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rudecyrus
Nov 6, 2009

fuck you trolls

Dell_Zincht posted:

Okay, so this is pretty shocking even by Millar standards i'll admit, but apart from this, why all the extreme hate for the guy?

Seriously, educate me on why I should hate this man and not buy his comics because i've ignorantly bought and enjoyed immensely Kick-rear end, Hit-Girl, The Secret Service, MPH, Nemesis and Chrononauts. I like both Kick-rear end movies (even if the sequel was disappointing compared to the first) and both Kingsman movies and own them all on Blu-Ray. I know a fair bit about Millar from reading his editorials and other strips in CLiNT magazine.

Am I just missing something? I started reading comics around 2008/2009, if that helps.

He has interesting ideas, but every one of them are delivered with viscous callousness. You can boil down every single one of his comics to "humanity is terrible." He has two gimmicks: crass jokes and ultra-violence, and little else. He's a misanthropic teenager in a man's body.

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WeedlordGoku69
Feb 12, 2015

by Cyrano4747

Dell_Zincht posted:

Okay, so this is pretty shocking even by Millar standards i'll admit, but apart from this, why all the extreme hate for the guy?

Seriously, educate me on why I should hate this man and not buy his comics because i've ignorantly bought and enjoyed immensely Kick-rear end, Hit-Girl, The Secret Service, MPH, Nemesis and Chrononauts. I like both Kick-rear end movies (even if the sequel was disappointing compared to the first) and both Kingsman movies and own them all on Blu-Ray. I know a fair bit about Millar from reading his editorials and other strips in CLiNT magazine.

Am I just missing something? I started reading comics around 2008/2009, if that helps.

everyone else has more or less said it, but... the best way I can put it is by comparison to another writer who catches a lot of poo poo for extreme edge, Garth Ennis.

if you pick up a Garth Ennis comic, say, Punisher MAX or Preacher, you're probably going to get something really loving nasty. Punisher MAX has an arc where Frank Castle fights Romanian child traffickers, and if I went on about all the depravity in Preacher we'd be here a while. but what those comics also have is a good, coherent story below all the surface-level depravity.

Punisher MAX is fundamentally a character study on Ennis' version of Frank, with a lot of focus given to his thoughts and general psyche; it ends up being a story about a guy who learned how to kill, wasn't able to stop killing when the time came, and despite finding a way to seemingly do some good for the world with it, hates himself for it. he's John Wick if John Wick had never actually gotten a taste of a normal life.

Preacher is a road-trip story about a broken man trying to go find God and ask him "HEY WHAT THE gently caress," and ends up being a pretty deep meditation on the American idea of masculinity and how that intersects with the Judeo-Christianity embedded into our culture. hell, even Crossed is fundamentally a story about human nature in the face of extreme adversity, even if it doesn't go as deep as the other two (partly due to not being as long).

I can't say the same thing about a single loving thing Millar has written, that I have read. instead of actually having any kind of deep, meaningful theme to any of his work, the best he can do is a surface-level middle finger to something else. he's particularly fond of doing constant variations on the same "gently caress YOU FOR LIKING SUPERHEROES" "theme," like Kick rear end, Wanted, Nemesis, arguably even Civil War. and when that's all a work is even capable of saying, I'm pretty comfortable writing it off as a bunch of blood and fury signifying nothing.

with The Unfunnies, what really just absolutely loving galls me about it is that this is what Millar's idea of comedy is. Millar's idea of telling you a joke is just... dropping something horrible and disgusting out of nowhere, and then just waiting expectantly for you to laugh. and they're not things that you would expect anyone with a soul to find inherently funny that way. which speaks to the idea that "anyone with a soul" is not a category that includes Millar, and that there is just a shriveled-up darkness where his heart should be. and that makes me hate him. deeply, and personally.

WeedlordGoku69
Feb 12, 2015

by Cyrano4747
and like, I should note that while I have a major, major soft spot for Ennis, he's not a very well-liked writer and even I don't love everything he's ever done. if the best Millar can do is "Ennis but worse" that says he's a pretty loving lovely writer.

Alhazred
Feb 16, 2011




LORD OF BOOTY posted:

and like, I should note that while I have a major, major soft spot for Ennis, he's not a very well-liked writer

He is compared to Millar. Morrison doesn't like him, Ennis felt comfortable dunking on him in a Marvel comic and Brubaker wrote a Captain America story about la resistance because of MIllar's "do you think this stands for France" bit.

