God help me, I re-read some Mark Millar
Dec. 19th, 2022 01:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiOver the weekend, I re-read Mark Millar's first arc on "The Authority." It remains an awful piece of drek, filled not only with Millar's trademark racism, sexism, and just plain boring dialogue, but also a set of characters almost so thoroughly disconnected from the ones in the previous twelve issues that it's practically fraud to have published it as "The Authority" in the same way that saying the movies Zack Snyder made are about "Superman".
But I knew all that going in. The reason I re-read it was to confirm my suspicion that Garth Ennis was ripping off this run when he wrote "The Boys," instead of "Marshal Law," which was the assumption I'd generally been making. And I was right to correct my assumption -- rather than being a third-rate ripoff of "Marshal Law," "The Boys" is a first-rate ripoff of Millar's "Authority."
To be clear, that's not a statement that "The Boys" is good; it's aggressively not (and no, I haven't watched the Amazon series). It is, however, better than Millar's work, because Ennis is a better writer than Millar, so while it's still full of racism, sexism, sexual assault played for laughs, and other stuff, it's both better written (in terms of both dialogue and plotting) and at least occasionally enters the same room as nuance, even if it doesn't stay there very long.
But if what you're looking for is "obvious analogues of DC and Marvel superhero teams getting killed in gruesome ways," Millar can save you a lot of time. Of course, you also read Ellis's pre-Authority run on "Stormwatch," or Mills and O'Neill's "Marshal Law," or Veitch's "Bratpack," or Gruenwald's "Squadron Surpreme," or even (if you don't want the analogues) various runs of "What If" and "Elseworlds" and "Marvel Zombies" to get that as well.
But I knew all that going in. The reason I re-read it was to confirm my suspicion that Garth Ennis was ripping off this run when he wrote "The Boys," instead of "Marshal Law," which was the assumption I'd generally been making. And I was right to correct my assumption -- rather than being a third-rate ripoff of "Marshal Law," "The Boys" is a first-rate ripoff of Millar's "Authority."
To be clear, that's not a statement that "The Boys" is good; it's aggressively not (and no, I haven't watched the Amazon series). It is, however, better than Millar's work, because Ennis is a better writer than Millar, so while it's still full of racism, sexism, sexual assault played for laughs, and other stuff, it's both better written (in terms of both dialogue and plotting) and at least occasionally enters the same room as nuance, even if it doesn't stay there very long.
But if what you're looking for is "obvious analogues of DC and Marvel superhero teams getting killed in gruesome ways," Millar can save you a lot of time. Of course, you also read Ellis's pre-Authority run on "Stormwatch," or Mills and O'Neill's "Marshal Law," or Veitch's "Bratpack," or Gruenwald's "Squadron Surpreme," or even (if you don't want the analogues) various runs of "What If" and "Elseworlds" and "Marvel Zombies" to get that as well.
The Boys.
Date: 2022-12-20 05:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-12-28 03:25 am (UTC)