Mark Millar's CLiNT - Quick Thoughts

Y'know, I fanlad rage on Mark Millar as good as the rest but he’s finally crossed a line that has made me see him for what he really is. His latest venture is CLiNT Magazine and it promises to bring the funk, predominantly the UK funk to the UK funkers, and will also house his Kick-Ass sequel, subtitled Balls To The Wall. But this isn’t about what he’s doing, this is about what he is. Hit the jump to see what I think he is. And, no, that thought does not share the title as his new magazine.

CLiNT. Geddit? As usual Mark Millar is as subtle as a sledge hammer with his attempt to win over the audience, or possibly ostracise himself from them. Over time, Millar has shown himself as the king of the high concept pitch, or the jester of the low concept pitch, I always forget which way it goes. Here’s his latest offering in his own press released statement, no hyperbole added by me.

Comics by two of the UK’s most outspoken TV personalities and burgeoning writing talents – Jonathan Ross and stand-up comedian Frankie Boyle – will feature in CLiNT Magazine, an exciting new joint venture between Kick Ass creator Mark Millar and Titan Magazines. Millar’s sequel to his cult comic and smash hit movie will also feature in the monthly title to form a stunning line-up of stories.

"This is The Eagle for the 21st Century,” declares Millar, whose genre-busting Kick-Ass scooped the number one movie spot in America and whose previous work includes Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman. “I’ve worked on everything from Spider-Man comics to the Iron Man movie for Marvel in New York, but what really excites me is the gap I see in the UK market at the moment. There are absolutely no comic-books aimed at 16-30 year old guys and I think CLiNT has potential to make an enormous impact, bringing a new type of magazine to a new generation.

“I want this to be edgy and irreverent, the kind of thing guys will be passing around lunch-halls and common rooms, and there’s nobody I’d rather have creating new characters for CLiNT than Jonathan and Frankie. They’re both brilliant writers and will surprise a lot of people with this stuff. The last thing you’d expect from Jonathan, for example, is a vampire strip, but he pulls it off amazingly. People are going to love this.”

Millar is also launching his sequel to the hit Kick-Ass movie in the first issue of the comic. "Kick-Ass 2: Balls To The Wall" has been scheduled for production in 2011 for a 2012 cinema release, but fans of the first movie can find out what happens two years in advance by picking up CLiNT.

The 100-page magazine will be packed with interviews and features from movies, games and television as well as four serialized comic-strips. The biggest names in entertainment will be featured every month and some will even be sticking around to write sci-fi, humour or horror stories after they’ve been interviewed and quizzed.


CLiNT #1
On-sale September 2nd in the UK
For future exclusive information on CLiNT, join:
http://www.twitter.com/CLiNTmag

Millar usually annoys me, to be quite honest, and I don’t care for what work of his I have read, but he sells and he’s a pretty big force, there’s no doubting that. Looking at his methodology for CLiNT I kind of appreciate what he’s going for. He sees a gap in the market and he wants to plug it. He’s very open with what he’s setting out to do and that’s actually pretty cool. And it is this concept that led me to realise that Millar just wants to recreate the salad days of his youth.

They always say that the golden age of any passion (be it comics, sci-fi, sports, whatever) is when you’re thirteen. You’ll never have that passion matched by the understanding of what you’re discovering again. All is new and all is awesome. Then you get old. Millar doesn’t want to get old, and his work proves it.

Most of Millar’s work reminds me of the sort of thing I’d spit ball with my brothers as we caught the train an hour each way to the comic shop in town when I was a youngling. We’d constantly one up each other with “Aw, wouldn’t it be cool if…?” moments and it was a blast. Well, Millar turned those cool thoughts into pitches and actually got to write them (Enemy Of The State, Red Son, Civil War, Old Man Logan, Kick-Ass, Nemesis, Marvel Zombies, which I know he didn’t write but it was his idea). All of those titles are easily summed up in one cool low concept tag line (What if Wolverine became a bad guy? What if Superman landed in Russia? What if all the heroes started to fight? What if Wolverine was old and went across the country with no discernibly logical purpose to see a bunch of cool Marvel fanfic sites? What if a normal kid wanted to be a superhero? What if Batman was a CLiNT?).

Sure, many stories are easily summed up by that elevator pitch line, but Millar’s just seem like they came straight from a teen’s mouth, and I’m sure decades ago they did. He’s living that fantasy writ large, no matter how many people might hate it. But now, with CLiNT I can finally see the icing on the cake. He wants this magazine to be the sort of illicit and sordid collection of pages that were passed under desks in years gone by. Frazetta covers with breasts, or Vampirella, or pin ups of Barbarella, that was the sort of thing stuffed into lockers and down boys’ pants. That Millar wants to create it is understandable, but it will surely fail. Those treasures of years gone by were classics, no argument, but they didn’t set out to be, they just were. They didn’t have to try to be it and then tell you all about how they were doing it, they just did it. Millar doesn’t have the ability to just let it get done he has to show and tell you all about it. It’s really kind of sad. I see this sort of thing in the classroom all the time, the kid who just wants attention and will say anything to get it. He’ll dream of how glorious it will go down and concoct masturbator fantasies of, finally, being king of the hill. But that’s not how the tale goes, sorry, mate.

I will addend to this rant one more side-thought by adding the sequel to Kick-Ass he has added a great flavour for people to go and try out the entire thing, but in the same breath he's probably also pushed away a lot of casual readers brought in by the film who would possibly want more but this news will shunt them into a guaranteed trade waiting situation. I'm interested to see if this means the new Kick-Ass is not associated with the Icon imprint from Marvel Comics.

Conclusion

Just the idea of naming his magazine CLiNT should be enough to anger me, Millar always aims for the lowbrow (stating that Nemesis made “Kick-Ass Look Like S#!t” right on its cover), but it doesn't. This will most likely cheapen his work (which seems to be what he wants, he’s not courting the mainstream with this, he’s firmly planting the corsage of hope into the breast pocket of the perverted and subverted) and sadly, it may give comics a bad name, in certain eyes and circles. Or a worse name, whichever you prefer. But I can’t hate Millar for it anymore, I just kind of feel for the man. He’s just trying to explicitly and overtly recreate the time when he was probably most happy, his youth. You can’t begrudge a man for that, but you don’t exactly have to support him either. You decide what you make of it. What are your thoughts about CLiNT?

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