| Title | : | Wanted |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1582404976 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781582404974 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 192 |
| Publication | : | First published April 25, 2005 |
Wanted Reviews
-
So.
Eminem is a supervillain.
Ok, so you know the movie with James McAvoy & Angelina Jolie filled with physics-defying car chases, nonsensical things like curving the bullet, and Morgan Freeman fucking with some ancient loom of destiny? Well, if you think that's what you'll be getting here, you'll be sorely disappointed. Because as retarded as the plot sounded, there was a hefty dose of entertainment value there.
Nope. This is an entirely different story altogether.
ENTIRELY DIFFERENT.
In fact, the only things that even remotely resemble the movie are the beginning bit and the names. And I can see why!
Would you have gone to the theater to see Wesley gleefully rape and murder everyone in his path once he found out that he was a supervillain legacy?
I'm going to go ahead and say no. This would have made a terrible movie.
TERRIBLE.
But as a comic?
Eh. If you know what you're getting into, it's kind of palatable. Perhaps, even fun?
Here's the thing, I thought this was going to be horrible. And maybe if I'd gone into it expecting something that made me feel warm and fuzzy inside, I would have hated Wanted.
So know this: Wesley is not a redeemable anti-hero.
For the most part, I enjoyed this weird alternate-Earth reality that Millar created, and I liked the little nods to our classic superheroes and to the wider multiverse. It's your basic What If the Villains Won? story that takes place 20ish years later, with humanity none the wiser as to who is running things behind the scenes.
And while I can't exactly say I loved it, if you are a fan of Mark Millar, you might find this worth checking out. -
(B+) 78% | Good
Notes: Hedonistic, nihilistic, rough vulgarity, bit Harry Potter (super-scion), ceaseless slaughter, and the ending's not for me.
*Progress updates:
Preamble ◦
Issues #1-2 ◦
Issues #3-4 ◦
Issues #5-6 -
A good story. (I'd expect no less from Millar, who is a great writer.) It's tight and well-contained. A stand alone story that is dense without being too busy.
That said, there's some pretty toxic stuff in here. There's a lot of lot of equally good comics out there that I'd recommend before this one, as they don't reinforce/glamorize some of our culture's darkest tendencies, and this one does. -
This is another clear example of why you shouldn't listen to most criticisms about a novel/graphic novel that you're interested in. I bought this without knowing that most of my friends hated this, and that there was a movie made already. I just read the short synopsis at the back because the cover looked fucking great. Months later, I ended up picking this up from the top of my bookshelf, and managed to enjoy the hell out of it.
This is not one of those cheap crime shit that you get most of the time. I really enjoyed the story, and the plot developed extremely well. I liked how the author portrayed the main character at first. He was this weak pussy who didn't really know how to live his life the right way. He was being messed around like he's some kind of slave. I never want to be what he was before he became the badass killer. I don't want to be that guy who lives as if he is paying paid to be boring. I hate routine shit, because life is an adventure, and you shouldn't be ordering the same fucking sandwich for 18 months straight.
It was a bit unrealistic how he became this batshit crazy good assassin all of a sudden, but like the author said, the answer lies on his genes. I liked the major plot twist Millar thrown in the end. I didn't see it coming at all because I was fixated on a lot of other things. This is a good example of a crime story. Something to make your mouth drop in the end.
I am so fed up of reading about how superheroes save the day. This is the graphic novel to read if you want your villains to shine. I've always been a fan of villains, so that's another plus point for this.
Another thing that I really enjoyed here was the brutal factor. I like my crime novels as brutal as possible, and this didn't disappoint in that aspect.
The artwork was fantastic. The sketches were spot on, and the characters didn't look like cheap garbage. Aside from that, the quality of the paper and the print was great. It wasn't cheap stuff, reminds me a bit of Saga's paper quality but a bit better. They obviously didn't hold back in terms of that.
5/5 stars. One of my favorite graphic novels ever. I'll surely read this again in the future. Highly recommended for those who are fans of crime and brutality. I can't wait to watch the movie soon. -
Collects Wanted #1-6, in which
Mark Millar presents with artwork by J.G. Jones, a dystopia where the super villains have already wiped out all superheroes and changed reality and history to cover up both of their existences.
