I see a difference, to be honest, Pran.
It's long been a standard for good writers to come along and reinvent characters and books through a process of reimagining their limits, starting at their core. Alan Moore is, of course, the grand master of this. And if you look at Moore's projects from The Killing Joke through that Death of Superman thing (the last Supes story pre-Crisis, what was it called...?) or even his efforts to save Supreme, I think you can see him struggling to find the value in these characters, in the Swamp Thing, wherever, and bring that value to the work.
GM has done much the same thing. He's openly admitted that working on Animal Man was very easy because Buddy Baker was such a cypher. But he's also brought me, who suckled the mutant teat of Lee-Kirby in me youth, back to X-Men for the first time since my disgusted early '90's departure. This is not just because of his writing ('though to be fair I'd follow him to Strikeforce Morituri if that's what it took) but also because he's found a way to write Logan and Scott and all these other characters and make them alive again, make them meaningful and vibrant. It's about a certain amount of imaginative empathy. The whole thing he said in the interview discussed a couple threads over, about the characters being alive in his head.
In contrast, I feel Millar's work is not like this. It's much more about appealing to the prurient within fans. His versions of the Avengers remind me more of the pastiche versions of the Marvel Silver Age lineup in Marshall Law. Yeah, it's funny to see what fucktards (can I say that on this board?) a satirist can portray these characters to be. But it's a very 14-year-old funny and, for me, it wears thin pretty quick. I just think that the Ultimates is essentially a very calculated and soulless work. Millar writes a good line in violence, and he's got some clever dialogue. But violence and cleverness for their own sake have never impressed me that much, sorry.
Which side of the line the Miller take on Batman falls is, I guess, a subjective assessment. It all depends on whether you think the "real" Batman is the happy, squarejawed one of the 1950's or the grim, gun-toting avenger that Bob Kane originally gave us (well, our grandparents) in the 1930's. Personally, I think Miller brought it all back in a very real way and showed us what an intense and visionary fascist Bats was. It's amazing how he makes the character such an extremist and yet also so compelling. But I don't get that attachment from Millar's stuff. Didn't get it on Swamp Thing. Didn't get it on The Authority. Don't get it on his Ultimate stuff. Sorry.
P-Runce: Yeah, I'm new to the boards. I've been checking out the Barbelith 'zine for a couple years off and on. Used to surf the old 'The Bomb' website pretty regularly too. Had the houdini login for a time and recently decided to come put it to use. Whatever spirits alone know why, but I'm probably here to bug you for a while.... |
