The holiday season and new books to buy and expect!

There are going to be quite a lot of new comics coming up over the next few weeks...which coincides with the Christmas shopping season, meaning that I've got to learn how to save and budget and prioritise like never before!

Brian Michael Bendis' Secret Invasion just finished...and what a series it was! The anticipation of what would happen in the next issue was just like Mark Millar's Civil War a couple of years ago and boy, was that a fantastic series and Secret Invasion certainly ended with more questions than resolutions.

Yes, the Skrull invasion was halted...was there really any doubt? But the fallout is just about to happen, and it leads nicely into Marvel's event of 2009: Dark Reign. I won't list any spoilers for those who haven't yet read Secret Invasion (and if you haven't, hurry up and go read it already!), but the gist of it is, the Marvel Universe has just become a much darker place with even MORE conspiracies than ever before at the conclusion of the failed Skrull invasion.

While Tony Stark was heralded as the Marvel Universe's saviour only a mere two years ago, with the Superhero Registration Act implemented as a result of the Civil War, he now finds himself discarded by his own government. All his plans post-Civil War failed to yield any fruition and he's failed to deliver on his promise of protecting America with the 50-State Initiative program.

So the government has sacked Tony from being the big kahuna of S.H.I.E.L.D. Wait until you see who they've chosen to be the new big boss...it's the shock ending of Secret Invasion that will resonate and create a ripple effect in all of Marvel Comics' books for years to come!

Anyway, I'll give Secret Invasion a proper review sometime down the line. Back on topic, another new title I'll be adding to my standing list is Dark Avengers, which spins off from the ending of Secret Invasion. There have been quite a number of huge releases in the TPB and HC format such as The Boys: Definitive Edition HC which collects the first 13 issues of Dynamite Entertainment's superb series.

The Boys is a guilty pleasure and the world it's set in is as realistic as it comes in posing the question: What would it be like if there really were superheroes in the real world? Garth Ennis (of Preacher and Punisher: Max infamy, and one of my favourite writers) crafts such a splendid tale of absolute power corrupting absolutely. He certainly doesn't hold back and while there are some moments in the series which are just flat out gross, it IS classic Ennis, which means fans will be treated with over-the-top humour in the vein of Preacher.

Hmm...methinks I should review The Boys sometime down the line too! It's just too good not to have a review!

The Rising Stars Compendium HC also gets released after the new year, which collects the entire series of Rising Stars, from the original 24 issue mini-series by J. Michael Stracyznski, to the three related mini-series. Rising Stars was absolutely brilliant, especially in the first third of the series where it established the world in which 113 special humans with powers lived and how they interacted with society at large.

It's a great time to be a comic book fan...not good for our wallets though!

Francis is also helping me to get the entire series of the Slam Dunk manga in English, published by Chuang Yi Comics in Singapore. 31 volumes means that it'll be a while before I can actually pay him for the order...yipes. Good reading times ahead!

Review: Wanted movie

Went to watch the Wanted movie today. I knew going in it was going to be significantly different from the Wanted six-issue mini-series by Mark Millar and J.G Jones (which I had reviewed two blog entries down...talk about continuity, wahey!) so I expected to see less big screen supervillain action and more "realistic" movie action.

Before you read on, here's the obligatory spoiler warning.

If you don't want to find out what happened in the movie, stop reading HERE as there may be some plot points revealed!

The movie starts off almost exactly the same way the comic does. Wesley Gibson (played brilliantly by James McAvoy) is delivering a soliloquy about how shit his life is. His best friend Bobby (who also happens to be his colleague and shares the same cubicle at his workplace) is constantly having sex with Wesley's girlfriend behind Wesley's back. Wesley keeps taking shit from his bully boss...a little more politically correct in the movie being portrayed as a rather obese white female who is, get this, ANOREXIC! Haha!

Wesley then meets Fox (played by Angelina Jolie), who apparently saves him from an assassin, Cross, who had gone rogue from The Fraternity, a league of assassins that had been in existence for over 1000 years. Wesley is asked to shoot off the wings off flies, mirroring the comic book, and then he freaks out, going back to his old life.

But he finds, having had a taste of the adrenaline rush and power that came with wielding a gun in his hand, he could not just walk back into his own life. But instead of yelling a huge "FUCK YOU!" in the comics, he actually pays out his boss in front of all his other colleagues before storming out of the office. Wesley also takes his keyboard with him and to be honest, I was perplexed. Why take the keyboard with him? Was it his? If it wasn't, why not take something else?

