Special Thanks to Top Cow Productions for providing this spotlight. Visit the cool Wanted website at www.wantedmovie.com for more information on the movie coming out June 27th and the critically acclaimed graphic novel.
When the daily grind becomes numb. When the sex becomes dry. When the world around you thinks life is all about beating you down and never letting up, you imagine. You imagine if one thing in your life changed, it would make a difference. For Wesley Gibson, his life changed the moment his father was killed, and it’s a turning point everyone would kill for. No more bad days. Not for you at least…
WANTED
Written by Mark Millar Art by J.G. Jones
Top Cow Publishing
One day, the bad guys will win, and the good guys will lose. For now, Superman will always beat Lex Luthor. Batman will always beat The Joker. Wonder Woman will always beat… uh… puberty? But what if the bad guys won? Not just a battle. That’s been done. I’ve seen Spidey get his ass kicked enough times already. No, I’m asking…What if the bad guys won the whole freakin war? Not only that, but what if the bad guys beat every single mother effin good guy on the planet? Don’t see it happening? Guess again. Wanted has delivered the goods, and with an ever-lovin middle finger I might add.
Soon to be a summer blockbuster filled with other comic book movies like Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and Hellboy 2, Wanted stands to be the underdog amongst those heavyweights. Not only does it have one of today’s hottest but relatively unheard of, stylish and frenetic visual masters of direction, Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch trilogy), but the film also features the always sexy Angelina Jolie being more badass than she was in Tomb Raider and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. So what’s the underdog to do? Get the people to read the source material! And that’s where I come into play, as I am very happy to oblige.
Wanted is probably one of the best graphic novels created in the past ten years, if not, the best supervillain story ever told. It stands tall next to the likes of The Watchmen, Sin City, and The Dark Knight Returns. (And some of you know, The Watchmen is also slated to be a movie by 300 director, Zach Snyder.) Written superbly by Mark Millar (The Authority, The Ultimates) and fantastically drawn by J.G. Jones (52), Wanted simply tells it like it is in this day and age of teenage girls ganging up on one girl to make silly putty of her face, just to show it on YouTube. The world is full of bad guys, and the only way to survive is to become one. It’s a book that makes a statement for sure, and I’m trying to resist the urge to swear like crazy in this review as Wanted has a very profound affect on its reader.
The premise is that the bad guys have won in the year of 1986, and all the superheroes have either been killed or crippled. The baddest of the bad is a guy that goes simply by the name of “The Killer”. As he’s about to have a justified threesome with two strapping male prostitutes, he get his head blown off from two cities away. This isn’t your average run of the mill Paste Pot Pete bad guys either. Nope. In Mark Millar’s world, these bad guys are good at what they do. So when the baddest, most lethal foe gets taken out of the picture, the supervillain society is shocked and shaken. The later being in the construction of a society where the supervillains basically run the country, and have free reign on beating, raping, and killing whomever and whenever they damn well please. What about the cops you ask? Yep, even them. So once The Killer is out of the picture, two chess pieces move into place. One of them being the lost son of The Killer, Wesley Gibson.
Stuck in a dead end job where the boss abuses her power and living with a girlfriend that sleeps around with all her coworkers and his best friend, Wesley Gibson one day gets a phone call from The Fox. (Think Halle Berry from Swordfish, but will be played by Angelina in the movie.) She informs him his father has just been killed, but has left him millions of dollars and a chance at a new life. The first thing he has to do in order to get that inheritance is to stand up, and tell everyone around him in the office, “Fuck you, you fucking assholes!” Do you do it? Hell yeah! It’s a classic moment that immediately brings the reader to Wesley’s side of the bargain. It’s just a shame that in reality, most of us want to stand up and do that!
From there, per the inheritance agreement, Wesley must lose the cowardice and feminine emotions his mother instilled in him, and not only become a man tied up to a chair while getting beat up by a lumberjack every week, but a cold-blooded killer as he takes a saw to farm animals everyday and hacks them up into burgers. In short, desensitization. Remember, there are no heroes in this world. Just villains, and for Wesley to survive, he must act, think, and live like one. Especially since it’s in his blood to be one of the deadliest marksman’s on the planet. From there, Wesley takes on the world with a new attitude and a gun, and there’s nothing that can stop him.
Mark Millar has written something without restraint and regret. Writers tend to fear this path because it’s risky. The content alone could either propel you to the top, and lucky for Millar, it has, or it could very well sink your career. He takes the perspective of the bad guys, and makes it common which is very hard to do. Rape? It’s a common thing. Kill cops? It’s a Saturday. So right away, this book is not for everyone, especially kids under 18. Because if you watch the news today, kids are messed up. Having them read this book is like handing over a gun. So that’s the only drawback of Millar’s tale. For those that are mature and understand this is fiction, then it’s the best comic book you’ll have read in a very long time.
J.G. Jones is the perfect choice for artist on the series, and he compliments Millar’s words perfectly. The complete collection even shows some of the changes that we made for dramatic effect, and Jones would hit it spot-on right away, or the requests from Millar would be filled with vast improvement. Jones worked very hard on this book, but you can tell he loved every minute of it. Each panel has a Panavision camera, and it’s easy to see why a movie would come from it.
Unfortunately, from the previews at least, it looks like the superheroes and villains have been taken out of the movie. In fact, I don’t think Wesley has his cool costume either. I think they mention it being an Assassin’s Guild of some kind, so that’s going to be interesting to see as the graphic novel really captures the conflict between good and evil using superheroes and villains, molded from some of the most recognizable. (Part of the fun of the book is to see who is who along with silly names like Shithead, Fuckwit, and Johnny Two Dicks.) But I don’t see that being a problem since the book is always better than the movie. However, after reading the book, I’m dying to see what they do with the source material on the big screen. I highly recommend this for comic book fans, and even higher for those wanting to see the movie. (Pun intended). Just make sure to keep the swear words at work to a minimum, don’t let your girlfriend sleep with your best friends while reading it, and have a Slim Shady CD ready to play after you read that last page. This is my face while I think of Wonder Woman bending over to pick up that rope.
GRADE: A+ HIGHLIGHT? Too many to list. The last page is brilliant. What a way to end it. Gritty, raw, and in your face, Wanted rocks the supervillain house!
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