The "Mark Millar is a Nazi Muslim Atheist Baby-Killer" topic

[anarky]

Checked out and read Kick-Ass, Book 1.

Uh, yeah.

I think that the words "Mark Millar" on the cover will keep me from reading any comic book on the future. Even if they reprinted the Grant/Breyfogle run on Detective with 100 pages of bonus sketches and a new Anarky story, had every copy autographed, and charged $3 for it, I'd avoid it if they stuck Millar's name on the cover.

Don't tell me the Authority is good. Honestly, everything I've read by him is such shit, it would take quite a bit to get me to try any more of his shock porn.

[Rollo Tomassi]

I'm sorry it took you this long to figure that out. But I'm glad you figured it out.

There is underlying current of disdain for comic readers in every single thing he writes, coupled with the worst fanboy wank ideas a five year old wet dreams about and yet people don't get it and keep eating his shit up. Seriously, this guy's pitches would never have made it past Gruenwald and Shooter back in the day.

[anarky]

Checked out 100 Bullets, Volume 1. They had pretty complete (at least early) runs of Walking Dead, 100 Bullets, and Fables. I'm limited to two items at a time for the first month I have the card (so the next week). I just happened to grab 100 Bullets. (The other item was not a comic book.)

[Diabolical]

I've only read 3 things by Millar: Marvel Knights Spider-Man, Civil War & Kick-Ass.
I really liked his MK Spider-Man run, Kick-Ass was pretty good (but not as amazing as some say) and the less said about Civil War the better.
I've read far better and I've read far worse.

[anarky]

Yeah, but when the emphasis is always on "the new work by Writer X" rather than "character X, with Writer X," I tend to stop buying anything by a hyped writer after getting burned a few times. One miss, I can understand. A track record, I figure I'll save my money.

[Diabolical]

I also read Nemesis by Millar, which I also enjoyed. A simple concept (What if a Bruce Wayne type decided to become evil?) in a fairly, by-the-numbers story, but it was entertaining.

New stuff by guys like Bendis (Scarlet), Brubaker (Criminal, Incognito) and Ennis (The Boys, Jennifer Blood) have all been great.

[Rollo Tomassi]

Hmmm...Marvel Knights Spider-Man. That was the one where he made Electro a homosexual. And Electro's reasoning for "turning gay" was 'Eh. I'll be in prison awhile, might as well try men...' Oh, and also retroactively made Norman Osborn and some supersecret cabal the geniuses who bioengineered EVERY SINGLE ONE of Spider-Man's Rogues. I call bullshit.

Wanted was a big Fuck You to fans of comic fans. The last page basically said "Winners go out in the world and make a difference. Losers like you just sit around and read comics...you fucking loser."
And Kick Ass wasn't much better. Funnily enough I saw the film before I read the Trade and it was a pretty good comic book film. Of course, in the film he gets the girl. In the comic, he's a loser who masturbates and cries to text pics of the girl sucking another dudes cock. Yeah, subtle, Millar. Tell us how you REALLY feel about fanboys.

I have enjoyed Millar's work in the past. Ultimates and Ultimates II were decent. (but I bet I'd be less impressed with them now in the larger context of his career). Although his FF run pretty much sucked across the board, I am glad he made Valeria a super-genius toddler. And Old Man Logan, while being a What If...? wankfest, when Logan pops his claws at the end, it was a very visceral moment. In fact, I would give Mark Millar a ongoing What If..? where he could come up with any kind of depraved out of continuity story he could think of. That's why I'm satisfied he's staying in the Ultimate Universe. He can fuck that one up six ways from Sunday as far as I'm concerned because I don't read it unless I find it in the 50 cent bins.

But, ever since FF, I've recognized him as a self serving prick who's work is derivative and he's only writing stuff he thinks some Hollywood producer will jerk off to and try to make into a film. (Seriously, evil Batman? That got a go ahead from an Editor at Marvel? Mark Gruenwald is spinning in his grave.). He's already done Bats and Supes. I'll not be surprised if his next "new idea" is ripping off Wonder Woman, but making her an actual lesbian with lots of gratuitous girl-on-girl that douche fanboys will eat up.

[anarky]

In the comic, he's a loser who masturbates and cries to text pics of the girl sucking another dudes cock. Yeah, subtle, Millar. Tell us how you REALLY feel about fanboys.