Dreqqus
Feb 21, 2013

BAMF!
Ennis can be a pretty difficult read and definitely isn't for everyone. I don't love a ton of it but I've read more than I enjoyed. The one thing I can say about Ennis over Millar is that, while frequently nasty and a specific idea of edgy, Ennis's work is almost always making a point. Whether you agree with that point or not is another question. In contrast Millar reads like he's being edgy for the sake of being edgy.

Ennis is punk and Millar is a loving poser.

By popular demand
Jul 17, 2007
Probation
Can't post for 19 hours!
Alan Moore's Providence (and the two preceding lovecraft comics) is horrendously edgy, but he did manage to add something interesting to the Cth'ulu mythos.
He didn't just make child rape jokes.

Oxxidation
Jul 22, 2007
millar’s cynicism is facile, if you want to make it clear that people are witless foot-dragging monsters then just going “rape and murder” over and over is basically finger painting

fuckin Johnny the Homicidal Maniac had a better portrayal of humanity’s suffocating moral turpitude than this

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
Mark Miller's one of those few writers out there where the film adaptations of their work are clear improvements over the original material.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



Oxxidation posted:

millar’s cynicism is facile, if you want to make it clear that people are witless foot-dragging monsters then just going “rape and murder” over and over is basically finger painting

fuckin Johnny the Homicidal Maniac had a better portrayal of humanity’s suffocating moral turpitude than this
Millar would have made the one guy who's like "yeah gently caress you Johnny, I'm going to go home to Jesus, so gently caress your poo poo" turn out to be a child molester.

In fact everyone would be a child molester.

Even Squee!

By popular demand
Jul 17, 2007
Probation
Can't post for 19 hours!
Mark Millar is basically what would happen to the Dominic Deagan guy if he made it big.

WeedlordGoku69
Feb 12, 2015

by Cyrano4747

Oxxidation posted:

millar’s cynicism is facile, if you want to make it clear that people are witless foot-dragging monsters then just going “rape and murder” over and over is basically finger painting

fuckin Johnny the Homicidal Maniac had a better portrayal of humanity’s suffocating moral turpitude than this

JTHM is honestly a really, really good comic. Johnny is a really well-sketched and genuinely interesting character, its statement about humanity is somewhat more complicated than just "we all suck" (a major point of it is that negativity is a requirement of the human experience, and that a life of relentless positivity would be actively worse than what already exists simply because it's empty by comparison), and it's also legitimately funny as gently caress, because Vasquez is capable of constructing a joke and not just joke-shaped misery. The "SOMEBODY PUT poo poo IN MY PANTS!" guy pops into my head more often than I'd like to admit.

And beyond that, its cynicism feels real and relatable. It never goes quite so heavy-handed with it and lets even the worst people have moments that humanize them, which makes it feel less like just a bunch of meaningless edge piled on top of more meaningless edge, and more like a sincere work by a person who's just pretty deeply depressed. You come away from JTHM wanting to give Vasquez a hug, not beat him with his own shoes.

e: I'd almost go as far as to call it this comic's real good twin. They're both relentlessly depraved, and even have broadly similar plots (serial killer metaphysical nonsense), it's just that one's a good comic y'all should read, and the other is... The loving Unfunnies.

Mr Phillby
Apr 8, 2009

~TRAVIS~
"I wanted to portay a heroic rapist" is at least an original idea, a really, really bad one but thats still one more than Millar managed with this poo poo.

Edit: in reference to Dommic Deegan, I've never read Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.

WeedlordGoku69
Feb 12, 2015

by Cyrano4747

Mr Phillby posted:

"I wanted to portay a heroic rapist" is at least an original idea, a really, really bad one but thats still one more than this poo poo managed.

If that's in reference to JTHM, I'm not sure if that's even accurate to how it works out. One, Nny is super explicitly not a rapist and is shown to be horrified and disgusted by sexual violence, and two, he's not really heroic, he's more someone you're supposed to feel bad for by the end.

e:

Mr Phillby posted:

Edit: in reference to Dommic Deegan, I've never read Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.

:stare: wait what? I'm suddenly glad I never read Dominic Deegan, holy poo poo

WeedlordGoku69 fucked around with this message at 23:50 on May 18, 2019

A big flaming stink
Apr 26, 2010
This was just kind of immensely tedious. I have less of an urge to bludgeon Millar to death with this comic than an urge to roll my eyes clear out of my loving skull.

I think I've read too many webcomics. If you truly want to read a beyond awful webcomic that actually accomplishes the puerile edge that The Unfunnies sets out (YOU DONT) read Jack.


