Wanted

One of the perks at the bookstore/café I work at is that employees are allowed to check out books. Of course I headed straight for the graphic novel section.

I checked out Wanted, a story by Mark Millar with art by J.G. Jones. It's about Wesley Gibson, a total puss. He's got a crummy job, a crummy life, and his girlfriend cheats on him with his best friend (I always wonder in stories about loser guys how they got girlfriends in the first place).

One day Wesley finds out his father (who had ran out on the family when Wesley was a baby) was killed, and now Wesley stands to inherit $50 million dollars. The catch is, Wesley's dad was a supervillain, and now Wesley has to train and live as a supervillain for six months in order to cash in. He gets indroctinated into the secret underworld of supercrime and quickly takes to killing, stealing, etc.

The dialogue and visuals were pretty brutal--loaded with "fucks" and "assholes" and heads getting blown off and sex and other shock value stuff.

The problem I had with the story was with Millar getting too cutesy. In the world of this book all the superheroes have been neutralized and the villains constantly make references to "the dark-night detective" or "the most powerful hero of all." And we never see these heroes; first, because the book's publisher is not Marvel or DC; second, Millar is using our knowledge of iconic comic book heroes (so he doesn't have to create his own heroes) to move his story along. There's even one major splash page devoted to showing a tattered red cape in a trophy case.

Gee, I wonder who's cape that was supposed to be? If we're not supposed to think it's Superman's, then what's the point of showing it? There are no other mentions or appearances in the story of that red cape, but somehow it merits an entire page to be highlighted? It's annoying little things like that that kept taking me out of the story.

The villains are supposed to be the focus, but Millar could have taken the time to give us a better sense of who the heroes of this world were -- as opposed to making shits-and-giggles allusions to Superman, Batman, Captain America, etc.

FJ