The world most deadliest killer is assassinated; his unknowing son is dragged out of his rubbish life, and dragged into the world of the Fraternity, a world itself that is also tethering on the brink because of internal strife. An earlier piece of work from Millar from which the successful Hollywood movie was drawn from. Gotta say it though, the 'white man living in a shitty world' narrative of the main protagonist leading him to be casually racist and misogynous, and the anti-comic book reader slant of the protagonist are kind of irksome. 7 out of 12.
2011 read -
I'm relieved to hear the upcoming movie, Wanted, is only "loosely" based on this comic - that gives it at least a chance to not suck completely.
Wanted, the comic, does suck completely. That's not a particularly nuanced assertion, but it's true. Almost all of it is plagiarized from other sources, not even subtly. Its most notable unplagiarized theme is the completely unexplainable racism that runs through it. The point of the comic is that supervillains make up a secret society running the world. It glorifies rape and casual murder, and every character is a sociopath - simply because they can get away with it.
This might be an interesting premise in the hands of a good writer, someone who could create interesting characters with depth and an intriguing storyline. But Wanted lacks both of those necessary elements. The characters are shallow and even worse, they're boring. The protagonist is explicitly modeled on Eminem, and his eventual girlfriend literally is Halle Berry. The protagonist's motivations are badly plagiarized, too - from "Fight Club".
For an interesting take on modern masculinity, secret conspiracies and a culture of unrestrained violence, just read "Fight Club". For the life of Eminem, watch "8 Mile". For supervillains... read any other superhero comic book ever written. Give this a pass. -
“Maybe this 'being evil all the time' crap’s just starting to feel a little forced.” –Wesley.
A kind of alternative, inverse history of superheroes from the perspective of multiple super-villains, and in particular, one all-time loser turned bad-ass guy named Wesley, whose Dad, The Killer died and left him his super-villain legacy. I don't usually like comics with covers that look like this, and with some tasteless minor characters called Shithead, and so on, but there's a point to that, they are tasteless super-villains. Do you need a comic to tell you that super-villains are a**holes? But Millar enjoys creating these bad guys, he says bring 'em on!
Wesley has a terrible abusive boss in a terrible job, and a terrible cheating girlfriend, but he basically becomes strong and powerful and evil and thus exacts a kind of revenge for his miserable life. Some superheroes are nerds that get sand kicked in their faces and this is a twist on that, I guess. I guess when I write it out now I see the idea is not all THAT interesting, but it's a pretty good. Maybe three stars. But the last two pages of the comic are terrific, they make the whole experience worth it; that particular twist is a pretty good joke, a kind of punchline for the book, which is complete in this one volume. The last two pages are worth at least a star. -
A friend of mine recently told me that the movie (with Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman) was better than this book. I had liked the movie, but I was skeptical, because how often does a movie version improve things? By my count, only twice so far (that would be
The Prestige and
The Children of Men). When I picked this up from the library, I briefly flipped through it and noticed that the Angelina Jolie character is actually black in the book. Oh Hollywood, I thought, you are so white and offensive (Jake Gyllenhaal as the Prince of Persia, anyone?).
Then I read the book, and I thought, well, maybe I should revise my opinion on how Hollywood dealt with this one.
The whole book is just this mad mess. The main character is purposely drawn to look like Eminem, for God's sake. Between that and a character made out of poop (so unexpectedly [/sarcasm:] named "Shithead") and the way rape and murder are presented as something really cool because if you're not doing that, then you're just a cubicle drone, I felt like I was reading something written by a 14-year-old.
There are elements that are shakey and undeveloped - what was up with the brief mentions of the alternate universes that they could travel to? And the supervillains are free to do what they want because they got rid of the superheroes, but they can't do whatever they want because superheroes from other universes might cross over and stop them? And according to the author, he only intended to have the supervillains in their costumes for one panel, but then he forgot and they ended up being in their costumes for the whole book. He forgot? How much attention was he really giving this thing? I feel like there's probably something to analyze in here, but it's just out of reach in the mess. -
Millar wrote his crude, violent anti-hero romp twenty years too late. While grittiness is still prized in 'grown up' comics, Millar has apparently mistaken 'mature content' for 'maturity'. Of course, he's not the first to fall into this trap. We've all seen television, movies, and books that place a premium on sex and blood, but presented with all the sophistication of a sniggering teen.