As Wesley approaches the exit, Bobby blocks his path and tells Wesley that he did what no one else had the balls to do...tell off the boss that they all hated. Bobby starts telling Wesley that he's "the man", only to get smashed in the face with the aforementioned keyboard...cue one of the funniest and most awesome scenes in the movie.

We see Bobby's face turn towards the camera in slow motion, with blood flying from the mouth. But that's not the only things that are flying. Some characters fly off the keyboard and they careen beautifully in the air in this order, from left to right: F, U, C, K, Y, O. But there aren't TWO "u"s on a keyboard! So we also see a tooth fly out of Bobby's mouth, complete with the roots and with that tooth looks like...is it...yes it is! A "u". Hilarious!

Some of the dialogue in the movie I recognised immediately since it was verbatim from the comic book. I laughed when Wesley tells us that Bobby is "shtupping" his unfaithful girlfriend on "an Ikea table I picked up for a really good price". As Wesley complains about his pathetic life and the fact that his father abandoned him when he was seven, he suggests that his father perhaps realised "that he'd just fathered one of the most insignificant assholes of the 21st century". In fact, when that line was being delivered, I actually mouthed it out in the cinema, word for word, since it's one of those lines that I just remember from the comic!

There are some major differences in the plot points between the comic and the movie. In the comics, The Fraternity is the league of supervillains that have taken over the world. In the movie, it's a league of assassins that had been in existence for 1000 years. As there are no supervillains in the movie, we don't see Mr Rictus, Solomon Seltzer or any of the other villains that we've read about and loved. In fact, the only two main characters that have made the transition from the comics to the movie are Wesley and Fox.

The Fraternity in the movie is headed by Sloan (played by Morgan Freeman...who swears twice during the movie! Absolutely awesome! Can you just imagine the regal driver from "Driving Miss Daisy" saying "motherfucker"? No? Then you've got to see this to believe it!) and gets his team of assassins to train Wesley to become the cold-blooded killer they know he will eventually become. Because of the lack of supervillains in the movie, they've got able-bodied replacements assassins to conduct Wesley's training.

We find out that Wesley's Dad in the comics is The Killer, who faked his own death so that Wesley can step into his shoes and stop being the pussy that he is in life. In the movie, we find out that the assassin who gets killed at the start of the movie isn't The Killer, who I'm sure most people think is, but is instead just another assassin, Mr X. In fact, Cross, the guy who's out to kill all the rest of the assassins in The Fratenity, is actually Wesley's father!

Cross found out that Sloan had actually been manipulating The Fraternity into doing his dirty work to for power and political reasons and wants to kill Sloan and anyone loyal to him. Slowly but surely, Cross is whittling down The Fraternity's numbers so Sloan concocts this story to dupe Wesley into pursuing Cross, knowing that Wesley, Cross' son, is the only person Cross will not kill.

Of course, Wesley finds out that he has been betrayed and wants vengeance against Sloan and the rest of The Fraternity. I'll leave it at that...you'll need to catch the rest of the movie to find out what happened!

One of the most controversial things from the Wanted series was the ending which some readers thought was Mark Millar taking a pot-shot at them and saying they had no lives or mind of their own. What that ending did was challenge the reader to get out there and do something with their life.

While the movie doesn't have an ending that was as strongly worded as "this is my face while I'm fucking you in the ass", like the comics, there's a message at the end that's directed straight to the movie goer. Wesley starts delivering a soliloquy again, saying how his life has changed and he's made the most of it, and asks the viewer:

"What have you done in your life lately?"

Review: Wanted

The movie “Wanted” is released in Australian cinemas today and it is based on the comic book series of the same name, published by Image Comics in 2003, so I thought it’d be appropriate to write up a review about the six-issue series since I fell in love with it when I first read it.

The comic book medium is, by and large, populated by superhero titles. Yes, there are the odd comic books that don’t feature superheroes and may have different themes: romance, Westerns, sci-fi, horror, thrillers, etc etc. But superhero comic books make up the vast majority of the comics scene.

We all know Superman, Batman, Spider-man. And the one common theme in most superhero comics are that the good guys will always come out on top. No matter how desperate a situation, no matter how bad it gets, the superheroes always find a way to win. Mostly anyway.

So what happens when the supervillains win? We’ve been treated to supervillain-centric comics such as Barry Kitson’s Empire before. And both Marvel and DC comics have released limited series focused solely on supervillains like Dr Doom, Darkseid and the like.

