Wanted
Sunday, 6. July 2008, 15:55:41
The only difference between a dream and a nightmare is how big your balls are, bitch.
- The Fox
So, seeing as I was planning on watching the loose movie adaptation of Wanted in the cinema in the upcoming week, I figured I'd give the original graphic novel a try first.
The premise was interesting, and the artwork by J. G. Jones was easy on the eyes. Seeing as it's additionally written by Mark Millar, I had rather high expectations to this, considering what I've read of his work before. Millar's DC Elseworld story Red Son featuring a "what is Superman landed in Stalnist Russia?"-premise was amazing, his recent major Marvel event Civil War was actually very good for a mainstream superhero giga-crossover, his original run at Ultimate X-men was exhilarating and often quite moving, and The Ultimates, especially the second installment, is simply awesome.
Thus, I must say, this was quite the disappointment. With Wanted, Millar is doing his completely own thing, writing with his own characters in a universe he made up himself. It's ironic, then, that one of the main strengths I see in the book is actually the ofttimes clever way he alludes to mainstream DC and Marvel characters and continuity. (Sadly, it often goes horribly wrong and just comes off as stupid or juvenile, like for instance his imitation of Scarface and Two-Face) In particular characters like his Mr. Richter deserves credit for being a funny and charismatic villain reminiscent of characters like Batman's "Black Mask" or Cap's "Red Skull", but not exactly like either of them nor a stupid parody. Another excellent character is Doll-Master, a character blatantly ripped off of DC's Toyman, but much more interesting and charming than Toyman ever was. Still, you're more often than not left sitting with the feeling that this'd be a lot more interesting if it had the original characters instead of Millar's homages, parodies and copies.
The plot of this comic, without spoiling more than your average blurb would, is that a normal pushover wussy office rat learns his father was a supervillain and willed him a fortune on the condition that his son learned to be a supervillain too, being trained by a secret society of such. The story is actually quite intoxicating, sucking you in, making you want to read on, see what happens next. The problem is that what happens next is (almost) never particularly interesting beyond making you want to see what happens after that again.
The reason for this is that Millar's created an interesting world for the story, but plotted it along the life of a main character totally devoid of any form of charisma, allure or even agenda for me as the reader to get excited about. All he does is kill people. There's no elaborate planning, no finesse, no charm, no interesting and complex motivations. The character simply has no draw to him, there's no... je ne sais quoi, nothing of interest. Just a hell of a lot of potential for interest that keeps you going. But by the end of the book, the potential's gone unrealized and the character's more boring and unappealing than ever. It doesn't exactly help that he's drawn to look like Eminem.
A little more spoilers from this paragraph on, if you're phobic you should skip to the last one. What happens, you see, is that our main character becomes a remorseless rapist sociopath. Fair enough. Why? Because he can, because the world's always screwed him over and he figures he can now screw it back. Fair enough again. How? By doing stuff like killing random people in the street. Alright. Also fair enough, I suppose. And then what?
Well, and then nothing. That's the problem. Wanted is the story of how a boring wuss became a boring bully. That's all he is at the end of this story. A rich, remorseless, super-powered bully with no intelligence or charm to his actions, nothing to keep the reader connected to him.
Oddly, Millar seems to think I'd somehow envy this guy. The story ends with the protagonist breaking the fourth wall, addressing the reader, accusing him of having as empty a life as he had in the beginning, and that reading about others doing things like he's been doing in this story is the illusion used to fill up the meaningless drone life. I suppose it's intended to make me feel provoked, or insulted, or maybe make me reconsider some priorities or something. All it does, honestly, is make me go "fuck, this man is stupid." If anyone in this story wanted to tell me a line like that, it needed to be one of the heads of the five families, or possibly Doll-Master. Heck, even the protagonist's father, whom he turns into an almost identical replica of, was a little bit more interesting than the guy we've been following throughout this. All the ending leaves me with is a feeling of "this was it?" I read five issues to get to the point where character-development as a concept is non-existent, the only interesting characters are killed by the most boring ones, and then one of the boring ones claim that my life is empty compared to his? Really Millar, Fredegar Bolger had a more interesting role in The Lord of the Rings than Wesley Gibson had here.
Thus, I'm sucked through five issues of action, constantly feeling as though the cool moments, the truly awesome entertainment, are all right around the corner. But in the end, all I'm left with are secondary characters who for the most part were more interesting in their original DC incarnations, stupid plot-devices like when Sucker doesn't know when 24 hours have passed since he did something but the protagonist who wasn't present at the instance somehow does standing in for what should be genuinely cool character moments, and a main character who was a million times less interesting than the badguys he fought but just as morally reprehensible, giving me no reason to root for him whatsoever. I know the movie is supposed to make him into more of a hero, but honestly, I've kind of lost all the drive I had to watch it.
great movie I feel
Enjoy it
By zenya, # 6. July 2008, 16:21:35
And that's without really listening, too.
By Obdormio, # 6. July 2008, 17:05:33
Maybe I'll check it out anyway, then. Sigh. Decisions, decisions.
By Loki Aesir, # 6. July 2008, 19:17:28
You could of course argue that that is where it fails spectacularly; the nature of a story is to tell a tale about people, not to have people as a scoring board to mark your, obviously, heavy-handed attempt to bring forth a (in its context) worthless message.
And I'd agree with that, and I'd nod and I'd tell you that you're right about everything... except one thing: Don't use a scalpel to dissect a bucket full of popcorn. This is fun, good-looking fluff that has too much fun with its adolescent bravado to care about a story's strictures; and it should be treated and read accordingly.
Not to say, of course, that I think you're wrong. In fact, I think the exact opposite; I just didn't care enough to be disappointed.
By Amrasananas, # 6. July 2008, 21:54:51
As for the "bucket full of popcorn", if that's it's purpose, it could've done SO much better. Make Mr. Richter your main character, or Doll-Master, or Adam One, or the Professor, or better yet keep fucking writing for DC or Marvel and use amazing characters like Magneto, Joker, Luthor or Al Ghul instead of making half-pale copies that are just different enough not to be parodies and way too similar to feel interesting in their own right. But even if he uses his own copies, sure, fine, but use one with a goddamn personality, some interesting aspects to this personality, and preferably, some form of agenda. I don't need my protagonists to stand for anything I do, but I need them to stand for or want something. Otherwise, why am I reading about them? Might as well read about someone going to the loo.
Furthermore, it could have had way cooler scenes. As it stands, the book had only three scenes that stay with me - the Professor's assassination, the Doll-Master's last stand, and Richter's awesome remark about hoping the boy he just casually orphaned would train himself to one day make an interesting challenge. That's the kind of story this COULD have been, had it focused on anyone or anything remotely interesting. Sadly, all we got was glimpses of greatness, and the rest were all drowned in juvenile stupidity like Johnny Two-Dicks and a main character (with a supporting cast) who's only goal in life is to become a mindless bully.
(And as for the secondary main character, The Fox is the least interesting adaption of Catwoman ever. And I say that only having seen a fifth of the frightful Halle Berry movie.)
I was just thoroughly disappointed by this. If I'd had no expectations I might have liked it somewhat. But I had huge expectations, and the only thing I got for them was a mountain of unrealized potential.
By Loki Aesir, # 7. July 2008, 00:10:38