#mark millar

On a lark I picked up Mark Millar's King of Spies from the library, best synopsized as " Mid-sixties James Bond learns he has an inoperable brain tumor and begins systematically assassinating everyone on the Epstein list in an attempt to clear his conscience." The comic is very visibly the result of Millar laundering his frustrations with all of the unpunished political monstrosities of the 21st century, and the fact that he'd write a comic like this shouldn't actually be surprising to anyone familiar with the political bent of his writing on The Authority, or hell, even his work on Kingsman. But for the kind of self-indulgent romp that it is, I did think it did a remarkably effective job of maintaining that the spy genre as as embodied by James Bond in particular is simultaneously incredibly cool but also basically unsalvageably morally bankrupt; you'd expect those two lines of thinking to fight each other more than they do, as they sometimes do when he tries to do something similar with superhero comics. I think part of why they don't fight each other has to do with his characteristic lack of subtlety; it's not a particularly artful decision to cap off four issues of popcorn revenge-thriller violence with a deadpan recitation of your actual political stance on the entire affair, but I can respect the impulse, at least, to want to make the audience Eat Their Fucking Vegetables.

Yo, here's where they brought Mercy into the comics for the first time. Two Amazons are fantastic bodyguards for someone like Lex considering who his worstie is

The special one-shot Superman for the Animals was published in connection with the Doris Day Foundation. It had a pull date of January 2000. Other than Superman and Lois Lane, all the characters who appeared were exclusive to that issue and were created by Mark Millar and Tom Grummett. The issue primarily focused on 12 year-old Tommy Delaney who was dealing with a psychopathic friend who bullied someone to shoot a dog, which ended up having its leg amputated, tried to throw a cat off an over pass in a box, and tried to drown a squirrel. The issue also had a coloring contest for ages 8 to 12. The awards included appearing in a comic with their pet, passes to Six Flags, the book DC Comics Masks, the Batman/Superman Movie, or Comics for Compassion hats. The issue also included a list of groups kids could contact who assisted animals. ("Dear Superman...", Superman For Animals, DC Comic Event)