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'I Love Mark Millar' - A thread about interesting crypto-fascism in the world of comics.

  
  

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Alex's Grandma
08:49 / 20.12.06
Elsewhere, Our Lady said;

I suspect I only like Ultimates due to the art. Millar is, at best, a competent scripter, I'd like to see something from him that moves me in any way whatsoever, but that's for a different topic.

So;

Mark Millar gets a bad press round here. But is it justified?

All right, Millar apparently has issues with what he perceives to be the darker sides of certain aspects of human sexuality, but does that necessarily make him a bad writer?

Apart from 'The Funnies' (which, ok ...) in recent memory Millar's always delivered, personally, in terms of being entertaining. I enjoyed his run on 'Wolverine', I'm a fan of 'Wanted' and I can't wait to see what happens next in 'Ultimates 2.' Comics, I feel, would be terribly boring without him.

Although 'Civil War' probably needs work.

Well, he's a man of contradictions.

But Millar's not ashamed to sit down and write a decent superhero story, and that's the important thing.

It doesn't have to be about some bloody thing from the 15th dimension, or whatever, does it? It doesn't have to always be about that, even though Millar can handle that sort of material admirably.

And Captain America would be like that.

Well enough of my yakkin' - discuss.

Mark Millar as heir to J Swift, basically.
 
 
Spaniel
10:54 / 20.12.06
You liked Wanted? Before we go any further I demand an explanation.
 
 
Sniv
11:06 / 20.12.06
You kidding, Boss? Wanted is an awesome book, one of my favourite minis of the past few years. Firstly, it's the one book I can think of that shows supervillains for the evil, depraved scum that they are. These are, finally, absolutely amoral bad guys, not the not-actually-that-bad baddies from the mainstream universes. They're not just robbing banks in colourful costumes and existing as an object to fight the 'hero', they killed all the heroes.

What's truly surprising about the book is that, despite going to great lengths to shock and disgust the reader at every turn, it still manages to make you care about the characters, egg them on and even like a few of them. When I was reading it I felt a bit ashamed of myself for enjoying it, as Eminem does some really nasty shit, but I still found myself laughing along and going 'ooooh' at the set pieces and become emotionally involved in the story. That's pretty impressive work.

And, the art is very nice and the book is chock-fulla easter eggs for the longtime comics fan. I'm looking forward to seeing if the movie ever gets made in all it's nihilistic, evil-fetish, shiny leather goodness. I mean badness.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:15 / 20.12.06
What's truly surprising about the book is that, despite going to great lengths to shock and disgust the reader at every turn

I'm just guessing, but did one of these lengths involve somebody getting a length up their bottom?
 
 
D Terminator XXXIII
11:30 / 20.12.06
Dude, what's your fixation with that in Millar's body of work?
 
 
Triplets
11:39 / 20.12.06
Well Millar IS always putting things up someone's body of work. For a start.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
11:40 / 20.12.06
I'd tend to agree with the above Mr B; there were, there are, various moments of pathos (Johnny Two Dicks going at Fuckwit's head with a crowbar, for example, and all the material to do with how the kind world ended in 1986, but the villains had no option, they were going to be wiped out otherwise.) It, 'Wanted' strikes me as not being all about comics.

Admittedly, it is quite silly, but then what isn't these days?

Mark Millar's characters seem realistic, and that's why I both love him and hate him.
 
 
Haus of Mystery
12:07 / 20.12.06
Wanted had a great first issue, and went downhill quite, quite hideously. By the end I wanted to slap Millar with a shoe. All that father and son bollocks. Shit. Millar consistently lets his stories end weakly. See - Ultimates. See - Spiderman. In fact don't. Spiderman was one of the worst written runs I've ever worked my way through. Why does everyone in the Millerverse have to be such a complete asshole?
 
 
Alex's Grandma
12:36 / 20.12.06
How would you have ended 'Wanted' though, ideally?
 
 
Eloi Tsabaoth
12:47 / 20.12.06
Why does everyone in the Millerverse have to be such a complete asshole?
I keep meaning to start a thread about the possible influence of 2000 AD's writing style on American comics, considering the mass migration of UK writers from one t'other that continues to this day. The queasy satire, obsession with toilet humour and 'adult themes', basically the whole '13 year old boy' feeling. It's offered as an alternative to long-underwear cliches but is just as limiting and stale in its own way.
 