Millar does not have the wit to present these issues seriously, nor are his plotting or characterization strong enough to save this book. Millar decided to base his assassin anti-hero on rapper Eminem, which is a cute enough idea, but it also gives us a good sense of Millar's sophistication. While many enjoy Eminem for his catchy, highly-produced songs and natural affinity for scansion and rhythm, only frat boys and OG wannabes find him an able role model.
Millar seems to take the rapper's message of misanthropic misogyny at face value, instead of laughing at Eminem's battle-rap fronting. This is even more inexplicable because Eminem himself often makes light of the 'hard' persona inherited from gangster rappers. It's not hard to imagine Millar putting on a mix of Marshall's most lewd, angry odes to wife killing each time he sat down to plot out this series.
Unfortunately, Millar is not the master of language that Eminem is, and so his attempts at humor, gangsta badassery, chauvinism, and romance tend to fall quite flat. His 'jokes' are especially cringe-worthy.
Perhaps if Millar had come out with his ode to unsympathetic violence in the mid eighties, when Alan Moore, Frank Miller, and Scarface were still fresh, he might not have come off as so out of touch. Perhaps if he had somehow updated his vision to include some sympathy and humanity, he could have been forgiven. Unfortunately, he was too busy placing lit cigars and whiskey shots before his shrine to Snake Pliskin to think about what he was writing.
However, all of this pales in comparison to Millar's twist ending. It's clear that Millar wishes he was Alan Moore, who inspired Millar to become a writer in the first place. Unfortunately, Millar realizes he is no Alan Moore, so now he's leapt onto Frank Miller's coattails instead. After 'Sin City', '300', and 'The Spirit', what comic creator is bigger than Frank Miller? Well, still Alan Moore.
Perhaps Mark Millar was tired of people mistaking him for Frank and asking "oh, so you're that guy famous for the violent, sexist comics" and so figured after writing Wanted, he could respond "why yes, I am a famous misogynist comic author named Millar" and then count on the resulting confusion to help his comic sales and autograph lines at Comic Con.
In any case, he threw most of that accidental good press out of the window when he decided that maybe he should try to be Grant Morrison, too. Millar completes his Magnum Opus by breaking the fourth wall for the sole purpose of insulting his fans for having shitty jobs, no luck with women, and for needing to buy comic books to pretend that their lives have meaning. While a bold move, I'm not sure that confronting his escapist readers with the sad reality of comic book fandom is the best way to make them, say, buy more comics.
So, Millar comes frat boy full circle. Trying to be 'hard'? Check. Rampant Misogyny? Check. Idolizing Eminem? Check. Trying to bolster your self esteem by telling dorks that they will never have the sort of money and women you have? Check.
Maybe Millar wants to start a rap career, but feels he won't be taken seriously if his main fanbase can't decide whether to spend their money on his CD's or on hand-painted, individually numbered acrylic statuettes of Vampirella making out with Dawn (the one with the reversed logo sent only to the Belgian market).
In any case, he ought to have lost some fans here, both amongst the discerning and the escapists.
My Suggested Reading In Comics -
I usually like Mark Millar (The Ultimates is absolutely epic) but Wanted is really bad.
A friend of mine often says if you want your protagonist to be a villain, he's got to somehow charm the audience. So even when he's on a murder spree, readers will be like, "Oh, but he's so dashing!"
Wesley Gibson has the personality of a sulky thirteen year old. The sort of kid that shoots up his high school. Wow, how interesting. He's so anti-establishment, he says "fuck" in every panel. Hey wait: does that mean this comic is gritty or does it mean Millar is trying too hard?
Does Wesley have superpowers? He does! He can shoot a gun really well and he never has to reload.
He's also boning a ghetto supervillain (and we know she's ghetto because she refuses to properly conjugate verbs) who looks like Halle Berry.
Also, Wesley will break the fourth wall and flip off the readers.
How villainous! -
It's hard to imagine a more UnPC book then this.
It has a super villain made entirely of shit, the line "I Don't Fuck Goats I Make Love To Them." and ends with the novel literally sodomizing you, the person who shelled out money for it.
