Mark Millar’s Clint Magazine is a collection of comics and a few articles mostly focused on Millar himself. Millar’s usually good enough in doses, will a larger one be good too, let’s find out. . .
CLiNT #2.1
Editor: Mark Millar
Designer: Russ Seal
Editorial Manager: Andrew James
Editorial Assistant: Mark McKenzie-Ray
Senior Editor: Steve White
Publishing Consultant: Lucy Unwin
Executive Director: Vivian Cheung
Publishers: Mark Millar & Nick Landau
MORE FROM MILLAR
This is the second iteration of the Clint Magazine and as above it features mostly Millarworld Comics. There are some other comics too, but we’ll take a look at all that later. The rest of the magazine is mostly focused on the creators and what they enjoy or happen to be working on. Unfortunately, this gives us two separate interviews with Mark Millar about upcoming movie projects, two interviews that could have been just one and given us some more info about anything else really. We do get an interesting 20th anniversary Lenore interview and comic, both of which were funny, if not a bit disturbing. By far the most interesting part is a bio on a Chilean actor, Marko Zaror, which honestly has me interested in tracking down some of his work. The other notable section is about a real-life Kick-Ass style vigilante over in London giving the magazine he named himself after an exclusive interview. This seems about half publicity stunt and half encouraging a bad. If the guy is fake, then the whole thing is just pitiful, but if the guy is real then his code-name is ridiculous and the magazine itself should really be more discouraging of the blatantly illegal activity. Yes, real super heroes would be cool, but it would generally be a bad idea for it to happen and the repercussions could be enormous.
SUPERCROOKS #1
Writer: Mark Millar
Artist: Leinil Yu
Co-Plotter: Nacho Vigalondo
Inker: Gerry Alanguilan
Colorist: Sunny Gho
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
MILLAR AT HIS BEST
The concept here, as Millar said himself, is X-men meats Ocean’s 11 and that is enough to be interesting, fortunately the follow through is also starting to pay off. The setup here has an old super-criminal, The Heat, get busted using a psychic precog to win bets at a Vegas Casino. The psychic is killed instantly and The Heat is told to bring back $100 million in a month. The other main character and team lead is Johnny Bolt, just out of prison after robbing a jewelry store on the morning of his wedding (the wedding didn’t happen). The two are old friends and The Heat finds him just in time to collapse after explaining the scenario. Johnny and his ex, Kasey, another psychic, start hatching a plan to help out, the biggest problem being the hundreds of heroes in the States, so why not go somewhere without heroes?
Yu is a great artist, managing to put the focus where it needs to be through a use of full, detailed backgrounds or simple negative space. The characters have a unique look to each of them and everything looks good. As a whole, the chapter sets everything up well and I am looking forward to the next. My only problem was an awkward moment with The Heat’s arm candy in the casino saying something that made no sense at all.
REX ROYD
Writer: Frankie Boyle
Artist: Mike Dowling
Colorist: Jim Devlin
Letterer: Chris Eliopoulus
WTF
Seriously, I have no idea what is going on here, and even if the disjointed style is part of the point, in fact especially if the disjointedness is part of the point, I am not enjoying it. The art looks good, but only just and it is not good enough to save the utter lack of plot from ruining the entire experience.
THE SECRET SERVICE #1
Writer: Mark Millar
Artist: Dave Gibbons
Colorist: Angus McKie
Letterer: Dave Gibbons
MORE MILLAR-Y GOODNESS
Another setup story by Millar here, giving us a Bond-esque spy thriller with a few twists along the way that are pretty funny. The open starts with a spy saving a kidnapped Mark Hamill only to have a parachute malfunction get both killed after jumping off a cliff at the end of a bloody chase scene. The rest is about the family, sister and nephew, of another spy and his eventual decision on how to handle them. The mother is a deadbeat and the kid is a criminal despite some well shown and obvious talents and intelligence that the uncle sees in him, thus setting up the rest of the book.
Gibbons does a great job except for one thing, the mother never looks like the same person from panel to panel and the only way I was able to follow was her having different colors from all the other women. This wouldn’t be so much a problem if all the other characters didn’t manage to have a distinct and consistent look throughout the rest of the book. Despite that, the story is again interesting Millar work, making a twist on the typical and putting his style to it, though the family was more dysfunctional than necessary.
DEATH SENTENCE #1
Writer: Montynero
Artist: Mike Dowling
Letterer: Comicraft’s Jimmy Betancourt
BEST OF THE BOOK
Montynero has a very intriguing idea here, a disease that grants you super powers but kills you over the course of about six months. The story so far looks to focus on three sufferers; an artist for some sort of print work that quits when her boss is a dick before she has a chance to tell him of the disease, a musician going through more of the sex and drugs part than the rock n’ roll, and a celebrity horn-dog. Only the second one develops powers before the end of the issue by phasing through some cuffs to escape thugs trying to get money from him.
Dowling’s work here is quite sketchy, but in a way that looks good for the finality that all the characters are going to have. In fact, the least sketchy segment is with the upbeat celebrity, so this may be an intended stylistic choice that really works. So far, I like the concept and I like potential of the characters, I’d pick up the next one.
BOTTOM LINE: If you like Millar
Then you should already have this book. If you aren’t a fan of Millar, well, the two stories of his here are toned down a bit from his previous works and of the other two, one has real potential to be fantastic and the other is crap. Unfortunately for the magazine, Rex Royd brought it down bad and I can really only give this a 2 out of 5. The other three stories are worth a read and most of the articles were worthwhile, but a few low points really bring down the quality of the rest.
[rating:2/5]