 
Glenn Close But No Cigar
13:22 / 20.12.06
Could be an interesting thread...
 
 
H3ct0r L1m4
14:35 / 20.12.06
I like Millar's stories most of the time, but I agree with Biz and I've experienced a similar thing myself, havinf written two short stories for COMMERCIAL SUICIDE [one's available at lulu.com].

well, the writers had no boundaries - which is great - to script what they wanted in the spirit of that being "the book of wrong". I still like what I did if I approach it as one a half minute crusty punk single, but I was thinking the other day of how much filled with HATE my stories were to bring that 'wrongness' thing out; some of it might still be funny,depending on how you approach it. I did have 2000AD's BIG DAVE in mind as a north for that, so... maybe our man Millar wrestles with rage in every page.

but what gets me the most in his work is the same that bothers me much with Tarantino's screenplays: ALL of the characters are too nerd for school and can fill EVERY conversation with movie refferences. it hits one tone for most of the time.

WANTED was good, except for that page.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
14:42 / 20.12.06
I was sort of hoping, Biz, that that was the kind of thing we could talk about here.

It's only just occurred to me, but I definitely think it would be germane.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
14:57 / 20.12.06
Hector;

Weren't the last two pages of 'Wanted' basically quite realistic, though? Reading back over the trade recently, all the stuff to do with rigged elections and pointless wars seemed about right.

The thought of Tony Blair and/or Dubya making an 'urgh' face in that sort of context is ... really bad, for sure, but isn't that what's essentially happening?
 
 
dmj2012
15:16 / 20.12.06
I'm not too familiar with Millar's body of work, but I did read his run on the Authority following Ellis' departure. While I think criticisms of Ellis' writing involving the fact that most of his characters are grumpy, smoking, wise-cracking bastards are valid, Ellis' run on the book looks positively subtle and subdued compared to Millar's.

My problem with Millar's writing had nothing to do with the violence or "political incorrectness" of the content but his lack of distinction between characters. During Ellis' run there were conflicts between members of the team itself, and such little tidbits like Shen's speech about giving up some of her old beliefs as a member of the team gave the characters a little depth in the midst of the "widescreen action" milieu. Also gone were the moments where the characters took the time to marvel at the wonders around them. Think Apollo and the Engineer stopping to stand on the moon, or Jenny Sparks taking the time to see the baby universe in the engine room because she knows she's dying soon.

In Millar's run, not only did all the members of the Authority seem to have the same personalities, but they seemed not too different from the gross caricatures they were fighting. I felt like the only thing distinguishing the "good guys" from the "bad guys" was the fact that the writer assumed I, as the reader, was supposed to know who the good guys were because they were the title characters.

Now this could have opened up a great storyline about the moral ambiguity of the motives of heroes, or whether the ends justifies the means, but in Millar's case it simply seemed that he had little distinction in his head between characters, that their personalities were nothing more than sounding boards for his own. Suddenly we had a whole team of Midnighters fighting swarms of other Midnighters.

As I said, I haven't read anything else Millar's done, so I have to confine my comments to his Authority run. Maybe he got better as he went along, maybe not, but after reading that I simply avoided anything he'd written since then.

That's my two cents. I'm interested to hear some of the other comments here and whether these criticisms hold true for his other works as well.
 
 
H3ct0r L1m4
22:10 / 20.12.06
Alex, that's a very good way to look at it. maybe I was hoping for a redemption of the character. how naïve I am [no sarcasm here]...

yeah, i like his AUTHORITY a lot, for that matter. I've also heard his long runs in SWAMP THING and SUPERMAN ADVENTURES [or ANIMATED, can't remember the name] are simply great and generally bastardness-free. haven't read them yet.
 