It's like Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palinuik collaborated on a "superhero" book and kept trying to one up eachother. It's pretty fucking awesome and I had a blast. -
Mark Millar has made a career in comic books and movies creating stories where the bad guys win, and win big. I may have not read his complete bibliography, but his stories like, Nemesis, Old Man Logan, Jupiter's Legacy, and even his first arc on Ultimate X-Men where he had Magneto publicly humiliate George W. on the White House lawn. It all started with Wanted.
Wanted is set in a world where the super-villains got organized and overpowered the superheroes and established a new world order. With their victory, the villains rewrote reality and relegated the entire existence of superheroes to comic books. A cabal pulls the strings behind the scenes in this new world.
The real draw for this reader is the exquisite art if JG Jones. He rarely does interiors because his demand for detail makes unfit for a regular monthly schedule that regular comics adhere too. It is only with miniseries like this one where Jones is able to go all out.
Millar shows his strength as a writer by selling to the reader that a total scumbag rapist can be a protagonist and even cheer for him. If the villains look familiar, its because Millar based them on analogues of some of the most nefarious characters from comic books. This reader has read elsewhere that this was an aborted Secret Society of Super-Villains pitch that was reworked to serve as a vehicle for Jones' art. It's no surprise that DC Comics declined, the character is a scumbag.
This was one of Millar's earliest successes and it has aged well. The writer has taken an uncompromising stand on his characters and gave us a story that is as good as comic book stories get. -
A henchman with Down Syndrome??? 😳That's a plus, being that I have ADD and am double-jointed due to trauma.
The graphic novel takes on a totally different direction than the movie. Plus, Wesley, who resembles Eminem, references(narrates) 1980s action flicks in the climax. Hey, I used to play a song repeatedly in my head whenever biking circa a decade ago! Did I mention Fox resembles Halle Berry?
-
One of the worst comic books I've ever read. Wanted is a book that has violence just for the sake of violence, and claims to be a satire, while really being a piss poor attempt to do so. At least the art is decent.
-
"Only difference between a nightmare and a dream is how big your balls are, b****."
—The Fox, "Wanted" comic by Mark Miller, JG Jones, Paul Mounts
I always love strong females that have potty mouths, aren't too cliché, and don't care what others think of them. Owning your personal power is a theme I love to see written about.
Wow. This grew & grew on me! I was so excited when my fiancés' friend heard I liked the movie and thought I'd maybe enjoy the comic. Well, I did! "Wanted" was graphic, action-packed, and not for faint of heart. I kept the pages turning, finishing it in a day. I'm happy to say I'm now a fan of the comic and the movie! I enjoyed most aspects of this. Again, this is another comic from the early 2000's so there are some broad topics that I don't think add much, but all the action around that is pretty sweet. No spoilers so that's all I'm saying.
If you like the movie or if you didn't, [if you are into these types of storylines (Adventure/Fantasy Comics) I'd say check it out.] I was pleased with the outcome.
Start to finish in 6 issues, this was an easy read that kept me on the edge!
[This is not for those sensitive to mature material. Pretty graphic.] -
So here are some of the things I found in this comic :
1.The main protagonist Wesley Gibson behaves like a teenager on the worst day of his mood swing and uses the ‘f’ word on every alternate panel that he appears in.
2.A sort of ultraviolent legion of supervillains (who are not as timid as their DC counterparts) kills people by the hundreds and never gets noticed by anyone.
3.If you are a much bullied and harangued individual then you should break free and kill everyone who ever irked you.
4.The definition of a good life is driving fast cars, fornication ( both forced and willing) with anything that moves and killing anyone for sport.
5.You will still need to take two characters – shithead and fuckwit seriously.
6.The way to look cool is to be a racist and in mouthing the worst slurs against women, various racial and ethnic individuals and nationalities and also in killing, raping and mutilating anyone you feel like.
Pretty enlightening stuff, ain’t it ? I still cannot figure out if this story was a book length joke or an attempt at story telling akin to Chuck Palahniuk/Brett Easton Ellis. The characters range from abysmal ( Wesley) to the cliché ( Mr. Rictus, Professor) to the cringe worthy ( Killer Sr.) and none of them are even mildly interesting. After a good 3 or 4 pages I stopped caring about any of the characters and as to what happened to them.
