'Wanted' proves that it's fun to be bad

"Wanted" premieres June 27, based loosely on a comic book that preached what we've always suspected: It's fun to be bad.

Will the movie have the same message? Probably, but it will vary considerably from the six-issue miniseries created by writer Mark Millar and artist J.G. Jones five years ago. That "Wanted," when published by Top Cow in 2003, was perhaps the most flat-out evil funnybook ever written.

"Mark Millar took a seldom-used premise and turned it into comics gold," said "Comics Buyer's Guide" editor Brent Frankenhoff.

And that premise was this: Average twenty-something putz Wesley Gibson -- he has a dead-end job, an emasculating boss and a girlfriend who openly cheats on him -- finds out that his late father was one of the greatest supervillains of all time, and that he has inherited both his dad's superpowers and his job.

In Gibson's world, like ours, Spandex types are thought to be fiction. He discovers that there once had been superhuman heroes and villains, but the bad guys had won long ago -- and quietly taken over the world.

They comprise "The Fraternity," which is the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission and every other world-domination conspiracy you've ever heard of all rolled into one, except with supervillain archetypes at the top instead of bankers. A Lex Luthor avatar ("Solomon Seltzer") runs North America, abetted by a bunch of thinly disguised Superman foes.

A Joker analogue ("Mr. Rictus") owns Australia, and his gang is fairly recognizable as Batman's rogues' gallery. A barely veiled Fu Manchu runs Eurasia, a Red Skull doppelganger lords over South America and so on.

When The Fraternity took over in 1986 (a year that dovetails with the publication of the grim "Dark Knight Returns," "Watchmen" and "Crisis on Infinite Earths"), they used their science and magic to erase any memories or evidence of superhumans.

In fact, some of the superheroes still survive, but don't remember who they were -- an unnamed "detective" and sidekick believe they're actors who only wear capes and cowls at car shows, for example, and this world's Wonder Woman clone is "a menopausal drunk who thinks she was a TV personality."

So the Fraternity members live the high life behind the scenes, raping and murdering and pillaging whomever and whatever they please, with all governments, law enforcement and media turning a blind eye. Most people are blissfully unaware of this shadow government.

And that's just the set-up! Millar's six-issue story follows Gibson -- a dead ringer for Eminem -- as he is brought into this underworld monarchy to replace his dead father, Deadshot -- uh, I mean, "The Killer." His trainer is Catwoma -- uh, "The Fox," who looks suspiciously like Halle Berry. And he joins the Fraternity just as Seltzer (who likes the status quo) and Rictus (who wants to go public) go to war.

Then lots of very, very bad things happen.

Pretty cynical, eh? And definitely for mature readers -- there's sex and violence and blue language on every page. In fact, most of the title chapters (and some of the character names) can't be repeated here.

But that's just the comic book (now available as a trade paperback). The film will be considerably different.

For one thing, if you're familiar with the terms "intellectual property" and "trademark," you can imagine that we are not going to see any Luthor parodies on the screen. In fact, the supervillain angle has been completely jettisoned.

The movie retains Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) and his recruitment by the Fox (Angelina Jolie) into a secret society. But a Mr. Sloan (Morgan Freeman), not Solomon Seltzer, runs this version of the Fraternity, which is described as a group of assassins working for justice. "Kill one, save a thousand," says Mr. Sloan.

Hmmm. Really? I suspect the movie's Fraternity and the comic-book Fraternity have more in common than Mr. Sloan is admitting. And the movie is rated R, so the comic book's sex, violence and four-letter words may remain largely intact. As may be the spirit, since it's a story about assassins.

"We're talking about characters that many in the audience will find more interesting than the traditional action-film hero," Frankenhoff said, "where you know the good guy is going to triumph by the end. It's the other side of the mirror."

And proving that it's still fun to be bad.

(E-mail Andrew A. Smith of the Memphis Commercial Appeal at capncomics(at)aol.com.)

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