Comics and Cocktails: Wanted

But I digress. Let me backtrack a bit. I'll start off with why I chose the Jägerbomb as the pairing drink. Well, going into Wanted I knew it was about a some poor office schlup, who finds out that his dad is a supervillain who just died and that he inheirted the family business. From what I was told and from what I could guess knowing what I do about Mark Millar, I thought this would be a transforming tale of some drone bee turned into an über-alpha male. And there's something about the Jägerbomb that just screams newly-minted alpha to me. It seems like the type of drink that an overly aggressive frat boy named Chad or Todd would order for the table and dare everyone to finish in one go. It seemed, for lack of a better word, what a douche would drink.

So, I walked back up the street from my local and sat down to read Wanted. Now, before I go on my diatribe, let me get some synopsis stuff and gut reactions out of the way. Wanted follows Wesley Gibson, a loser who works in a job he hates, lives with an unfaithful girlfriend, suffers from a variety of psycho-somatic problems, and has no money or ambition to speak of. One day he is approached by The Fox and told that his father, who walked out when he was eighteen-weeks-old has died and left him millions of dollars on the condition that he takes up his legacy of being a supervillain. Gibson agrees and after undergoing a severe training regimen assumes his father's identity: the Killer.

Now, while this world does have supervillains it doesn't have superheroes. Back in 1986, all of the supervillains teamed up and defeated the heroes and carved up the world into five domains. Then they remade the world into a darker, grittier place where no one even knew that the heroes had ever existed. However, the truce between the villains now grows uneasy and a coup is attempted. To make a long story short, the worse villains attack the better villains and it is up to Gibson and the Fox to return the world to its status quo. However, then it is revealed that Gibson's father is still alive. He faked his own death so that his son could get the training and become a man. Now, his ambition achieves, he has his own shoot shot him in the head and go to join the super crime syndicate that is controlling the world.

Roll credits. The end.

I had been told (by Guy and a few others) that Wanted was like Watchmen for super-villains. The problem is that it's not. At all. I will admit that there are certain similarities. The deep construction of the world, its rich tapestry of history. There's also a certain commentary on superhero comics that both books have. But that's about where the similarity ends. Watchmen is considered to be one of the best comic stories because it plays on a variety of levels. Whether its the heroes as stand-in for differing philosophies (Ozymandus' ends justifying the means, Rorschach's refusal to compromise even in the face of armageddon, or Manhattan's emotional detachment), a murder mystery, or as a Shakespearean-style tragedy (heroes are banned because they are thought to do more harm than good, and in trying to prove them wrong the heroes do more harm than good). Whereas Wanted works as a commentary on the darkening tone in superhero comics and as a rallying cry for insecure beta males.

The only real meaningful message it has is that it is making fun of people who read superhero comic books. That the world is a dark and miserable place where elections are fixed, where rape and murder happens, and where people find themselves in dead-end jobs before going home to people whom they don't love. And that if a person wants to escape from this joyless world into reading about superheroes than they're either naive or a pussy. As Gibson says to the audience at the end of the series, breaking the fourth wall, about their decision to read the comic at all "this is my face while I'm fucking you in the ass." Wanted speaks to the innate fascism in superhero comics and stands as a dark reflection of its fans' power fantasies.

Gibson's rebirth as a supervillain is pretty much the same power fantasy as in the X-Men. That there comes a time in your life when its revealed that you're special, that you shouldn't have been judged or prejudiced against. That you are better than the people around you thought and perhaps than you yourself gave yourself credit for. But instead of the positive "they just didn't get you" message of X-Men, there is a more mean-spirited "you were just a fuckin' pussy and you should have sacked up and kicked in the world in its' goddamn teeth."
 
The problem that I have with this is first and foremost that it's kind of an easy and one-note chord to strike. Also, the fact that Mark Millar is heralded as one of the great superhero writers of our day, so if he really feels that way, then he should quit working for Marvel and DC. I don't think it's fair to have this big an issue with people who like escapist fiction and still write it.

