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The Unfunnies is the worst loving comic I have ever read, and possibly the worst comic ever written. This is not a hyperbolic statement. It is a comic that ran for four issues from 2004-2007, published by Avatar Press, written by Mark Millar and drawn by Anthony Williams. To the astute reader, this raises two massive red flags. First, Avatar Press is a company widely known for publishing transgressive horror comics and, generally, anything horrifically edgy and hosed up. Not everything they publish is bad- in fact, Crossed+100 and Uber are both very good, if not for the faint of heart- but they're not generally a company you want to read books from unless the book gets a decent amount of critical acclaim or you really like edgy poo poo. Secondly, Mark Millar. Oh God, Mark Millar. If you're here, you probably already know he sucks, because "Mark Millar loving sucks" is one of the earlier things you learn as a comics fan. Hell, you've probably already even seen the Nextwave cover I alluded to in the thread title:  We're gonna be getting a lot of mileage out of that in this thread, I feel like. For the uninitiated, Mark Millar is a British comics writer who has spent most of his career taking a giant steaming dump on the medium of comic books and making incredible amounts of money to do so. He has written a grand total of one good thing in his entire career, Superman: Red Son, which was most likely ghostwritten in its entirety by Grant Morrison. To give you an idea of just how awful as a human Mark Millar is, Morrison actively mentored him and helped him launch his career, and this is what Morrison had to say when asked about Millar later on in a Rolling Stone interview: Grant Morrison posted:There’s a very good chance of running into him, and I hope I’m going 100 miles an hour when it happens. Now, this may give you the impression that what we're looking at is typical Mark Millar. The Unfunnies is atypical for Mark Millar, in that it's every single thing you don't like about his work, with the dial cranked up to 12, because this absolute idiot hellfucker thinks he's being funny. To wit, Millar's wife reads most of his work, and seemingly at least tolerates his usual levels of edge; when she read this, she loving threw it at him. Someone who thought the Kick rear end and Wanted comics were perfectly well and good, and had no issues with "DO YOU THINK THIS A ON MY HEAD STANDS FOR FRANCE", got so angry at this book that she attempted to bludgeon its author with it. If there's any "ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE" warning for this thread, it's that. This is a Mark Millar comic that goes Full Millar to the point where even Millar fans, even people who are such Millar fans that they married him, and even Millar himself hate this poo poo. Next post: issue 1. (I consider Anthony Williams to be more or less blameless for this, for what it's worth. He's a legitimately good comics artist who did not like working on this series, on multiple levels, and I gather part of why it took three years for a four-issue series to complete was because of this. The series is basically on-brand for both Avatar and Millar, though, so I assume it to be moreso their fault.)
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May 13, 2019 21:34
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 06:18 |
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You sure reading and posting all about that book won't violate any rules either here or the Geneva Convention?
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May 13, 2019 22:23
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I won't be following this because gently caress Mark Millar, but just a warning don't embed anything that is NWS and be mindful of the piracy rule. Don't be posting whole or anywhere near whole issues.
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May 13, 2019 23:22
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Jesus Christ, man. You don't have to do this. It's not too late. You can still turn back.
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May 14, 2019 00:56
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I, for one, can't wait to see this and can't wait to regret that inability to wait shortly thereafter. Godspeed, bootyman.
