Reviews

Big Game by Mark Millar

romanjones's review

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5.0

Gotta hand it to Mark Millar because he actually pulled it off. This miniseries was a satisfying culmination and conclusion to the universe he’s been building for the past twenty years across all his comic book properties. This is Millar’s Avengers: Endgame, with a suitably big bombastic Endgame-style battle in the final issue for the fate of everything. I’ve previously been critical of a lot of Millar’s work, but I really enjoyed this.

There’s a ton of fan service and callbacks to previous stories. Even a huge payoff moment for a major character, the one who in a way started all this mess. Millar manages to incorporate a reference or character from every single one of his books into this 5-issue miniseries. Some parts work better than others. For example, the inclusion of the Ambassadors, Edison Crane, or the Chrononauts felt more natural whereas bringing in Sharky the Bounty Hunter or the Space Bandits felt more like forced cameos.

I read this event issue to issue as it came out, and at the time of writing this, issue 5 just dropped today. I look forward to rereading this. Highly recommend if you like the Millarworld titles.

gemgem18's review

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adventurous dark funny lighthearted fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

nsunny's review

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adventurous dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

As much as I find Mark Millar to be an over the top writer and not always the best, this was a wildly impressive crossover comic. He merged all his characters into one world and made it work. I don't know all the characters but he made me interested to know them.  I had a lot of fun reading it. So I recommend it

rebus's review

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3.0

I'm not familiar at all with Millar's world, but it seems as if he's taken the route that Alan Moore did in the 90s and created a lot of characters who are mere cognates to characters in the Marvel or DC universes, from the New Gods to Superman and everything in between (without the charm of Moore, who was paying a loving, if post modernist, tribute to the original heroes). 

Millar has a veneer of edginess, what we might even call somewhat leftist politics, but it's really not all that different from anything the big two ever published. Sure, he says that plastic toys and big summer movies--which morons like Walt Hickey laud--are what people had left after 1986 to piece together what they'd lost (heroes and their humanity). I might even agree with him that 1985 was truly the last great year for art of any kind, but it all rings a bit hollow when a character admits that all hunger and discord is engineered by the real villains behind it all, that presidents and the mass media merely work for them. The fact is that most of us in Gen X knew that WELL before 1986, and he's not offering anything new or original in terms of political analysis, no real depth behind such superficial statements. He's gone a bit Graham Hancock here and there, not realizing that the works of Don DeLillo or David Cronenburg were telling us that this is no time travel or multiverse--due to the error in math by Schrodinger that was exposed by Heisenburg LONG AGO--and that there is no possibility of any of the basis for this tale. 

It may be true when a character intones that" given them a culture war and they will never wage a class war" but it seems to me that Millar--like Tom King and other right wing hacks--is on the side of waging the culture war for his own personal benefit (massive wealth) and that he really doesn't care that the money of the few never trickles down to the masses (and they probably can't run it with AI and a few million slaves). 

It's fairly entertaining, but he and King are the last guys whose work should ever have reached such financial heights. 

reillykid7's review

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adventurous dark funny tense fast-paced

3.0

as_in_crazy's review

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adventurous fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Only read if you're a fan of Wanted, Kick-Ass, Nemesis, Hit-Girl, or Mark Millar's comics in general.

batlim's review

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adventurous dark tense fast-paced

4.0

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