Wanted (comics)

AUTHOR: Millar, Mark

ARTIST: J. G. Jones (illustrator); Paul Mounts (colorist); Robin Spehar (letterer); Dennis Heisler (letterer); Mark Roslan (letterer)

PUBLISHER: Image Comics

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 2003-2005

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2005

Publication History

Mark Millar, creator of Wanted, has explained that the concept for the graphic novel originated during his childhood in the United Kingdom, when he saw a book in the library about the United States that had a picture of Superman in it. He took it home, and his brother explained who Superman was and that he was both real and dead. Later, his brother told him that all the supervillains ganged up and killed all of the superheroes. This idea stayed with him, and he pitched it in various forms to DC Comics and Marvel Comics, using characters from both universes. Neither company bought the idea.

When Warren Ellis’s The Authority (1999- ) came out, Millar realized he could reimagine the concept for a post-Authority audience and rewrote the idea with his own characters. J. G. Jones provided the art. The six-issue miniseries was published by Top Cow Productions, an imprint of Image Comics, from 2003 to 2005. It was collected into a single volume in 2005. It has gone through numerous subsequent editions. The collected novel also contains bonus material, such as the Wanted: Dossier, featuring the major characters from the story drawn by well-known artists in the comics field. The movie inspired by the series was released in 2008.

Plot

Wanted is a graphic novel that replaces superheroes for supervillains. It begins with Wesley Gibson narrating, telling the readers that he is a loser. He scans the Internet looking for stress-related diseases he might have. He tells readers that he was abandoned by his father when he was just weeks old.

In a different scene, Wesley, Sr., “the Killer,” is apparently assassinated. At his funeral, two men discuss his death and his long-lost son. The story switches back to Wesley’s narration, as a woman appears at his regular lunch spot and kills everyone there. The woman, the Fox, takes Wesley to meet Professor Seltzer, a leader of the Fraternity, a group of supervillains. In 1986, the villains banded together and defeated all the superheroes and then changed reality so that no one remembers. Wesley finds out that his father was the Killer, and he is the heir to his fortune and place in the Fraternity.

Wesley is given the choice to join the Fraternity. He does and begins his brutal training to be a supervillain. He takes revenge on the neighborhood gang and kills his best friend before dumping his girlfriend. He is initiated fully into the Fraternity and meets Mr. Rictus, the villain who leads the Australian branch of the Fraternity and who is rumored to have killed Wesley’s father.

Wesley relishes his new life as a supervillain, going on murder sprees and missions for the Professor, the Fox, the Doll-Master, and others. He attends the Council of Five meeting with the Professor, where the Professor manipulates the Emperor into siding with him against Mr. Rictus’s plan to go public. Mr. Rictus and the Future then plan a hostile takeover of the Professor’s organization, killing the Professor and most of his group.

Rictus sends S----thead and others to kill Wesley and the Fox. Wesley manages to kill them all instead, bleaching S----thead to death. Wesley and the Fox systematically eliminate Rictus’s gang until they confront Rictus along with a horde of his followers. Wesley kills them all in seconds. He gives Rictus one shot at him. Rictus fires, and Wesley deflects the bullet back into Rictus’s throat. Wesley asks him who killed his father, but Rictus says “Lee Harvey Oswald.” Wesley kills him. It is then that his father, alive, reveals himself.

Wesley’s father tells him how he met his mother at a supervillain party. He left her because she wanted him to reform. Wesley, Sr., did check on his son over the years and had grown appalled that his mother had turned him into a wimp. In part, he faked his death to get Wesley to realize who he really was inside. His father has one final task for Wesley: Realizing that he is losing his touch, he asks Wesley to be the one to kill him. After a few moments of hesitation, Wesley shoots his father. He then takes his place alongside Fox as a leader of the Fraternity.

Characters

•Wesley Gibson, the protagonist, is a typical office clerk who is demeaned by his boss, cheated on by his girlfriend, and harassed by the neighborhood men. Then he discovers his father was the supervillain the Killer and that he is going to inherit his father’s wealth and identity.

•Fox is another supervillain. She is the lover of Wesley’s father and becomes Wesley’s as well. She is a remorseless killer.

•The Killer is Wesley’s father, a supervillain who is supposedly assassinated by a rival faction.

•Professor Solomon Seltzer is the smartest man who ever lived, with a level-nine intelligence. He leads the Fraternity in the Americas.

•F----kwit is the clone of the world’s greatest superhero except that he also has Down syndrome.

•Doll-Master is a family man who is also a deadly supervillain, using killer dolls as his weapons.

•Mr. Rictus is the supervillain in charge of Australia and is dissatisfied with the current state of the world and supercrime. He wants to take over the American operation from the Professor.

•S----thead is Mr. Rictus’s chief enforcer and is composed of the fecal matter from 666 of the world’s most evil people.

•Sucker is an alien parasite that can drain the life forces and the powers of other superpowered people.

•The Council of Five is composed of the five leaders of the Fraternity: Professor Seltzer and Mr. Rictus along with Adam-One in Africa, the Future in Europe, and the Emperor in Asia.

