Mark Millar's Ubermensch

Your moment of zen...

Millar's Ultimate X-Men is just odd. Some great bits, some bits where everything drags on, some bits where stuff just happens seemingly because it's convenient to get it out of the way. Also, it bites A LOT from the movie (the way Gus Van Sant "bit" Psycho).

Also, conveniently enough - the 1st issue of the new Ultimates series is out today. I loved the first Ultimates arc, vaguely adored the 2nd arc (that A = France thing notwithstanding), & am hoping for a return to the good stuff w/ the 2nd season.

Plus, if Morrison did Crisis and a Superman reboot, they could logically be connected -- which makes sense if you want to preserve Superman's status as the preeminent DC superhero despite his post-Golden Age lack of seniority.

Also: you googlepoofed GOOGLE! Of all the people to google themselves, they ... well, just might.

As politically insensitive as the A thing is, I did think it was very funny. And acceptable in someone who's been frozen since 1940.

As for FQ on a monthly - if they give him a head start, and have a fill-in art issue every so often (by, oh, I dunno, Philip Bond), then it could be sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet.

I think his Superman thing deifies Elliott S! Maggin just a little too much. The guy had an awful lot of good ideas but I think his total negation of Clark Kent wasn't one of them. All this "Yeah yeah he's jesus but he's an alien jesus" thing feels really cold and dispassionate. Not quite as dispassionate as Byrne's cold, joyless sexing-up tactics, but still, not somebody who'd actually interest me on any human level.

You can certainly formulate an argument for a new version of Superman who's more attracted to dogs than to Lois (or Cat Grant or Lana or Wonder Woman) because of the biology of Kryptonian physical attraction and the coincidental similarity of canine pheromones. You can come up with perfectly good science for it, and you can write a couple issues that will be funny and make people talk about it on the internet. That doesn't make it a good idea.

I'm not saying the status quo can never change at all, or temporarily, but you need other things going on in between the shake-ups, and if you don't want constant traffic of readers coming and going, you need to use the shake-ups conservatively or have some reason for them. (One of the reasons the X-books work, I think, is because the cast is so large -- if all that stuff happened to the FF, you'd really be pushing it.)

Even in the terms you've just described them, they're limited-use stories -- you can't constantly smash series taboos without taking the time to establish those taboos in between.

It's like Tivo -- there was a long article on Tivo the other day about how a lot of the appeal of it is to bypass commercials, but broadcast television is paid for by commercials, so if everyone had Tivo, there wouldn't be anything to watch with it. Guys like Millar only have stories to write when the industry keeps them in the minority.

I'd think that's an obvious point. It's also something that Millar does, from what I've read ("The Authority", "Ultimate X-Men"); Millar more than Ellis was the one who planted the seeds of The Authority as liberal fascists in that book and shortly after deviating from the mainstream X-template he set relatively firm parameters on the types of stories he was going to do in UnlXM.

Luthor, meanwhile, is utterly pro-human and for that reason is determined to destroy this freaky alien who's skewing human development with his very presence. He should have been a hero of humanity, only Superman turned up and now he's determined to wipe out this evolution-retarding anomaly by any means necessary, including robbing banks/killing people/assassinating the President.

I AM THE NEW MARK MILLAR.

Superman'll talk about how Luthor keeps trying to sic giant robots on him, and the Justice League gets all awkward and looks away and is like, "Well look, Kal, thing is, he bought us this geosynchronous defense satellite, and we didn't even ask for it, Lex seems pretty cool ... maybe you guys should just talk or something..?"

And then at the end, Luthor thanks Superman, and Superman says "My pleasure, but do try to be good!" It's two people who have no option but to try to defeat each other, but have respect for each other anyway. (Actually, Supes sounds like a smug git, but he always does due to his Superness.)

Maggin's finest hour by a long way.

http://superman.ws/tales3/president/?page=17

Unfortunately this sequence is spoiled somewhat by him using his Kent power to tear down a nuclear plant and replace it with the environmentally-friendly alternative of... a coal-burning plant. Yay Superman.

ihttp://www.buzzscope.com/reviews/4919/4919_1.jpg

http://www.buzzscope.com/reviews.php?id=4919

anybody got a cbr?

At some point between this thread and 2008 I decided Millar was an objectively terrible writer but I’m not sure when I made that decision. I’m very surprised to see myself arguing in favor of the existence of Ultimate X-Men, which aged at the time like an armpit full of sour cream and that I actively hated after like 3 issues.

Yeah, sometime after Ultimates 2 (which I remmeber as being excellent but have no wish to revisit) he got bad and stayed bad IMO.