Mark Millar Talks Glasgow Film Festival, Movies and Kapow!

It’s a fair assessment that Mark Millar is one of (if not the) Hardest Working Men in Comic Books right now – on the comics front he’s writing Kick-Ass 2 for John Romita Jr, he’s just wrapped up Nemesis with Steve McNiven, and continues to churn out Superior with Lenil Yu. At the same time as he spearheads Kapow! Comic Con, which is shaping up to be the most exciting comic-con to happen in Britain in an age, he’s also working on his film directorial debut Miracle Park whilst two (possibly more) of his creator-owned properties enter movie production. He’s editing CLiNT magazine. The man is a machine, and what you may not know is that he’s also curating a movie festival-within-a-festival on his local turf at the Glasgow Film Festival. Somewhere amongst this productive maelstrom, he found the time to talk to Comic Booked, and we talked at length about all of these topics.

So, Mark – the question on everyone’s lips: just exactly what does an Ambassador for the Glasgow Film Festival do?

It’s really great! I was given a remit of ‘find some good comic book movies that people might not have seen before.’ You can’t go in and pick Iron Man, or Spider-Man 2, because everybody’s got those sitting on their shelves, and I think especially as it’s the GFT (Glasgow Film Theatre) you want it to be a little bit quirkier. So they said to me ‘think of some cool ones that might suit our audience,’ and it’s exactly the sort of thing that I would want to see, which is great because it’s kind of like pay-per-view – I was basically able to choose a bunch of things that I would watch myself. I picked out stuff that was mainstream enough, but also quirky enough that the GFT audience wouldn’t feel alienated.

When it was announced that your participation involved a comic book mini-festival, you would forgive people for immediately thinking of recent and past big-screen superhero affairs – but the films that have been announced for your strand (Superheroes In Glasgow) are for the most part not ones that you would immediately think of as being comic book movies.

I recognise that not everyone is into comics that have superheroes in them, and it’s a celebration about comic books in general. A lot of people don’t know, for example, that Battle Royale is a comic book film. I wanted to get a documentary in there like Crumb, which is a brilliant documentary and Crumb (underground comix legend Robert Crumb, the subject of the film) is one of my heroes. I wanted it to represent comics overall – at the most mainstream I’ve got Superman II, and at the most independent we have Crumb and Griff The Invisible, an Australian superhero movie. It’s a really wide mix.

Are the selections all movies that you’d happened to see before, or is there anything in there that you’ll be watching at the GFF for the first time?

Actually, there’s a wee bit of selfishness on my part – there’s a couple I’ve wanted to see and never had a chance. So I thought ‘oh, I would love to see the Heavy Metal movie, I think I’ll choose that one,‘ so I really just picked six things that I would go and see, and the beauty of it is that I’m getting to go and see them all for free.

Danger Diabolik looks like being a treat – I’ve never caught it on the screen, let alone the big screen.

I’ve only ever seen wee bits of it, and it’s funny, one of my neighbors is doing some translation for Dario Argenta and he’s a massive buff on Italian pulp cinema. He actually loaned me a DVD of Danger Diabolik the other day, so I’m going to be watching it for the first time myself.

Am I right in thinking that Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut will be getting its first cinematic screening in the UK at the Festival? I know it had a couple of showings at some gala and charity events in the US when it first came out a couple of years ago…

That’s right, it’s never ever been shown in the UK, which is incredibly exciting for me. I’m a massive Superman fan so getting to see it on the big screen is exciting, getting to see it in a cut we’ve never seen before on the big screen surrounded by three hundred fans is amazing. I think the place will be electric. The other one I wanted for that reason was the Flash Gordon movie, but weirdly that was the hardest one to get – the GFT ended up getting Griff the Invisible in its place. I wanted Flash Gordon in there, a) because it’s a comic book adaptation of Alex Raymond’s comics from the newspaper strip, and b) just because it’s exactly the kind of film I think would play great at a festival. Every line of it is a classic and with everyone in that audience it would be like a geek Rocky Horror Picture Show, with everyone shouting along with the lines. So I’ll sadly miss that one, but I love all the others.

I remember when news of your role in the GFF first came out that Flash Gordon was going to play a part, but then when the programme for the festival came out it was curiously absent. So for the record that isn’t one of the surprise films scattered across the Festival?

No, unfortunately it’s just been impossible to get our hands on it, everyone tried. I thought it would be a really easy one to get but it turned out to be the hardest of the lot. I thought the Donner cut of Superman would have been harder, but this couldn’t have worked out better. I was delighted. It’s a great line-up.

And the best thing about the Donner cut of Superman II is there’s no cellophane ‘S’ shields being thrown at anyone for no apparent reason.