 
Spaniel
09:11 / 21.12.06
Don't get me wrong, I don't actually dislike everything Millar ever does, in fact I think he's got a good grasp of pace and tone and has some nice ideas, it's just that he let's himself down elsewhere, and he lets himself down a lot. The problems for me are threefold:

1) As has already been mentioned, he seems incapable of writing characters who aren't arseholes. Now, I suspect Mr Marky thinks this way lies drama as arseholery tends to produce lots of conflict, and, well, he'd be right on that score, unfortunately said drama is undermined by the overuse of his method of production. Also, who wants to read about wankers all. the. time? Not me that's fer sure. That his pages drip with sadism and schadenfreude is not inticing, as far as I'm concerned. And, you know, I expect more from a writer, I expect characters who don't constantly inhabit the most disfunctional spaces, or characters who only inhabit those spaces some of the time, or - get this - character's who are actually quite pleasant. I expect to see a range of human behaviour from a writer with so much invested in character dynamics and that's not what I get. Ever.

2) He's juvenile. His jokes are always lowest common denominator stuff, his political rants always deeply unsophisticated. Now, the jokes I could stand if they weren't buried in the other stuff I don't like - Ennis is equally childish but as a writer I find his work consistently more entertaining and humorous - but the politics, well, his rep as the political go-to guy at Marvel throws this ugly stuff in the full light of day. I appreciate that this is as much to do with the hype around him as anything else, but there ain't anything I can do about that.

3) Like the man says, his endings. Now to be fair they're not all bad, and I recognise that some of them have likely suffered due to editorial interference (see the end of Ultimates 1) but he does tend to lean towards deus ex machina which can get a little tedious, and even when he doesn't there is often a certain flat inevitability to the proceedings (see the latest arc of the Ultimates). Now, that's not to say that he never pulls any surprises out of the bag, just that they're often not enough for me.

Wanted was the worst of this shit exemplified. A veritiable borefest of miserable wanker characters behaving like miserable wankers* to make a very stupid point. A very stupid point illustrated by a very stupid joke. A very stupid joke built on bumsex. Bumsex being something that Millar likes to get into his comics a whole lot.
Alex, quite where the pathos comes in I'm not sure. Pathos requires that I give a shit about the characters and frankly I couldn't care less about Wanted's gang of psychopaths, mass murderers and bastards.

To sum up then, I've enjoyed chunk of Millar's writing, but familiarity is starting to breed contempt.


*The there's another point here about the overuse of uberviolence and how it totally depowers it's impact, but I can't be bothered to go on about it, I've written more than enough as it is
 
 
Hallo, Paper Spaceboy
13:51 / 21.12.06
Boboss: As has already been mentioned, he seems incapable of writing characters who aren't arseholes...And, you know, I expect more from a writer, I expect characters who don't constantly inhabit the most disfunctional spaces, or characters who only inhabit those spaces some of the time, or - get this - character's who are actually quite pleasant.

To be fair, I thought he was actually getting there with his (Ultimate) Thor -- he was, at worst, maybe a bit snotty. I was able to sympathize with Thor at various points, but of course the consequence of this is Thor being beaten to a bloody pulp by his "teammates" and locked up. And I thought his Betty Ross interpretation, while certainly on the arsehole spectrum, was approaching more of a medium-point with some complexity that was maybe missing from Hank Pym or Jan. But those are just two examples which show complexity more than pleasantness, and you could argue that the complexity was performed in a haphazard fashion...

but he does tend to lean towards deus ex machina which can get a little tedious, and even when he doesn't there is often a certain flat inevitability to the proceedings (see the latest arc of the Ultimates)

Arc? That was an "arc?" I'm not sure I'd call it that. It was something, though. It was the worst plotted "One. Last. Stand." comic I've ever read. And the Liberators still managed to come across as mostly gross caricature in the vein of his Authority.
 
 
Spaniel
14:29 / 21.12.06
Re Ultimates 2: Absotivluterly, could not agree more.

Yeah, I think he was getting there with Thor, but I reject the notion that Betty was more complex and therefore more interesting, 'cause while it may be true that there's a little more to her than you'd normally expect of a Millar character, she's still, at base, another badly behaved creature of Millar. Okay, that's an uncharitable reading and I'm sure I'd be a lot less harsh if Millar wasn't quite so keen on cramming his books full of misanthropy and nastiness, but sadly for us he is and I'm bored shitless by it.
 
