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Humble Comics Bundle – Millarworld
Aug. 15th, 2021 10:26 pmJupiter’s Legacy (volumes 1 – 4) – Somewhere along the line, the miniseries Jupiter’s Circle got repackaged as the first volume of Jupiter’s Legacy. (I think in the “Netflix Edition”, which this is.) There's a volume 5 that isn’t included in this bundle, but it ends sensibly here with the villains defeated, the original characters' plots resolved, and most of the mysteries revealed. Honestly, this series spends too much time building up characters without really developing them (one thing the TV series actually did better) just to kill them suddenly and abruptly. I maintain my stance that Alan Moore's Supreme and John Byrne's Superman & Batman: Generations did the “repudiation of the Silver Age” and “conflict among generational superheroes” better.
The Magic Order – Actually very similar to Jupiter’s Legacy, just with a secret order of wizards instead of superheroes, which means they have less well-defined powers and slightly different tropes. It holds together decently as a single-volume story.
American Jesus – Jodi was a normal kid in 80s America, until he miraculously survived being hit by a truck and started demonstrating all sorts of other superpowers. Turns out his parents are part of some sort of cult and he’s the second coming of Jesus. It’s a big mess of premonitions and foreshadowing that hints to a much larger story in the 21-year interim between the framing narration and the main events...but apparently this is everything that was published in 2004 and then the series stopped. It’s being repackaged as “volume 1” now because the sequel just recently started coming out and isn’t even collected yet. Maybe they’ll actually make it more than one volume and pay off some of the setup; I’ll check back in a few years.
Reborn - What really happens when you die: You go to a sci-fi/fantasy world, meet everyone you’ve ever known, and get superpowers based on how good a person you were. And then go to war against the city of bad people who are more monstrous depending on how bad they were. There are gaping holes in the worldbuilding that would drive a moral philosopher to tears; and the idea that it was all a near-death hallucination is a more valid interpretation than most. This is another case “nominally volume 1, but they never made more.”
Huck - What if Superman decided to be a small-town gas station attendant and help people in secret, because he was just a simple, nice guy? There are a bunch of twists and turns to the story, but it holds together nicely and everything ends up both happy and satisfying. I think this might be the nicest, gentlest story Millar ever wrote (It only has a little Russian torture!), and definitely the most likeable protagonist.
Starlight: The Return of Duke McQueen - As a young man,Adam Strange John Carter Duke McQueen was transported to an alien world, where he saved the people from tyranny and had all sorts of exotic space adventures along the way. Then he returned to Earth, everybody thought he was nuts, and he lived a normal and boring 40 years until his wife died of cancer. Then a spaceship from that alien world appeared because they needed his help again. This is a fun sci-fi adventure romp in the same spirit as those pulp tales.
Space Bandits - A pair of female space bandits, both betrayed by their previous partners, team up for wild a revenge trip. It’s a fun little adventure, but feels a bit like Millar had a half-dozen cool sci-fi ideas, and came up with this story as a way to run them all together, whether or not they necessarily worked as a whole.
Chrononauts (volume 1) - Time travel is real, and you can build time-traveling jumpsuits with 100-year batteries, but the rules of time travel are as timey-whimey a mess as there’s ever been: The clock continues to run in San Dimas…except when it doesn’t. Changes to the past affect the future…sometimes. You can’t go back and stop yourself from doing things, except when the plot demands that you can. It’s moderately entertaining, but I’m kinda picky about my time travel logic; or at least I want it to be consistent. I think volume 2 is in this bundle, but I’m not bothering.
Prodigy: The Evil Earth - The world’s smartest man gets pulled into a search for an ancient conspiracy to bring invaders from an alternate dimension in to destroy the world. And by “smartest”, I mean “So hilariously over-brilliant his world can’t support other superheroes.” He speaks every language, masters every martial art, predicts events to the second and runs parallel thought-tracks to solve every problem he encounters. His only weakness is that he’s a risk addict and deliberately puts himself into dangerous situations. It’s an amusing thought-experiment of a story with some clever bits, but the villains are cartoonish and this suffers some of the common problems of trying to write a character much smarter than you are.
