avengers, I disagreed with the story on several levels, from the underdeveloped characterisation of several characters, including Captain America to the logical flaws in a story which prides itself on its realistic portrayal of superpowers, such as Stark's ability to operate his armour despite drinking heavily and suffering from an incapacitating brain tumour. The repeated reliance on cinematic setpiece sequences misunderstands the medium of comics, especially the office attacks and the continual use of group and individual close-ups and one-liners fail to translate their cinematic abiity to punctuate a sequence in a way that can have audiences cheering.
I felt that the introduction of the Skrull marked the downturn of the series, into a pastiche of popular blockbusters inlcuding The Matrix and Independence Day, although I admit that Millar's casual dismissal of human atrocity as the activity of the universe's immune system angered me and which I feel is a theme which Morrison explores to greater effect in The Filth.
I won't be buying The Ultimates after the disappointment I felt at reading this issue and feel no sense of loss at doing so. Onwards and upwards. |
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