A great many people have heralded this as a brilliant work in comics but I am not among those great many people. -
Lame. The main character (with a stupidly striking resemblance to that most hardcore of rappers, Eminem! *dies*) goes from being the world's biggest loser to...the world's biggest loser! I was captivated, but what I was captivated by was my intense desire to kick Not!Eminem in the balls, shoot him in the face, and be done with the damn thing. I have no problem liking characters who are frankly irredeemable, murderous bastards, I'll excuse a lot for said characters, and I love an excessively violent action flick; but a writer who uses rape simply for shock value has lost my interest. Millar gave me absolutely no reason to like his protagonist; he was a boring sad sack even after his epiphany and subsequent transformation into a superhuman killing machine. The "moral" of the story made me roll my eyes so hard they almost stuck.
I'd rather have spent my time reading/watching Fight Club or Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog; both were exponentially better, actually intelligent, and managed to use their misogyny/misanthropy for a purpose. This was just racist, sexist drivel aimed towards a specific breed of jerkoff, and if I'd actually paid for it instead of checking it out from my branch, I'd have set it on fire. -
Not a single curved bullet in sight, would you believe!
Another really fun, violent read. Why am I so into comic book violence? Jeez, I hope I turn out okay.
The plot here is pretty basic, but the execution is fantastic.
I loved the wide variety of characters, and the concept made everything crazy fun.
Very reminiscent of The Boys but much more simple in execution.
Highly recommend. -
It's Eminem and Halle Berry against the world. (Read the book to find out :P)
Wesley lives a miserable life, with a cheating girlfriend and the constant rebukes of his boss. But he cannot do anything about it, because he doesn't want to confront them. Then one day he gets swept into the world of supervillains...yes, there's a cabal of supervillains that has divided the world among its five members, kinda like The Godfather. Anyway, Wesley's life changes and he becomes The Killer, an expert marksman (like James McAvoy in the movie minus the projectiles).
The story is set in a reality where the bad guys have won and superheroes can be found only in comicbooks. The plot serves as the basis for
Wolverine: Old Man Logan, another Millar masterpiece. One can find references to Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Comedian, Catwoman, Lex Luthor, Clayface and many more. It's one of the better Mark Millar books. -
This was fucking amazing! Super ultra violent and offensive. I really think this comic, which was published in 2004, would really run into problems with the pc police today. I loved the movie, but his was in some ways better. The plot is way more complicated, with alternate realities and a world-wide hypnosis that happened in 1986 and made us all forget that there had ever been superheroes, all of whom are now dead or slaving away in menial jobs to the satisfaction of all the super villains, who are now a secret society.
Ultraviolence, racism, misogyny, homophobia, casual rape and murder; a main character based on Eminem; the real-life Batman thinking that he's an actor named Adam West who played a fictional character; a super villain made out of the feces of the 666 most evil people in history, a super villain with down syndrome who was previously a superhero exposed to radiation, etc etc.
If you've got the intestinal fortitude to get through this comic, you will be rewarded with an insanely wild, psychotic, imaginative experience -
Sognare di poter fare impunemente del male e' probabilmente capitato a tutti: omicidi, violenze, ingiustizie, di tutto e di piu'. Sogni, incubi, per l'appunto, ma cosa succederebbe se si scoprisse all'improvviso di poterlo fare realmente, anzi di essere un predestinato al male? Una distopia totalmente affascinante e pericolosamente invogliante, supportata da disegni e sceneggiatura ai massimi livelli. Lettura immancabile!!!
-
Pulling back the curtain to reveal the ugly truth(s) behind the charade, Watchmen poignantly deconstructed comics as the puerile, spandex laden fantasies they always were. And since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Mark Miller decided to do his own take on Moore’s sacred tome. Heavily inverted and saturated with edginess, this ostensible tribute comes across as an insult more than anything.
Light-years from the stellar quality of Watchmen, Miller’s work wanes pathetically in comparison. Chunked with easily discernable references from Fight Club, the banality of the protagonist’s cubicle is grated unto timely depictions of emasculated masculinity as it is disparaged and degraded in our modern Feminist era. Crushed under the inhuman pressures of daily life, the internal gravity swiftly drags down our main character into something far more otherworldly. Dragged into the maw of the underground, we become privy not to a world of secret hero’s but rather the opposite. This is Miller’s first inversion of Watchmen: a world where the bad guys actually run the joint.
