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Posted March 5, 2012 by Earl Maghirang in Comics
 
 

5 Mark Millar Stories You’ll Want to Read

It’s official, Mark Millar will be visiting the Philippines to promote “Supercrooks” together with artist Leinil Yu; and to celebrate this great, great news, here are some of the books that you might want to read before his imminent arrival.

 5. Wanted

If you thought the movie was good, then get a load of the actual source material. Wesley Gibson was a certified loser before everything went to hell and he found out that he is apparently the son of the legendary assassin known as “The Killer”. This tale was epic if you want to find out how supervillains can be cool at what they do. This was released for Top Cow and Millar worked with artist J.G. Jones on the book.

You’ll be happy to know that the movie starring James McAvoy (Professor X) and Angelina Jolie had a simple nod to the creators in the final scene for the movie:

Not the name on Wesley’s place “J.G. Millar”.

Plus its rare that you get to see a gun-toting Eminem lookalike kneecapping baddies and good guys to with the help of a very Halle Berry looking “Fox”.

4. The Authority – Nativity

Millar also did a couple of controversial issues of “The Authority” under the Wildstorm imprint. Simply the best among the story arcs he wrote was the Nativity, which is the tale of the birth of Jenny Quantum; the spirit of the 21st Century who will be replacing Jenny Spark (the spirit of the 20th Century).  It’s got a lot of shocking moments and violent depictions including the apparent death of the Wildstorm universe’s “Avengers”. If you ever see one of these books, you might want to grab it because its pretty rare these days.

3. Civil War

Marvel’s Civil War was one of the best looking book during the early parts of 2000. It’s got a mean hook and works on a premise as old as time – “Would you surrender privacy for security?”. It also made a lot of buzz because it split the New Avengers in half as Captain America and Iron Man official call off their bromance (Thor was absent due to the whole Ragnarok business). There were a lot of shocks and a few twists with a controversial ending that changed the landscape of Marvel for awhile.

Millar also did something really shocking IMHO in the middle point of the story which was Peter Parker’s revelation on national TV that he was Spider-Man.

of course Spider-fans know what happened next (OMD, Brand New Day and currently Big Time)

2. Old Man Logan

Mark Millar again pushes the envelope for Wolverine with a post-apocalyptic story wherein, you guessed it, the supervillains win and the heroes are either dead or have become villains themselves. In Old Man Logan, Millar explores this world taking us on a roadtrip with a passive Wolverine and a blind Hawkeye. It’s got great action thanks to the art of Steve McNiven and a great twist ending. Heck, Millar even tweeted once that he wanted to do a sequel for Old Man Logan.

1. Superman Red Son

 

Millar also did a popular re-envisioning of Superman with the premise that instead of landing on Smallville, the rocket ship landed on the Soviet Union. In this world the cold war was just about to reach a fever pitch and we get to see Superman emerge from being a bodyguard and a warrior for the Communist ideals to become the leader of Mother Russia.

It’s an interesting pitch and is mostly collected in a nice looking tradepaper back. I’m betting that National Book Store still has a couple of these lying around.

Earl Maghirang is the author and owner of Thefanboyseo.com


Earl Maghirang