Wanted
by J.G. Jones, Mark Millar
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Book Summary Information
Author: J.G. Jones, Mark MillarEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-11-28
ISBN: 1582404976
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: Top Cow Productions/Image Comics
Book Reviews of Wanted
Book Review: The Forbidden Fruit
Summary: 5 Stars
Wanted is the sort of graphic novel that would have changed my life as a teenager. I don't know what it is about the forbidden fruit of media, but I gravitated towards it as a kid with my love of Excalibur, Conan the Barbarian, and Heavy Metal. Though I have matured somewhat in my views such that the forbidden no longer is so forbidden, I still get a charge when I read something as unbridled as Wanted. I get a feeling that 99% of current Western society would raise hands to mouths and stare with wide eyes if they saw the sights that I saw in that comic book.
Wanted is a story of social rage unleashed. Like the movie Fight Club, Wanted begins with a character living much of the lives we come to understand. He's a guy always getting picked on, letting the world walk over him, and settling for the status quo because anything else requires a level of confrontation he avoids at all costs. Where it goes is somewhere fantastic.
Unlike the movie, which I have not yet seen, the comic focuses on a war between superheros and supervillains that happened decades earlier and ended with the supervillains on top. Our hero learns of his own special superpower - the inability to miss any target with any shot he decides to take with any type of firearm. He is exactly the sort of superhero I secretly dreamed of being all those years being picked on in the fields and playgrounds of my middle and high school.
It could also be considered by some to be an instruction manual to Columbine.
I surprise myself by even saying those words. I am the last person on earth who would point at a comic and tie it to a real-life massacre. Life does not directly imitate art. Still, I feel the gravity when I read this comic, that feeling of seeing someone breaking completely outside of all of the social conditioning we have these days, and no doubt there is something there within us that wants it. It would be a lie to say we are not influenced by art but the results of censorship only fuels our desire the more.
Censorship isn't the answer, of course. I'm not even sure understanding this desire so we can properly direct it is the answer. These feelings are there and a comic like Wanted shows just how alluring this disturbing subject matter can become. I can't help but read a comic like Wanted or another recent favorite, Sea or Red, and wish I had written them. Even my own subject matter seems to shy away from topics ripped out from the shadows of our psyche and dragged out screaming into the light.
I loved Wanted. I loved its brutality. I loved its unashamed exposure of the subject matter. I loved the writing and the dialog. I loved watching wacky costumed super-villains shouting "Jesus Christ!" When an army of small doll-like robots attack from nowhere. I loved the meta second-person ending. I loved every page of it.
Summary of Wanted
What if everything in your life was out of your hands and those around you propelled your fate? Your girlfriend left you for your best friend; your boss gave your job to someone better. What if then, after all this, someone gave you back total control? What if he revealed you were the next in line to join a secret society of super-villains that controlled the entire planet? Mark Millar and J.G. Jones provide a look at one man who goes from being the world's biggest loser to the deadliest assassin alive.General Books
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