With the first inversion perverting the stage, there is no path to hero-hood to be trammeled. Quite to the contrary, our buffoonish beta male takes the left side of the road to become a professional psychopath. Via incessant violence and dully unimaginative brutality, this path for our dweeb toward alpha-hood is paved with each body dropped. Quite literally walking across a bridge of corpses, the particularly unmemorable swathe of nameless villains are mere cannon fodder for the author squeeze out an extra issue or 2.
When the smoke finally clears at the end, the revealed terminus of the story’s ouroboros is as stupid as expected. And of course since Miller has flipped everything on its head (unimaginatively unlike Moore’s work) there’s nothing the least bit satisfying or elucidating for those of us hoping for something just a little bit deeper. Watchmen fiercely challenged us with a complex intertwine between history and philosophy to create a golden tale that built a phenomenal story while it savagely critiqued its very medium. Wanted, on the other hand, offers us nothing more than empty palms. With nothing behind the curtain, Miller has given us a vacuous simulacrum devoid of meaning or luster. -
I feel like a lot of people misinterpret this story. While it's meant to be wildly entertaining on a superficial level (and succeeds) it's also a sort of satire.
Grant Morrison, who knows Millar, expressed this same point about Wanted in his book Supergods.
I don't think it's a shallow dark tale like everyone is saying. The last line of comic that solidified my opinion on this, albeit in a very crass way, reads, "This is my face while I'm fucking you in the ass!"
It feels like the point of this was that the story is a culmination of all the dark gritty anti hero stuff. The story then reads as a twisted satire reveling in nihilism and cynicism.
I have a hard time believing that the same guy bothered enough by the darkness in Man of Steel enough to write Huck is a big fan of cynicism.
To me this felt more like Robocop or Starship Troopers films--other often misunderstood works. -
"Wanted" by Mark Millar is generally recognized due to the crappy movie of the same name. I have seen a little of the movie and didn't care for it. As usual, the book is far superior. It is also different. The movie had the Fraternity as a group of assassins who can curve their bullets. Ummm the ONLY reference to any of this bullshit is one line from the comic where they reference a kill shot coming from two city lengths away.
Wesley Gibson is a pathetic human. A weak-spined and groveling kind of guy who has an unfaithful girlfriend and poor-quality friends. Wesley's life changes when he encounters the Fox. She gives him an interesting offer- $50 million and a chance to enter the Fraternity. It seems Wes' father was a supervillain and the Fraternity is a group of supervillains. Back in 1986, they were able to band together and defeat the superheroes and now run the world.
Wes must navigate these treacherous waters, as he learns his new skills and seeks to find who murdered his father. It turns out that thieves don't have honor and the various rulers of the Fraternity have many hidden agendas.
A pretty good story. Millar's writing reminds me much of Garth Ennis. Some of the humor is borderline scatological and there are little hints at the "wider world" such as hints about the death of Batman, or that the Fox is actually the Black Cat, etc.
The artwork is pretty good as well. A good anti-hero story that is far superior to the movie. If you must choose, choose the comic. -
Damn. I really wanted (I couldn’t resist) to like this book but holy shit, it has it’s problems.
What’s it about?
Wesley has a kind of crappy life. His boss is a racist bitch to him, his girlfriend is fucking other guys, his father wasn’t around when he was growing up, all kinds of stuff. Well, he’s about to get training to become a super villain #1.
(Well, okay, not as cool as these villains. RIP Stefan. Always number one)
Pros:
The story is interesting. This book is pretty much about an illuminati of supervillains that secretly take over the world and wreak havoc which is a pretty interesting idea for an alternative take on the superhero and supervillain genre.
The art is done well.
The action scenes are frequent, brutal and fucking fantastic!
This book is pretty unpredictable. I will admit I kinda figured out that but other than that...
I appreciated the easter eggs and references. In fact, if you look in the background in a few scenes, you can spot villains from other comics which is very cool!
Cons:
Hate this book’s narrative. Pretty much it’s narrated by a douchebag who hates the world until he decides to live a life of rape and murder. Oh, and he’s a racist asshole. I wouldn’t even mind this too much because I understand it’s from the villain’s POV but this book dare I say glamorizes an evil lifestyle. Yeah, it’s fucked up (and not in a good horror type of way).
