Mark Millar - Overrated?

bombidol

A lot of people have been talking to me recently about Mark Millar, probably because of the dubcomcon happening soon. A lot of em seen to be on the "he's overrated" side of the fence. Personally I have a hard time thinking of anything the bloke has written that i havent really really enjoyed. He seems to have a knack of humanising these random characters and bringing crazy storylines down to earth. In fact now that i think about it, some of my favourite comic books have been written by the guy.
I agree that he is the golden goose at the moment, and unfortunatly when you get to be held in such high regard theres only one direction you can go.Down.
Anyone else got an opinion. Come on , ive got 8 hours a day to waste and Millarworld wont have me!

Fysh

I'm kind of undecided about Millar as I haven't read much of his stuff. I've read the Ultimates 1 and really enjoyed it. I've read his first material on the authority and disliked it, mainly because of the fanboy-pandering in it. I've read 1 issue of The Unfunnies and liked it, but am still waiting for the rest of it to be available.

Overall, he is a good writer - I'm interested in his Ultimates work, for example. But he does seem to court controversy for the sake of it in some of his writing, and I'll have to read more of his work to decide what I think of it.

That being said, I'll be waiting until he makes a go at his own equivalent of Preacher, Transmet or Sandman before I can really make my mind up on how good I think he is.

bombidol

Read wanted if you are looking for something 100% creator owned by him. its amazing

Fysh

Yeah, just after posting I was reading the Mark Millar bibliography & profile on wikipedia and saw that. I'll check it out sometime soon, but I'm also curious to see what he'd do if he was given the chance to go for a long-form creator owned project...

bombidol

yeah it would be hard to say what way he would go with it. He wrote "Aztek" with Grant Morrison and to be honest i thought it was utter muck now that i think about it. Wanted is fantastic though, soon to be a movie too!

qwertplaywert

all of his ive read is ultimates 1-13

Longshadow

There's been hypothesising on how Millar would handle a 'long-term creator owned project', and I seem to recall there being some talk of him doing a Marvel 'Icon' project (in the new year I think). And that's pretty much what Icon is there for; to allow Marvel exclusive creators the freedom to do creator owned stuff more typical of smaller companies. Ie. Brubaker's Criminal and Bendis' Powers.
So maybe it's a question we'll see answered soon.
As for my own opinion on Millar, I think he can be a great writer. He writes far and away the best big-event-superhero-fighty-action-packed-over-the-top books on the market today. I'm not typically a fan of the kind of book where Hulk Smashes Thing for 22 pages, but Millar can give that type of story a level of drama and excitement that makes it a brilliant read.
On the other hand, he's far from infallible, and when he's bad, he's very bad indeed. MK Spider-Man #1-12 attempted a big 'bring in all the villains' type story, but just over-reached itself and fell completely flat. I didn't read all of Wolverine: Enemy of the State, but it just didn't seem to work for me at all. It genuinely seemed to hang entirely on a 'monster of the week' hook, replacing monster with which Marvel Hero Mr Claws was going to tackle that month. And I couldn't help but regard the art as just lazy, Romita and all as it was.
And oh, yeah, Superman Red Son is one of best graphic novels you can buy as far as I'm concerned. It's f**king amazing. From art, to story, to the sheer ballsy scope of the thing, it's just incredible, and a rare positive arguement for 'Elseworld' books.
(Edited to correct stoopid spelling)

qwertplaywert

just got ultimates 2-volume 1[issues 1 to 6]

it has done the impossible........OUTSHONE the ultimates 1