 
Jake, Colossus of Clout
15:30 / 21.12.06
He seemed to check a lot of that shit at the door with Ultimate Fantastic Four, though. It's conceivable that Bendis and Ellis set the tone and Millar just ran with it, but previous writer's arcs have never stopped him from asshole-izing characters before. However, I haven't read the "Frightful" arc yet, so it may deteriorate. Good comic, though.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
16:15 / 21.12.06
What I've read of what he's done, I'd say that I liked Swamp Thing the best, but even then I didn't really care about any of the characters, it was how he was going to get out of destroying the world, and I think he did that quite well. He's not completely talentless, I just wish that he'd write characters that are multidimensional rather than try to 'shock me', apart from the bum fun fixation there's also the fact that the female Authority characters were dealt with a lot more sadistically and detailed than the male characters when they were replaced by the new Authority.

His Ultimate X-Men run seemed to be an attempt to write something a bit more thoughtful but at no point did I really worry what was going to happen. I do wonder whether if Ellis and Morrison would write exclusively for Marvel whether the company would dump Millar in a heartbeat.
 
 
Spaniel
16:50 / 21.12.06
Doubtful, he seems to make them lots of money.
 
 
H3ct0r L1m4
23:06 / 21.12.06
with all that was said here, he's been Marvel's best card in years.

in all fronts...
 
 
Jake, Colossus of Clout
23:11 / 21.12.06
Umm... Bendis?

I kind of hate the guy, but I think he's been more important to Marvel over the past five or so years than Millar. And Ultimate Spider-Man is ace.
 
 
Rachel Evil McCall
03:55 / 22.12.06
I do remember enjoying the first issue of Chosen. Never ended up reading any more of it, though.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
04:38 / 22.12.06
I do wonder whether if Ellis and Morrison would write exclusively for Marvel whether the company would dump Millar in a heartbeat.

It's a fair question, but the thought of Warren _splashpage, splashpage, 'why can't I get a decent cup of coffee round here; this tastes like a polecat's gone to the gents in it', splashpage, splashpage, will this do?_ Ellis at the helm of the Marvel Universe is a little troubling.

Although he might have handled 'Civil War' with more sensitivity.

As far as Mark Millar's politics go; while, all right, he often does go overboard in terms of baiting the hippie liberals (read: Grant Morrison) isn't this mainly for comic effect? Whether or not anyone else was all that amused by the 'what do you think this letter on my forehead stands for?' scene in Ultimates 1, I bet Mark was chuckling to himself when he wrote it. Similarly, assuming that a character like Wesley in 'Wanted' is saying what the writer really thinks is a bit like seeing Eric Cartman as a shill for the Klan.

Granted, Mark seems to be struggling, to put it kindly, with the characterisation in 'Civil War', but I'd guess that's largely because he was told, at some stage, that he couldn't just play it for laughs - when he is allowed to do that though, he can be subtle-ish. In 'The Ultimates' the characters with the power to shatter worlds or whatever aren't all that sympathetic, but then they wouldn't be, IRL, power leading to a sense of self-importance, etc; but I'd argue that the likes of Bruce Banner and, in particular, Henry Pym, are handled pretty decently. Having just been over the trades recently, I could go on about any number of examples, really I could, 'Don't leave Banner alone again!' and so forth, but the scene in the olde English pub (it's not Proust exactly, but it's a nice touch,) when Henry asks Steve to sit down, have a beer, and talk things through, before being forced into a terrible fight that he deserves to lose, but doesn't, but does, is, I think, quite well done. There's nothing Henry could 'say', because this is Captain America.

I never even try to second-guess plotlines any more, and I'm not all that bothered about what's going to happen to Tony, Steve and Thor in Ultimates 13, whenever it comes out, but how are Henry, Bruce and Jan going to feel about how things turn out? I mean it is sort of interesting ...?
 
 
Spaniel
08:09 / 22.12.06
The aforementioned schadenfreude and sadism isn't just a product of Mark's particular style of characterization, it oozes across the plot too in that the non-bastards always get fucked (in the bottom). Sure Banner might not be totally despicable (mind you, I wouldn't exactly describe him as likeable, I mean, this guy carries around the Hulk in his head), but what's done to him kinda is, even if it does find justification in it's really realness. And that brings me neatly to my next point, do we really want to defend the nastiness that goes on within Millar books by resorting to the realism argument? Really?
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
08:24 / 22.12.06
Considering that the Hulk is supposed to be the repressed side of Banner's personality I quite like Millar's UltimateHulk. I have no real interest in Millar's politics, I would guess him to be vaguely left-wing who enjoys writing right-wing stereotypes because they're naturally more ridiculous (see 'Chester Williams: All-American Cop'). Has he written anything with a left-wing character?
 
