INTRODUCING MYSELF TO MARK MILLAR - part 2

Wolverine, Agent of … S.H.I.E.L.D by Mark Millar & John Romita, Jr. (volume 2 of the “Enemy of the State” arc)

So, I decided to introduce myself to the work of Mark Millar and dove in with the twelve-part Wolverine story, “Enemy of the State.” My thoughts on the first volume, which collects issues 20-25 (chapters 1-6), can be found here.

As for the conclusion of this epic narrative – there were a couple of bright spots, but for the most part, I am happy to know that I don’t ever have to read this again. It is entirely possible that this is a great Wolverine story, but for me, it’s just a bunch of hackwork lacking any real drama, with hyperbole and bombast substituting for characterization and narrative inventiveness. It’s basically one long fight scene with no consequences at all.

The collection opens with Gorgon’s introduction to the Hand followed by Northstar’s extrication (or at least that of his corpse) by a now-re-resurrected and villainous Elektra (a scene that lacked any punch, whatsoever) before entering a virtual reality simulation being used to rehabilitate Wolverine – though readers are unaware of the VR aspect until we hit the climax of the scene. The rehabilitation scene is pretty good, a nice feint put forth by Millar & JRJr, but once Nick Fury bites it, it is obvious something isn’t right.

Dr. Weinberg intrudes on Wolverine’s killing spree in this simulation – explaining that SHIELD is running these simulations to make him burn out the Hydra programming – and it makes some kind of sense. I also found it to be inventive on Millar’s part – until he found it necessary to let us in on how serious this plan is by having the doctor spout off on how it would only take “another half a million simulations” to get Wolverine deprogrammed. When it’s revealed, on the next page, that those 500,000 simulations will take place over the course of just 12-18 hours, I was completely taken out of the story. If you do the math, that’s almost 8 simulations a second. Sure, comics are supposed to fall somewhere outside the realms of believability (they fly and regenerate and have superpowers, etc. etc.), but when you go too far, the narrative just crumbles to nothing. And this seems to be Millar’s style – push it too far, then go ten times farther, and try to mask it all with his hype machine. Maybe I’m being too harsh. And maybe I’m not.

Millar then pulls me out again when he has Wolverine discussing how many Hydra, Hand, and Dawn of the White Light agents are out there. The total he arrives at is 52,000. And is he going to take them all out by himself? “Bingo,” says Wolverine.

Now, I get that this is the character – he has a trail of bravado and ego and testosterone oozing behind him wherever he goes; he’s animalistic and he doesn’t stop, not for anything, least of all overwhelming odds – I get that. But, for me personally, that bravado act doesn’t resonate. It doesn’t work for me. Remarks like this come across as farcical rather than “tough,” and maybe this explains why I’m not much of a Wolverine fan.

Or maybe I need him toned down just a bit, in order to accept him. I appreciated the character of honor who came out of the Claremont/Miller mini-series back in the early eighties, the one who, at any moment, could go off on a berserker rage. That he had to work to hold in that animal instinct made for drama and provided conflict within the character. But when there’s no longer anything to limit him, and Wolverine is just killing non-stop, the volume turned up to 11 the whole way through, the drama is sucked out of the narrative because there is nothing to counterbalance the crazed fighting. Without any real quiet moments, the big moments have nothing to play off of.

This is a similar problem I have with the event-driven publishing mandates from DC and Marvel these past few years. Civil War rolls into Secret Invasion pours into Dark Reign and seeps into Siege, and there’s no opportunity for readers to stop and catch their breaths. And, at some point, one just burns out on this downhill race. Like a rollercoaster, the anticipation during that long, slow climb up the track, makes the rush down the other side that much more exciting.

Another glimmer of narrative ingenuity comes with Elektra’s double-cross of the Hand, which was well handled and made sense. If the Hand has resurrected her once, Elektra would obviously have a better knowledge of how to circumvent their brainwashing this second time. But, again, the fact that her actions – the killing of 200 SHIELD agents when she was part of the re-animated superpowered beings who attacked the helicarrier – are dismissed because she was under “very deep cover” just rips me out of the story. If these characters have carte blanche, then why does it matter? They have no dramatic choices to make. There’s no need for them to be heroic (and yes, I know Wolverine is an “anti-hero”). They can run their sais and their claws straight through whatever phalanx of characters stands in their way, and it doesn’t mean a damn thing.

