Mark Millar

"It's interesting how one writer from DC Comics name Joe Kelly wrote this one story titled Whats So Funny About Truth Justice And The American Way. You can read about it on Wikipedia. The whole story was apparently a huge Take That to Mark Millar's The Authority."

And that take that fails, because Elite are bunch of assholes who doesn't care about destruction and collateral damage they cause, resort only to killing and doesn't belive criminals can be reformed. In Millar's very first story Authority takes thousand of political refugees and defeats the bad guy by talking him down, giving him chance to show his ideas to ONZ officials and employ him to stabilize political situation in Asia, which they destabilized by taking down one dictator, which is way they took the refugees in the first place. Even in Ellis' run Authority were acting like a soldiers on war, not psychopathic murderers. Kelly's story is a good take that to antiheroes in general, but aimed at Authority it's only a Shallow Parody.

"Clearly DC disagrees with Mark Millar's work, even if it is popular."

Yet they try to make things Bloodier and Gorier, something which Millar is poster child of.

edited 4th Sep '11 10:56:03 AM by PrimoVictoria

Oh, then I guess that makes DC Comics look rather hypocritical towards Mark Millar.

Oh, Equestria, we stand on guard for thee!

Well, there is the DC Comics then when that story was written, and the DC Comics now. They've become much more gratuitous on violence lately.

That Action Comics story is one of my LEAST favorite superhero comics of all time. I didn't even think that the Authority parodies were that bad in terms of being strawmen, since unlike Clark, they actually had experience with the worst the world could offer. Clark, the invincible alien raised by loving Ma and Pa Kent, has the luxury of sticking to his moral absolutism and not having to make any compromises. He doesn't live in the kind of world where he has to make compromises, he never has, and he shouldn't be brought into that world if he's going to be used to wave his finger at more complex characters.

We Are The Wyrecats Needs Tropes!

To be fair, there have been times where Superman has had to take compromises. Even of the lethal kind, like in John Byrne's story dealing with the alternate Kryptonians.

The thing about Superman is that he is arguably as powerful as God. Can you imagine such a character acting like an Anti-Hero? I can't, because he's portrayed as a protector of Earth, and someone who stands for ideals. If he acted like an anti-hero, it would probably do more harm than good for the character - and probably everyone else.

Mark Millar certainly tried to make an anti-hero version of Superman in The Authority and Superman Red Son. Your Mileage May Vary on how well that worked.

Oh, Equestria, we stand on guard for thee!

Where in The Authority is Millar trying to make antiheroic Superman? Apollo is anti-hero but his characterization didn't changed from Ellis' run and he still is The Heart of the team and nices person on board. Millar didn't tried to do anything with him, he is as he was during Ellis' run, at last as far as I get with he plot. I don't know, are you trying to say that being raped makes him more anti-heroic or something?

And Apollo isn't Superman, he is his own character, who outgrew being an Expy long time ago.

edited 5th Sep '11 4:08:52 PM by PrimoVictoria

Oh, sorry about that. I guess that's what I get for not looking at the material very closely and making assumptions. Well, like I said, Superman is simply not Anti-Hero material. Really, Mark Millar seems to be more interested in outright villains most of the time anyway.

Oh, Equestria, we stand on guard for thee!

You sure as hell got that right. Anyone name the works these summaries come from:

1.A convicted pedophile/murder claims there is no such thing as an afterlife, but somehow discovers magic to allow him to swich places with a fictional character and proceeds to do such "wonderful" things like introducing child pornography, corruption, sexual & moral deviancy, AIDS, etc into a cartoon world and completely get away with it.

2.An outright ripoff from DC (actually a combination of two DC characters) who does shit for lulz, including making a gay man impregnate his sister & somehow rig her uterus so that any attempts for an abortion would sterilize her all to fuck with their father.

There is no prize for guessing correctly, just shame at knowing these things exist.

Sometimes life just sucks. You have to learn to take the good with the bad. Why should you expect anything different in the mediums?

Apollo never out grew being an expy, because he can't without fundamentally changing. Not being the same exact person does not make you grow out of being an expy, it just means you're not a complete Captain Ersatz. Ellis made the authority for the purpose of being Justice League that killed. I don't even care for the authority(I don't care for JL) but it's Warren's work, Mark licks goats.

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

Sure. Look at The Doctor, Jenny Quantum, The Sentry, Doctor Manhattan, and The Mask (the comic book version). They're all more powerful than Superman. The thing about being an anti-hero is you don't have to have Samaritan Syndrome. Just because you have god-like powers doesn't mean you have to try fixing all of the world's problems.

edited 11th Sep '11 1:11:43 PM by Tongpu

So apparently Millar's actually a pretty awesome guy in real life.

I remember reading about that incident. Very nice to see people teaming up and taking action.

Also, I felt the need to address this point made on the previous page:

A lot of people seem to have read the issue with that line, but not the one after it, in which Cap admits to Fury (who thought it was hilarious) that it was "one of those stupid things that comes into your head when you're pounding somebody".

