Wanted
by J.G. Jones, Mark Millar
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Book Reviews of Wanted
Book Review: Review of Millar's 'Wanted'
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a filthy, brilliant piece of work. I have two particular reasons for praising Millar's 'Wanted': (a) it features great dialogue and (b) it offers a morally confusing atmosphere. The border of good and evil is ever apparent in this comic; as a reader I struggled to find a character I could identify with. This is a comic about evil people, and the lives they lead in an alternate world where the evil control everything.
I have a hunch that many people are disappointed because they read this work expecting something very similar to the movie adaption. Indeed, so was I. 'Wanted' the comic features some parallels, but is generally less about assassins and more about super-villains, less about a magic tapestry and more about massacre. In any case, who can blame the adaptation for toning down something this vulgar? It is important to expect the kick in the face that this comic offers.
Book Review: Lazy, Exploitative, Fanboy Nonsense
Summary: 1 Stars
Life, apparently, is unfair to Wesley Gibson. Oppressed by his wimmenfolk and talked down to by his various minorities, he dresses like a tool and feels sorry for himself. Then, kazam. He turns out to be a supervillain.
Wesley reacts to his new powers by raping and murdering his way to the top of his supervillain game without a single hesitation. I think there may have a moment or two where he stopped and tried to generate some empathy, but I probably blinked and missed them. Fortunately, he's surrounded by a cast of equally vapid monsters, with nary a bit of depth between them.
Wesley is a dweeb as a mundane human, but as a supervillain he's actually one of the most genuinely unlikeable characters in comic history. I imagine that I've missed the post-modern/ironic twist, but I wasn't going to go rooting through it in this pile of nihilistic fanboy trash.
Book Review: Keeps you coming back...
Summary: 4 Stars
Wanted is a great read, but not a likable one. Pretty much every character in it is reprehensible as they come, including the main character. I feel that Millar goes too far on more than a few occassions (mainly the new found rape/murder habits of the main character), but that's sort of the point. Supervillains, unchecked and unopposed, would take every chance to do whatever they pleased, regardless of who they hurt. There are truly some heartbreaking moments and it's a little hard to take at times. I do have gripes with certain details of the story and how they contradict other details in the story. Also, like certain Authority members, the Killers powers are somewhat poorly defined. He's defined as having perfect aim, but displays other abilities that suggest other powers...sort of. It's a constant throughout Millar's other works too. All in all a good read.Book Review: Not so Wanted
Summary: 2 Stars
Jones' art is great and I really sympathize with what the author is doing, but I do not think that Millar's story is focused enough and detailed enough to warrant his harsh conclusion. The set-up of how the office drone becomes the super-villan is far too perfunctory and it becomes entirely lost in the sub-plot of the war among the super-villans. I think that if the book is going to pull-off its about-face ending, the reader needs to be significantly more co-opted by Wesley Gibson's transformation, significantly more sympathetic to him despite his abject degredation. Instead of just dropping hints to the depths of perversity in this world, the story should have shown them off. As it is, Millar is in too much of a rush to shove it all back in the reader's face to set his trap sufficiently. Good idea - poor execution.Book Review: Morally Repugnant
Summary: 1 Stars
The trade is introduced by Brian Vaughan, ironically he says "At their worst, superhero stories are just dopey male power fantasies, but at their best, these myths don't just entertain, they work as powerful allegories that help us understand who we are." In my opinion "Wanted" falls firmly in the former category... or it would except 'dopey' implies a level of harmlessness that "Wanted" lacks.
This is the story of a thoroughly unlikable loser who gets the sort of life he couldn't even dream about before by picking up a gun and killing everyone he dislikes or who got in his way. Plus some random by-standards just for the heck of it. It's a book about killing lots of people while looking cool and feeling no remorse. It's a glorification of the sort of thinking that leads to high school shootings.