Got the last issue of Mark Millar's Wanted today. In some ways it is a meaner, uglier Man in the High Castle. Phillip Dick's novel is set in a world in which the Axis won World War II. At the end of the novel the protagonist meets the title character who knows that the world is wrong. He describes our present world and that seems to feel more correct to the hero, but then the guru says that that world is off the mark as well.
Millar, too, calls our attention to the world's fallen state through the use of a golden age known only to a small elite. In Wanted the supervillains have won. They rule the world and behave as horribly as they wish without repercussions. After all, they have super technology to make the masses forget anything that they might remember differently. They didn't even bother to kill all the superheroes. Many of them have menial jobs, never remembering who or what they were before "the fall."
The plot follows one who crosses over from the enslaved to the elite fellowship. The book has several endings which get progressively more depraved. I can't help but think, however, that Millar intended the reader to create an ending beyond the final fourth-wall-breaking one. Like Dick, he gives you reason to believe that the world is not supposed to be as bad as it is. The fact that the villains still relish their depravity means that they still feel like they're getting away with something. That they aren't absolutely positive that their dominance is unbreakable speaks to a chink in their armor. Hope remains.
"It will not be like this forever." - Mark Heard
Posted to Books at January 26, 2005 1:45 PM