The Secret of the Wednesday’s Haul

Note: With the release of the movie Wanted this weekend, here’s a look at the sixth issue of that mini. This review originally ran on the now defunct Mediasharx website in January, 2005.

Wanted #6
Dead or Alive

Published By: Image Comics/Top Cow
Written by: Mark Millar
Drawn by: J.G. Jones & Dick Giordano
Colored by: Paul Mounts
Lettered by: Robin Shehar & Dennis Heisler

What you should know:
Wesley was trying to learn how to be just like his old man, a villain called The Killer. After his death, the Killer’s friends and allies took Wesley in, let them in on their secrets and taught him how to be a super villain. While this was happening, Wesley ended up in the middle of a power struggle between the villains. Soon, nearly every one was dead except for Wesley and the man who planned everything, his father.

What happened:
I think Mark Millar just doesn’t know when to shut up. He puts together a technically sound and good miniseries and then he manages to blow it all in the last two pages where he rubs it in the readers face how clever and brilliant he is. The problem is that Millar’s repeating himself. In too many ways, WANTED is just a retelling of the story that he told last year in SUPERMAN: RED SON.

In the last issue of WANTED, we saw the massive super villain war. In this world that Millar tried to construct that’s supposed to be so similar to our own reality, the villains had succeeded in having their own “Crisis on Infinite Earths”-type reboot where they wiped out the super heroes and made the world forget that super powers even existed. From the shadows then, the villains controlled and ruled the world. Wesley, long ago abandoned by this father, is introduced to this world and taught what it means to be in power. Teaching him violence and depravity, they make Wesley into “a real man.” For the first five issues and throughout Wesley’s training, the morals of this book always seemed tongue in cheek. For all of the over-the-top villainy and horror going on during the series, it seemed like the heart of it was trying to be about a boy being forced to grow up into his father’s legacy.

For most of this issue, that’s exactly what the story is about as Wesley’s father explains everything to him. Since The Killer abandoned Wesley and his mother when Wesley was only eighteen weeks old, The Killer has never really been that far away, keeping a protective eye on his son during the bad guy’s reboot of reality. The older Killer now feels it’s necessary to explain to Wesley the events of his life. Father/Son bonding is happening here and the book even leads up to an understandable and violent end. For a story about Wesley becoming the man his father wanted him to be and taking his place, there’s only one way that this series could end. Without giving too much away, there can’t be two Killers running around.

There are so many ways this story could have worked out. It could have been a story about fathers and the legacies that they leave for their sons. It could have been about sons having to live up to those legacies. It could have been the ultimate word on villains and the type of people they really are. Millar makes it about how clever he is and how you’re a slave and a drone. In two pages, Millar throws everything in your face and makes it about how Wesley’s just another asshole in the world on a power trip. I’ve wasted over $20 on a series about a jerk who falls in line with what those around him expects and becomes an even bigger loser that he was when the series started and he had a girlfriend who cheated on him.

Wesley’s dad isn’t a good father. That’s the point of the story. He’s a jerk and an idiot who abandoned his wife and kid because he didn’t want to be shackled down into an “ordinary” life. The series is about him seemingly trying to correct his mistakes but in the end he just creates another version of himself who has no redeeming values at all. Honestly, I’m not looking for “and they lived happily ever after” ending here and yet that’s what Millar throws in our face. “And they all lived happily ever after as they bend everyone over. The end.” Thank you so much, Mr. Millar. Can I please have another?

Two pages. That’s all it took to ruin six issues for me. But not everything is at a lost. J.G. Jones artwork really clicked together by the end of the series. Dynamic and expressive, this is the strongest work that he’s done but it’s wasted on a series that had no heart to it. Dick Giordano steps in to help on a flashback sequence that involves a villainous key party where Wesley’s parents hook up. For some reason, I’m still amazed that Giordano drew a key party. That part just seems hilarious to me.

WANTED is just the mirror opposite of SUPERMAN: RED SON. In the Superman miniseries, it was about an abandoned boy learning to be a hero by those around him. Influenced by the communists that raised him as well as those that he fought, Superman struggled to become a man. That’s also Wesley’s story but from the opposite side of the legal fence. Both men rise to power and essentially become leaders of the world in their struggles to adulthood. Millar even repeats the circular tricks at the end where the present ends up dovetailing into the past to set up a moebius-like story that bends backwards upon himself. The difference? RED SON had a heart to it where you’re rooting for the characters. By the end of WANTED, I didn’t care what happened to Wesley. I just wanted to put the book away and get on to something good.

Note part 2: I picked up the first hardcover edition of this series when it came out and I think my stance on the book softened a slight bit. Millar still undermines his story with the last two pages and he’s also spent the last couple of years rewriting Wanted as both The Ultimates and in his current Kick-Ass. Millar’s ultra-realistic approach to super-powers lately has been beaten into the ground. You know it’s difficult when he tries to apply that approach to the Fantastic Four, the house that Stan and Jack built. Wanted remains unique in that it looks at what happens when the bad guys truly and honestly do win and I still enjoy the way Millar and Jones weaved in classic stories and characters that we would all be familiar with. I guess since the movie is opening this weekend, Millar really won the day but I think ultimately that Wanted (the comic) will go down as a fascinating failure– a book we’ll always wonder what could it have been if Millar had just pulled back a slight bit at the end.

Covering the same topic

• A story in search of characters- a review of Final Crisis #3