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May 14, 2019 01:52
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e: settled
WeedlordGoku69 fucked around with this message at 06:44 on May 14, 2019 |
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May 14, 2019 03:46
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This is a blanket warning: this comic isn't just technically bad, it's genuinely morally loving unspeakable. This comic deals with... almost every issue that could possibly warrant a trigger warning, and handles them all maliciously poorly. I'll try to link and tag anything that's too over the line as  (if it's just because of nudity, especially graphic violence, or IV drug use) or  (if it depicts something I see as possibly triggering), but it's really basically impossible to talk about this comic in any detail without mentioning or discussing some really, really horrible things, right from the second page of the first issue.I really don't want this to be responsible for someone having an anxiety attack. I don't need more reasons to hate Mark Millar. I've got loving plenty. Alright, I'm stoned as hell, I got clarification on the piracy rule, let's get this shitshow on the loving road. ISSUE #1: Moe the Crow in: A POUND OF FLESH  Yeah. A pound of flesh. That's what this loving comic's going to take from me by the end, all right. Good title, Mark. I should probably go ahead and point out the elephant in the living room here: the art in this comic is loving awful. It's stiff, flatly colored, poorly detailed; it looks less like a professional comic book and more like some 8-year-old's DeviantArt Club Penguin fan-comic. That's not by accident. I'm not tin-foil-hatting here, this is something the artist actively acknowledged in an interview. Comic Book Resources posted:As Williams began getting scripts and read what he had to draw, we wondered whether there was ever a moment where the artist had to stop and catch his breath before continuing. He answered in the affirmative. "Every page, and it's getting worse. Somebody help him before it's to late." And when Williams began sending back finished pages to Millar, the writer did have a few recommendations and changes for the artist. "Bizarrely, I was drawing too well. I'd get repeated emails saying 'Make it shittier.'" "MAKE IT SHITTIER." "MAKE IT" loving "SHITTIER." Anyways, the next couple panels are the doorbell ringing, disrupting the one panel of stability and status quo we have gotten, and Moe going "HOLY HANNAH! ME AN' MY BIG DUMB MOUTH!" at the reader. He goes to open the door, and... it's the sheriff. Moe greets him cordially, wondering if his son's been throwing rocks at a patrol car again (hell yeah, good kid) and noting to the reader that he, himself used to do that as a youngin'. Turns out no, the FBI's with the sheriff because Moe's credit card info was found on a pedophile ring's computers, and they go to drag his computer off. While doing so, they find child porn videos.   I'm not showing most of this part because I have a loving soul, but I had to snip this panel. That loving line from Moe. Jesus loving christ. gently caress you, Mark. gently caress you for thinking this is okay. gently caress you for thinking this is funny. I hope Grant Morrison does run into you again, and I don't just hope he's going 100 miles an hour, I hope he's driving a loving 18-wheeler.We skip immediately to his trial, where "Legal Beagle" (creative) is interrogating him about several molestation accusations that have apparently come up in the sudden timeskip. He makes some bullshit excuses, and then, right hand to loving God, this comic manages to top that last panel.  TRIGGER WARNING: GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF CHILD RAPE, EXPLICIT HOMOPHOBIA, HOLY loving poo poo gently caress you, Mark, you absolute god damned goat fucker. Moe gets found guilty on three charges of rape and indecency, and asks for his cell to be on the side of the prison facing the elementary school. The judge, who looks like a green recolor of Snagglepuss, sentences him to twenty years, and says he hopes Moe's butthole is bigger than an Oreo by the end of it. Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains.   So here we meet Frosty Pete. Spoilers: Frosty Pete's the villain, as much as there is one here other than "Mark Millar, for subjecting us all to this god damned abomination." We also find out that things haven't been great for Moe's family in the meantime, to put it very mildly. Frosty Pete delivers a letter saying that the bank's going to take their car. The repo men immediately teleport in and take it away. Birdseed Betty resolves to find a job, since she needs a car. She doesn't find anything. When she comes back from job-hunting, she's already being evicted. The landlord coerces her into prostitution, and explains to her in graphic (but oddly childlike) detail what a handjob is. We then get a semi-graphic depiction of a cartoon crow woman jacking off an elderly cartoon... panther... question mark, and we get to see the panther's O-face. Or, well, I have to. I'm not making any of you all look at that.  Would you believe we're not even loving halfway done? Moe and Birdseed Betty commiserate over the situation and ask each other where the problems came from. Moe brings up that a guy named Troy Hicks started his descent into pedophilia. Spoilers: Frosty Pete is Troy Hicks. Prisoners talk more about raping Moe. This comic really likes rape. I don't like this comic. I don't like Mark Millar. I don't like humanity. More of Birdseed Betty and the landlord, Jungle Jim, weeks later. (I'm not joking, that's his honest to God name.) Troy Hicks has gotten him into pegging, now. Birdseed Betty fucks Jungle Jim in the rear end while Jungle Jim instructs her to call him a "poop-head." Another panther O-face. Apparently, it's not a good enough orgasm for Jungle Jim, and then... this happens.  