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Underground > Comic Books >

The Best of... Peter Milligan

  
  

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The Falcon
22:38 / 11.04.06
So, I thought it'd be fun to continue the series with a guy who's status is, for better or worse, kind of that of a lesser light than the likes of Ellis, Ennis &c.

I also wanted to take issue with Ms. Wonderstarr's thesis that "Moore, Morrison and Gaiman have a more distinct style and vision than Mills, Milligan and Wagner". It may be simply that I find his company in that list objectionable in part, but I think Milligan has an absolutely driving obsession that permeates about 90% of his work: that of the malleability of identity, how it can be pushed and changed, how loose it was in the first place. Anyway, that's the theme, and I reckon you can make a case in pretty much everything he's done over the last 20 years, up to and including the likes of Toxin or 'Golgotha' in X-Men and finding something of an apotheosis in Human Target. It's a big theme, granted. (You don't have to talk about this - I'm just sayin' is all.)

I also am operating a thesis that Milligan is quite possibly the only Brit writer working in the American mainstream who's not quite obviously doing so in the shadow of Alan Moore; though there's maybe a case for Ennis too, I suppose.

Anyway, onto the actual comics. I think Enigma, which is also incidentally Mark Millar's 'comic he wished he'd written', is likely to score high here and with good reason. The shift in lead character Michael's identity and the later decision he made about it therein was possibly the most remarkable and striking one I've read in a comic, however many years ago it was. The Fegredo art is pretty much unparalleled too. It's smart, it's po-mo, it's sexy, it has superheroes and villains, it has gender politics. You can't really ask for more.

On the other hand, there's Rogan Gosh, which as a piece of craft is sensationally constructed, with five pretty much seamlessly interwoven narrative strands, various curry-involved wordplays and the intergalactic style of Brendan McCarthy on art. That bit with guy in the bra and 'I know where beauty lies.'? Fuck, I melted.

More recently, I'm thinking Dead Girl, still in progress, is superceding all the X-Force/X-Statix that came before it, and is quite easily the best comic I'm getting right about now. (Well, in two weeks.) I love the hinted at cosmology and rules, the razor dialogue, everything is on point.

Anyway, there's loads of other stuff that's dead good - I'd love to talk about Girl, Skreemer, fuck - even the Minx if you like.

Bring it.
 
 
sleazenation
23:21 / 11.04.06
At his best, and this thread is all about the best, Milligan is quite possibly my favourite writers. He is at his best when writing in tight spaces, he constructs narratives so perfect that one can't help but marvel at their architectual virtuosity. He can tell a story that will make you want to cry in fifteen words. He is one of those rare writers who appears to have taken Orwell's essay on The Politics of the English Language and danced up a storm with it.

All of which might sound overblown praise, but the simple fact is that, at his best, Milligan is worthy of the most overblown praise.

Duncan has already mentioned quite a few highlights of his writing and I'm sure that someone else is going to talk about Shade so I'm just going to mention three of Milligan's comics that I really enjoyed.

The Face

X-Statix 10.
A new girlfriend in a still uneasy new relationship helps here boyfriend sort through the possessions of his deceased ex, a woman from whom the new girlfriend feels an unbearable weight of unwinnable rivalry from. That is a rather inelegant summary of the plot. Milligan sums it far more effectively, more beautifully and poignantly in the first ten words or so of the issue. "These are a dead girl's shoes. She had smaller feet than me. Prettier too, probably." That the issue is drawn by Phill Bond just adds to the power of the comic...

Hewligan's Haircut
Milligan was doing pop-comics way before he teamed up with Mike Allred, and surreally enough, here he actually managed to team up with a major component of a future pop-act, Jamie Hewlet of The Gorillaz fame. The tale is one of surrealism, other art movements, teenage love and improbably hair. This is where comic art and High Art meet.

