Civil War is teh suk

Jim Roeg actually read all the Civil War issues! Not only that, he wrote an excellent essay about them which echoes (and expands upon) my thoughts about Mark Millar's writing.

Ultimate Fantastic Four #25 - Marvel (2005)

Hey, I'm back to posting reviews! I just picked up UFF #25 and it's official: I'm dropping it from my hold box. I'm not fond of Mark Millar's writing so that's a strike against it, right there. When you combine the writing I don't like with Greg Land's art (which I really don't like) you get a dropped book.

It's not that Land is a bad artist, it's just that his heavy reliance on photo references turns me off. You can find examples of Land's work in so many places on the net that I'm not going to bother reproducing the cover here. I prefer to insert the cover of Fantastic Four #4 instead:

OK, if you really want to see the Land cover, it's on this page

Anyway, if you like what Millar has done with UFF so far, you'll probably like this storyline. I admit that he did do something interesting with Namor's character but it's just not what I want to read. Also, I don't like his characterizations of Reed and Sue. When Warren Ellis was writing UFF Sue was presented as much stronger and more capable than the Millar version. Ellis's Reed was far more interesting and three-dimensional. I get the feeling that Millar just sees these characters as plot modules with great hair.

Ultimate Fantastic Four #21

Here's my spoiler-free review:

I miss Warren Ellis on this title almost as much as I miss Adam Kubert

Now for the one with the spoilers:

The Art: This is an excellent visual team. Greg Land on pencils, Matt Ryan inking and Justin Ponsor (Or "Jutin" as his front-page credit would have it) doing a spectacular job on the colors. Each page has something really cool and shiny and well-rendered on it. I have no complaints about the art.

I do, however, have several complaints about the character design.

Sue has been restyled as an underwear model. Not that I have anything against underwear models but this interpretation goes far away from the previous looks for the character. I find Kubert's Invisible Woman to be much more attractive and far more human. I have trouble seeing past the cheesecake of Land's version. The eye candy is nice but it does nothing to give me any sense of the character.

Also, Land couldn't decide which "as seen on the hit show" hairstyle to give her so he changed it from panel to panel. She sports four different hairdos on page 20, alone. Or maybe that's one of her lesser known powers. She's got an invisible Flowbee!

The previous two artists (Kubert and Stuart Immonen) made Johnny look young and brash and, well, hotheaded. In UFF #21, Johnny looks like "Human Torch, 90210". He's too pretty and it doesn't work with the character. Both of the Storm siblings are well-drawn but something about them doesn't click with me. Reed and Ben look good.

The Writing: Mark Millar completely failed to piss me off in this issue. That's about the best he can do at this point. I went into this issue expecting to dislike it and I came out of it mildly interested in what's going to happen next. Nice work, Mark!

The opening scene looks cool but it doesn't stand up to multiple readings. The FF have chased some hackers into the past in order to stop them from killing the first thing to crawl out of the sea. "That's just the kind of wacky hijinks the FF were always getting into!" I have heard some people cry. No, it's not.

Let's think about this for a minute: You're a 1337 haXXor who has just broken into the system of a huge government-funded research group. Do you:

A) Steal the plans for a time machine, build it and threaten to kill the aforementioned amphibian unless the U.N. pays you a zillion dollars?
B) Steal the plans for a superbomb (hello! government-funded), build it and threaten a big city?
C) Siphon a bunch of that government funding into several accounts of your own thus setting you up for life?
D) Build the time machine, buy a sports almanac and bet on lots of sporting events throughout time.

If you chose "A" then you, too, are lame.
If you chose "D" then your name is Biff.

I have no problem with the time-travel as throwaway tech angle. I do have a problem with how weak this premise is. I know, I know, it's a comic book. Just a bit of fun. However, things like this knock me out of a story. I'm not the kind of guy who goes looking for things to nitpick but when they jump out at me like this they take my suspension of disbelief with them.

