Dear Mark Millar,

I want the time back which I wasted reading the trade paperback of your Millarverse comic series Wanted.

It wasn’t completely horrible, just terribly incomplete and incosistent.

Here’s my biggest complaint: I wasn’t shocked or surprised or even remotely impressed by the violence. There was just so damn much of it was so cartoonish, it didn’t have whatever desired effect on me. I suppose it was a statement about realism in comics, especially super-villains, but it fell flat.

Add to the violence this list of complaints, and you’ll see why I was disappointed:

  • Eminem as a character model

    • Is it any wonder why Eminem won’t do the movie version? Millar created a nebbishy mama’s boy who becomes an amoral killer of the highest order.

    Note to Millar: Eminem vents his frustration via his music. Millar apparently takes his frustrations out on comic readers.

  • Halle Berry as a character model

    • Re-read the first comment and find/replace the appropriate names. Pathetic. It was a horrible reference to the even worse Catwoman movie.

  • Redemption through homicide

    • Seriously? Was the killing of Wesley’s father or Wesley’s transformation supposed to have any weight or gravitas?

    Another note to Millar: you want people to care about these characters (when they won’t care for themselves or others)? Spend more than 4 pages explaining the strange circumstances of Wesley’s childhood and his rapid ascendency to power/prominence.

Honestly, the whole series felt like an idea scrawled on a napking that wasn’t allowed to reach it’s full potential.

Super-villains ruling the world? Great.

Greatest super-villain shielding his young son only to mold him in his own image? Better.

Squishing a 12 or 24 issue series into 6 issues. Shitty.

Millar could have written the super-villain equivalent of Kurt Busiek’s Astro City. Seriously. I truly believe that, executed correctly - with enough issues and more space to explore both the darker and more humane aspects of the story, it could have been great.

If you wanted to show the most nihilistic, amoral, violent world you could, Wesley would never have fallen in love with The Fox, he’d have killed her and taken over as some kind of proxy for The Devil incarnate.

As it was, the series was too short to accomplish all of it’s goals and only served to frustrate the Hell out of me. Granted, if it really got as nasty as I describe in my suggestions, I’m pretty sure no one would have read it. On the flipside, had Millar taken the time and issues to tell all the stories fully that he suggests superficially, I’d drive you to the store and buy you the book myself.

My advice: save your cash, buy and Astro City trade and hope someone else give super-villains their due.