Even as a ten year old coming home from the cinema I remember being slightly pissed off. I didn’t know why I was pissed off, I just knew that there was something wrong and it wasn’t as good as it should’ve been, but I was too wee to articulate it. Superman II: The Donner Cut isn’t exactly the way Donner would’ve shot the movie, but to see something close to it is exciting. I’m a huge Richard Donner fan, he’s like my hero.

I take it in that case there’s no surprise showing of Miracle Park, and it’s being saved for Kapow! Comic Con?

Mark directing Miracle Park

No, it’s way too early for that I’m afraid. Miracle Park is still being shot! I’ve always being doing Miracle Park around my regular job, because it is an very low budget indie movie, and I have been fitting it around my paying work. I’ve had do a week here and a week there with Miracle Park. My plan was to have it finished in time for Kapow! but hopefully we will, we’ll see how it goes. It’s coming together great, but being a newcomer to movies the one thing I forgot is that Scotland gets dark at four’o'clock. So you’ve got half the time to shoot, it’s crazy. Then there was the bad weather for two months! (laughs) I’ve had a brilliant time doing it though. We’re shooting the middle segment on the third week in February.

It’s not just the movies at the GFF during your strand, there’s also small events throughout the week – what can people that are attending expect from the workshops held by you and Frank Quitely?

I think what’s nice is that people assume that the comic book industry is written and drawn by Americans, but it’s not – it’s a lot of British people, and quite specifically Scottish people. A lot of high-profile creators are from here, more so here in terms of representation than probably anywhere else in the world, so to have people at that level in the industry on hand to give them advice is amazing. In cinema terms it would be like having the biggest filmmakers living nearby. You can come on a bus and see possibly the biggest artist working in comics right now, Frank Quitely, give a talk! Dave Gibbons, probably my all-time favourite artist and the co-creator of the greatest graphic novel of all time in Watchmen,  just to come along and see these guys in the flesh without having to fly to San Diego, or whatever, is amazing. The festival’s been really well put together, I’m very impressed with it. If I wasn’t getting in for free I’d actually pay money to go.

Can people expect to see you evaluating their work at the CLiNT Portfolio reviews at the GFF and Kapow! ?

Yes. At Kapow! particularly there’ll be fifteen different people doing reviews, there’ll be American editors coming over, there’ll be all the big publishers there, creators too. There’ll be the big UK guys there, CLiNT, 2000 AD. It’s great. If the one at the GFF had been about when I was nineteen I wouldn’t had to go down to London on the overnight bus for nineteen quid. (laughs) I love the fact that’s in Glasgow.

Quitely and Gibbons are also going to be appearing at Kapow! – that’s shaping up quite nicely.

Kapow! is absolutely insane. I can’t believe how good it’s going to be. I kind of wish everyone had tripled the price because the tickets are selling like hotcakes (laughs). There’s just nothing that can compete with us. There’s a lot of conventions in America, I think there’s a convention every week in America, but generally they’re the same kind of formula and you don’t have what they have at San Diego, where the guys from the studios fly their best guys in, or a big Marvel and DC presence, and big news stories being announced, big cinema stories and big television people selling their upcoming seasons. Kapow!’s got all those things – it’s got all the big studios, all the big television programmes from America and the UK. It’s the biggest movies and the biggest comics, all in one show. They’re all doing panels, 700 seater panels, and a few of the biggest names in entertainment are even hosting the panels. Jonathan Ross is doing a comic book gameshow kind of like Never Mind the Buzzcocks with comics. We’ve got The Stan Lee Awards, Frankie Boyle, Stewart Lee, it’s just absolutely insane. I can’t believe how good it’s worked out. The only thing does piss me off slightly is that I’m going to be working there, so I can’t actually enjoy it as much as everyone else. I want to go to the panels, I don’t want to be doing a signing at that time, but unfortunately, that’s the way it’s worked out.

I was going to mention that the announcement of the Misfits cast had slipped through the net…

It’s funny, the guy from Misfits (series creator Howard Overman) obviously hadn’t heard we were saving all the movie and television announcements until February the 14th. But I’m just amazed the guys are coming, I’m delighted. It’s funny, I’d never watched Misfits until last week – I’d hated the adverts, they had a horrible advertising campaign on the side of the bus, but when I watched the show I loved it, it’s brilliant.

You’re still saving the announcement of your new creator-owned series with Dave Gibbons for Kapow!, but I saw today on Twitter you were getting a bit of Hollywood interest.

Yes, the people that who we’ve sold Superior to are talking about buying the Dave Gibbons project, which is crazy because I haven’t properly started writing it yet. The people know what it’s about, and they like the idea and they can put ‘from the creators of Watchmen and Kick-Ass‘ on it, which sounds cool. But it’s good, I’m really pleased with the project, it’s working out really well, and the minute I told the producer the high-concept of it he was ‘right, we’re having that,’ so it’s nice, it makes it a lot easier than the usual nine months without pay creators have to endure when you’re doing creator owned. We’ll make all these announcements at Kapow! itself, of course. I’ve got three big, new Millarworld projects to announce at the show, so it’s all very exciting. You’re not going to believe who the next artist is that I’ve snagged.