TRIGGER WARNING: GRAPHIC DISCUSSION OF SEXUAL COERCION, ALLUSION TO CHILD RAPE Birdseed Betty responds to this by beating Jungle Jim to death with the dildo, to the point where his brain comes out of his head. She enlists the kids to bury him in the backyard. Frosty Pete comes by, somehow knows she killed him, and blackmails her into loving him. "HOLY HANNAH! TALK ABOUT OUT OF THE FRYING PAN AND INTO THE FIRE," she exclaims. This comic really likes the phrase "HOLY HANNAH!". I think by the end of this, it'll probably end up being like a loving Manchurian Candidate kill phrase for me. The issue finally, mercifully ends with Frosty Pete getting his dick sucked just off-panel by Birdseed Betty and saying he wants to see the look in his own face when he cums. We get to see the reflection in the mirror and, yeah, like I said, it's Troy Hicks. That whole thing is going to make sense later on, and also get so, so much worse. I hate myself for doing this, but I feel like I have to. More people need to know just how bad this is. Every scrap of success Mark Millar has ever achieved has been completely, utterly unearned. To call Millar a hack would be to be far too nice to him: not only is he talentless, but this comic makes me believe there is a loving black void where his soul should be. This comic isn't trying to say anything. It's just trying to make you laugh... and Millar's idea of what constitutes a joke is absolutely horrifying. Someone in RGD mentioned the Flintstones comic from not too long ago as a comparison to this. I really hope I've dispelled any thought of the two comics being in any way remotely loving similar by now. I'll give myself some time to... clear my head, I guess, and then do issue 2.
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May 14, 2019 06:43
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May 14, 2019 09:24
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Humanity deserves extinction because of that comic
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May 14, 2019 09:59
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Roth posted:Humanity deserves extinction because of that comic  just to make it clear why I'm doing this: it's become very clear to me that Millar is trying to sweep this book under the rug and rehabilitate his reputation. he doesn't deserve that loving luxury. he doesn't get to just pretend he didn't write this. he deserves to loving reckon with the Hell that he has subjected comics readers to, and even if me doing this doesn't stop him, it'll hopefully make people on here think twice before giving him money for anything. WeedlordGoku69 fucked around with this message at 14:01 on May 14, 2019 |
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May 14, 2019 13:27
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Why? Just, why? Why does this exist?
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May 14, 2019 15:28
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Hey at least the title's accurate
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May 14, 2019 15:48
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 when was this published?
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May 14, 2019 16:06
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watho posted:
2004-2007.
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May 14, 2019 16:11
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I think I hate life now
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May 14, 2019 16:22
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Odious Fuckboy Mark Millar strikes again
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May 14, 2019 17:01
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Like, I'm really genuinely angry about Millar, y'all. This isn't the work of some nobody. This is the work of one of the most famous and successful writers in the entire comics industry. This is the guy who wrote loving Civil War and (technically) wrote Red Son, and consulted on Fox Marvel movies for years, and just had his creator-owned imprint bought by loving Netflix. Not only that, but he's managed to more or less shed his idiot edgelord reputation, and his new books are making people think he turned over a new leaf. He doesn't deserve any of that. He deserves to be remembered for this. He deserves to have his legacy be absolute dirt.
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May 14, 2019 17:18
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I remember someone emailed a publisher as to why The Unfunnies wasn't included in a Mark Millar omnibus collection thing and they gave a vague non-answer and then clammed up. No one vaguely connected to Millar wants people to know about this comic. I'm pretty sure even Avatar loving Press of all publishers tried to bury it because I can't find it on their website and comixology doesn't even list it under their name.
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May 14, 2019 17:28
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Yeah. I'm not doing this apropos of nothing: I am actively trying to Streisand Effect this book so that Millar doesn't get to loving run from it.
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May 14, 2019 17:36
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Covok posted:Why? Just, why? Why does this exist? I'm betting because a man named Troy Hicks said comics can be art, but not the stuff Millar writes or enjoys. LORD OF BOOTY posted:Like, I'm really genuinely angry about Millar, y'all. I'd be okay with him being rehabilitated, but that would require reflection and acknowledgement. Like actively saying "Hey, I wrote a lot of garbage I'm a ashamed of, and a lot of it was even after my career took off and I should have known better." An unearned "Well that stuff makes me look bad, so I'm gonna quietly tuck it under the rug," while still being lovely is the exact opposite of that, but I'm just preaching to the choir here.
