July 17, 2002

 
Hulk Millar Does Manhattan

For me, Mark Millar comics are something of a guilty pleasure - though more and more, I'm not sure if I even get any real pleasure from his work. My fascination with his writing is becoming increasingly inexplicable, and might even border on self-abuse. First, the man writes a final Authority story arc which begins with promise (the superheroes get killed off by the G7 - interesting and sort of surprising), veers off into sadism and misogyny when he brings them back, and ends the story with a lame deux ex machina finale and a tasteless, delusional, self-congratulatory epilogue.

Now in his Authority 2.0, Marvel Comics' The Ultimates, the man goes off and mindlessly destroys most of New York City in an issue-long fight scene. I think that I would be more willing to say "well, it's just a big dumb action comic", but Millar's The Ultimates is so selfconcious in the way that it begs the reader to believe that the story is happening in a realistic, contemporary world that I think that he is unfairly trying to have it both ways. For example, there were no realistic repercussions of the events, no signs of death, the city was evacuated FAR too easily, it would never have been so fast. The issue's events take place in a timeframe which would have to be less than 40 minutes. Impossible!

There's a fairly recent event that is a pretty good template for what would happen in NYC was in a similar crisis, but Millar just ignores it in favor of having the Hulk throw Giant Man through a building, or having Iron Man blow up half of Grand Central Terminal, treating it all like a big laugh. With the exception of one throw away line, there is no acknowledgement of the human loss, or how the massive destruction of private and public property will effect real human beings. I would have thought that after September 11th people would think twice before doing this sort of thing in comics and movies, or at least make them portray them in sensitive, realistic terms. I guess I was wrong. Obviously, Millar is just trying to feed his fanboy constituency's enormous hunger for disaster porn, and that this is a deliberately crass piece of entertainment. So - why am I supporting it with my money? I'm not sure. I think it's time for me to stop, though.

Finally, a question: Why is Ultimates artist Bryan Hitch comfortable with drawing and releasing this issue of the Ultimates, but not the issue of the Authority that he scrapped cos it was about NYC under attack? That makes no sense. At least judging by what I have read, Hitch's story apparently spent a lot of time with the Authority helping to rescue people. There certainly isn't anything like that going on in The Ultimates.

What Costume Shall The Poor Girl Wear?

Stephen Malkmus will be curating/headling an All Tomorrow's Parties event. That's cool. What makes it fall into the "well, see there is a God, and He likes me" file is that it will be in the New York area. Yes! I'm very curious to see who Malkmus invites - I'm hoping that he deliberately goes for the most obscure music that he knows, and confuses audiences with a disturbing number of reformed 70's Brit folk revivalists. "Pentagle who? Mellow Candle what?" It'd be really funny!

When People Stop Being Polite...

Dilettantism has a very intelligent, well-written post about MTV's The Real World and its effect on the people who are casted on the show on his blog today. And oh look - Todd also wrote a wonderful post about Michael Jackson's economic dilemma. Check it out.