What’s the progress on the movies that we already know about, how are Nemesis and Superior coming along?

The Superior movie should hopefully get made public in the next couple of weeks. I was told it would be before the end of January, but it’s kind of out of my hands to be honest. It’s funny, in comics you just sort of ask Joe Quesada ‘can I announce this Ultimates series I’m doing?‘ and Joe would be like ‘aye, no problem, on you go‘, whereas in movies it’s weird – everything has to go round a hundred people. Whenever you hand over the rights to something it becomes not your news to give. I obviously knew about Tony Scott directing Nemesis before it was made public but I kind of had to sit on my hands and say ‘very exciting, but we just can’t tell you who it is yet‘. I remember actually at the time it was going to be within the next couple of days and it ended up taking three weeks before everything got signed off and I was like ‘come on…‘ Superior hopefully will be announced in the next week or so, fingers crossed. The deal was done a little while back and I’m very pleased with the team that seems to be assembling around it. The screenwriter’s started putting a few things together on it and their previous work has been pretty amazing. Likewise, the Nemesis screenplay with Tony Scott is being written now. All going well, this should be in production before too long, but it’s going to be a month or two before they have a Nemesis first draft to really look at.

And do you wait until the script’s finished before casting’s sorted out?

Yes. Tony said to me when we were phoning each other about it all ‘who can you see in the roles?‘ and we were chatting about that,but they obviously need to have the script ready before this proceeds beyond speculative conversation.They have to show the script to the actors because nobody’s going to agree to a movie until they know exactly what they’re saying. Things can get modified later, but they need to see at least a good first draft. I think that’ll go quite fast. The guy we’ve got writing Nemesis is a really interesting choice, because normally it’s roughly the same guys or same kind of guys that write superhero movies, but Tony thought ‘I’ll get someone who can do really brilliant character stuff‘, and this guy’s a character writer. Tony said ‘I’ll take care of the digital effects and make it look really exciting and this guy can handle the character stuff‘. It’s going to be a really interesting combination. Nemesis will be quite unlike anything else. It’s Tony Scott!

The writer’s not Aaron Sorkin, is it?

Uh, no. (laughs)

The Avengers movie is coming up – a lot of the Marvel movie universe has drawn influence from your work with Bryan Hitch on The Ultimates, and I was wondering since that’s the case if Joss Whedon has your ear just now?

No, not at all. I’m friendly with Joss, but there’s no reason for him to contact me any more than he’d contact anyone else who’s written these characters in the past. If you watch the X-Men films, or Spider-Man you can see it’s influenced by lots of comics over the years and my contributions are no more special than Roy Thomas or Kurt Busiek or any of the brilliant writers who have shaped that world. When you work for Marvel you do work-for-hire, you write your book and that’s that. If anybody wants to expand some of your ideas in other mediums, it’s fine. You know what the deal is when you hand over your ideas for, say, Iron Man and it’s nice when they use them. I’d maybe feel differently if I didn’t have my stuff I owned out there, but of course that’s why I started Millarworld. That’s where my focus is really going to be over the next couple of years as we expand into different mediums we haven’t even touched yet. I don’t like standing still and the sales on the books suggest people have an appetite for something new. I think we’re entering into an amazing period for comic book creators. We’ve got more Millarworld books in pre-production as feature length movies than Marvel or DC at the moment and that’s just crazy. It would have been unheard of a few years back. There’s never been a better time to be comic-book creator and we can use the movies, the games, the spin-offs as mainstream ads for our books. I’m under no illusion that the Kick-Ass movie is what sold 100,000 copies of the Kick-Ass hardcover in the six weeks leading up to the movie. But that’s a great thing and we need to embrace it. The playing field has been levelled and creators working in their spare bedrooms have just as much if not more power now than the big companies

Thanks to Mark for talking to Comic Booked. Superior continues monthly in a comic store near you, Kapow! Comic Con takes place in London April 9th and 10th and most importantly, the Glasgow Film Festival kicks off February 17th and runs through till the 27th at selected venues across Glasgow.

Tags: CLiNT, colin bell, glasgow film festival, interview, kapow comic con, Mark Millar, millarworld, miracle park, movies, nemesis, Superior

About the Author

Written by Colin Bell

Raised in Scotland on a diet of Tintin and 2000 AD, Colin Jefferson Bell enters his 28th year on Planet Earth as one of the world's foremost experts in comic books that take place in his home country, and maintains his corner of the internet at It's Bloggerin' Time!. Colin Bell appears courtesy of his wife.

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