Artistic Style

Jones is the penciller and inker for Wanted. Paul Mounts is the colorist. The style is highly realistic and often graphic. Facial expressions and musculature are detailed and defined. The scenes of violence are shown in splashes of blood and color. Characters that are shot are drawn so that the impact of the bullet and the sprays of blood are clearly seen. The art reflects the fact that the characters are enjoying the violence in which they are involved.

The layout of the panels and pages is fairly traditional for a superhero-style comic book. Panels usually go all the way across the page instead of being six-panel blocks. The backgrounds are usually filled in with details. Often, these details show the devastation of the aftermath of the violence. The gutters are black, which makes sense since this is a “dark” story, focusing on villains and the evil they do.

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of the artwork is the deliberate way Millar and Jones base the appearances of Wesley and the Fox on real celebrities. Wesley is drawn to resemble rapper Eminem, and the Fox is drawn to look like actress Halle Berry. Because of this artistic choice, a false rumor started that Eminem was going to play Wesley in the movie adaptation of the comic. In issue 6 of the series, Dick Giordano provides the artwork for the flashback scene.

Themes

Wanted is based on a hypothetical question that asks what would happen if supervillains existed and wanted to take over the world. Millar explores this in brutal detail, sometimes in actual images of violence and in references to rape, torture, and genocide. The series is violent and mature-themed.

Wanted focuses on the subversion of the common theme of finding your true heritage, of the orphan or half orphan that discovers that he or she has an extraordinary parent and is heir to powers, wealth, and/or royalty. This is a theme found in Superman, Harry Potter, and many books and stories. Wanted looks at this issue in an ironic light. Wesley has a powerful secret parentage, but it is a legacy of villainy. At first, he is horrified by the world in which he finds himself, but eventually, he relishes his new identity. He hesitates only briefly when his father asks him to shoot him. He toys with Fox, saying that maybe he should give it all up. The ending makes clear, however, that he is going to enjoy his new life leading the Fraternity and never regret any of the things he does to anyone. He is not a hero, and he does not want to be.

Readers of mainstream comics will recognize a sense of nostalgia and references to characters that are familiar. Most of the characters are recognizable analogues to famous comics characters. Professor Seltzer is a reflection of Lex Luthor, Mister Rictus of the Joker, and F----kwit of Bizarro. Millar takes these characters to the extreme, though, in both level of villainy and their grotesque nature. Clayface becomes S----thead. Two Face becomes Johnny Two-D----ks, a villain whose talking genitalia orders him to commit crimes.

Impact

In Wanted, as well as in his other works, Millar follows in a tradition of violent, edgy comics in which characters engage in more violence and sex than one would normally find in mainstream comics. Since Wanted is an independent comic and not part of the DC or Marvel Universes, Millar was able to do things to and with characters that could not be done in a mainstream continuity, somewhat like one of the comics’ precursors, Alan Moore’s Watchmen (1986-1987). However, Millar makes Wanted significant because the villains are not only the focus but also the victors. Since all the characters are relatively recognizable analogues of known and iconic characters, he gives fans a book that hypothesizes about what would happen if their favorite villains really did decide to kill all their favorite heroes. Wanted, with its successful movie adaptation, also shows the viability of independently owned properties for comics creators.

Millar is fully aware of the history that made it possible for his books. The villains take over in 1986, the same year that Watchmen and Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns debuted. Wanted is another successful successor of the changes in comics initiated that year.

Films

Wanted. Directed by Timur Bekmambetov. Universal Pictures, 2008. The film adaptation stars James McAvoy as Wesley, Angelina Jolie as Fox, and Morgan Freeman as Sloan. The film differs from the novel in that, in the former, Wesley is asked to join a fraternity of assassins that has been around for centuries and not a group of supervillains. The Fraternity of the film, though a group of assassins, is supposedly guided by a belief that it is killing for the greater good, determined by fate and interpreted by Sloan. Wesley finds out he has been lied to and turns on the group. Fox sides with him, killing the other members and herself. Millar was reportedly happy with the film.

Further Reading

Ellis, Warren, and Bryan Hitch. The Authority (1999- ).

Miller, Frank. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986).

Moore, Alan, and Dave Gibbons. Watchmen (1986-1987).

Bibliography

Millar, Mark. “Wanted from Comic to Film, Part 1, Interview.” Interview by Matt Brady. Newsarama, June 26, 2008. http://www.newsarama.com/comics/080626-MarkMillarWanted1.html.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Mark Millar on Wanted 2: From Philosophical to Fanboy.” Interview by Matt Brady. Newsarama, June 27, 2008. http://www.newsarama.com/comics/080627-Millar2.html.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “The Takeover-Millar World.” Interview by Brandon Thomas. The Comics Bulletin. http://www.comicsbulletin.com/ambi/106728468559172.htm.

Miller, Carl F. “Worlds Lived, Worlds Died: The Graphic Novel, the Cold War, and 1986.” The CEA Critic 72, no. 3 (Spring/Summer, 2010)