Yeah, that jumped out at me, too. Oddly, the other thing that bugged me was the "tunk" thing, despite the use of it in the showdown being the only truly funny part of the book. High school kids don't sit around making up cuss words. That's a second-grade thing. It made the fanboys look even more pathetic.

The gratuitous use of "faggot" and the subplot about him pretending to be gay because, obviously, everyone thought he was a gay prostitute (I mean, really, it's obvious, because what gay guy doesn't get run over and left for dead, naked, right?) was a bit much, even for me. (Never mind that, really, no matter what Hollywood wants us to believe, most kids would have the same "holy fucking shit, that's awful--we ought to be nicer to the guy who got mugged, stripped naked, and had to get metal plates in his head and re-learn to walk in a mere two weeks" reaction an adult would have, as opposed to the "heh heh, he's gotta be a fockin' QUEER!!!!!" reaction everyone in the book seemed to have.) It was a bit overdone, even for sexually insecure teenagers, and it didn't come across as parody, not even the Snigtadian variety. There was so much of it, it came across as Millar bashing gays, especially in light of the other stuff you brought up in your post.

I also noticed that, at the end, Kick Ass's dad is supposed to be banging the hairdresser who contacted Kick Ass about her ex-boyfriend earlier. But for some reason, they aren't the same woman. It's not just that she's considerably bigger in the end than earlier (she could've eaten six Big Macs a day for a month, I guess), nor is it merely Romita's abstract way of drawing faces. It's a different woman. I have to wonder why. Having a lot of faith in Romita's abilities and professionalism, though, I can only deduce the script wasn't clear.

Really, though, the single worst thing was the way the kid kept recovering from every-fucking-thing so quickly. Re-learning to walk within weeks? Strolling around like nothing happened when he had his nuts electrocuted? Really, that's going to require some medical treatment and likely cause permanent damage (and he certainly ain't going to be in any condition to wack off to picks of his would-be girlfriend while he still has the facial injuries). You think dear old Dad is going to blow it completely off when Junior comes home and says, "Dad, someone fried my balls today"? And let's be real--testicles are so sensitive, the alligator clips clamping down on them would've knocked him the fuck out, long before he got zapped.

And I don't think steel plates work the way Millar seems to think they work; I don't have much experience with them, but I understand you're actually supposed to avoid impact if possible, not act like you're suddenly made of adamantium and wearing a helmet. (And I doubt a kid who's as insane as he obviously is wouldn't use some of his mad mafioso-bustin' skills when some dude goes to kick his ass. He's not Peter Parker.) But, honestly, Hit-Girl's miraculous emotional recovery was worse; the girl has been essentially brainwashed her entire life, her meaning for life is revealed to be a complete lie, and her dad got killed right in front of her. But she asks for a hug, and everything's hunky dory; she just goes home to the mommy she didn't know existed and should have no way to know how to find, and who apparently doesn't ask the obvious questions like, "Where have you been the last ten years, what have you and Dad been up to, and why the hell did your Dad send you here all by yourself?" It all would've been fine if the book was clearly parody, but it's not.

[anarky]

Okay, vyn, probably not the title I would've gone with for this split-off, since he's never been so bad at stringing words together that I couldn't finish the book in my hand (like that guy who wrote for Jim Lee in the early Image days), but fine.

You're still a Nazi Muslim Atheist Baby-Killer Homophobe though. If you ask me if I want to put a stylish yellow emblem on my shirt and take a little train ride, I'm going to send you back to Arabistan where you should be.

[vynsane]

Okay, vyn, probably not the title I would've gone with for this split-off

fix'd.

EDIT: oh, was that me that is supposed to be that?

[Rollo Tomassi]

Maybe we could make this an all encompassing topic about writers we don't like and the reasons why. Whether they were once good and have since fallen from grace (Claremont, Loeb), or maybe they'se sucked all along.

