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I think Paul O'Brien's review of this issue is pretty on the money.
Says he:
“In other words, it's a Mark Millar version of "One day my real parents will take me away and I'll become a princess." But because it's Millar, Wesley gets to be a gun-toting leatherclad psycho instead. Something that he doesn't seem altogether happy about, it must be said.”
First things first: while I know that all such slogans should be taken with more than a pinch of salt, "Watchmen for super-villains" it ain't. I didn't expect it to be in any way shape or form, and there's still the majority of the series to go, and I'll be nicely surprised if Millar and Jones manage to disassemble the power structures behind the idea of super-villains like Moore and Gibbons did with their more heroic counterparts way back when, but still... I don’t see it working out that way, not based on what we’ve seen so far.
I find Millar's violent, schlocky excesses to be mildly out of place most of the time, to be honest with. I feel like he often goes for shock value, and ends up with something that is just plain boring instead (see his last Authority arc, which wasn't crap purely because it was "toned down" and edited, but because it was a really shitty, clichéd superhero story dressed up with a couple of shabby "extreme" touches). But still, he can be an entertaining writer when he’s on form – I love his first Authority arc, his first Ultimates arc, and various bits of his Ultimate X-Men run. It’s OTT trash, but I’ve got a lot of time for that…
Wanted is, of course, the pure distillation of Millar’s excesses, and I’d say that this works better in this context (i.e. within the realms of a creator owned comic book about a load of nasty of super-villains) than it has in any of his previous superhero work, and is pretty entertaining as a whole.
It doesn’t look like it’s going to have much bight or complexity to it so far, but I think O’Brien is on to something when he points out that J.G. Jones' art gives the whole thing a slightly deadpan feel; ideally, I reckon this would be like the Kill Bill or superhero comics – a really silly, bombastic exercise in style, violence and black humour presented in a fairly straight-faced way. I know, I know – I said I’d be pleasantly surprised if this did turn out to be “Watchmen for super-villains”, but I think that it is far more likely that Millar could write something brilliantly silly in the Kill Bill vain than it is that he could create something anywhere near as big and clever as Watchmen.
So far, Wanted hasn’t really hit the level of masterful absurdity of Tarantino’s latest movie. There are too many clunky bits (such as the whole Fuckwit section; I’m with O’Brien on this one - it was a crap excuse for a joke) for me to really love it, but I’ll check out the next issue to see how it develops.
I’m interested enough to see how Wesley handles all of this to read on at least a little more, which is a good sign, and so far I’d say that a more fitting description of this book would be “a superhero comic for people who like to play Grand Theft Auto with all the cheats on.”
This isn’t an outright condemnation, by the way – just an observation of the drive of this particular power fantasy. It could be an interesting ride, depending on how Millar chooses to engage with the situation his character finds himself in (if he does so at all) - there's potential for a simple play on the old "power and responsibilty" theme amidst the silliness, and I'm hoping that it isn't squandered. |
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