I'm not a big fan of the Mark Millar vibe. His whole oeuvre, it’s got this snarky sniveling pompousness to it. I feel like Millar is the 2000s version of Dane Cook of the Comic Book World. I did some shows with Cook back in the day. He’s very good, solid, no holes in his material or delivery, great energy, likeable. Yet his bombastic career vaulted into the stratosphere due to his ego, his viciousness in strong arming other comics who would dare confront him over the source of his material and his genius of utilizing the dawn of social media (mainly MySpace) to his advantage.
Cook was the MySpace king when it was actually a space. He capitalized on his ‘Yo Bro’ regular guy from Bawston act to be a vortex for the entire party people ‘Woo Hoo’ crowd. They flocked to his shows. He was a guaranteed winner onstage and he was just like you. Problem was that ‘Woo Hoo’ crowd wasn’t a sophisticated comedic savant crowd. They couldn’t tell you who George Carlin or Bill Hicks was. They wanted to take their dates out, drink a lot and go woo hoo to Cook’s middle of the road humor. Cook became the darling of the LA Comedy scene due to his shows at Dublin’s.
Dublin's was a huge Irish Pub/Club with two floors that used to exist right at the edge of the Sunset Strip back in its heyday when cruising the strip was still a thing. It was a perfect storm. The Woo Hoo Social Media Guy Comic at the tip of LA’s Social apex. He killed you with laughter and then you could dance, drink and kill yourself with booze and lines off the floor of the Viper Room.
Cook’s biggest show on planet earth was broadcast in the round from Madison Square Garden if I’m not mistaken. It was his moment to cement himself as one of the greats. The ‘Woo Hoo’ crowd was there but you could feel how off the energy was. The Woo Hoo crowd didn’t want to sit down in an arena and be far away where their dates could barely see one of their own. They were restless. They didn’t have the attention span for an hour. They wanted twenty minutes so they could go back to the bar, order drinks, text their friends, maybe get a quick bang in the bathroom with their dates. This was asking too much from them.
Cook’s film career also tanked. You can’t go Woo Hoo in a cinema unless it’s in the Bronx of course. The final downfall came when another regular shmo Louis C.K. called him out as a thief. Louis wasn’t just a regular shmo like us he was also a comic’s comic. He was one of us; a guy who put the years in as a nobody because he loved what he did. So the vitriol and desire for retribution over Cook poured through C.K.’s shtick. His ascent to knock Cook off the top of the mountain was rooted for by everyone who saw Cook as a fraud. Of course, C.K. became exiled from the kingdom of comedy when it was revealed that he liked stroking off in front of female comics in the heart of the Me Too error, oh Louis.
Anyway, so this Millar doofus. This yutz who puts his name at the top of every comic in BOLD 150pt FONT. His books are events! They’re part of his World! Millar World! They’re can’t miss arcs of never seen before work in the comic book medium. He enlists the greatest artists and tells the most riveting stories! Millar World! Where comic geeks go to experience all the best that comic books have to offer under a sky where MILLAR hovers in 17,000 pt font as a hologram. Yeah. Whatever.
I never found anything he did to be so gobstopping wow. It was like Cook: good, solid, standard fare, no flaws, solid delivery – but so fucking what? You’re not Stan Lee or Jeff Lemire or Jonathan Hickman even. Millar’s stuff gets made into TV Shows! He’s always got something in development that will break new ground in the world of entertainment. The fusion of his mnyeh comic books with streaming content will take the world by storm!
I bet this dude goes to Dominatrixes a lot. Like, he’s one of these tightly wound neurotics who hob knob in such high stakes meetings and business shenanigans that he needs some Amazon with sawed off heels to put a ball gag in his mouth, hang him upside down and put his fingers in a nutcracker. I bet he likes to crawl around naked on Star Wars comic books from the 70s panting like a dog while his Dom whips him and seethes ‘You’re not Lucas, you’re not big time, you’re an aborted Ewok’ while he whimpers ‘Yes Mistress Lay-uh’.
So this ‘Ambassadors’ book comes out. Mind you, I’m toiling in a world where my pull list is dwindling by the week due to the incessant blecch that seems to be pouring out from the Comic Book Universe these days. I’m flailing about, looking for something to grab me, to take me away on a journey. Millar isn’t stupid. Never said that. No, he’s cunning and a brilliant salesman. He knows how to grab people. So what does he do? He drops another ‘This story is holy guacamole good!’ but he gets Frank Quitely to draw it. Fuck. Quitely. Quitely can draw a pile of poo on a bar napkin and it would be frameable. Quitely. Dammit. Art Genius. Okay. Fine. I’ll get it, I mean how bad could it be? And look, Millar reduces the font of his name at the top of the book and makes it equal to Quitely! Okay, maybe he’s chilling out a bit.