 
Alex's Grandma
08:38 / 22.12.06
Well yeah, why not?

I don't really see Mark Millar's characters, in The Ultimates anyway, as nasty so much as human. They're not Superman, they are mainly a disgrace, but with just enough redeeeming features to keep you reading. This perhaps says something bad about me as a person, but I find that preferable, approach-wise, to, say, what George is doing in ASS. Up to a point, I suppose I'm stuck in the Eighties, but what I enjoy most in comics is seeing morally flawed characters in hellish situations, doing whatever it takes - if there are deaths, so be it - for them to blast their way out of there. If, you know, it's intelligently done. I'm not arguing in favour of 'Identity Crisis', for example.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
08:40 / 22.12.06
x-post with Our Lady, there.
 
 
Spaniel
09:22 / 22.12.06
But Millar is hamfisted in his approach to moral flaws. His characters all too often behave very very badly when another approach would do, and do better. This annoys me, it's not realism, it's shit characterization and lazy writing.

To be clear, I'm sure Millar does think of himself as a lefty liberal playing with nasty right wing toys, but that doesn't make his approach appealling to me, not because I find it offensive, but because it's boring and juvenile (and I say this as someone who likes juvenalia most of the time)
 
 
Ganesh
10:58 / 22.12.06
Why does everyone in the Millerverse have to be such a complete asshole?

In order to quiver prettily in fearful/hopeful anticipation of forcibly encountering a complete cock.
 
 
Sniv
11:31 / 22.12.06
With regards to the arsehole character debate, can I put forward Ultimate Hawkeye? From what we've seen so far, he is (or perhaps was, after what's happened) a caring family man, good natured and thoughful as well as being a badass assassin that can kill people by flicking his fingernails at him. The family scenes in particular had a lovely warm feel to them which made the inevitable all the more wrenching when it happened. So, at least we have one non-asshat. And Valkyrie (sp?) from the Defenders issue - she was a nice person, despite being perhaps way to trusting with Hank 'mid-life-crisis' Pym.

Can we talk a little about the anal fixation here? I've not read a great amount of Millar's comics and so have never come across this supposedly overused trope in his work (apart from the Hulk skull-fucking that Chitauri, and Eminems happy-face at the end of Wanted). How often does it crop up, and in what circumstances? I see this referred to often on the board, usually attached to some gag about it being every right thinking guy's worst nightmare. Is this genuinely how it's presented, as a kind of gag? Where it's a wink to the readers 'well, you wouldn't want that now, would you fellas?'?

I'm not sure how I feel about this - on the one hand, if he uses it a lot, it's a rather odd proclivity, peppering anal rape through his oeuvre. On the other hand, it is a pretty nasty thing to have happen to someone, straight or not, so I can see how it can be used easily to shock the reader. Handled sensitively, I can see no reason why there couldn't be a 'good' (well, not so much entertaining, but worthwhile) story about this happening to a character.

So, educate me Barbelith, what is going on here? And what trades can I pick up if I'm looking for some action?
 
 
CameronStewart
11:57 / 22.12.06
There's Apollo's rape in the Authority, and Midnighter's subsequent revenge by visiting the same fate upon the rapist with a jackhammer.

There's the "this is me fucking you in the ass" final page of Wanted.

There's ANOTHER instance of Apollo being almost raped by his replacement, Teuton.

There's more I'm sure, I can't bring them to mind just now.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:41 / 22.12.06
Messiah - in which the antagonist, in case you weren't sure where your sympathies ought to lie, bumdoes a priest.

This is Millar's first printed work, which allows narrative scholars to construct what we call an "arc".

In case anyone was wondering, this does not lead on to a sensitive and well-handled examination of the mental and emotional consequences thereof. Nor is it particularly shocking.
 
  

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