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May 14, 2019 17:45
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I think Jungle Jim is supposed to be a lemur. I've had the displeasure of reading the entire thing and it feels like the product of some 14-year-old on DeviantArt going through an edgy phase. Every page might as well have an aside by Millar saying "Are you offended yet, readers? Look how DARK and HORRIBLE this is!" Once you get past the shocking subject matter, though, there's pretty much nothing there. The terrible art undermines any emotional impact, there are no sympathetic characters, and the plot is little more than "bad things happen." The only really memorable thing about the comic is Troy Hicks looks like Mean Gene Okerlund.
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May 14, 2019 19:11
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mARK mILLAR'S eMERGENCE.
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May 14, 2019 19:23
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From a strictly business outlook I can see why Millar would get a chance to do something radical, he's quite successful. BUT WHY WASN'T HE STOPPED FOR THREE FULL YEARS?! Is there absolutely not one person in Avatar who reads the comics and they only found out by chance?
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May 14, 2019 20:49
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I'm gonna wager a guess and say there was some kind of contract at play.
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May 14, 2019 20:51
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Sure, but couldn't they have ashcanned the whole thing or even just force him to get a co-writer? Anything but put their logo proudly on it as if it's worth reading. I just read through Crossed +100 and while I recommend just the first 6 issues, it's conceivable that low rent gore fetishists could enjoy the rest of it. The unfunnies seem like the sort of stuff only a serial killer could enjoy.
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May 14, 2019 21:09
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Not sure if we should thank you for taking this bullet for us, or suggest a good therapist so you can deal with his need to punish yourself more constructively. By popular demand posted:
I've been curious about Crossed+100. The original series has some -vile- poo poo in it, but the characters have actual inner lives and spark other than being gore fodder and stereotypes. Not just that, but every now and then, it throws in a small, genuinely beautiful moment in to contrast with the bleakness and edgy stuff. Someone who despite being infected by the Crossed blood manages to fight off the madness to save someone else from a pack of monsters. Broken people who take a small step toward bonding with others again. Hell, I'll go ahead and say the moment when the survivors pause in the wilderness to watch a pack of wolves on a mountainside was one of the most placid, beautiful panels I've seen recently in a comic. Compare that with the Millar tempo who is just "Snarky joke/edgelord poo poo/human misery/edgelord poo poo/dumb trolling/glorious gore" without a breath of humanity.
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May 15, 2019 01:08
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Turnes out that following the authors is the strategy to pick: the original Crossed by Garth Ennis were cool and good and I lost interest in the franchise after he left, I only came back to +100 because Alan Moore. I actually liked Wanted quite a bit but there's no denying that in got lost up it's own a as by the end, and now that I see first hand what Millar does when he's given permission to go hog wild I can understand why.
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May 15, 2019 02:46
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By popular demand posted:Sure, but couldn't they have ashcanned the whole thing or even just force him to get a co-writer? Anything but put their logo proudly on it as if it's worth reading. honestly, I don't agree with it, but I get it. Avatar's whole MO is that they seek out transgressive stuff that nobody else wants to touch, and beyond that, they have absolutely no standards. keep the blood flowing and/or the tits out, and their EIC's happy, no matter what the rest of the comic is like. this is extremely a double-edged sword: sometimes you get loving awesome stuff like Uber and Crecy and Crossed+100, and sometimes you get something more like the later non-+100 runs of Crossed or Lady Death. and sometimes the dice just come up loving snake eyes, and the thing you just commissioned from a hot up-and-coming writer and told him to go hog wild on turns out to be the loving Unfunnies. like, I actually have a pretty major soft spot for Avatar, but mostly because frankly my lizard brain likes the same poo poo their EIC likes. i will never defend something like No Hero or 303 as high literature, but if I just want to read a quick mini where a bunch of people get hosed up bad in badass/creative ways, Avatar books usually have my back. this is just a case where they hosed up, and given the book no longer exists legally, I'm inclined to say they're aware. WeedlordGoku69 fucked around with this message at 04:20 on May 15, 2019 |
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May 15, 2019 04:17
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:honestly, I don't agree with it, but I get it. Hmm. No hero. I usually hear it mentioned in the same breath as Wanted, and that has been enough to keep me away up to the present date.