The Face
This might seem like a minor work, and in many ways it is, but it is still a brilliant self contained story. A gifted surgeon is offered the ultimate job - to practice his own art on the face of a renowned and incredibly scretive and eccentric artist. But when the knives come out... well, why spoil the ending... Its a great and satifying tale of the unexpected as well as being a great example of how to structure a truly satisfying story... And the art by Duncan Fregredo is brilliant too...
 
 
iamus
02:14 / 12.04.06
It's only recently, with Deadgirl, that I've remembered just how much I love Milligan. Back when I first graduated from Onslaught-era X-Men to Vertigo, it was Milligan and Morrison all the way. I think the last full thing I read by him was The Eaters, a fun little one-shot concerning the difficulties of holding down a boyfriend when you come from a family of cannibals. Hewligan, stolen from my sister's 2000AD collection before any of that, probably remains my favourite (though my thirteen year old self will always remember Egypt and The Extremist as being the first comics I read with tits in).

I actually just reread Hewligan the other day for the first time in years, it's great stuff. A romantic surrealist adventure, like sleaze said, that keeps building and building in absurdity, continually pulling the reader forward with Milligan's easygoing, likeable and very recognisable narrative voice before yanking everything sideways again and again.

There's not a lazy moment in the book. It's packed with as many (if not more) ideas than Morrison on a good day. Whether it's spending a page or two on the logistics of living in a cubist world or just a panel on a really bad joke, it's always doing something. Hewlett's perfect for it too. It's obvious the art and writing are working in complete harmony. The absurdity of Deadgirl makes me think of Hewligan actually. Even if it is far more subtle.

To me, Milligan titles have a cool indie-flick aesthetic. There isn't the self-importance in his work that you might find in All-beard or No-beard's. He's always felt quite informal to me, and his comics seem to say what they're there to say without making a huge big fuss about it. I think that often stems from his tendancy to have his main characters narrate their books. His own voice is often very evident in theirs, which could be seen as the mark of a poor writer, but I don't care. I could read 100 pages of stocks and bonds if it were written like that.

Perversely, I think that lack of self-importance was probably part of the reason why I stopped reading him and was pretty much exclusively Morrison for a number of years, but I'm beginning to see the light. I think it's time to dig Egypt back out, or try and get my hands on some copies of Enigma or Face 'cause it's been a bit too long, frankly.

I don't suppose Shade was ever put into trades?
 
 
Benny the Ball
04:16 / 12.04.06
Shade, sheer perfect comic. It was put into trade, but so far I think only the first seven or eight issues made it - the American Scream section of the story-line.

I've mentioned before that Milligan is my favourite writer, I've always liked his stuff from 2000ad onwards (I still really like Freaks, think it was spelt differently but can't remember how?)

Anyway, the best -

Bad Company - 2000ad strip which ran for a few arcs, following a motley platoon on a strange planet fighting an alien foe in a pointless war. Beautiful art helped what was at times an amazingly moving story, and really showed Milligan doing the character driven madness surrounded stuff that he does best.

Shade the Changing Man - I've raved about this series before on here, but for me it surpassed anything else during that wonderful early just-becoming-vertigo period of DC's history.

Plus Milligan made the Riddler frightening, and Batman a detective again at a time when it was all about vibrating fist techneques and the car.
 
 
yawn - thing's buddy
08:44 / 12.04.06
he's my fave.

sooner or later - pop magic!

bad company - black magic!

paradax - punk magic!

skreemer - mafia magic!

skin - bad magic!

enigma - just magic!

rogan gosh - advanced magic!

pop london - magic magic!

x-statix et al: - beyond magic!

Strange Days: the font.......
 
 
yawn - thing's buddy
08:45 / 12.04.06
and of course:

tribal memories: fuckin magic!
 
 
Mistoffelees
09:59 / 12.04.06
Yes! Enigma!

It´s my favourite Vertigo comic ever. It´s sad, that such comics happen so rarely. I liked everything about it. How he only has sex on tuesdays, those crazy villains, then that they are not villains at all, his home being under the earth because of the earthquake, the cool narrator ("You squat there with your dull eyes. You squat there as you were wise. But you´re not wise. You´re just ugly enough to be wise."). (We shouldn´t really think about SPOILERS here, it´s been 13 years, people should have read it by now, it´s "Rosebud" territory).

