Ah, Mark Millar. Of all the big name comics creators, none quite resemble a psychologically troubled child as much as the Glaswegian writer of “The Ultimates.” Making Garth Ennis look like Craig Thompson, most of his work is personified by a spectacularly juvenile, sexist, misogynistic worldview, which never fails to make the reader feel a little bit unbathed. But, thanks to the success of “Wanted” (and, to a lesser extent, “Kick-Ass”), he’s fairly hot property, and it looks like another adaptation of his work is on the way.
Millar (who’s somewhat unreliable as a source on his own work, having previously claimed he’d approached to write the next “X-Men,” a claim strenuously denied by Fox) spent much of last week teasing a huge announcement and it came yesterday, with Bleeding Cool, swiftly followed by Deadline, reporting that Fox have picked up the rights to Millar’s most recent baby, “Nemesis,” co-created with artist Scott McNiven, and that the suddenly omnipresent Tony Scott is attached to direct.
The comic, which is halfway through a four-issue run at Marvel’s creator-owned imprint Icon, earning fairly weak reviews so far, starts from the conceit “What if Batman was the Joker?,” and follows the titular supervillain, a genius billionaire who, bent on avenging the deaths of his parents, travels the world picking cops to torment, and finally returns to Washington DC to confront the cop who caused his family’s deaths. The source material is typical Millar, who never met a subtle undertone he couldn’t skullfuck while jumping from an exploding airship; it begins with a Japanese cop being run over by a bullet train, and also features Nemesis hijacking Air Force One and crashing it into Washington DC.
If we were to be generous, we’d say that “Kick-Ass” proved that adaptations of Millar’s writing can rise above their source, and that, in Scott, he’s found his perfect partner in bloated excess (Millar had previously claimed that Sam Raimi and Guy Ritchie were interested in an adaptation, but Scott probably seems like a better fit). We suppose the idea is kind of interesting, and that it could theoretically make for an interesting deconstruction of the superhero genre. But let’s face it, it probably won’t.
As we reported a few days ago, Scott is currently picking between three other possibilities for his next project, and with no writer currently on board this one, it’s a few years off from happening. But you know, consider yourself warned.