Cap may have been out of commission during the last part of WWII, but there's no reason why he didn't catch up on what he missed via research, and learned about the French's surrender. He probably wasn't invoking the stereotype, just referring to what he had learned. Then again, maybe that's all just Fan Wank.

edited 8th Sep '12 9:52:44 AM by DrFurball

Weird in a Can (updated M-F)

Well, just because you don't like someone's work doesn't mean you're saying they're a bad person and I did admit his work is better than I give it credit for(I don't hate everything of his I've read). But as long as people try to give him credit for what Ellis did Mark still licks goats.

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

Weapon X was Canadian fyi. CW was more promoted than Annhilation because involved the mainstream Marvel heroes on Earth and effected more stuff by being "closer to home." One never even touched Earth, the other involved almost all the marvel heroes on the planet. Rather obvious if you think about it.

edited 8th Sep '12 7:55:06 PM by LushCity

So, in the time since this thread was made, I actually read the first issue of Civil War.

It was much better than I expected.

I noticed that (and again, this is just the first issue, so maybe it gets worse later on) people who complain about the series tend to leave bits out. In particular, one very important plot point in the first issue that the complainers never mention is the fact that Speedball essentially admits, on live TV in front of millions of viewers, that he's risking lives to get ratings. I could definitely see people turning against superheroes after a comment like that.

Maria Hill is still a Smug Snake bitch though. I have no idea why they even bothered rescuing her from the Scrappy heap; if it were me I'd just have written a story where she gets her head kicked off by a horse. It's all an utterly vile (fictional) person like her deserves.

The best thing that can be said about Maria Hill is she's damn fine looking.

You could just feel the slime dripping off her as she said, "Really? And here I thought supervillains were people in costume who opposed the government's laws?" or whatever that was. *shudder* Horrible, horrible woman.

So you think Penance was the only thing wrong with Speedball? Yeah, there's a reason New Warriors fans were the first ones to complain about Civil War.

And it still doesn't make sense. So "superheroes" need to be accountable now. Nitro's still at large and no one seems to care. He doesn't need to be accountable? A mob attacks the human torch and hospitalizes him as he's exiting a movie theater. How that's an argument for registration is strange since Torch's identity is open, he didn't really have anything to be accountable for(unlike Nitro) and he essentially has the same exact power as Nitro(he can set the atmosphere on fire and kill from a city's worth to 99% Earth's life he want to)...which should remind everyone Nitro's still at large.

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

IIRC the only one to bother going after Nitro himself was Wolverine, wasn't he?

And AFAIK, the New Warriors' Reality TV shtick had been going long before Civil War, although from what I saw it was an ill fated and badly conceived retooling from the start. Not only it didn't match with their previous portayals, but it made them grade A tools.

What? I never said anything about Penance; all I said was 600 people dying for the sake of reality TV is a logical thing for the public to get pissed off over.

I've always thought the biggest loss in Civil War was not having the villains take enough advantage of it. I know most villains are backstabbing by nature, but the situation with the heroes was so bad, I'd have had a ball seeing the villains actually going the other way, forming a mega-conglomerate a la DC's Secret Society, taking over while the 'heroes' fought each other, and then rubbing on everyone's faces, "Eeeeehhhh, we couldnt have done this without you, thanks...!"

Okay, the New Warriors were headed that way anyway right, that can't be Civil War's fault, their fans were going to get unglued anyway?

So here's the thing. A bunch of criminals, dangerous super criminals, are taken on by the warriors in a ratings stunt. The criminals kill them and many other people. They were wanted criminals, they were going to be taken anyway but maybe we could trust people with government training or at least some police procedure to do so more competently.

So, the enraged public, shows their indignation by doing the exact same thing as the Warriors against an even more dangerous individual who isn't a criminal and hasn't done anything wrong.

As said, Human Torch did not flip out and destroy the city(or cause The End of the World as We Know It) but he could have and unlike with the Warriors they couldn't even use the "he's a criminal, someone was going to do this anyway" excuse. Shouldn't the public have equally raged against this mob for endangering the entire planet? Shouldn't they're be calls to give pause before stoning mutants you know nothing about besides the fact they are mutants? Call the government trained mutant exterminators instead?

Civil War shouldn't have even been about Super Hero registration, it should have been about outlawing vigilantism and citizen's arrest or at least launching a campaign to discourage citizens from antagonizing people with devastating super powers.

edited 9th Sep '12 2:53:13 PM by Cider

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

My brother's a huge Millar fan, but my brother's a fan of comic book deconstructions. He thought Civil War was awesome, loved The Ultimates 1 and 2. No idea if he's read any of Millar's other stuff, but I'm sure he'd love it all. He likes books that explore the genre.

For my part, I'm more interested in the characters. I want to see people dealing with their problems. So, Millar ends up doing a lot less for me.

I did enjoy Old Man Logan. I thought it was a pretty good story, overall. Hulk and She-Hulk having apparently done in-breeding annoyed me, though. That's bullshit straight out of some retarded fanfic.

I thought Civil War was largely mediocre. A little too much of the characterization was relegated to tie-ins, leaving the event book feeling very impersonal. And of course, every event since Civil War has been the same. Av X has been the most character-oriented major Earth-based event Marvel's had in a decade.

X-Men X-Pert, my blog where I talk about X-Men comics.

Marvel Universe's populace has a long history of being mouth breathing, prejudiced, Stupid Evil, ungrateful, unworthy morons.

edited 9th Sep '12 11:55:25 AM by NapoleonDeCheese