I found this incredibly apt image that summaries Jack by typing "the furry rape comic" into an incognito browser:



"drap" is Drip, the author's self insert that is an incarnation of the deadly sin of lust who used to be a serial rapist/murderer (you better drat well believe his exploits are shown to the reader in gratuitous detail.)

drat, honestly that sounds kind of like a funny thing to Let's Read. It's horrifically long and agonizing to go through, but......

hmm. I'm not sure anyone willing to participate in such a Let's Read is worth it.

A big flaming stink fucked around with this message at 00:24 on May 19, 2019

Fish Noise
Jul 25, 2012

IT'S ME, BURROWS!

IT WAS ME ALL ALONG, BURROWS!

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

:stare: wait what? I'm suddenly glad I never read Dominic Deegan, holy poo poo
Oh, yeah, if you've ever seen references to jazzhands anywhere around here, that's what it's about.

Zinkraptor
Apr 24, 2012

The Unfunnies was never going to be good. Even in 2004, the whole "children's cartoons BUT HOLD ON, THERES BLOOD AND GORE AND SEX AND STUFF" wasn't new and exciting. But there just... doesn't seem to be any point to any of it! There's so much stuff in The Unfunnies that just kinda... happens. Often, a bad thing will happen to a character, but it'll be a character that's completely disconnected from the actual plot - it doesn't add to the story, it doesn't make a point, it's just "look, a terrible thing happened to someone! OKAY MOVING ON!" The whole thing is just a series of things that happen that don't really add up to anything. The main Troy Hicks plotline takes up surprisingly little of it, and there's not really any justification for all of the other stuff (without him even around) other than "Troy Hicks was corrupting the cartoon world in some nebulous way!" which - though it isn't a plothole or anything - is a really unsatisfying explanation.

The closest The Unfunnies comes to making a point or having a theme or anything seems to be Troy Hicks' backstory - but it completely messes that up as well. Looking at it generously, The Unfunnies can almost be read as a criticism of overly edgy stories like this - the villain is the author, after all, who is evil for making all these things happen to the characters for his amusement. Except, Millar takes it too far - for that to work, Hicks would have to be a "normal" cartoonist who is turned "villain" only because he takes pleasure in making all of this edgy bullshit happen to his fictional characters - but Millar made him a horrible criminal in the real world too. Thus, there's no conflict! Troy Hicks is just a guy who does terrible things to everyone, not just cartoons! This makes the whole "cartoon" thing almost completely irrelevant beyond an excuse to give Troy Hicks supernatural power over them.

I don't think The Unfunnies is remotely fixable, but if a few thing were switched around - like maybe Troy Hicks was more of a ""normal"" guy who manipulates the cartoon world as escapism from his lovely life or something like that, the violance and disturbing imagery was toned down (it's difficult to take seriously as is) with more "down time" to make the disturbing parts stand out more, maybe make it a commentary on disturbing imagery in comics like "Aha reader! You see him as the villian for hurting fictional characters, but you also purchased and read a comic about such things!" and, gently caress, I dunno, less child rape/murder... well, like I said, it'd still be really bad, but at least there'd be an idea or point behind it! The Unfunnies just fails on every conceivable level. It's pretty clear that Mark Millar thought "EDGY COMIC about cute cartoons" was a good enough idea to carry four issues on its own and didn't need any elaboration beyond that. Spoilers: it did.

A big flaming stink
Apr 26, 2010
Yeah, actually. Would anyone be willing to follow a Let's Read of something as beyond grotesque as Jack? Do I need to be removed from my internet connection for my own wellbeing for even contemplating such a thing?

Oxxidation
Jul 22, 2007
iirc the creator of Jack's antics once caught the attention of the FBI and i thought Jack had been permanently taken off the internet as collateral damage

no such luck

Oxxidation
Jul 22, 2007
i first heard of Jack on LUE and followed it on and off for a while out of morbid curiosity more than anything, and it's really not worth a second look

its depravity quickly becomes tedious and it's honestly sort of quaint in a lot of ways compared to the more outwardly benign but far more damaging/insidious crypto-nazi poo poo you find nowadays, and unlike the unfunnies it's loving interminable

A big flaming stink
Apr 26, 2010
I know! There's just so loving much of it, like thousands upon thousands of pages. And it's kind of, well, interesting! Not even car-crash interesting, it's like a sort of outsider art along the lines of Darger. Except instead of art, it's a sort of outsider moral philosophy. It's someone structuring a moral narrative in terms that are nearly unrecognizable to an average member of society.

