This comic is angry, racist, misogynistic and sloppily written.
I'm gonna write a lot about how much I hate it, but really, all you need to know is the above sentence and that the movie is incomparably better.
On the second page the narrator, doing his very best Fight Club monologue, points out verbally that his boss is an African-American. Later someone else veers off their conversational road to re-establish that Wesley's boss is African-American. You'd be right to presume the boss' ethnicity must hinge around a plot point with the hammering they're giving it. That boss has to have something to do with this story.
She doesn't. The boss is verbally observed to be black twice and a lesbian once and is promptly out of the story. She is not even listed as one of the myriad of people he shoots in the arbitrary killing spree that passes as his "training" later in the story.
Welcome to Wanted: The Comic.
Wesley is the son of the greatest assassin ever and he has been recruited by a group of super-villains that call themselves "The Fraternity". The name was chosen by internet poll on a teen comic book forum. Runner up: "The Corporation". There are no super heroes in this universe; all the bad guys teamed up in 1986 and killed them. Upon extinguishing the super heroes The Fraternity reformatted the whole universe's collective memory so that only they had any memory of the way it used to be. They now run around the new world like a bunch of trench coat wearing adolescents, killing and raping to their heart's content.
Yeah, raping. Supervillains and specifically the protagonist Wesley are super into rape. It's what Wesley does for fun now that he's in the Fraternity. And why not? After all, if I were in his shoes and my societal chains broke off I'd run right out and brutally assault everyone and everything. Right? Right? While I could forgive what came before, this was when I gave up trying to like the book. I mean, I get it: Wesley's a Super Villain. He's a bad person. Bad people rape. Bad people kill. He's also the protagonist of this obscenely masturbatory fantasy of Mark Millar's. He's celebrated on every page. He's your super hero Tyler Durden. And a rapist.
I have no idea what Mark Millar is like in person. I have no desire to find out. In my mind he's a 14 year old boy with a lot of anger issues inside a 30 something year old body. The two decades lost completely in a blindness of rage and an inability to figure women out even a little. Given my imagined set of circumstances, we can see how someone would at once dream of being of allowed to rape while at the same time dream of being trained to be a great lover. How fucked up is that? Did I mention that? That his trainer, Fox teaches him how to give good head? How broken is that logic? Wesley is the definition of narcissism. I find it hard to believe that after bragging about raping famous actresses he could have any desire to please a person. When does the ability to give good head come into play in rape and murder land?
What I do know about Mark Millar is he is a mediocre writer who had an interesting idea and little capability to carry it out. The question of what a society of outlaws does when no one can stop them is excellent, exploring that with a normal guy: also excellent. Millar never digs in, never gives it more than a passing thought. Everyone goes around killing and raping. That's the extent of it. It's boring. Mark Millar (and I suppose this is some feat) has made the two most traumatic events a single human can perpetrate on another into something boring. Murder's boring. Rape's boring; a masturbatory fantasy of a teenage boy and a way to turn the evil up to eleven. It's all very boring.
Fortunately for us Wesley repents for a page and cries about his bad deeds in a most insincere manner, then he kills all the bad guys, then he shoots his dad at the end, says "Bitch" arbitrarily a few more times and it's over.
The comic is a horrible pile of shit in every direction.
But hey, I like to be the bigger man sometimes, so here are some small ideas that would make "Wanted" suck less:
- The Shit Man, instead of being "the collected feces of the 666 most evil people" why isn't he the death shits of those people. Hitler shoots himself, ass relaxes, shit falls out. Shit Man should be that shit specifically, not just arbitrary bad guy shits. Also, do evil people shit really tiny, cos 666 human shits would be fucking enormous. Also also, have you seen that Kevin Smith movie Dogma? Just curious...
- Knock off Fox's ebonics. It reads like Americans doing British accents.
- Show Wesley, super assassin, doing a kill that is more difficult than just shooting at a guy. Other than a few frames where he's posing like Chow Yun Fat, Wesley never comes off as any more skilled than a magically invincible psychopath.
- Knock it off with the "the authorities leave us alone cos of our pins and license plates" nonsense. Don't go there, don't explain it. The Super Villains can reprogram minds. Done. Don't show me cops going "oh shit sorry sir, I didn't see your pin" cos now I start to think, "How soon after a cop gets hired do they tell him to let the people with the pins do what they want?" and then, "Is anyone counterfeiting pins? How hard are they to duplicate? Do they have holograms in them?" Imagining cops kow-towing to these pins forces me to punch all kinds of holes in the reality of the world. Regular people may not be as powerful as the super villains, but it's rather unlikely that people would just sit around and take it up the ass for two decades. So either the people get their minds consistently erased or the Super Villians aren't causing all that much trouble, neither of which seems to be the case in the book, hence my issue with it all.
- That part in the beginning where Wesley's dad is about to fuck two dudes and is all "I'm not gay, I've fucked tons of women." Is written out so specifically... I don't see a super killer who's banged 5,000 women as someone who'd feel the need to explain himself (even if he is insecure enough to keep track), extra especially in a world without consequence.
- As a subset to the above note, and a general writing suggestion: imagine every line you write being spoken aloud in a real world situation. If it sounds like your character is explaining a bit much, your character is explaining a bit much.
- As a second subset to the overly explanatory dad: were any of the 5000 women he's banged rapes? I suppose if the guy was raping his way to a high score he could still be a tad insecure about himself and his sexual proclivities.
- If you're going to constantly comment on how your girlfriend character is fat, you might want to have her illustrated as such. Katsuhiro Otomo said he didn't draw attractive girls because that was too easy. But hey, who's he?
- All I see in that two page spread of Wesley shooting his dad is cock and eyes rolling back. What word did you hold in your mind when you drew that? Roofiedudesex?
- The guy who's peins is a super villian: clever. How's that working out for you?
- Dear powers copy guy (there's a guy who can copy other people's powers, but only for a limited and specific amount of time), was Wesley there with a stopwatch when you got the flying powers from the other guy? Is there a stopwatch on your chest I didn't see? Do you flicker a funny color right before you lose the powers you stole? Cos man, he knew down to the SECOND when you were gonna lose them. Super assassin AND super time teller! Also, who were you? Was I supposed to care about you when you barged into the story sometime in book five, cos I was all WTF and like, maybe I missed the part earlier where anyone said anything about you at all.
- Okay, those last few weren't exactly suggestions.
- People come into and out of this story with very little motivation. I suppose in a book whose central context is a world without consequence it is fitting that characters would appear lacking in all motivation.
I've got a bit of a complex where when I read or watch or experience some form of public art or entertainment and said art/etc is godawful. My mind imagines how the whole thing could be an elaborate ruse by the creator of said work just to mock the consumers for enjoying it (or not). I've gotten into the concept before writing about Southland Tales, as well as the previous version of this essay. To deliberately and successfully pull off a stunt like that would make you a huge douche. Writing the comic Wanted also makes you a huge douche, albeit considerably less brilliant.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
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