And if it doesn’t mean a damn thing, why should I care?

Now, regardless of how poorly written I think this whole journey has been – and, for me, the journey of a narrative is important – the climax of this storyline is brilliant in its simplicity. Wolverine, like Perseus in the myths of old, reflects the Gorgon’s gaze back at him with his claws, turning the Gorgon to stone, as he has done to so many others. I applaud Millar for this bit of narrative creativity, but only wish that he wouldn’t have dragged out the story so long for such a brief moment of appreciation.

There’s a part of me that can almost understand why this story is so well regarded. But I can’t get past the fact that I feel it is terribly flawed. I’ve brought it up a number of times in these two pieces about the book, but Millar never lets up. This is one long fight comic with little in the way of substance. Millar thinks drama is achieved by heaping more “shit onto the pile” – i.e. the exaggerated amounts of enhancements Wolverine and the others who get reanimated receive from Hydra; it felt like a kid’s game where your buddy shoots you with a bazooka, but you claim to now have a missile launcher plus super-armor so you win, except that he now has a force-field and a mult-laser projectile weapon and trumps your “upgrade,” etc. etc. It all felt ludicrous, and there was never a chance for Millar to develop any dramatic tension naturally within the context of the story.

Greg Rucka recently wrote about honesty in storytelling. I didn’t get that from this story. All I got was a lot of (unwanted) style and flash in lieu of substance. And that’s probably the biggest problem I have with “Enemy of the State.”

-chris

INTRODUCING MYSELF TO MARK MILLAR – part 1

Wolverine: Enemy of the State vol.1

A CAVEAT: First, let me say that, despite being a big comic fan, I am not an X-Men fan. I have tried on a number of occasions to get into the X-Universe, but I only ever last a few issues and then move on. Which is not to say that I don’t appreciate the characters or the themes inherent with Cyclops, Storm, Rogue, Wolverine, et al. I enjoyed the cartoon back in the early ninetie;, I loved Barry Windsor-Smith’s “Weapon X” storyline; and I thoroughly enjoyed the graphic novel, “God Loves, Man Kills” by Chris Claremont and Brent Anderson, which I see as the final word on mutants. So, we’ll see if Mark Millar can make me a believer.

Mark Millar is probably the most successful contemporary writer in comics, if one judges that by how well he’s managed to get his projects into the mainstream (read: Hollywood). With Wanted and Kick-Ass and other movie projects said to be in production, is there any other comic writer whose work has reached a wider audience (Stan Lee & Alan Moore excepted)?

To my knowledge, I’ve never read a full Mark Millar penned story. I began Wanted at my local Borders, but I couldn’t get through the second chapter. I got ten pages into the Ultimates and was too bored to continue. I did read Kick-Ass, but I missed out on some of the middle issues because of the publishing delays. Other than that, I’ve not read anything from Millar, though I am aware of him and of his penchant for pushing the envelope until it shreds to confetti. So I thought I should rectify this and investigate his work starting with the much-lauded twelve issue arc of Wolverine he did with JRJr, “Enemy of the State.”

Regarding the first volume – collecting issues 20-25 – I have to say, I was unimpressed. Millar’s work seems to consist of a nice, shiny patina of excessive violence lacking any heart. There was no emotional core, nothing upon which I could focus my attention in order to become engaged with the story.

Wolverine goes to Japan to help his dead fiancée’s cousin, whose son has been kidnapped (thankfully, Millar only uses Akira Kurosawa’s plot from High & Low, which was itself a loose adaptation of Ed McBain’s novel, King’s Ransom, as setup). Wolverine confronts the Hand ninjas and is taken down by a mutant who is apparently better than Wolverine at what Wolverine does best (killing). Then we get five issues of Wolverine killing recklessly, as he takes out heroes that the Hand will resurrect as part of the final-ditch effort Baron von Strucker is using to appease his wife and hold onto all that he’s amassed. So there are battles with the Fantastic Four (I’d love to see JRJr do a long run on this title), with Daredevil, with Elektra, with the X-Men, while Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. continue one step behind. And then, at the culmination of this first collection, they manage to capture Wolverine, with Nick Fury smirking, “We got our little killing machine back.”

