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Unashamed: In Which Concluding Remarks are Made and a Book is Announced, Shameless? The Superhero Tales of Mark Millar

I hate to break a promise, even if it’s made to no-one but myself. Yet things have changed since I typed “to be continued” at the foot of the last section of Shameless? to be… [more]

“It Would Have Made a Great Comic”: On Skrull Kill Krew #1-5 (The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 43)

Continued from last week. Yet whatever its strengths, Morrison and Millar’s 2099 proposal went to waste, with a far less sweeping and less nostalgic series of changes being introduced instead. As part of the ongoing… [more]

“To Shoot Every Last Skrull On Earth”: On Skrull Kill Krew #1-5 (The American Superhero Comics Of Mark Millar, Part 41)

Continued from last week. Despite the precipitous collapse and subsequent flatlining of Swamp Thing’s sales in the second half of 1994, Millar’s career at the half-point of the decade still appeared to be in rude… [more]

“About Sixty Per Cent Happy”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 40

Continued from last week. The rest of Millar’s Swamp Thing tales shared the same weaknesses as River Run, although they only intermittently reflected the same strengths. The likes of Twilight of The Gods and Chester… [more]

“So Many Questions are Left Unanswered”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 39

Continued from last week. For the third time in ten months, Millar’s Swamp Thing had presented abortion in a wholly negative light. Nothing that he’d write in the remainder of his tenure on the book… [more]

“Why d’You Think God Created Abortion Clinics?”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 38

Continued from last week. After abortion as a vehicle for laddish jokes and abortion as a means for evoking terror, Millar turned to abortion as a symbol of crass irresponsibility. (ST: 147/152/157) In Sink Or… [more]

“Terminate This Pregnancy”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 37

Continued from last week. Millar makes more use of the topic of abortion in Swamp Thing than most superhero writers do in a lifetime. In each case, abortion is used either as a symbol of… [more]

“Her Deepest, Hidden Secrets”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 36

Continued from last week. As so often before, Murder In The Dark saw Millar indulging in two of his greatest fascinations: body horror at the expense of helpless female victims and the tradition and dogma… [more]

“Do You Remember Earth Two or Earth X?”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 35

Continued from last week. Though Millar’s River Run tales are rarely anything other than predictable, they’re also undeniably focused, purposeful and enthusiastically told. Even when he’s sketching out the inevitably baleful career of a psychopathic… [more]

“There is Something Wrong with This World”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 34

Continued from last week. Even when Millar put an appropriately exotic backdrop to use, he frequently neutered its dramatic potential. The desert setting used to conclude the first arc was portrayed in an entirely throwaway… [more]

“Not Walking in Alan Moore’s Footsteps”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 33

Continued from last week. Of course, there’s no reason why an obvious ending can’t also be a satisfying one. Similarly, a protagonist that seems to lack personality or potency can still be used in a… [more]

“Even The Worst Among Them Has Potential”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 32

Continued from last week. So, the Millar who wrote Swamp Thing was enthusiastic, ambitious, and ethically engaged. But for all his efforts and good intentions, and for all the occasional highpoint, the run was heavy-handed,… [more]

“Ritual Must Be Observed”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 31

Continued from last week. As for his two warring Lodges of super-mages, Millar seems to have used them as a symbol of religious sectarianism and reconciliation. Their differing interpretations of how to save the world… [more]

“Why Try to Create a New God?”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 30

Continued from last week. But for all the carelessness and clumsiness of Millar’s scripts, his and Morrison’s Swamp Thing consistently displays a deliberate and serious moral purpose. Indeed, the comic persistently plays out two quite… [more]

“Take a Look Inside My Mind”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 29

Continued from last week. It’s impossible to believe that Morrison and Millar’s Swamp Thing wasn’t intended as an allegory. For all that Morrison’s original plans appear to have been significantly modified by his junior partner,… [more]

“Old Souls, Dark Agendas”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 28

Continued from last week. The final pages of Millar’s Swamp Thing depict the Earth on the eve of a historically unprecedented golden age. (*1) Humanity has been empathetically transformed through the god-like Swamp Thing’s influence,… [more]

“The Spirit of Hatred or the Spirit of Love”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 27

Continued from last week. Other aspects of Millar’s closing tilt at Swamp Thing were less praiseworthy. Though the final arc appears to show little of the swaggering misogyny that saturated his earliest work for 2000AD,… [more]

“The Notion that Mankind is Diseased and Must be Replaced at all Costs”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 26

Continued from last week. The conflict between Millar’s two opposing teams of Masons appears to represent a clash of empathy and hubris, tolerance and tyranny, good faith and a world-razing secularism. Where one Lodge is… [more]

“The War Between the Super-Freemasons”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 25

Continued  from last week. Millar’s command of his craft wouldn’t significantly improve over the remainder of his time on Swamp Thing, though progress would undeniably occur. He’d dial back on the degree of redundant dialogue… [more]

“A Martyr for All Mankind”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 24

Continued from last week. At first, Morrison and Millar’s scripts were religious only in the very broadest sense of the term.  With the former’s influence clearly dominant, Swamp Thing’s series-opening crisis of identity is clearly framed… [more]

“[The] Most Morally Objectionable Comic DC Has Ever Published”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 23

Continued from last week. As ever, it’s impossible to precisely disentangle Morrison’s influence from Millar’s. Yet Swamp Thing’s storylines and themes certainly bear the stamp of many of the former’s recurrent passions; magic and folklore,… [more]

Killing the Planet: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 22

Continued from last week. Those first four issues of Swamp Thing by Morrison and Millar set the template for the rest of the series. The pretence of an everything-you-know-is-wrong reboot was swiftly abandoned, and “Alec… [more]

“Make Him a Monster Again, Make Him Dangerous”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 21

Continued from last week. Morrison later made a point of emphasising how central his contributions to Millar’s Swamp Thing had been; “I worked out a large scale thematic structure based on a journey through the… [more]

Sneaking Barry Allen Back: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 20

Continued from last week. Millar’s habit of writing Swamp Thing tales, which demanded the presence of off-limits DCU characters, never entirely faded. Even at the climax of his run, and despite almost three years of… [more]

“Try Telling That to a 23-Year-Old Who Just Wanted to Play with the Toys”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 19

Continued from last week. That “bloody big shadow” of Alan Moore’s extended far beyond the pages of Swamp Thing. Trying to compete with his achievements on the title was a daunting enough prospect.  But Moore’s… [more]