Wanted

by Mark Millar

[empressbrooke]

A friend of mine recently told me that the movie (with Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman) was better than this book. I had liked the movie, but I was skeptical, because how often does a movie version improve things? By my count, only twice so far (that would be [b:The Prestige|239239|The Prestige|Christopher Priest|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173026658s/239239.jpg|1688160] and [b:The Children of Men|41913|The Children of Men|P.D. James|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1169779918s/41913.jpg|1142]). When I picked this up from the library, I briefly flipped through it and noticed that the Angelina Jolie character is actually black in the book. Oh Hollywood, I thought, you are so white and offensive (Jake Gyllenhaal as the Prince of Persia, anyone?).

Then I read the book, and I thought, well, maybe I should revise my opinion on how Hollywood dealt with this one.

The whole book is just this mad mess. The main character is purposely drawn to look like Eminem, for God's sake. Between that and a character made out of poop (so unexpectedly [/sarcasm:] named "Shithead") and the way rape and murder are presented as something really cool because if you're not doing that, then you're just a cubicle drone, I felt like I was reading something written by a 14-year-old.

There are elements that are shakey and undeveloped - what was up with the brief mentions of the alternate universes that they could travel to? And the supervillains are free to do what they want because they got rid of the superheroes, but they can't do whatever they want because superheroes from other universes might cross over and stop them? And according to the author, he only intended to have the supervillains in their costumes for one panel, but then he forgot and they ended up being in their costumes for the whole book. He forgot? How much attention was he really giving this thing? I feel like there's probably something to analyze in here, but it's just out of reach in the mess.