Mindless Ones

Jupiter’s Legacy #1-3, by Marky “Mark” Millar, Frank Quitely and Pete Doherty

Forgive me for the somewhat less than timely review, but fuck me – three issues in this is still a startlingly uninteresting book, from pig (Millar) to lipstick (Quitely) and beyond (???).

It should go without saying that this response is merely a product of the reaction between the lines on the page and those etched into my long-suffering brain, but that in no way makes this a good or even halfway entertaining comic.  So while it’s true that both Millar and Quitely have thwarted all expectations here by failing to irritate and innovate respectively, the only real problem experience poses for Jupiter’s Chegacy is that a lifetime of reading and watching stories will train you to spot a tired duffer like this miles off.

Familiarity itself isn’t the issue here, per se: the old power/responsibility theme could easily survive yet another regeneration, and there’s no reason why a story about the famous children of rich superheroes couldn’t be made timely and interesting. It’s the old world vs. the new, the people who made the world vs. those who have to limit in it, and surely that’s an easy sell in this post moneygeddon landscape?   The problem, at least so far as this cynical critic is concerned, is more that no one involved in this comic seems particularly interested in how they’re saying anything:

Page after page of dialogue mounts up to little effect, with passionate arguments sitting on the page like undeveloped notes from the plot breakdown, lacking either the vanity of realism or the courage of true artifice.  This is a comic full of gestures, which would be forgivable if we were dealing with the mangled mitts and marvelous manifestations of Ditko-era Doctor Strange. Instead, Jupiter’s Children nods absently towards a half-busy suburban street in the daylight, hoping that you’ll find something interesting there and mistake dumb luck for careful planning.

In the spirit of increased generosity, I won’t pretend that there’s no value to be found in this book…

Answering! the gjallahorn blown by a respected campaigner of old. Scorning! the gnarled admonishing finger of grumpy teach and his selfblind pretensions to impartiality:

Jupiter’s Legacy is really a very dull, very poor indeed, comic, F-minus, forced, tired, artificial, very disappointing, get the fuck out of my house. Sapped of all grace and mana by over repetition of zombified tics and gestures: laughably inept in its socioeconomic analysis: not even pathetic in its yearning for the world of five years plus past: idolatrous in its devotion to the never-there assurances of the old American century? Everything you’d expect of its famous author-shyster. These few years, no one with a soul to save or a clue about anything important has stepped across the threshold of number 10, and no honourable man could ever drop his knee before the Queen of Evil.

But don’t take Frank Quitely’s drawings with you, for pity’s pain.

a) Fancy a drink captain, you unprofessional fuck? What drink? The one in your hand! Look really closely. Yeah there, take a sip. You can’t? It hasn’t been set up properly? The continuity and detail of this scene is entirely tossed off? Forget it cap, someone can go back and draw it in your hand later, sfine.

b) Magic sliding towards you wall? Is that? I mean, these are new, fashionable glasses, so maybe I’m, but come on, really? When Quitely was alive he’d nail the 3D modeling and that tricky perspective. It is possible instead nails have been run in to his poor dead hands prior to commencing work on this comic.

c) Sometimes I wonder if the dialogue in this comic could be any more dogshit? As for the pictures, don’t worry about any kind of aesthetic clarity, and for fuck sake make sure you don’t get any rough energy in there either.

PS – no nudery, just prudery. More fucking blood you prick, this is for kids!

Mark Millar’s writing is so bad it makes the art go bad, basically. Here’s hoping by christ for a resurrection of Frank Quitely before he has any more high profile superhero work coming out…