Posted in: Comics, Image | Tagged: late, Mark Millar, tony harris, war heroes
Mark Millar On His Missing USA VS Iran Supersoldiers Comic, War Heroes
Mark Millar talks about his unfinished USA vs. Iran superhero comic, War Heroes with Tony Harris and how it changed the way he wrote
Article Summary
- Mark Millar says War Heroes stalled after issue #3 because he wrote himself into a corner and never found the ending.
- The unfinished Image series with Tony Harris imagined US supersoldiers, Iran war escalation and stolen power pills.
- Millar reveals War Heroes changed his writing process, leading him to plot every story backwards from the end.
- Mark Millar confirms War Heroes went to Netflix in the Millarworld deal, but he has not returned to finish it.
War Heroes by Mark Millarand Tony Harris made it to three issues from Image Comics twenty years ago in the early days of the Millarworld, but then that was it. Solicited as a six-issue series, at the time Mark Millar said, “War Heroes is everything I’ve been leading up to with Civil War, Ultimates, The Authority, Kick-Ass and Wanted” and “This is what my Ultimates 3 would have been if Bryan Hitch and I had stuck around.” But we only ever got three issues: the first two in 2008, the third in 2010 and that was it. Upon publication, War Heroes was optioned by Columbia Pictures, with Michael De Luca as producer and Mark Millar as an executive producer. In 2011, Jeff Kirschenbaum bought the film rights and set it up at Universal Pictures, with Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer approached to write the screenplay.
War Heroes #1
War Heroes #1
War Heroes #1
War Heroes #2
War Heroes #3
War Heroes #3
War Heroes, set in the aftermath of 9/11, saw a detonation of a nuclear bomb in Washington DC and the US expand its Afghanistan and Iraq wars into Iran, institute martial law in the US. As casualties rose and morale fell, the US boosted enlistment by distributing pills to its soldiers to give them superpowers, also tipping the scale in the war. And the comic focused on con artists who enlist in order to steal the pills and sell them to Al Qaeda. Three issues in, the con artists flip on their employers after one of them was kidnapped by the now-superpowered Islamists and was lined up to be executed in Iran, and that was the cliffhanger that was never answered.
Some people presumed the delay was down to Tony Harris, but he was insistent to Bleeding Cool that it was not. In 2011,m he told CBR it would return in 2012 “Mark will be finishing the scripts over Christmas, as I clear my schedule. I will resume work at the first of the year once he is finished and complete the series by summer’s end. We then plan on re-issuing the first 3 issues, as a Mini-Trade (to make to book fresh in readers’ minds), then publish #4, #5 and #6 monthly with a Trade/Hardcover right on its heels, and a European release.” This never happened either. Instead, Mark Millar says War Heroes is the book he wrote himself into a corner on, sold to Netflix with the rest of Millarworld, and never went back to finish. And this is the reason he now plots every story backwards, beginning with the ending. Last month Mark Millar made his first appearance at a British comic con in decades at High Vis Comic Con in Kings Heath last month, where former Bleeding Cool contributor Olly MacNamee was on hand to interview the man. In a church. A previous article by Bleeding Cool on this interview already sentKing Of Spies into the Hot Comics stratosphere but it might not do the same for those three issues ofWar Heroes. Mark Millar says;
“We sold it to Netflix, and when Netflix bought my company in 2017, that was part of the overall package, you know, but I’ve never gone back and finished it. Like, it’s funny. Tony and I, Tony’s a brilliant artist and I love him as a guy. We did a big tour and we became really close friends. We did two weeks touring the whole of America together, literally around the whole country, just on taxis and buses. It was like planes, trains and automobiles, and we just never get around to finishing. And I think I got to issue three and it’s the only time it’s ever happened to me. I kind of wrote myself into a corner and I was kind of like, I don’t really know what to do. And it actually spooked me.”
What he took from it, he said, was a method he has used on everything since.
“So what I do when I write now is I block everything out. Every single scene, ever since 2008. Every single scene I block out scene by scene, and I start at the end actually. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this. A lot of writers do this, where I’ll have my ending and then I reverse engineer my story from the end, because nobody ever complains about a rushed beginning, but people complain about a rushed end. So if you make sure your ending is perfect… and you can see in my stories the endings are much better after 2008. So if you work out your ending and reverse engineer your story. Somebody once said to me that they do that as well, because if you go on a journey you need to know your destination to have a straight path to it. So if you know your ending you have the shortest possible journey to it when you’re writing the story, which is great. So I’ve got cards up all over my room. It looks like somebody hunting a serial killer. I’ve got cards everywhere with all these scenes that I put into a big structure. But I didn’t do it for War Heroes, unfortunately.”
When Netflix bought Millarworld, Mark Millar said War Heroes went across in that deal with the rest of the company, and that he has not returned to the scripts. He did not say whether anyone at Netflix has asked for them. Since Netflix now owns War Heroes along with everything else, and with the gossip that Mark Millar is no longer an employee of Netflix, maybe they might ask someone else to finish it? Maybe Tony could do it himself?
- WAR HEROES #4
(W) Mark Millar (A) Tony HarrisJust when the scam is ready to kick into action, one of the team is kidnapped and may be beheaded by Islamic fundamentalists. Yes, the bad news is that the Islamics have gotten their hands on the super-pills, too, and have an unholy Jihad planned against both the soldiers in the Gulf and the western world in general. The war between these two cultures reaches a new high with the threat of a third World War fought entirely between super-powered soldiers.
- WAR HEROES #5 (of 6)
(W) Mark Millar (A) Tony Harris & Cliff RathburnThe enemy has access to their own super-powers, but with a frightening twist that make them more powerful and dangerous than their American counterparts. Literally thousands of soldiers have been massacred, and the life of America’s most decorated super-soldier hangs in the balance. Has it all gone horribly wrong? It’s the penultimate issue of the series MARK MILLAR has called his follow-up to ULTIMATES 2 – and possibly the most brutal chapter yet! DECEMBER 24 * 32 PAGES * FC * $2.99
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