As the intro is wrapping up, Millar becomes a nominee for "Lamest use of the phrase Who let the dogs out?". There's an Eisner for that, right?

The actual story of the issue is pretty good. This is how Millar keeps getting me to buy stuff he writes. He doesn't totally suck. There's usually just enough to interest me and this issue is no exception. I like the idea of Ultimate Reed meeting Alternate Universe Reed. There are some nice moments (and only one stupid one) between them.

The ending I have mixed feelings about. First off: Ultimate Reed gets tricked into teleporting into the universe of the Zombie Fantastic Four! That's pretty cool. However, given some of the stuff I've seen Millar do in The Ultimates 2 and (ye gods!) The Authority this story could remain kinda cool or it could piss me off. With Millar and me it's a crapshoot.

We'll see.


By the way, here's a guy who pretty much disagrees with everything I just wrote. His review has a shot of the other, cooler cover.

Next up: Powell-a-palooza!

Mark Millar Doesn't Suck

Mark Millar is not a bad writer. I think the things he chooses to write about are very well-written. He's good at the craft of writing. I don't think he's a good storyteller, though. Grant Morrison is a great storyteller. His sense of pacing and the interactions of his characters are both top-notch. Morrison can write some stuff that at first seems to have the consistency of a fever dream but he usually pulls an excellent and interesting story out of all of it. For example, Morrison's Zatanna mini-series really has me hooked. It's got a cool, well-told story and compelling characters such as the girl who is tagging along with the title character.

Millar seems to have an idea of where his story arcs are going but, to me, it looks like he gets lost along the way. He's got Points A and Z thought out but there's not much of a sense of the path between those points. Many things just seem to happen. He has dropped some hints about future events (such as the Vision android) but the introduction of said synthetic being just seemed incongruous.

In Ultimates 2 Millar is definitely going somewhere with Pym as well as with Captain America & The Wasp but I get no sense of an arc or of any compelling elements which tie any of the parts of this story together. I have no problem with a comic that tells a self-contained story in each issue but Ultimates 2 is obviously on an arc.

Another thing that good storytellers do well is suspense. Allan Heinberg is doling out the information about the main characters in Young Avengers with an eyedropper. And I love it. We are several issues into the series and we just found out something very important about Hulkling. Heinberg is keeping me interested and I actively look forward to each new issue. This is, no doubt, something Marvel would be thrilled to hear.

Millar, however, has not captivated me with the mystery of the Ultimate Traitor. Ultimates 2 #6 ended with another tease showing that Pym knows who the traitor is but we, the readers, don't yet. It also ended with a cliffhanger that in the hands of a better writer would have made me say, "Woah! What the hell? I can't wait to see what that's about." Instead, because the events of the cliffhanger have had no build-up, I don't care. That's something Marvel doesn't want it's readers to say.

The opposite of love is not hate; it is indifference.

I think the main reason that Millar's writing bounces off me is that he doesn't seem to care for the characters he's writing about. Allan Heinberg does. Joss Whedon does. Giffen and DeMatteis do. Let's take another writer who does.

Warren Ellis.

This allows me to make a direct comparison between the two writers because they both worked on The Authority. Ellis writes cynical, smart, bastards who have seen too much. Some say he writes those characters too often but that's fodder for another essay. Jenny Sparks and the rest of the Authority are willing to do extremely violent things to make the world a better place for the majority of its inhabitants. They are not amoral but they do not abide by any law that keeps them from doing their jobs. This is one of the core premises of The Authority.

As written by Ellis, The Authority were a bunch of bastards but they were Bastards for Justice. They were also sympathetic. There were several moments in the first twelve issues of that comic which moved me and one or two that nearly had me in tears. Millar never did that. When he took over The Authority became assholes. Just assholes. I no longer cared about these formerly fully-realized characters. And I don't think Millar did, either.




