In keeping with the theme…
My friend Sarah told me that she wanted to see, uh, Wanted. I had seen the comic, and my curiosity was piqued, even if I wasn’t impressed by the coarseness I got just by flipping through the pages. Eventually, I saw the trailer for the film, and was very disappointed until reviews started popping up saying that it was a guilty pleasure, and not just a pile of trash.
Based on this, I decided to whet my appetite by reading the comic book. I enjoyed it overall, as there were some cute ideas, but there were some over-the-top elements including a talking penis and a monster made of shit. It’s definitely a power fantasy of the highest order, giving greatly into everyone’s hidden desire to murder, maim, and steal everything you can. You see, it’s all about supervillains, not superheroes.
Now, it’s probably pretty hard to create a new cast of characters these days without them resembling characters somewhere in the multiverse of comics (note The Vulture and Sunfire in the pic); so it looks like Millar decided really to not create completely original characters, especially for minor characters, and some of the more important B characters seem to be pastiches of common enemies and themes. I did notice before reading the section on Wikipedia about it, that the gangs of villains largely resembled the rogues galleries of Batman and Superman, some of which are particularly obvious. Especially considering some of the themes of a changed world, it seemed possible to enjoy them almost as analogues to those villains, similar to reading Marvel’s Ultimates, or What If? story-lines.
It’s a good idea for 6 issues, but I lost some interest in issue 5, and issue 6 is pretty much an aftermath. I hear that the movie differs significantly, and whether or not that’s for better or worse, I don’t know, but I’m willing to give it a shot. If Sarah changes her mind, maybe I’ll go with Joe or Robert.
X-Files is this week! Waugh!