Part of the greatest problem that this book brings me is similar to what I've had from other movies and books that push the envelope. For instance, let me just bring up Fight Club and Clockwork Orange both of which are ultraviolent commentaries on ultraviolence. Fight Club the book (which I would argue is not very good and doesn't deserve much credit) ends with the hero stuck in bed, impotent, unable to stop this masculine revolution that he's started. Fight Club the movie, however, ends with the boy decisively killing that overly-masculine false version of himself and getting the girl, and with the world crumbling around them they are unsure of how to move forward but will do so together. Clockwork Orange the book has Alex seeing a former gang member having settled down, and Alex decides to do so as well of his own free will. While the movie has Alex freed from his treatments and free to pursue his violent ways once more, the government is revealed to be as violent and cut-throat (or even more so) than Alex himself ever was.

Wanted ends in a similar vein as Fight Club the book. It points out that there is no John Wayne anymore. That Clint Eastwood has become old and feeble. That "gee, men just sure ain't what they used to be." Then it has the men chasing this false ideal of masculinity. End transmission. The bigger problem is that's just not good storytelling. I'm not saying you need a happy endig, the movie of Clockwork Orange has a killer and rapist preparing to go about his business once more. But it has a deeper level. You can't stop there and expect to patted on the back.

And why not? Because the inherent theme of the book is a lie. There is no ur-masculinity. Taxi Driver isn't about Travis Bickle going into a hotel and shooting lots of people in the face. It's about seventies America, how lost and listless we were. How much Vietnam damaged us. How the only way we knew to show affection was through violence and self-destruction. Even John Wayne commented on his own cowboy persona, in John Ford's the Searchers saying the macho cowboy led directly to genocide.

Not surprising then is how this book handles gender and race. Everyone who is not a white male is portrayed badly. Professor Seltzer might be one of the five most evil people in the world, but he comes off like a wise old grandfather-type. Doll-Master may be a villain but he loves his wife and children, and wants to protect them (while, simutaneously, his wife is portrayed as a foul-mouthed shrew). Even his father, who is a mass murderer several times over and walked out on Gibson as a child is presented as a sympathetic character who the audience is supposed to like. Gibson's boss is shown to be a "black bitch." His neighborhood is full of cholos who should be judged and disdained. His girlfriend "can't go to buy cigarettes without sucking someone's cock." Even Fox, the most prominent of women in the series is shown to be heartless (she kills a restaurant full of people to show she can) and unhinged. In a world full of villains no one seems worse than women and minorities.

Well, now that I've railed against the book let me say what is has going for it. First and foremost, the art is just gorgeous. JG Jones does the penciling (and inking, I believe) and he just does an outstanding job as per usual. The feel of the world is also very well done, it has a rich history and the book does a good job of giving us a peek into that world in a very short period of time. Finally, the commentary on the world of comicdom is very well done, both in terms of jokes (how Batman was convinced he was just an actor in a campy 60's TV show or how there was a 'crisis' in 1986 that retconned the whole world) and in terms of plot (comparing the crisp and clean Golden Age to the dark and gritty Modern Age). And I have to admit that is some clever and even some fun bits of ultraviolence. But sadly, all of that is far too little to overcome the massive holes in the work as a whole.

Some other random thoughts that I had scribbled down:

• There's something odd about the fact that Gibson has the stone cold killer skills even before his training. It's in his DNA, apparently. He's better than the masses because he was born better. Best case scenario, Millar is just taping into that superhero-trope of the protagonist being better than the world gives him credit for. How it reads in this book is, the protagonist was born a white man and with that comes some innate power. Worst case scenario there's this vague Nazi-esque propaganda to it all.
  
• I don't know what's up with Millar and President Bush, but it's a little odd. This series has Rictus' parroting Bush's infamous "bring it on" line.
• Because his mother raised him by herself, he is inheirently flawed? A single mother cannot raise a boy without him becoming weak and effeminate?
  
• It seems fitting that the hero's look was based on Eminem. Like Eminem this book seems to be trying to get money out of men badly seeking validation and an excuse for middle-class rage.
  
• I don't know how much more you can say about the metaphor in this book then that one of the villains is told what to do by his thirteen inch penis.
• His father wants his son to kill him because he's not the best anymore? Once more the ultimate achievement in this world is one's virility.
• Instead of quality dialogue or even good shocking dialogue (such as Warren Ellis can whip up in his sleep, and probably does), Millar just seems to put the word 'fuck' in a lot.
  
• Wait... he has to kill his dad? And then become him? How fucking Oedipal.