When you were younger, did you ever wonder how you would fare as a superhero? Not a version of you with bullet-like pace, super strength, or the ability to fly – just plain, old, regular you? If you suspect it probably would have resulted in a horrific beating, imagine no more; Scottish comic book writer Mark Millar has put the scene down on paper so that you don’t have to. The adaptation of Kick-Ass by director Matthew Vaughn and co-writer Jane Goldman is currently riding high at the UK box-office, but it was Millar that first brought the scenario to light. Containing all the savage violence and ‘C’-word dropping children currently enraging film critics at the Daily Mail, it was in his comic that the story first took form. What on Earth was he thinking?
“It’s entirely autobiographical,” laughs Millar, speaking in a recent appearance at the Glasgow Film Festival. “A friend from school and I just loved superhero comics, particularly the realistic stuff, like Alan Moore and Frank Miller, and we thought; ‘let’s do this, let’s try and be superheroes.’” At fifteen years old and weighing in at a combined weight of around sixteen stone, it’s safe to say Millar and his cohort might not have been the most imposing deterrent criminals could ever face, they would have – as Millar now freely admits – ended up in hospital. Fortunately though, circumstance meant that their time of trial never really arrived; “luckily we were in rural Scotland, it was hardly Gotham central.” But this didn’t stop them trying. “We designed costumes and created characters for ourselves,” Millar timidly confesses, “I was called ‘Mr Danger’. I wanted to be like Rorschach from Watchmen, but I looked more like a walking Oxfam advert”. If Millar’s idea wasn’t exactly original, then his friend hardly fared better; “He decided to be Batman!”
Eventually Millar settled for writing superhero stories, rather than starring in them and it seems unlikely that he would regret his decision – he has recently become the biggest selling British comic book writer currently being published in America. Yet even today, as he publicises the second big-screen adaptation of his writing (the first being 2008’s Wanted), he observes his peers’ continued reluctance to let go of other people’s characters. “People always say that Superman and Batman are forever”, Millar tells his audience at the Glasgow Film Theatre, “but they’re not. They’re forever to us because we’re mortal, but things belong to their time and they evolve to become other things. What started off as Hercules five thousand years ago turned into Superman and it’ll be something else in two thousand years time.” The transition, Millar believes, is already underway and, following a conversation with comic book legend, Stan Lee (creator of such massive names as Spider-man and the X-men), the writer has developed an insatiable urge for fresh ideas. “Stan once told me that if he’d just been writing about his favourites then it would have all been Tarzan, Superman and Batman – no Spider-man, no Hulk, nothing. And I thought that was interesting, because now everybody just wants to do Stan’s creations when they could be doing their own.” Today, the much loved tree-swinger of Lee’s generation has as good as died out from the world of comics, how long will it be before the others follow suit? “I think we’re coming to the end of those 20th Century heroes,” Millar comments, “Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got Christopher Reeve’s cape from Superman hanging on my wall at home – those characters means a lot to me – but I see that as a particular period in my life. I just think they belong to a different era”.
It’s about time, Millar believes, that the industry produced some new heroes, rather than relying on those that have gone before. Ever the creative mind, he has his own way of describing the situation. “The way I think of it is to imagine somebody who’s thinking of starting a family. They don’t think; ‘Let’s try to resuscitate that old man and then maybe we’ll adopt him,’ they think; ‘Let’s just have a baby.’” A new generation of readers calls for a new generation of characters, and Millar – to continue his metaphor – hopes that he can help give birth to them. Nonetheless, he acknowledges that certain archetypes will always remain relevant. “There’s a line we can draw from the Golden Age of comics to now where you can see character types developing; Clark Kent and Peter Parker are kind of similar and I’ve tried to carry that lineage through with Kick-Ass.”
So, is Dave Lizewski (the eponymous Kick-Ass) the sort of super-nerd the 21st Century needs? Millar would like to think so. It’s a bold claim, but the writer assures people that he is not attempting to put himself on a creative pedestal. “I think a lot of is to do with the timing as opposed to the quality of the work. I think this generation doesn’t have its Spider-man yet, it forms a vacuum.” Millar is just lucky that his work has been given the opportunity to fill the void. But, at this stage, it is still just that – an opportunity. In order for a hero to be successful today, simply conquering the comic book medium isn’t enough; there is another art form that craves new and occasionally radioactive, blood. Hollywood has been riding high on the superheroes for a number of years now and with 2008 not only yielding the record breaking The Dark Knight, but also a summer blockbuster for the previously B-list hero, Iron Man, the genre is showing no signs of slowing down. That is, of course, until it runs out of characters. “I think that’s one of the reasons Kick-Ass became a movie within months of the comic book,” Millar muses, “there’s just such a hunger for it. Sony have bought the rights to my last story, War Heroes, and I’ve already had people ask me about my next book, Nemesis. Hollywood just eats up ideas so fast.”
It’s interesting that Hollywood should suddenly take such a strong interest in Millar’s work. When director Matthew Vaughn originally tried to pitch the idea of an adaptation of Kick-Ass, every major studio refused involvement unless drastic changes were made. The main bone of contention was Hit Girl – played in the film by Chloë Moretz. A supporting character in Millar’s story, she is an 11 year-old girl raised by her father, Big Daddy, to become not just a superhero, but a criminal killing machine – a stark contrast to the protagonist Dave’s more nervous approach. Oh, and she also happens to have a mouth like a sailor. For some reason producers seemed to think there was something unmarketable about the ultra-violent, swear-spouting, pre-pubescent youngster.
Considering some of the awkward territory Millar enters even speaking of her casting process, perhaps this is not surprising. “I was on a train, talking on my mobile, and I just went into a little bubble where I forgot other people could hear me. ‘Matthew and I have had a brilliant few days,’ I said, ‘we’ve just been watching DVDs of loads of wee girls!’” It’s the sort of discussion that would usually see your name joining a criminal register, rather than the box-office top ten. But a new kind of superhero film needs a new kind of approach and this is exactly what Vaughn and Millar opted for, deciding to fund the film independently before enticing distributors by revealing the first rapturously received clips at 2009’s San Diego Comic-Con. It’s a choice that Millar feels was essential to the film’s success. “If we had done Kick-Ass with the studios it would have been a sanitised mess and probably wouldn’t have even made it out theatrically. Doing it outside the system let us make the movie we really wanted to make” – 11 year-old assassins and all.
With an admirable share of positive reviews suggesting that the filmmakers were right to stick to their guns, the dust of controversy surrounding Kick-Ass may well be settling, but this doesn’t mean that Millar is ready to stop playing with convention. “I’d like to do a superhero film set in Scotland”, the writer reveals, speaking of a possible foray into directing. “I want to do something as cool as District 9 was to South Africa. I think it’s really interesting when people juxtapose two things you wouldn’t often see together – like alien invasion and South African politics. So I thought; superheroes and Scotland.” If the concept sounds a little BBC on paper, don’t worry, Millar – as always – has his own vision. “I really like Alan Clarke stuff, like Scum [1979]. I love the way it’s so raw and real. I think it’d be great to do superhero movie like that. I think it could be really epic; something unlike anything anybody’s ever seen before.” After seeing Kick-Ass, it’s easy to believe him.