Milligan doesn´t get the same awe and respect as Morrsion and Moore, which is sad. But maybe it´s good, too. That way, there´s not such pressure to succeed and compete.

Two stories I discovered recently and both are very good:

Vertigo Pop: London 1995
Aging Rockstar pulls off a mean scheme to reclaim his old glory. A bit slow, but still nice, with Philip Bond as the artist. I´m still missing the last issue, dammit!

Girl 1996
Kind of a mix between Fight Club and those Brassed off/Full Monty stories. Again full of interesting ideas and with one of my favourite artists, Duncan Fegredo.


Vertigo these days gets more and more boring every month. What was that Otherworld about? Trigger gone, and noone noticed. Hellblazer trudging along.

And all those new titles? I stopped reading Testament after issue 3, Loveless after issue 1 and I´ll stop with DMZ any month now. Only Exterminators shows some promise.
 
 
D Terminator XXXIII
11:13 / 12.04.06
Milligan is TEH god. I've gotten immense satisfaction from X-Force, -Statix and Human Target.

Perversely, all his 90s Vertigo stuff? I've read only a handful, I think a number each for Minx, Enigma and Shade -- those were the only ones available to me then. I should forage in the back issues bins for them, and soon! Should I start with Shade?
 
 
_Boboss
11:23 / 12.04.06
there was an issue of human target, it was like twelve or thirteen I think, involving a mystery with the wife and some people trying to kill her. lots of very good 'hollywood's golden era' poolside scenes, perfectly witty neo-noir one-liners and kind of by-the-by chow-yun two-gun action. i think it might have had a guest artist paul dini maybe (milligan always gets great artist). anyway that's it: human target issue twelve or thirteen - the last great one before the series went off the boil a bit, a pure and perfect twenty-two pages of smartarse identity-bending fun. milligan's best i'd say, and milligan's best is basically the best of the best.
 
 
iamus
11:53 / 12.04.06
I remember really, really enjoying Shade but thinking it got slightly saggy towards the end, round about the Metang(?) suit time, getting back on form for the last arc or so. Is that about right? I can hardly remember the ins and outs anymore.

I think I liked the hotel era best. Whatsisface with the Don Juan jaw. Bachalo's art (which I remember leaving a big impression on me at the time).

I still want Shade's coat.
 
 
sleazenation
13:09 / 12.04.06
Optimum period for Shade was probably issue 30-50 - at this point the comic was less about Shade and more about Kathy, his ex-girlfriend and her new girlfriend Lenny. It all kets rather messy and emotional from there onwards, but beautifully so.
 
 
yawn - thing's buddy
13:54 / 12.04.06
shade is the least interesting of his work IMO.

And Vetigo Pop London was 2002 (maybe 2001) certainly not 1995.

I'd say Pop London contained some off his finest writing. plus it's not superheroes. also some of bond's best art.

Human target didn't grab me. too many caption boxes. not really. just didn't grab me. but wil investigate now, cos of gumbers - he knows his shtuff.

Really really shocked that rebellion has not collected sooner or later into a lovely ultra-shiny glossy album.
 
 
This Sunday
14:44 / 12.04.06
I love Milligan's work(s) and cannot think of a single thing he's done that I absolutely loathe or even just really dislike. Even, his 'Elektra' is redeemed by it's most excellent 'it's all a show' dance-metaphor material. It wasn't Elektra, any more than his 'Shade, the Changing Man' was Shade, even if the story featured the character(s).

No Milligan piece is actually about what the story is about. Or, so it seems, anyway. Which, to be clear, is something I like.

His 'Enigma' is, if not the best comic ever, certainly the one that's had the most influence over everything creative and narrative I've done since first reading it. What's weird is that I entirely forgot about it, right after it came out, and didn't notice until years later what an effect it had on me. Rediscovering it was like an unfolding genetic anamnesis, rather than just rereading.

'X-Force/X-Statix' was top, sentimental and harsh and very very pop glam boom! With an oncogenous jellybean cameramonkey of luv!

