Mark Millar - Re-inventing comics

  Since the 1960's a comic book writer's main target audience was children. It wasn't until the 90's that comic books started becoming more serious and hard hitting. Writers and artists like Todd McFarlane, Alan Moore and Frank Miller were starting gain more recognition for their efforts. Even with all of the divergent writers getting recognition, comic books still weren't updated enough for the more grown up audiences. In the year of 2000 the first marvel movie was released in cinemas in the form of the X-men and not long after the first Spider-man movie appeared. 

  Marvel saw these new movies as an opportunity to reinvent alot of Marvel's already established characters and give them a new look and attitude. This new series would come under the banner of Ultimate Marvel and they were originally supposed to promote the recent movies, but instead ended up taking on a life of their own. Marvel started with revamping the X-men and Spider-man, the young mutants were now all teenagers wearing black and yellow uniforms; crazy things like Wolverine no longer wearing a mask. Spider-man was changed in more subtle ways, for instance he gained his powers from a genetically engineered spider not a radioactive one and he works as a web master for the daily bugle instead as a photographer. It was the precise changes to the marvels characters that made them more modern and believable but they were still being perceived as rip offs. 

  Marvel didn't stop at the X-men and Spider-man, worried that their fans would think this was just one off, so they created a landmark mini series to officially establish Ultimate Marvel. This mini series project was named the The Ultimates, this series was a re-envisioning of The Avengers but with major differences. First of all the team was put together by a black Nick Fury (that closely resembled Samuel. L Jackson) working for S.H.I.E.L.D, Tony Stark has a brain tumour and in result fights criminals to settle his conscience, Thor is a god reincarnated in a human body and works with Green Peace, Hulk was created by using an experimental super soldier serum and last of all Captain America was thawed out of the ice to become the teams first leader. The Ultimates comic was the first step in cementing Ultimate Marvel as its own universe and its massive story came from the mind of a writer from Scotland named Mark Millar.



  Mark Millar started out writing for 2000 AD comics, a successful British based comic company famous for creating Judge Dredd. In his time with 2000 AD he worked on Crisis, an experimental comic series that was aimed towards a more free thinking adult audience. In 1994 Millar left 2000 AD to write for DC comics on the Swamp-Thing series and collaborated with Grant Morris, together they produced many successful DC titles like The Justice League of America and Aztek: The Ultimate Man. Mark Millar went on to write a mini series called Superman: Red Son, a communist re-envisioning of Superman's origins, soon after it was printed Millar resigned from DC comics to write for Marvel and their new Ultimate project. 

  In 2001 Mark Millar started writing Ultimate X-men for Marvel. This alternate X-men series put the team in a more serious and abrasive light than its mainstream counterpart, the characters are less moral like Wolverine almost killing Cyclops to win Jean Grey's affection and Storm is hot tempered and out of control. It was these changes in characteristics that set Ultimate Marvel apart from mainstream Marvel. not long after writing X-men Millar was signed to write a completely new series. This series would be the Ultimate equivalent to the Avengers. 

  This new series titled The Ultimates would be one of Mark Millar's landmark achievements, the Ultimates opened the Ultimate Marvel universe to completely new opportunities for re-inventing already established characters and throwing them into a real world; in some cases the comic involved very real social issues like domestic abuse, drug addiction and political corruption. This series gave comic book fans an insight into seeing superheroes in the real world, fighting real world problems with real world consequences.   

  Mark Millar would work on many other Marvel titles like Ultimate Fantastic Four and Marvel Knights: Spider-Man. But In 2006 Millar would usher in one of the greatest main stream Marvel mega crossovers, Millar collaborated with Steve McNiven to create Marvel's Civil War. 

  The plot of Civil War revolves around the government ordering all super heroes to reveal their identities and become S.H.I.E.L.D agents, Iron man is in favour of the new registration act but Captain America refuses, he believes it will remove their ability to make the right decisions and endanger their personal lives by revealing their identities. This indifference creates a divide between the superhero community and results in a major battle between the pro-registration group and the Anti-registration group. Civil War would then become a landmark event in the Marvel timeline and would effect all other major story arcs to come like Secret Invasion and World War Hulk. 

  During his time with Marvel, Mark Millar went on to write more titles like Old Logan (wolverine in post-apocalyptic nightmare) and the Ultimate Avengers: the next generation which featured Captain American learning that Red Skull was his son. Mark Millar has his own comic book publishing site called Millar World where he writes his own original work. Millar has gained alot of accolades from his original work like Superior and Nemesis, but the two pieces of work that have gained him the most notoriety is the Kick-Ass trilogy and Wanted. Wanted was the first to be adapted into a film starring Angelina Jolie, James McAvoy and Morgan Freeman, even though film is loosely based off the comic it still stays true to the spirit of the story. Millar has published three Kick-Ass comics but only two of them have been adapted, unlike Wanted the Kick-Ass movies stay true to the comic (minus a few changes in details) and retains the brutal pop art atmosphere. 


  What impresses me most about Millar's work is that he has an uncanny ability to create larger than life characters that can be translated to the big screen, both Wanted and Kick-Ass were easily transferred to the cinema for the world to see. When designing the characters for the Marvel films leading up to Avengers, the concept artists and scriptwriters took inspiration from The Ultimates and Ultimate avengers and tried to emulate them. To this day many comic book movies are taking inspiration from work that Mark Millar was either involved in or created himself, he managed to take over-exaggerated super heroes and wacky super villains and bring them into the 21st century and make it work where others have failed.