Wanted is a different kettle of fish, however. Writer Mark Millar, one of my favourites, takes the concept to a whole new level. In the world of Wanted, not only do the supervillains triumph over the heroes, but their victory is so absolute that no one is the wiser that superheroes ever existed in the first place!

The supervillains rule the world of Wanted. In this world, the villains decided a long time ago that they should get together and fight the superheroes as a team. Such a simple concept…why didn’t anyone before Mark Millar think of such a concept before?

So superheroes were eradicated and the villains formed “The Fraternity”, a worldwide organisation consisting of all the remaining supervillains who ruled the world and could get away with anything. They could steal, kill, plunder, rape, destroy and pretty much do anything…and get away with it!

It’s a massive world, but like in all good stories, us readers would need to look at that world through someone’s eyes. Enter Wesley Gibson, the main character of Wanted. We first find out that Wesley is a complete loser. He works in a dead-end job and has the same sandwich for lunch everyday: a sesame-crusted salmon over sourdough with mustard greens and wasabi mayonnaise. As Wesley explains, he chooses that particular “unique” sandwich just to prove that he’s different from everyone else. What. A. LOSER!

From the very first panel of the series, an immaculate splash page of Wesley’s best friend about to have his way with Wesley’s girlfriend, you can already tell that Wesley is a bonafide loser.

Doesn’t Wesley’s girlfriend look like Roxanne “Freefall” Spaulding from Image Comics’ Gen 13 series? Why, the resemblance is uncanny!

In fact, the whole world seems to be populated by characters that look disturbingly similar, or even ALIKE some of the other comic book characters we know! But more on that later in the review.

Wesley is a hypochondriac and puts up with his female boss who calls him an “asshole” at least thrice a day. But he has absolutely no backbone and as much as he hates his boss, he puts up with her snide comments such as this one:

But the fun doesn’t stop there for Wesley. Oh no. When he goes home from work, the same bunch of Hispanic gang members follow him, taunting him all the way until he gets home. And he gets home to a cheating girlfriend…just how much of a loser is this guy?

Even though Wesley is portrayed as the ultimate hard-luck wanker in just the very first issue of the series, we actually emphatise with him and have sympathy for him. That’s just how strong Mark Millar’s writing is.

How many of us work under shitty bosses or colleagues but have to put up with them because we’re afraid to lose our jobs? How many of us have been the victims of pack-bullying, or have found out that our girlfriends or boyfriends are cheating behind our backs…with our best friends or worse, a family member? (JERRY! JERRY! JERRY!)

And how many of us just try to convince ourselves that despite all this that’s happening right under our noses, that the world may still turn out to be a better place tomorrow?

Millar’s writing is also infused with a lot of dark but hilariously laugh-out-loud humour. Take the panels above for instance. A website for small white dicks? Wesley being hounded by what it seems like every extra who was in Spike Lee’s movies? Wesley wishing that that his best friend’s penis disintegrates after fucking his girlfriend? The hits and one-liners keep coming!

But let’s leave Wesley behind for just one moment and explore the world of supervillains. Unknown to Wesley, his father, who Wesley believes was an airline pilot, turns out to be the greatest super assassin the world had ever seen: The Killer.

Imagine having the superpower of just being able to stop someone from breathing. No fancy X-ray vision, no heat vision, no super strength, no flight…if you just want someone dead, you pull out a gun or knife or whatever and bang…they’re dead! Not a great superpower if you’re living in a civilised world (unless you’re a serial killer of course), but in this world of supervillains, what an awesome power to have.

The Killer was one of the most feared individuals in The Fraternity and just as he’s about to copulate with some prostitutes, a couple of gunshots ring out and they’re dead. Realising that someone was making a play for his life, the Killer jumps out the window and chases after his would-be assassins.

Wait, hang on a minute, he JUMPS out the window and gives chase? But this is a man without any sort of real superpowers! He can’t fly, he doesn’t have superstrength…how does he give chase by jumping out the window?

Ah, he runs across the outside walls of the building towards the direction of his assassins. Just check out these boots that the Killer is wearing:

Do they remind you of a certain friendly neighbourhood hero? At least the movie version of the costume, and in Venom-black too. As good as the series is on its own in terms of art and storyline, little “cameos” like these allow readers to keep going back and reading the story again, seeing if they can spot something new that’s a shout-out to rest of the comic book medium!