If it weren’t for Romita, Jr’s artwork, I don’t know if I could have gotten through these first six issues. It was a chore. I found the fights boring – despite the art of JRJr – the decompression of the storytelling grating, and the absurd enhancements made to Wolverine by Hydra – who, along with a group of mutants known as the “Dawn of the White Light” – so outlandish, even for a comic, that I was pulled right out of the story.

Wolverine has enhancements that allow him to crack any code and lock? Seriously? #$%@ off, Mark Millar!

I also could not stand the fact that all the killing Wolverine does – under brainwashing by Hydra – was just dismissed by everyone, including Nick Fury. Oh, Wolverine’s brainwashed, so it doesn’t really matter. Come on! I realize these are comic books, but it used to be that the stories would revolve around actions having consequences (and no, I’m not advocating for the After School Special model of writing). Heroes forced to make difficult choices, and living with those choices, makes for interesting reading. Characters allowed to just kill pell-mell like this and have everybody just give him the benefit of the doubt – he isn’t doing this; it’s the brainwashing – just broke any sense of disbelief I had.

This is part of the problem with comics today. Death and killing are so commonplace that it has been rendered meaningless. How can you have an emotional moment when you know it doesn’t matter? Yes, I know Wolverine is all about killing, but it used to be he only killed the bad guys – and even that has worn thin for me; when something becomes commonplace it completely loses any impact it might have once had – but having him running through innocents and heroes with nobody caring – I’ll say it again: #$%@ off, Mark Millar!

Exiting the “condemnation train,” I have to say that the manner in which Rachel managed to outthink Wolverine after he’d infiltrated the X-mansion was a twist I did not see coming and extremely well done. Millar & JRJr set it up beautifully, showing Rachel fearful of Wolverine as he had her sync up to Cerebra and search for the President. Once linked in, Wolverine, along with us readers, could not tell who she was searching for; we could only base our assumptions on how she had allowed herself to be put into this position, apparently as a result of her fear of the situation. So, when she dismantles the terraforming device Wolverine brought with him to use as a threat, and she explains that she tapped into Reed Richards’s brain to figure out how to do it, I was impressed. If only there had been more than just this one great moment in the book.

Two final things.

First: in the initial chapter, we have two characters – TWO – respond to Wolverine’s thoughts. His thoughts. Now, it comes to light later in the collection that possibly the first one to respond to his thoughts – the Gorgon – may have some form of telepathy. I will concede that one. But the second character who responded to a direct statement from Wolverine’s thoughts was a nurse. How did that get through editorial, let alone make its way onto Millar’s desktop screen? That’s just sloppy.

Second: Captain America, when he takes out Wolverine in the final chapter of this first collection, makes a wise-ass remark as he slams Wolverine’s head with his S.H.I.E.L.D. – “Heal this.” Come on. These characters are supposed to be unique, but none of them had anything resembling a distinct voice. Having Cap utter such a brainless quip felt completely out of character. Steve Rogers is an army man, who has served his country and believes in the ideal of America. He has class, and that remark lacks anything resembling class. Millar thought he was being cute, and he just exhibited his tin ear.

And third (yeah, I said “two final things,” but I reserve the right to change the rules, this is my house): Why is S.H.I.E.L.D. having all the superheroes quarantine themselves while Wolverine is on the loose? S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are going to do a better job against Wolverine than the Fantastic Four, Dr. Strange, Daredevil, Captain America, the Falcon, etc. etc. etc. could as a collective group? Or singly? Whaaaatttt????!!!! That’s stupid.

Ugh. I wonder if I can stomach the second collection. I’m already feeling a bit queasy from the Greg Land cover to the volume. At least I know JRJr did the interiors. Maybe that will help me get through the rest of this piece of dreck.

We’ll see.

-chris