So... fuck all of these characters. Wesley is... well, I just went over how much of a prick he is. The other villains ain’t really any better. I also mentioned how Wesley’s boss is a racist bitch. The girlfriend just seems like a shitty girlfriend. Yeah, didn’t like any of them.
The dialogue is terrible.
This comic at times tries to be funny but isn’t.
Mark Millar is a good author but sometimes in books like this (and The Ultimates) he tries too hard to be edgy. Now I don’t mind explicit content, I read lots of stuff that’s much more graphic than this and enjoy a lot of it (example: Berserk is my favorite manga) but I don’t like books that just try too hard to be cool and edgy. There’s a difference between explicit content in a story and trying to excite ten year olds who sneak a comic book into their room without their parents seeing it. I didn’t mind the violence and gore as it makes sense in the story and action scenes but the shit-ton of gratuitous sexual content and nudity (some of it makes sense but a lot of it had fuck-all (no pun intended) to do with anything), at least 1 (often more) swear word in probably every sentence (I don’t mind swearing, hell look at my reviews including this one, but even one of the main characters in this is named Fuckwit) and a guy who is a literal walking piece of shit... it’s ridiculous.
The ending is stupid. I would have given this a 3 star rating because I did like quite a few things about this book but that ending sucks ass. This book’s message is pretty much “the world sucks, fuck everyone.” Not to mention, some of it doesn’t even make sense. Oh and it has one last panel of dumb edgy bullshit.
Overall:
This book is overrated and stupid. I thought I’d enjoy this but no. I’ve heard people say things like “ignore the dumb movie, watch this instead” so I’m actually kinda curious but don’t think I’ll actually watch it. This book is not necessarily terrible because it is an interesting story with good art and great action scenes but with the shitty narrative, dumb ending, awful dialogue and such I’d be lying if I said I like it.
2/5 -
I re-read this after watching the trailer to the James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman movie adaptation and... this story of a cubicle drone who becomes a super-powered killer still holds up pretty well.
When The Killer (a Tommy Lee Jones look-alike) is killed, his girlfriend (Halle Berry) inducts his son (Eminem) into a super-criminal fraternity that secretly rules the world.
This book is bursting with cool, filmable scenes, like Eminem shooting flies with a revolver. Or The Killer being shot from two cities away.
Mark Millar clearly saved his most cinematic idea for a creator-owned book that would lead to a bountiful movie deal. And as long as the action's at the forefront, this book clicks and entertains. And the central message, that people should do whatever it is they really want (even if it's shooting up a police station) is uplifting and freeing, despite coming from foul-mouthed, natural born and trained killers.
Too many of the reviews here point out that the high frequency of curse words makes this book less mature, despite being labeled for mature audiences. Yeah, a lot of the book's humor is juvenile, but when you see that the chapter titles include "Supergangbang" and "Eff You," you should know what you're getting into. This isn't penned by
Neil Gaiman; it's trashy, but it isn't trash.
The new "Assassin's Edition" includes interviews with Millar after he visited the movie's set. I know he's acting as a hype-man for the movie, but he did allay some of my fears that the movie would be nothing like the book. You can still tell the young Killer's story about getting what he wants without including the book's reality-shifting events of 1986 (which, by the way, is a lovely allusion to the seminal comics made in 1986, including
Watchmen,
Dark Knight Returns,
Crisis on Infinite Earths, and
Maus)
Like a lot of fun action movies, Wanted drags in the dramatic character moments, especially in the last act. But up until that point (and including the last two pages, which I thought were both fun and didactic) it's a pleasure to read. -
My comic man crush on Mark Millar continues.
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A nice one time read graphic noveI. Wesley's outfit is cool
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Nice art and a good story made this an enjoyable read. Interesting spin on the superhero concept. Recommended
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I actually did enjoy reading this one. I had a tough time deciding how I felt about this book many times though. I wasn’t sure if this deserved a three-star or a four-star review because of how conflicted I felt about this book. This was entertaining and fun for sure. This was also insulting and crass and wild. I felt a roller coaster of emotions during this book and I think the fact that I was thinking so much about this and not in a “Man, Trouble sucks so bad” kind of way, this book deserves every bit of a four-star rating. BUT I’M NOT EXACTLY HAPPY ABOUT IT! And both the somewhat conflicting beginning and ending of this review equally sum up my feelings for this story. If you’re reading this review, just pick up the comic and read it.