I am - proudly - one of two people on the planet who really enjoyed the Cyclops and Phoenix thing 'Further Advent. of...' with Jean dropped naked into a Victorian-Era church and Mr. Sinister getting a properly masturbatory and pathetic origin. He really is the Swinburne of the science set, and once distressed, it's all downhill pompous pouting and malicious, 'I'll be you're fucking monster, then!' whining and loathing... and Poccy, prefiguring Milligan's current 'X-Men' run in ways, is just flash and bite, a fugue of confrontation and adoption. Ur-darwinism versus the coping skills of twentieth century telepathic horus-girls.

I've never had the problems with 'The Minx' like other folks have. That God-navel bit is quite effective, from my end, and cute. Muchly does my Milligan attachment subsist on cuteness. And any comic with someone named Sexdeath is immediately cooler than not.

As to why Milligan doesn't get the note of Moore or Morrison, et al... he's not got the presence, I suppose, in the ambient realm of comics fandom. We are indoctrinated into Morrisonia, with every interview (it seems) having to mention his wife or his drugs and draw their conclusions not from the current comics he's producing, but those two elements. Moore's been very open about his life infused and inspiring to his fictions. Both have recognizable visual positions.

I don't know what Peter Milligan looks like. I don't know who he's sleeping with, or who's shared his home and bed and toothbrush in the past. I don't know his religion, true politics, or whether he eats the ears off monkeys when nobody's looking.

Makes him superior, in some ways, I think, since we're then entirely judging on the works. It's just his metaphors we need to process, and not the mislabelled questing beats of his life and history.
 
 
Haus of Mystery
14:54 / 12.04.06
I met Peter Milligan & Jamie Hewlett when I was a nipper. They signed my copy of 'Hewligan's Haircut', and very nicethey were too.
I've always thought Milligan would be a good sort to go for a pint with.
 
 
The Falcon
15:00 / 12.04.06
Milligan/Fegredo's like the dream team, eh? I could prolly stack them against Morrison/Quitely and it wouldn't necessarily be a foregone conclusion. Milligan/McCarthy, of course, enters the realm of 'just not fair.'
 
 
Haus of Mystery
15:23 / 12.04.06
Truth.
I think Fegredo's one of the best and most underrated artists EVAR!!
Remember 'Girl'? His art was soooooo good for that.
 
 
Mistoffelees
15:56 / 12.04.06
And Vertigo Pop London was 2002 (maybe 2001) certainly not 1995.

Hihi, you´re right. I saw 2.95, and thought aha, february 1995.

The Girl issues are from 1996 though.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
16:19 / 12.04.06
I maintain that Milligan is less obviously auteurist than Morrison and Moore; but that doesn't mean this thread hasn't brought back some great memories of his work.

Enigma and Shade just felt very important to me at the time, locking perfectly into my life (lots of boots, various bedsits, not much food or sleep; dangly earrings, patterned waistcoats, frottage as I remember) and its soundtrack (Shade, plus Suede... Enigma, plus Elastica). They are key to my memories of the early 90s.

Skreemer, yeah I really dug when I first borrowed it - I still don't own it, which is a crime in itself - during a film degree when we were studying 1930s gangsters. Milligan seemed to have seen the same flicks from the Warners classic cycle: the rise, fall and begin-again. I mostly remember parts of it: the 80s-patterned boxy jackets, and the scene where the Steve Dillon siblings are told to make out.

And as other have suggested, his Riddler story (Dark Knight, Dark City?) was one of the best things anyone's ever done with the character.
 
 
This Sunday
16:23 / 12.04.06
For all his work, and for 'Bizzare Boys' alone, I would buy Milligan a drink, expecting no recompense. And I have very serious morals against that sort of thing.

While I know little of the man, himself, the joy in even his most harrowing and vicious of works, leaves me hoping that he, himself, is experiencing regularly that same sort of bemused loveliness.

Who has time for 'Watchmen' when you can reread 'Hewligan's' or 'Enigma'?