The Killer finally catches up to the would-be assassins, only to find out that they’re actually decoys.

And just like that, the Killer is snuffed out.

But it wouldn’t be the same world without the Killer, so one of the head members of The Fraternity, Professor Solomon Seltzer, sends The Fox to recruit Wesley Gibson into the Fraternity to fill his father’s shoes.

It is revealed that Wesley has his father’s DNA and “superpower” of killing but Wesley needs some convincing. The Fox gives Wesley a gun and asks Wesley for a demonstration of his abilities. Wesley refuses initially as he had never fired a gun before, but with another gun pointed to his head, he has no choice but to comply.

The Professor and the Fox give Wesley 24 hours to choose between returning to his pathetic old life or join them and live it up. It’s not a really hard choice to make…if you could get away with anything and everything without fear of reprimand, punishment or consequences, wouldn’t you take that option too?

Don’t we all wish we could just drop everything and give a big “Fuck you” to anyone who’s ever given us grief, just like Wesley has done above?

Thus begins Wesley Gibson’s training to be the new Killer. More of Millar’s trademark dark humour in the training sequences and you can see from the panels below:

I won’t spoil too much of the rest of the plot for readers…go pick up Wanted and start reading it today! It’s well worth the price of comic book admission!

So far, I’ve just raved on and on about how wonderful Millar’s writing is. Let’s not forget that part of the reason why Wanted was as brilliant as it is was because of the artist, JG Jones.

Jones mainly does covers and his covers are absolutely beautiful…check out some of the covers from the 52 series from DC comics! He has only done interior art for three series thus far: Marvel Boy, Wanted and most recently, Final Crisis. Why Jones doesn’t do more interior art is beyond me…maybe he just doesn’t have the time for it!

Jones’ art is extremely detailed and photo-realistic. Whether it’s drawing a massive technological death trap or that sex scene splash page in the very first page of the series, or even exploding heads with brains flying all over the place, he makes it seem as if you’re seeing a movie freeze frame instead of just comic book art.

His art is so photorealistic that when you look at the main characters in Wanted, they seem really familiar. Perchance you’ve seen them before somewhere? Like on the cover of a magazine or on TV or in a movie theatre somewhere perhaps?

Why, wouldn’t it have been fab if Marshall Mathers the third, Halle Berry and Tommy Lee Jones had played those characters in the movie? Unfortunately, we’re stuck with va-va-voom Angelina Jolie and Academy-Award winning Morgan Freeman who doesn’t even play The Killer. Bah!

Remember somewhere at the start of this review I said that Wanted was populated by characters that resembled comic book characters we knew? Not sure if Jones deliberately added them into the backgrounds on his own or was told to do so by Millar. Regardless, it’s just enjoyable spotting some familiar characters in the world of Wanted! Here are just some of the characters I spotted.

Why, isn’t that Magneto, with an albeit different colour scheme, in the left side of the top panel? And he’s got the Shocker joining him in the same panel! And in the panel below, we see the Abomination and Tarantula. Four Marvel supervillains in the space of two panels!

But it doesn’t stop there! We see the decrepit Vulture in the panel above. And who’s that on the far right? Is that…Japanese mutant hero Sunfire? But isn’t he a hero? Ah well.

See if you can spot the following characters in the panel above: Poison Ivy, Grendel, Hatemonger, Ghost Rider, Mr Freeze. And more of that irreverent Millar humour…Wesley’s induction ceremony involves the burning of a Marvel comic? Haha!

The Vulture makes another appearance in the panel above.

And isn’t that Whirlwind in the top left, accompanying Wesley and other members of the Fraternity in one of their raids in an alternate world?

We’ve got Iron Man (in one of his old armours) and Scarlet Witch hiding in the background of this panel. So this explains Tony Stark’s actions in the last 18 months in the comic book world: he’s actually a villain! :p We also see the Wasp in her mutated form in the comic books.

And isn’t that Scott Steiner (formerly from WCW and WWE) on the right? Who knew that the Big Bad Booty Daddy was a supervillain? Holla if you hear me!

We also see the Jabba the Hutt-esque Shit-head in the panel above, with a nice little character description. Shit-head is like Clayface, except that he’s made of poop. I love the Shit-head character…he’s involved in some of the funniest moments in the series which I’ll elaborate on later.

We see Bulldozer from the Wrecking Crew in the top panel and the Shocker makes another appearance. And why does that look like Elektra in the passenger-side seat of the truck?