There were a decent number of Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl books included in this bundle, but I’ve never really been particularly interested in that franchise.
Overall: This is a fun collection of standalone stories that generally don’t require knowledge of an existing canon, which is nice. Millar is not my favorite author; he’s got a bunch of tropes he likes to rely on and blind spots in his worldview that irk me; but he does respectable work.
The Magic Order – Actually very similar to Jupiter’s Legacy, just with a secret order of wizards instead of superheroes, which means they have less well-defined powers and slightly different tropes. It holds together decently as a single-volume story.
American Jesus – Jodi was a normal kid in 80s America, until he miraculously survived being hit by a truck and started demonstrating all sorts of other superpowers. Turns out his parents are part of some sort of cult and he’s the second coming of Jesus. It’s a big mess of premonitions and foreshadowing that hints to a much larger story in the 21-year interim between the framing narration and the main events...but apparently this is everything that was published in 2004 and then the series stopped. It’s being repackaged as “volume 1” now because the sequel just recently started coming out and isn’t even collected yet. Maybe they’ll actually make it more than one volume and pay off some of the setup; I’ll check back in a few years.
Reborn - What really happens when you die: You go to a sci-fi/fantasy world, meet everyone you’ve ever known, and get superpowers based on how good a person you were. And then go to war against the city of bad people who are more monstrous depending on how bad they were. There are gaping holes in the worldbuilding that would drive a moral philosopher to tears; and the idea that it was all a near-death hallucination is a more valid interpretation than most. This is another case “nominally volume 1, but they never made more.”
Huck - What if Superman decided to be a small-town gas station attendant and help people in secret, because he was just a simple, nice guy? There are a bunch of twists and turns to the story, but it holds together nicely and everything ends up both happy and satisfying. I think this might be the nicest, gentlest story Millar ever wrote (It only has a little Russian torture!), and definitely the most likeable protagonist.
Starlight: The Return of Duke McQueen - As a young man,
Space Bandits - A pair of female space bandits, both betrayed by their previous partners, team up for wild a revenge trip. It’s a fun little adventure, but feels a bit like Millar had a half-dozen cool sci-fi ideas, and came up with this story as a way to run them all together, whether or not they necessarily worked as a whole.
Chrononauts (volume 1) - Time travel is real, and you can build time-traveling jumpsuits with 100-year batteries, but the rules of time travel are as timey-whimey a mess as there’s ever been: The clock continues to run in San Dimas…except when it doesn’t. Changes to the past affect the future…sometimes. You can’t go back and stop yourself from doing things, except when the plot demands that you can. It’s moderately entertaining, but I’m kinda picky about my time travel logic; or at least I want it to be consistent. I think volume 2 is in this bundle, but I’m not bothering.
Prodigy: The Evil Earth - The world’s smartest man gets pulled into a search for an ancient conspiracy to bring invaders from an alternate dimension in to destroy the world. And by “smartest”, I mean “So hilariously over-brilliant his world can’t support other superheroes.” He speaks every language, masters every martial art, predicts events to the second and runs parallel thought-tracks to solve every problem he encounters. His only weakness is that he’s a risk addict and deliberately puts himself into dangerous situations. It’s an amusing thought-experiment of a story with some clever bits, but the villains are cartoonish and this suffers some of the common problems of trying to write a character much smarter than you are.
There were a decent number of Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl books included in this bundle, but I’ve never really been particularly interested in that franchise.
Overall: This is a fun collection of standalone stories that generally don’t require knowledge of an existing canon, which is nice. Millar is not my favorite author; he’s got a bunch of tropes he likes to rely on and blind spots in his worldview that irk me; but he does respectable work.