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May 15, 2019 04:55
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No Hero is... hard to recommend, really, but it's definitely not Millar levels of bad. If Ellis doing a "psychopath gets superpowers" story appeals to you on any level, and you've got a pretty strong stomach for gore, you'll probably get a kick out of it.
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May 15, 2019 06:12
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rudecyrus posted:I've had the displeasure of reading the entire thing and it feels like the product of some 14-year-old on DeviantArt going through an edgy phase. Every page might as well have an aside by Millar saying "Are you offended yet, readers? Look how DARK and HORRIBLE this is!" Once you get past the shocking subject matter, though, there's pretty much nothing there. The terrible art undermines any emotional impact, there are no sympathetic characters, and the plot is little more than "bad things happen." The only really memorable thing about the comic is Troy Hicks looks like Mean Gene Okerlund. Yeah, I read this (for free online after five seconds of looking for it because nobody wants to make money off of it) after Lord of Booty brought it up in another thread and had pretty much the same reaction. It's an empty shitpost of a comic that doesn't even bother using disturbing imagery most of the time, just characters talking about dark poo poo in a golly gosh gee-willikers voice. That voice is the main evidence that, as OP stated in that thread, this is terrible comedy and not horror as Millar tried to rebrand it later. Also lol that it took three years to publish four issues of this tripe.
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May 15, 2019 06:58
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No Hero, Black Summer and Supergod are a sort of trilogy from Ellis. I'd happily recommend Supergod and Black Summer if you want more uh sort of real world stuff thrown into superheroics. No Hero is kinda meh though.
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May 15, 2019 08:16
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Yeah No Hero has one thing going for it at the end and that's really it. Crossed+100 is an interesting premise that is absolutely ruined by the future slang being ridiculous and because everyone speaks it, it looms large over every god drat thing no matter how intriguing it is.
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May 15, 2019 08:36
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This is like A Serbian Film in comic form. Is it trying to be a comedy? It reads like it's trying to be funny, but all it has is an absurd premise, and that doesn't make something funny on its own. Pointing at the premise every couple of seconds and going "Look! Look how absurd this is! It's like Hanna-Barbara, but with rape!" doesn't make it funny either. It also reads like Child Porn Crow is supposed to be somewhat sympathetic and a victim of circumstance, and I hope that's not really the road it's going down. Ick.
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May 15, 2019 12:19
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I feel bad about Anthony Williams 
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May 15, 2019 13:13
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jesus christ
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May 15, 2019 13:14
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I had heard about this comic and how bad it is, but it's so much worse than I had imagined. I will be following out of curiosity, at least this makes every bad comic I've read look so much better in comparison.
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May 15, 2019 14:17
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Sephyr posted:Not sure if we should thank you for taking this bullet for us, or suggest a good therapist so you can deal with his need to punish yourself more constructively. I'd definitely recommend the first six issues of Crossed+100. While there are some extremely dark things going on, it's way more interested in moments of gentle humanity in a hostile world &c. Fantastically well written stuff. Hostile V posted:Yeah No Hero has one thing going for it at the end and that's really it. I love the future language, chiefly because Moore is approaching it from a perspective that's clearly grounded in knowledge of actual linguistics. He isn't just swapping out nouns in standard hokey sci-fi fashion, but changing syntax, some nouns from modern English become adjectives, words that used to be socially improper are now a part of polite speech, etc. It reads like actual linguistic drift - decipherable to a modern speaker, but operating under a new set of syntactic and cultural rules. As soon as Spurrier takes over it becomes standard hokey sci-fi language, sadly, because he doesn't seem to understand that linguistic grounding, and instead just writes it as "post-apocalyptic future people forgot how to speak normal".
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May 15, 2019 14:22
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Also, Jesus Christ, I had no idea this comic existed. It sounds uniquely Millar and uniquely bad.
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May 15, 2019 14:31
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Avatar has a thing about starting an engrossing series with top shelf writer and artist and then replacing them with complete hacks. It's like I lease you a Cadillac and four months later switch it for a cheap Subaru.
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May 15, 2019 14:33
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