WANTED #1

What do you do when you take over Dad's business -- and he was a supervillain?

By Patrick Sauriol     December 18, 2003

Wesley Gibson is one of life's losers until unresolved family business comes calling. You see, 24-year-old Wesley is another poor schlub doing the daily grind for a boss he hates, living with the knowledge that his girlfriend is nailing his supposed best friend, and popping pills by the handful to deal with all the stress that's eating him up inside. Then one day a beautiful woman known only as The Fox interrupts Wesley as he's getting lunch to tell him that he's inherited the estate of his MIA father who was supposedly one of the world's greatest supervillains. Wesley's old life of serving the man is over and now it's time for payback.

The premise of Mark Millar's WANTED is an intriguing one: what would the average angry young man do if he found out he could do anything he wanted without consequence? Known for his mature approach with superheroes on THE AUTHORITY and THE ULTIMATES, here Millar is sort of doing the same thing except focusing on criminal metahumans (although there are lots of people who'll argue that Millar's depiction of regular superheroes in ULTIMATES and AUTHORITY aren't that far from being outright villains themselves.) It's an aspect of traditional comic book super adventures readers haven't seen much of save for the odd comic here and there (Mark Waid's EMPIRE or Warren Ellis' run on DOOM 2099, for example) except done with the savage bite and graphic violence Millar's work is known for.

While it's a neat idea and the first issue sets up the premise and plight of Wesley, the book feels a little light by the final page. For instance, if Wesley possessed his father's superpowers (which seems to be godlike marksmanship) all along, wouldn't there have been some instance when he was growing up that he noticed this? If supervillains really do run the world as The Fox, Wesley's contact to the criminal underworld, says, could she really kill all the patrons of a busy deli with impunity and get away with it? Shouldn't the media be picking up on these unexplained crazy mass killings -- or are they and every time we see another disgruntled worker that goes postal is that the supervillain equivalent of spin control? By the end of the book I found I was still more interested in the idea than any of the characters so far.

The artwork by JG Jones and Paul Mounts is strong although at times Jones' likenesses for Wesley and The Fox bear too much of a passing similarity to a certain white rapper-turned-actor and Oscar-winning actress currently playing a DC supervillain. Looks like a certain someone owns a DVD player and a copy of 8 MILE!

WANTED is a six-issue mini-series and it's likely we're going to see Wesley deliver some ultraviolence upon the individuals in his former life before long. I'm interested in seeing what's coming next but I'm also hoping that there's more for me to invest in before deciding whether I'll stick it out to the end. Millar's run on THE AUTHORITY seemed to bring a better balance of extreme asskickings and characterization; right now WANTED is a little light on the latter but I'm willing to see what the next 22 pages bring before making a final decision.


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