A big flaming stink fucked around with this message at 00:19 on May 19, 2019

Oxxidation
Jul 22, 2007
it’s a decent demonstration of the unique sort of creative anarchy you saw in early oughts online works, but it’s all covered with a nauseating veneer of Jack-ness

here’s a chapter entirely based on nine inch nails lyrics

here’s a yearlong starship troopers knockoff arc

here’s a whodunnit where the souls of a group of bombing victims posthumously try to find out who among them killed everyone (spoiler, it was the Muslim)

Gaunab
Feb 13, 2012
LUFTHANSA YOU FUCKING DICKWEASEL

Kai Tave posted:

Mark Miller's one of those few writers out there where the film adaptations of their work are clear improvements over the original material.

Millar is the definition of an idea guy.

The Vosgian Beast
Aug 13, 2011

Business is slow
I've only read Wanted and my takeaway from that was that Mark Millar thinks the world is a horrible awful iredeemable place because Mark Millar doesn't get to go around randomly murdering and raping people who aren't Mark Millar, and it's your loving fault for being such a pussy.

A big flaming stink
Apr 26, 2010
whoa, the author of jack has a freaking profile on SA. That's kinda unsettling.

Nipponophile
Apr 8, 2009
If this thread leads to someone legitimately doing a let's read of Jack, I am going to be even angrier at Lord of Booty than I am now.

a cartoon duck
Sep 5, 2011

Fish Noise posted:

Oh, yeah, if you've ever seen references to jazzhands anywhere around here, that's what it's about.

my favorite part of that bit of dominic deegan is when the rapist's victim and travel companion get mad him for being a rapist, but then it turns out they were possessed by a demon or whatever to be angry and they apologize to the rapist, for being mad about rape

Calaveron
Aug 7, 2006
:negative:
Who the gently caress is this for

Sephyr
Aug 28, 2012

A big flaming stink posted:

Yeah, actually. Would anyone be willing to follow a Let's Read of something as beyond grotesque as Jack? Do I need to be removed from my internet connection for my own wellbeing for even contemplating such a thing?

Ohhh boy.

Back in 2008 I was working doing press work at a big private hospital and all the rich jerk doctors there basically took forever to do their pieces for the releases and magazines, and could easily get us fired for pestering themtoo much about deadlines, because after all they were doctors and we were plebs. So we basically has jack poo poo to do for 20 days a month and then had to piece the issues together in the last 8 days in a hurricane of madness and sleeplesness.

As a result, I would spend half my time at work browsing webcomics (I almost installed a Snes emulator at one point), and 'Jack' was always at the top listings, so I gave it a try.

It was one of two times that my assistant, who sat across from me, came over and asked if I was alright because my face was caving in on itself frowning.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012
The closest thing I can see for a 'point' to all this is an experiment to see what a children's comic would look like if the author were a serial killer - an insider trying to make outsider art, basically. Problem is that Millar decided (because he's a puerile shock-jock) to go full horrifying, resulting in a work where even if you get the joke, it's not remotely pleasant or engaging to read. Again, Humanimals is a much better take on the concept because it marries the weird, freaky poo poo with a strange sense of innocence, and because it's just the implied fictional author's ridiculous, otherworldly fetishes rather than anything actually reprehensible.

WeedlordGoku69
Feb 12, 2015

by Cyrano4747

Nipponophile posted:

If this thread leads to someone legitimately doing a let's read of Jack, I am going to be even angrier at Lord of Booty than I am now.

seconding this, do not do that

WeedlordGoku69
Feb 12, 2015

by Cyrano4747
seriously it sounds like it'd be entertaining but it is just way too loving long for this to be reasonable. The Unfunnies was four loving issues and I had to force myself to even do #3 and #4 instead of just saying "gently caress this comic I'm done" after #2. I cannot imagine what the gently caress kind of hell a let's read of Jack would be by the time it ended.

e: honest to Christ, the only way I could even see it being possible is a round-robin where people hand it off when they can't take any more.

A big flaming stink
Apr 26, 2010
well at the moment, the site is actually offline, and lord knows i am not going to download an offline copy of it to store on my computer.


But I still think it would be interesting! In the ways that a grotesquerie would be interesting!

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

e: honest to Christ, the only way I could even see it being possible is a round-robin where people hand it off when they can't take any more.

huh, that's actually a pretty good idea. But I would have to find multiple people as incredibly stupid as I am.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Didn't the author turn out to be a child molester or something, and that's what got the comic taken down?