And his 'X-Men'? At any moment, after any panel, the following panel could contain the same character(s) skipping and singing with tulips falling from the sky... and not miss a beat. No, seriously. Pick up an issue, start reading, and at the seventh panel from wherever you started reading, stop looking and just visualize the above. Lorna teaming up with Havok while Bobby Drake pouts... to... skippingdancingflowerseverywhere Iceman.

The could also collapse into tears from panel to panel. Any one of them.

Quick, somebody find a fault and post it.

But not '... clearly doesn't want to be working in comics' because that will cripple my brain and needs to stay on other messageboards. (Has Byrne or the Byrne-board ever commented on him?)
 
 
The Falcon
16:42 / 12.04.06
Ah, who cares, you know?

Anyway, I thought this might be of interest, nominally a Shade thread at The Engine but really just loads about Milligan, and Fegredo shows up halfway in, complains about Vertigo's reprint policies, etc. Apparently Girl was to be traded with Kill Yr. Boyfriend at one point, hmm.

I see Tribal Memories was just recently reprinted, this March, in a 2000AD Extreme Edition; I'm really quite unfamiliar with most of Pete's two-thou work, got some Sooner or Later Eclipse was it? colour repro's., read a bit've that was it Bix Barton? He was quite good.
 
 
Haus of Mystery
17:23 / 12.04.06
My favourite Milligan stuff is probably still Bad Company, just for the sheer bloody weirdness of it. At a time when the 'future war' recipe was getting stale in 2000ad, Bad Company arrived with it's splattery post-punk snarl, and ferocious nihilism. Plus it's funny as fuck (something that Milligan, above Moore, Morrison and Ennis, hsa always excelled at). The weird feudal Japan vibe of 'The Bewilderness', the genuinely odd cast members, the fact that Milligan refuses to explein too much of the back story, fucking Kano neuro-flipping...there's so much dinner right there.
Alongside Zenith, the very best of the 'second-wave' 2000ad stories. Such a golden age...
 
 
Haus of Mystery
17:24 / 12.04.06
That said, my battered copies of 'Strange days', and 'Paradax' are some of my most prized possessions.
You really don't get much better than colour Brendan McCarthy art...
 
 
Hallo, Paper Spaceboy
18:05 / 12.04.06
Shade the Changing Man, particularly the "A Season in Hell" story arc, is probably my favoruite because of the sheer delight when I first moved down to the Island and discovered that a comic shop here actually had some Shade in stock - I'd only heard the title, in brief snippets, and had found a copy of #33, the first Vertigo issue. I wanted more. It really does it for me because it's not about Shade, per se, it's about Kathy George and her relationships with Shade and with Lenny. 's part of the reason the book falters after Kathy dies - although there's still that divine "Lunch with Lenny" issue after the fact, drawn by Michael Lark - a concrete poem of polaroid photographs, Shade's bizarre skin condition (he flakes off a duplicate of himself at night), and references made to the earlier stories - reminding one how much the series had changed by that point. Shade was a book in constant flux, with the same trio at the centre of it all.

Enigma has been rhapsodized about up-thread but it's still my favourite after Shade, and I still long for another story with Envelope Girl and Michael Smith's dawning comprehension about his sexuality, and then his choice to keep his sexuality because it's given him other things.

Human Target! I didn't really get into the newer series, but the first mini with the Javier art was fab. It encompasses Milligan's obsession with identity & transformation of identity, the flexibility of character, perfectly.
 
 
The Falcon
18:33 / 12.04.06
The first mini was Edvin Biukovic (RIP) on art. Pulido did the OGN afterward.
 
 
Hallo, Paper Spaceboy
18:42 / 12.04.06
Right, right. It's on t'other side of the room, I am lazy and did not check.
 
 
Haus of Mystery
18:54 / 12.04.06
Biukovic's art was fantastic on that, and a really good Grendel Tales mini - his premature death was a real loss to comics.
 