EDIT: The distinguished commentor makes a good point. I could tack on some specific examples of the differences between Millar's and Ellis's Authority work but it will take up quite a bit of space and this post is plenty long, already. So, STAY TUNED for part two wherein I go on at length about that comic book.

No one will be seated during the thrilling Hegelian Dialectic scene!

Ultimates 2 #6

This issue is good for what it is and I'll actually review it on those terms later. However, I have to gripe for a bit about how disappointed I was that Millar didn't do something cool with the Defenders. I mean, this is the Ultimate universe. These are the freakin' Defenders.

I know the regular-continuity Defenders had more than their share of goofy moments (Cloud, anyone?) but they have always been one of my favorite teams. Mostly because they were a non-team. They didn't like each other very much but they came together when Big Bad Things were happening. I also liked them because they were the weirdest collection of heroes possible. It's like the Marvel editors drew a bunch of names out of a hat and turned the comic into some extended writing exercise.

The heroes who make up the Ultimate Defenders are also a weird bunch. Their introduction makes it look like they're gonna have really kewl powerz and interesting personalities. Instead we get a bunch of losers who are miserable failures at actually being superheroes. It's a funny concept but Great Lakes Avengers is doing it better.

Millar did the same ball-dropping maneuver when he introduced Captains Italy and Spain in issue #4. I thought "Neat! I wonder what these guys can do." I never found out. We might see the other captains later in the series but I really like to get some hint of what new characters can do before the end of their intro issue. Failing that, I'd like to see it eventually. Gradual information release can be done well. Young Avengers is doing a good job of slowly revealing things about the main characters. I end each issue of that title interested in what's going to happen next. I keep ending issues of Ultimates 2 frustrated. Even the cliffhanger and the near revelation of one of the series' big secrets at the end of #6 didn't pique my interest as it should have.

OK, I griped a lot. Ahem.

As I said above, this issue, unlike its immediate predecessor, accomplishes what it sets out to do. It manages to tell a little more of Henry Pym's story and it tells the tale of the aforementioned losers in a funny way. There are a few well-done nods to the original continuity and a Scarlet Witch joke I'm still laughing about.

The art is excellent and the cover is my favorite one on any comic so far this year. I doubt I'll pick up #7 but that's what I said about #6. Ultimates 2 keeps not sucking just enough to keep me coming back.

Ultimates 2 #5

Here's another one recycled from my LiveJournal. It's slightly out of date but I'm moving it here because it mentions an upcoming issue of Ultimates 2 that I'll review when it comes out.

I didn't like Ultimates 2 #5 very much.

A while back I talked about Ultimates 2 #4 and how I liked it. #4 set up a big conflict between the Ultimates and Thor. Mark Millar wastes no opportunity to mention that Thor is the most powerful superhero on Earth and issue #4 ends with Captain America (sorry, Ultimate Captain America) pointing at Ultimate Thor and telling him he's going down.

"Ooh," I thought. "This is gonna be a good fight."

I thought this because Millar has written some good fight scenes in the past and Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary worked on The Authority which was pretty much one big fight scene and they did it really well. #5 disappointed me because the story was just OK (yes, I still want a good story with my big fights, sue me) and the art was confusing.

Some artists don't do action well. Hitch and Neary have shown that they are very good at action. However, I couldn't figure out what was going on in several of the panels. Clarity is important when you're drawing a fight scene. There's not much dialogue so the reader needs to see what's happening. When three-quarters (or more) of the issue consists of a fight scene, clarity is essential.

There was a good part at the end where it's still not clear whether Thor is THOR or if he's just some deranged guy with stolen supertech. That was handled very well.

I was all set to stop buying Ultimates 2 anymore but then I saw the cover of #6.

Sigh.

Cheesecake aside, this is the Defenders. The Ultimate Defenders! They have always been one of my favorite teams and I'm looking forward to what Millar does with them. So, I'll pick up #6. We'll see.

And, um, if the writing is substandard there's still the cheesecake.