WeedlordGoku69
Feb 12, 2015

by Cyrano4747

Terrible Opinions posted:

Didn't the author turn out to be a child molester or something, and that's what got the comic taken down?

if this is accurate then holy loving christ especially don't do the let's read :cripes:

e: again, if I compile this Let's Read into a single-article format so it can be shared around, what would be the preferred place to archive it? Medium? Tumblr? LPix SSLP test poster? a Twitter thread with screenshots of my posts?

WeedlordGoku69 fucked around with this message at 04:00 on May 19, 2019

A big flaming stink
Apr 26, 2010
...that would not surprise me in the slightest. Though I feel like that's what oxxidation is referring to here:

quote:

iirc the creator of Jack's antics once caught the attention of the FBI and i thought Jack had been permanently taken off the internet as collateral damage

no such luck

Dell_Zincht
Nov 5, 2003



Thanks for all your opinions on Millar guys, really appreciate it. I guess I don't really look deeper into his comics other than being entertained by the storyline and enjoying the artwork. I've always been a big fan of John Romita Jr which is probably what drew me to Kick-rear end in the first place.

I'm just curious, what is the deeper meaning behind The Secret Service in your eyes? To me it was just a pastiche/homage to classic spy movies, nothing else. The fact that the movie remained pretty true to the comic seemed to reinforce this.

One other thing, considering nobody on here has defended him so far - How come he seems to be pretty well respected in the industry? You don't get the big artists drawing for you or even names like Kevin Smith writing one of your character's runs unless your peers admire you, surely? A lot of writers would kill just to see ONE of their titles made into a movie. Did he just get lucky? Does he have dirt on the bigwigs at Marvel? What about the Netflix deal? Surely all that success must mean something?

Feel free to PM me if you don't want to de-rail this thread!

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



LORD OF BOOTY posted:

if this is accurate then holy loving christ especially don't do the let's read :cripes:

e: again, if I compile this Let's Read into a single-article format so it can be shared around, what would be the preferred place to archive it? Medium? Tumblr? LPix SSLP test poster? a Twitter thread with screenshots of my posts?
I think Medium would work best from among what you've said. I was thinking Blogspot or something but I'm an old gently caress now I guess. I feel like you want to make this a thing that normal people can read.

e: Also I bet part of why Millar got options is that a lot of his poo poo, due to his relentless growling about how superheroes are dumb poo poo for babies, would be relatively inexpensive to film compared to the recent spate in bonko superhero action. Ennis would probably be similar but he always has people who would require heavy makeup.

Shwoo
Jul 21, 2011

This comic is awful no matter what genre it's supposed to be. It feels most like a comedy, but it's too predictable to be really funny. "Hm, I wonder if this is going to end in rape and/or murder? It did? What a shock!" One thing that did sort of work was the rapist landlord reacting like a stereotypical cartoon character to being hit on the end, only to be hit again and killed, but that's probably the closest to subtle the comic ever gets.

It doesn't work as horror, either. The thing about the bad guy having complete control over the comic's reality could have been a little scary, but it's revealed too late to really matter, and he doesn't seem to be directly controlling reality before this.

And it's not a drama, because there's barely a plot and all the characters are thinner than the shadow of a piece of tissue paper. You can't even enjoy following the villain, because everything always goes his way. And also because he's a murdering child rapist.

Speaking of which, somehow the most unbelieveable thing in the comic is that, in-universe, it's drawn in Photoshop from death row, according to the infodump at the end. That's surprisingly nice of the prison system.

Alhazred
Feb 16, 2011




Dell_Zincht posted:



One other thing, considering nobody on here has defended him so far - How come he seems to be pretty well respected in the industry? You don't get the big artists drawing for you or even names like Kevin Smith writing one of your character's runs unless your peers admire you, surely?
He's comics are popular. It really isn't more complicated than that.

quote:

A lot of writers would kill just to see ONE of their titles made into a movie. Did he just get lucky? Does he have dirt on the bigwigs at Marvel? What about the Netflix deal? Surely all that success must mean something?

As I understand it he's better at pitching movie ideas than most of his colleagues.

Kai Tave posted:

Mark Miller's one of those few writers out there where the film adaptations of their work are clear improvements over the original material.

Then I can't even begin to imagine how terrible the source material for Kick rear end 2 was.

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Dell_Zincht
Nov 5, 2003



Alhazred posted:

He's comics are popular. It really isn't more complicated than that.


As I understand it he's better at pitching movie ideas than most of his colleagues.


Then I can't even begin to imagine how terrible the source material for Kick rear end 2 was.

Mass child murder and gang rape were two things that weren't in the movie.

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