The premise, from what I can gather, is some wrongly accused middle aged Korean chick who is rotting in a jail cell somehow creates the ultimate super hero of some sort and has downloaded herself in its consciousness in another body that’s out in the world somehow. Her douchebag husband who I assume either stole the tech or just flat out betrayed her had her put in jail either for being smarter than him, not making good homemade kimchi, or both. Meanwhile we get a subplot B story of your basic half assed ‘Antarctica is a base for the intelligent agencies/shadow govt’ where the future of the planet is created/experimented on and super intelligent beings/monkeys who escape and have to be tracked down by Men In Black who don’t dance like Will Smith nor have wives you need to keep out yo fuckin’ mouf.
Korean chick is now a babe and is levitating in front of a bunch of elites in Korea. She offers her superpower tech to anybody, any regular person who is worthy of it from the entire planet. Who will it be??? The crusty dude who yells ‘Tamales’ at 8am up the street from me? Megyn the Horsy or whatever she is? A white blonde Christian woman who loves Jes – hahahahaha I’m sorry I couldn’t even finish typing that; you're kicked off the casting list sweetie for about 10 years. Well you know what? This question has already been answered! It’s in the solicits! All 6 issues of this run and the choices that get made are revealed one by one in clear regular Helvetica font.
Spoiler: It’s an Indian dude, a Mom and her son in Paris, a Catholic Priest in Brazil, an Anti-Progressive (what does that even mean) older dude from Australia and a Mexican dude. Yawn. Their outfits look like they were designed by the costume design castoffs of Alpha Flight and the Wonder Twins from back in the day. But it’s Millar World! Sorry. MILLAR WORLD! A world where we cultivate great stories and turn them into streaming content – oh shut up. You know why it’s in the Solicits for all the world to see? Why is Marky Mark just giving away the entire secret of the series five months ahead of time? Because the comic is just a vehicle for the TV Show or a vehicle to ultimately just sell a trade. It doesn’t exist as its own entity. And if it's Marky Mark it's going to be created for a pitch deck or it’s not Millar World.
You see, these comics aren’t comic books for you to enjoy. They’re marketing tools. They’re an extended storyboard for TV Executives to take a look at. The sales will gauge and fuel the pitch meeting. Look at all this diversity! Look at all the markets we hit with this cast! Yes, the Anti-Progressive undergoes a sex change by the second season, don’t worry! Look, you’ve got an Editorial Production Manager listed right on the first page of the masthead of credits. That’s not a comic book job. There were no Editorial Production Manager jobs in the classifieds when Kirby was looking for a gig back in the 60s. Aww, and look Mark’s wife is the CEO. Notice her font is 1/10th the size of Mark’s. Is this him being passive aggressive with his wife? I bet you he's the master of passive aggressiveness, just look at his fonts! Is this a new disease? Fontism? Helvetica on Steroids Syndrome?
Of course I can't really get mad at Mark, this is an industry wide issue. Lots of comics have their entire story broken down in solicits and already have the date for the Trade Paperback set before you even get issue one. Does the comic book universe not want us to buy monthlies? Ugh, anyway...
The Most Ambitious Comic Book of All Time! Oy vey. How is this the most ambitious comic of all time Mark? Seriously. A six issue arc with a basic trope about finding power in every day people? Is it the 6 different artists? Dude, artists are hopping around projects these days like herpes at the Playboy Mansion in the 80s. Is it your ambition Mark? To make this into a 7 season Emmy award winning streamer? You wanna know what would be the most ambitious comic book of all time? Saying, I'm gonna write a compelling story that lasts 500 issues! That, would take the cake. Hell, in this day and age saying you'd wanna write 20 issues is considered nutso.
Finally, of course Mark can’t resist exploding his name to assault
your eyeballs with. He’s back to his old antics with his font fetish on the
back cover page of the comic. My goodness the name of the comic he's promoting on the back cover is called BIG GAME.
Here's a sneak peak at some titles coming down the pike from Millar Lite World:
Gigantic Things. Big Stufferoo. E-Nor-Mous. Wowiekablowie! Boom Boom Buy Buy.
Look, Quitely’s art is a sight to behold. I could read this back and forth several times over if I didn’t have to actually ingest any of the text. Again, it's not that this is bad per se but it's not worthy of any of the superlatives, not one bit. Maybe it’s telling that an artist is changed up for every issue of the series, perhaps they can only take Mr. Fonty for one issue before he’s begging to pick them up and drive them to a Malibu Clambake where Matthew McConaughey is hosting his nude Bongo workshop.
Good on ya Mark. You’ve made a life and a career for yourself. I can’t hate on you for that. But I would look to the rise and fall of Dane Cook as a cautionary tale for someone who surfed to glory with bombast and marketing know how. Eventually it catches up to you. Eventually your work will be sitting in the round at Madison Square Garden and the world will see you not necessarily as the Titan that you claim to be but rather a simple old Times New Roman 10pt font that doesn’t even know how to italicize itself.
Rating: 7.0
Verdict: Drop
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