I don't like Daniel Way. I first read him when he did an arc of Wolverine that suggested Winter Soldier had something to do with Lady Mariko's death. ( Am I misremembering that? Maybe it had to do with him and the Weapon X program...) Anyway, the arc didn't suck, but it wasn't great. it read more like filler. Decompressed filler. A 2 issue story spread out over 5 issues. Anyway, Way then pitched a series about filling in all the blanks in Logan's memory. A grand challenge that aimed for the fences. I was on board. And for the first few issues, it was good. But then he got fixated on this ONE aspect of Logan's lapsed memory. This douche made-up son of his and this previously unmentioned uber-arch villain that had been manipulating Logan for the past 150 YEARS. And then he milked that atrocious shit for 50 issues. Which was not how the original pitch for the seriies was promoted.

Then he started writing Deadpool. Except instead of the funny irreverent quasi stream of consciousness we had gotten from Joe Kelly and Fabian Niciecza, we got this unfunny dick who had dueling caption boxes, both of which were unfunny. And for some reason, the snowballed into a franchise of about 20 Deadpool titles, allof which featured this unfunny new take on the character.

Now he has taken over the reins of the Astonishing X-Men book, following in the footsteps of Joss Whedon and Warren Ellis. It doesnt help the artist on the book is Jason Pearson whom I don't like (Pearson is famous for the Image book Bodybags, about the burly assassin in the hockey mask and his cheerleaer daughter asst assassin.)

In short, I avoid Daniel Way's name on books wherever I can. I never say never, and he might redeem himself at some point, but it will by accident when I find his books in the quarter bins. I'm not paying full price for any of his shit.

[anarky]

I don't care for Rob Liefeld's writing. Or Jim Lee's. Or Marc Silvestri's. Or Dale Keown's. Or Whilce Portacio's. Not crazy about McFarlane's, either, though he can write rings around the others I mentioned when he takes the Kleenex boxes off and tries.

Fuck, what was it about Image that we thought was so awesome as shit? Of the first batch, Dragon was the only book that was consistently good, and it was a parody that I doubt most of us realized was parody. Shadowhawk was pretty good story-wise for the first miniseries, but the art sucked pretty badly. Even when it wasn't at its strongest, the novelty of using the second-person narrative for a completely unknown character, and how well it was pulled off, kept it afloat.

Whatever happened to Jim Valentino? I think he aimed too high by drawing his own book, but his writing was solid until it became a gimmick-laden wankfest.

[jjreason]

The problem with Daniel Way is that at his best (think about that Nighthawk limited series for Marvel Max he did), he is fucking awesome. Wolverine Origins was a huge disappointment though after the first few issues, which is a real shame for all the reasons you mentioned.

[jjreason]

I was having a look at the Millarogrophy at Wiki & found a few other things I recalled as being at least "ok". I didn't hate Kick Ass, for the record, I thought the pacing of it was quite good actually & Romita's art was a high point for comics that were coming out at that time. It was obviously gratuitous, but likely only because it was the introductory Icon book & some editor likely coached them to make it as risque as possible to legitimize the "edginess". I didn't find any of it shocking (well, maybe the use of faggot), more like roll-your-eyes-expected, and not at all necessary for the story's sake. The violence and character narration actually reminded me quite a bit of Frank Miller Daredevil, to be honest.

The Wolverine "Enemy of the State" arc I remember as being pretty darned good - not that I can remember the specifics of what happened (but that's typical for me).

Ultimates was a very thinly veiled re-make of The Authority, so no points for that one. And since we're on The Authority, his issues paled in comparison to the arcs done by Warren Ellis. That was Ellis' book and those were his characters (even the ones he assumed control of at the end of Stormwatch were his by that point). This was one of those "perfect synergy between artist & writer" situations that isn't often found. Millar taking over that book would have been a bit like trying to go on stage after Elvis Presley.

Civil War I didn't really buy into, particularly the Spider-Man aspect, but it was presented nicely (McNiven's art was pretty solid here). Again, I'd like to find out who came up with the concept - my guess is it was a Bendis' round-table discussion about the future of the universe that led to the seed, and Millar was likely assigned to the task to ensure a big name writer was there to generate sales.

Not to apologize for the guy, but he's not so far down my shit-list as to warrant much bashing here. I wouldn't chase him from book to book by any stretch, but he wouldn't stop me from buying anything either.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Tomer Soiker's Millar riff over at CBRs Comic Legends Revealed in the comments section today had me chuckling.

It's amazing what story ideas a Marvel Editor will agree to if it's pitched to him in a tiny leprechaun voice.