More villains than you can shake a hat at! Here we see Gorilla Grodd, Terrax, Reverse Flash, the Scarlet Witch, the Green Goblin, someone who looks very much like Darkhawk, Kang the Conqueror and Hatemonger. And check out that guy who’s been split in half by the panel on the extreme right. Is that a Predator? He must have been sick of hunting Aliens and decided to join The Fraternity!

As I was saying above, Shit-head is involved with some of the funniest moments in Wanted…two in particular. Shit-head is sent by his boss to kill the Professor in order to upset the status quo of the ruling heads of The Fraternity. Shit-head disguises himself, a la Clayface, as the Professor’s driver, and then attacks him.

Once Shit-head has smothered The Professor with what must be tons of poop, he reports in to his boss and delivers possibly the funniest line in the series…and certainly my favourite line:

Sheer brilliance! Shit-head and his cronies then make a play on the lives of Wesley and The Fox, but when your superpower is killing, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that if you don’t ambush The Killer properly, you’ll just wind up dead. Bullets seem to have no effect on Shit-head though, so Wesley needs to resort to other means to kill Shit-head…

And the end result?

You can even make out the shape of Shithead’s head in the bowl! Ewwwwww.

The one thing that is really pleasing about this series is how many comic book in-jokes that Millar drops in the series. He actually references DC Comics’ Justice League of America so many times that one wonders whether he was actually getting royalties (or subpoenas) from DC for parodying their characters!

Take Fuckwit for example. Fuckwit is EXACTLY like Bizarro. But Millar has a simpler explanation of who Fuckwit is, without having to explain why Bizarro speaks the way he does:

The Justice League references don’t stop there however. As the Professor tells Wesley how The Fraternity beat the world’s superheroes, he regales him of stories of what happened to some JLA-esque characters after the supervillain triumph:

No prizes for guessing who the “camp podgy joke” is…think Adam West’s character in the TV series! And the menopausal warrior princess can only be one other character. And check out The Professor’s arch-foe, with the distinctive S-curl in his hair. Who could that character, who needs help in the shitter, be I wonder?

The above panel is a nice tribute to those famous five words from the TV series, movies and comics. With a nice little swear word in the same panel.

So we’ve seen Superman in a wheelchair needing assistance to defecate. What about Batman though? Millar certainly hasn’t forgotten about him, paying homage to Batman’s origins with this neat little twist in the panel below:

And Batman is referenced multiple times in the series:

Haha! If one could just picture “Tubby” as Adam West, it’d make this scene that much funnier! And isn’t that Phoenix and Reverse Flash we see in the background?

If one was in any doubt as to the identity of “Tubby”, let’s have The Emperor call him “The Detective” and spell it out to those of us who haven’t yet been convinced. And let’s have Mr Rictus refer to the other guy in the death trap as “Tubby’s” old “teen sidekick” and refer to The Emperor as his “chum”!

Corny jokes and silly nylon tights. Cmon, sure you MUST believe now that that IS the Batman?! By the way, the answer to the question delivered in the top left panel is “Puzzler”. As in the name of the villain who’s got his mitts on the death trap lever. Yes, they couldn’t get The Riddler, so had to make do with The Puzzler instead.

Can’t get campier than that comment by Mr Rictus!

A reference to Green Lantern in the panel above. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Lantern make ten foot dildos though…that would have been funny to see! I wonder how the ladies in the DC Universe would have reacted if they saw that the Green Lantern was able to make oversized sex toys with his power ring?

There are many other jokes in the series that references comic books and readers, not just JLA characters. Take the following panel for example:

Talk about breaking the fourth wall! Of course no one reads the funnies anymore. Why are we picking up this books still then? :D

Millar really scored a home run in the way he ended the series though. With the bad guys dispatched (hang on…they’re ALL bad guys. Ok, the really REALLY bad guys then), Millar could have gone with the Hollywood-esque happy ending. He could have written the ending in such a way that it would be open to a sequel being published.

But Millar chose to end the series in his own unique fashion. He broke the fourth wall again and made a comment about comic book readers. Now, I know that Millar has taken a lot of flak for his comments and readers said that his last couple of panels in Wanted insulted them.

But all Mark was trying to do was to be ironic. If you can’t laugh at yourself, well, then you’re taking life too seriously.

Here are the last couple of panels of Wanted. Judge for yourself what Millar’s intent was.

If only we could just drop everything and yell out at the top of our lungs:

“FUCK EVERYBODY!”