 
Shiny: Well Over Thirty
19:07 / 12.04.06
The post death of Kathy issue’s of Shade are actually my favourite Milligan work. I don’t know if it’s what Milligan was actually tryinh to do but somehow the lost, empty almost meaningless vibe of Kathyless issues really worked for me. Reading the book during that period was the strangest thing for me, it was almost as if the narrative of the series had concluded and it should logically have ceased publication already but somehow it still continued to be published without really seeming to go anywhere or even have the capacity to go anywhere. I imagine to anyone who hasn’t read the issues in question that must make them sound like they’d be perfectly dreadful, and under most writers they probably would have been, but Milligan who after all created the situation in the first place ran with it marvellously, creating a darkly wonderful fairy tale of beautiful heartlessness and crippling heartache, with gallons of delightful oddness thrown into the mix and for me the run stands as a all time comic book classic. The new characters like Krankl and Andrea all fitted the closing era of the book perfectly as well, all of them seemed so much more plastic and disposable than Kathy or Lenny, to me but somehow that just made me all the more in love with them anyway.
 
 
Hallo, Paper Spaceboy
19:56 / 12.04.06
Well, it mirrors the depression that permeates Lenny and Shade after Kathy dies. They don't have the same sense - or any sense - of purpose, and it occurs to me that the great thing about the series, especially after Kathy dies, is that there's nothing holding these people together beyond habit and a sense of family - such a strange, ephermeral flavour in comparison to super-team comics or strong ties to a particular location...
 
 
raggedman
06:59 / 13.04.06
yes, that was what I loved about post Kathy's 'real' death (she has at least one other)
it fell apart, they fell apart and the story fell apart. (and some of that time period was a bit sucky but man oh man the ending arc where he's time travelling trying to put everything right...'do i have to be this good?'
Don't want to spoil it as any who haven't read it should run to your 25 cent box NOW)

he is such a hopeless romantic with extreme masochistic tendencies. Did he ever write any Hellblazer? someone get karen berger on the phone...surely? that would shock the book out of it's rut.

we heart milligan
 
 
miss wonderstarr
09:29 / 13.04.06
I'm really in the mood for some Milligan now, thanks to this thread, but of the classics mentioned here I can only find Bad Company: Goodbye Krool World on Amazon. I could dig out my original issues of Enigma from somewhere (I hope) but areSkreemer, post-American Scream Shade, Girl (never heard of this before) and more Bad Company available in trade?
 
 
Haus of Mystery
10:44 / 13.04.06
Isn't 'goodbye Krool world' the collected 'Bad Co'?
Of course if you have the sexy 80's Titan editions like me you don't have to worry.
 
 
jamesPD
11:01 / 13.04.06
miss wonderstarr, Skreemer is definitely available as a trade and it's a cracking read too. (I've never understood why it's not mentioned alongside Watchmen, V For Vendetta and Batman: Dark Knight Returns as one of those titles that introduced comics to adults.)

I'm pretty sure none of the others you've mentioned are available as trades, although I frequently find Girl and Shade issues at stupidly low prices in Comic Shops.
 
 
sleazenation
14:07 / 13.04.06
Yeah, Milliganis ridiculously under-represented in the re-print/collection market.

It reall seems that Milliagan is a writer's writer. Editors love his work, but, unfortunately, it doesn't tend to sell massively well.
 
 
Hallo, Paper Spaceboy
16:05 / 13.04.06
Which is tragic.

I just reread Enigma and wow! Some of those lines! "His hand moves slowly... and Michael Smith remembers the first time he stood naked in front of a strange girl... Because that's what he feels like now. A strange girl." It's actually rather disturbing to read a comic you haven't looked at in a while and realize how much the writer influenced your prose style. Milligan also managed to make the comic sufficently meta, but in a more languid, subtle fashion than others, that doesn't override the narrative. I'm more disturbed by the Enigma himself this time, but can identify with Michael Smith more - something. I don't know.

Human Target's next on the reread pile, and then I should figure out where I stashed Rogan Gosh...
 
 
Hallo, Paper Spaceboy
16:08 / 13.04.06
Oh, and what was Skreemer about, anyway? I've never actually seen anything about it...
 
  

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