I bought this because I generally love all of Mark Millar's work. So when this came available, it was a no-brainer to buy.

It's a pretty dark take on what would happen if all of the villians won. The book works pretty well for the most part. The art is crisp for the most part and the pages are glossy. I would agree with another reviewer in that it's a little short. There is a whole backstory that doesn't really get fleshed out that would be a lot of fun.

Regardless, if you like more mature comics, you'll probably like this one too.

This comic is absolute pure Millar. It is permeated with every fiber of his artistic being. Sex, violence, political commentary........all a trademark of his career. The only difference is that this time he has created an original universe instead of an alternate version of a derivative universe (i.e. The Ultimates, The Authority, etc.)

However, it isn't perfect. Its good, but not incredible. The book is a tad short, and doesn't take enough time to explore the universe within.

Other than that, it is quite an enjoyable piece of work. I reccomend it.

Understand I love Mark Millar's work! His run on Ultimate X-Men is genius and his run of Marvel Knight's Spider-Man is the best Spider-Man I've ever read in the world of crazy cross-over's and lord knows how many years of history! But I just couldn't like this book!

I also love Fight Club, and WANTED is just too similar a set-up for my liking. Okay, I hate my job, lets go beat up each other and then blow up our old coporate bosses to feel free and alive - THAT kind of motivation I can understand. But my white collar job sucks and my girlfriend is cheating on me with my best friend - lets kill, rape, mame, and torture anyone and everyone for a kick....hmmmm....yeah.....not so much with the empathy.

I tried to give it a go. I tried to look past it all. But the whole time I kept thinking "This is Fight Club taken to extremes that don't need to be taken with a dorky protagonist that looks like Eminem". It's just a story that thinks it's cool when it's really not....like the protagonist, and I hope, NOT like the author.

There is so much wrong with story that it's hard to put it into words. This could have been a dark story about how the government drove the superheros to hunt down all the supervillians until all the heroes were used up. Then the supervillians are forced underground to fight the repressive government forces for freedom and recruiting new talent when they can ... but no, instead it's a light-hearted comedy about a young man who, to win $10 million, has to become an amoral, psychotic, sociopath serial rapist and murderer and then kill someone special he never knew. And we learn what Foxy on Comedy Centrals "Drawn Together" did before she got that gig.

The premise is that the super-villians out number the super-heroes so by getting together and planning their attacks to use their numerical superiority they wipe the heros out. To rub salt in the wound of the dead heroes they use a machine to make the world as if there never were any super heroes.

After the "change" life has never been so boring for super-villians. There is no consequences for their actions. There is no danger. They are free to do as they please except!!! They must never wear their costumes where ordinary people can see them. Rictus and the Future had it right.

The art is excellent. The story could have gone many directions but the one Mr. Millar took it in made this a poor use of carbon.

Sporting a cover image that is simple yet sure to grab attention on the shelves, Mark Millar and JG Jones' WANTED trade paperback had been on my "to buy" list for some time. I finally plopped down the cash for the book this week with high expectations, as Millar had accomplished the near-impossible several years ago by piquing my interest in the Authority, as well as producing some interesting work with DC's Superman: Red Son and Marvel's Ultimates. After reading WANTED, I have to say that, while the premise is quite fascinating, the story itself was yet another case of shock value substituting for good writing.

WANTED collects issues 1 - 6 of Millar and Jones' series, plus a great pin-up and sketch gallery. Let's get the basics out of the way first: Wesley Gibson is the ultimate loser - he has a dead-end job, a cheating girlfriend, and no backbone. This drudgery is interrupted when Wesley is surprised by the information that he has just inherited the legacy of his deceased deadbeat dad, the rapid-firing supervillain The Killer. He is even more surprised by this information because no one is aware that superhumans even exist! Over the following months, under the tutelage of arch-criminals Professor Solomon Seltzer and The Fox, Wesley learns of the shadowy history of superhumans on Earth and is transformed into a killing machine in the mold of his father, while slowly coming to the realization that things aren't quite what they seem to be. Rumor has it that Millar pitched this idea to DC Comics as a story of the son of either Deathstroke or Deadshot, and I can believe it, as almost every character contained within is an analogue of some DC character (with a few Marvels thrown in for good measure).

Jones' art is excellent - seriously: WOW! It couldn't be better. His skill with faces, physiques, action sequences, and layouts are all on good display here. My favorite aspect of the art, however, is the backgrounds, which often consist of glimpses of thinly-disguised DC and Marvel villains. It's much like the "spot-the-hero game" readers could play with Alan Moore and Gene Ha's Top Ten.

As for the story... it started out quite well; in fact, the first 2 issues really had my attention. But it quickly slides into a mess of blood, guts, cursing, sex, and general amoral behavior, and while this story IS indeed about super-villains, I don't feel that the gruesome details were necessary to make that point. In some ways, these elements undo a lot of what Millar was trying to accomplish by showing Wesley's growth from weakling into warrior. For example, you can have heroes, and you can have anti-heroes, and while villainy may not a noble profession, you can't help but root for Wesley to leave his dreary life behind and accept his destiny. But when the writer then dives so deeply into the nature of that character, to the point that the anti-hero is no longer just a victim of circumstance, but revealed to be a mass murderer, terrorist, thug, thief, elitist, and serial rapist (and what's more: just for the thrill of it), there's nothing left for me to root for. In fact, as I neared the end of the book, I was hoping that it would conclude with Wesley taking a bullet to the brain, as that's the only way I could see this story ending on a high note: you live by the sword, you die by the sword. As for the ending, by the time I reached the final chapter, I realized that Millar had pulled a fast one, where the events depicted in the beginning of the story were not quite as they appeared. While he did leave himself some leeway for this, he took great liberties with the introductory narrative, to where the ending was essentially a cheat, pure and simple. If that was the plan all along, then chapters 2 through 5 seem pretty unnecessary, upon reflection. In spite of all of this, I will give Millar a thumbs up for the way in which he blurs the line between fantasy and reality. The supervill