by Jake Jacobson
Wanted. Where to begin? Wanted is the brainchild of Mark Millar as illustrated by the very talented J.G. Jones with assistance from Paul Mounts on colors. I picked up the Wanted TPB just a few days ago with the hopes that it would be something in the same vein as Millar's recent work on Ultimates. Granted, Wanted is the story of villains, not heroes, but I hoped and expected Millar to handle this story and these characters with the same precision with which he handles Iron Man and Thor (my favs among the new Ultimates lineup). What I expected and what I received were two different things.
The premise of Wanted, the bare bones meat of it is an excellent, dare I say genius idea. The idea alone kept me reading through the entire trade and without it, I wouldn't have progressed past issue one. The premise is as follows: In 1986 all of the super villains of the world (not just one rogue gallery for one hero, not just a single legion of evil, but all of them) decided they were tired of being beaten up and thrown in jail. Thus they did something no one had ever considered: they worked as a team. There are about a dozen villains to every hero, so of course once everyone committed to the plan they practically obliterated the heroes overnight. Afterwards the world was divided up along continental lines and given to the five most dastardly villains (later known collectively as the Council of Five), the respective heads of all the crime families of the world. After the divvy of the planet Dr. Solomon Seltzer, the mad scientist of the Five, along with the aid of seven dimensional imps and alien supercomputers rewrote the whole of our reality to eliminate everyone's memory of the heroes, the villains and anything relating to their massive brawl for control of the planet. In place of these memories a false, gritty world of bleak hopelessness (the real world as you and I know it) was created. In this world the super villains are in control of everything from behind the scenes. Their organization, The Fraternity, is run by the Council of Five rules from the shadows with not a one of the ordinary people of the world the wiser. Super villains are allowed to indulge in their wildest fantasies without repercussion because the police, the government, and anyone else who might care are all secretly run by the villains anyway. Pretty cool idea, huh? Like I said, the mere premise is bitchin-rad.
Like the premise the meat and bones of the characters is also golden. Our lead, Wesley Gibson is a first rate pushover. He lets his boss shove him around, he ignores his girlfriend's constant infidelity with his best friend, and he readily accepts spite and torment from just about everyone he meets. Come to find out he's the son of The Killer, the best assassin in the world and lead hit-man for one of the Council of Five. It seems however that Wesley's dad has been himself assassinated and his last wishes are that his title, his occupation, and all his vast wealth fall to his one illegitimate son. To this end The Killer's mistress of several years, The Fox, an accomplished super villain herself, is set about the task of turning Gibson from a thumb sucking mama's boy into a hard hitting, meat eating man that his father would be proud of. While all this training and meat eating and super-villaining is going on it seems that one of the Council of Five, Mr. Rictus has gotten it into his head that the Fraternity should stop living in the shadows and instead become a public force of tyranny and evil, sweeping aside the notion of discretion to attain a sense of complete terror from the populace of the world. As Rictus says, he wants people to flip out at the mere letters in his name. Of course all his plotting puts Rictus into conflict with the other members of the Council and, you guessed it, poor Wesley Gibson, the latest super villain and inheritor of the title of deadliest assassin in the world. Doesn't this sound cool? I swear, writing it here it's hard to think you could make this story bad. Sadly, the story is bad.
Don't get me wrong. The story isn't bad because of the characters, or the premise. It's bad because of the writing. Whereas yes, villains are evil, the villains Millar portrays are beyond evil. They are subhuman monsters. They literally rape, murder, fuck, violate and otherwise molest whatever they come across simply because they can. The characters by the end become so distanced from even real life evil as to become cartoon like. They're like exaggerated caricatures of ultimate evil, only they lack the one thing that would give them direction, and in this case, a purpose for existing in the story: they lack motive. The characters are so wantonly depraved that past issue two I can't tell whether they're doing something to further a goal, or just to gross me out as a reader. Sadly I fear the answer is the latter. The effect is that throughout the book I'm torn between a myriad of cool ideas, cool characters, cool scenery and design, and the overriding sense that I don't care at all about any of it. Whenever Gibson casually speaks of raping celebrities because he can I lose connection to the character. Whenever Rictus clarifies that he doesn't fuck goats, he makes love to them, I feel less inclined to keep turning pages. To be specific, the characters inhumanity keeps me from giving a damn about any of them. If I don't give a damn about the characters, then I don't give a damn what happens to them, and if that's the case… well, let's just say it's a good thing for Millar that I bought the trade instead of the monthly issues.
This book had so many good ideas that it makes me want to cry that none of them were developed. It hurts me on the inside that the actions of these characters (who I know look gorgeous in concept) make me want to drop the book altogether halfway through. It's not that I don't like stories about bad guys. I own Way of the Gun, a movie in which, of all the characters, only one is innocent and only two can even be in the running as decent human beings. I love bad guys; I love stories about bad guys. Wanted isn't one of those stories. Wanted is a story about monsters. The function of a monster is to frighten or shock, and after the first twenty pages of shocking and frightening, I want a real human being in there just to have some contrast. Like I said, the premise is good, and I'd love to see something truly inspirational done with a premise like this one. Sadly, Wanted isn't it.
I suppose I should mention the art, but there is so little to say. The art is fantastic. J.G. Jones has a knack for cool characters and wicked fight scenes. If you just like to look at pretty pictures, forget the last four paragraphs and just go buy Wanted now, you won't be wasting the money. If however you want to challenge your grey matter with a story and you think of art as the icing on the cake I'd pass this one up. At the very most borrow it from one of your friends who was suckered (like me) by the publicity into buying the book.
Note: You have no idea how hard it was for me to not gripe about the villain made of shit or the kryptonite condom. I've seen some Kevin Smith movies too, Millar. Those were great jokes, but stupid as hell plot points in a serious comic.
