Teamworking Day: Mark Millar Thinks This is Smart Part 2

Seanbaby: In part 1 of our winning series on Mark Millar's fundamental misunderstanding of intelligence, we talked about many of the comic book geniuses Millar gave voice to. We covered everything from Professor X reading author minds before they finish their books to Dr. Doom's vegetable fish to Black Panther nearly remembering his password to Hank McCoy brilliantly not flushing the toilets of his enemies. It was breathtaking and perfect because like the turnip fish of Doom, Dennard and I are actual geniuses. Today we are focusing on only one original Mark Millar character– Prodigy. which is not the end of this sentence because there is a period in Prodigy.'s name. He is Edison Crane, the most brilliant man in the world, something Mark Millar cannot imagine, and the entire comic is wrong guesses about that would look like.

Dennard: Prodigy. proves Prof. Millar takes feedback. After Nemesis, we asked “why worship the most loathsome fuck in the world?” So he made a heroic triple genius. Prodigy.’s still better than you, but he cures your future cancer while breaking up with your sister. Check your wallet: it’s full of money with his face. Your sister knows where to spend it. If all the restraint and humility in James Bond bores you, you’re one of ten children Prodigy. designed to read this. The other nine have gone rogue, but instructions to stop them are tattooed on your retinas. Prodigy. is like this paragraph, with far fewer transitions.

Seanbaby: Beautifully put. Let's start in Prodigy.'s childhood, where he grew up doing the best thing any genius can do– imagining karate.

Seanbaby: This is exactly what you think. Prodigy. was getting bullied at school, but remember: he's smart. So smart, in fact, that it occurred to him one solution could be beating everyone up like in the hit film Timecop. A dumb or average person might stop themselves there and say, "Timecop is only a movie." Not Prodigy.. He did what no one else thought to do– he watched kung fu movies all night, only really fucking hard. Maybe that sounds stupid to you, but the last 109 world championships were all decided by who watched Timecop the most the night before. It's why I've never lost a fight, and never will.

Dennard: I tried this with The Raid 2, and achieved house arrest. Giving me extra time to reflect on Dr. Prof. Millar’s philosophy. Genius is like The Secret or economics: I simply will it into existence. I think, therefore I think better. While Edison plays it safe with the VCR, I’m snorting pulverized issues of Prodigy.: Slaves of Mars. I can already feel my brain getting harder and dick getting faster. You read that correctly. I don’t even forget the period after Prodigy anymore. Fuck. I need more Millar.

Seanbaby: This is so hilariously dumb you might think Prodigy. is some kind of parody. And you could be right! But we have seen Mark Millar when he's writing comedy, and just to prove Prodigy. is a sincere attempt at writing a cool action genius hero, let's take a look at some of that comedy work. I'm sorry, we will all regret this, and I should not show you this clipping from 2004's The Unfunnies:

Dennard: Blame the papercuts on my brain, but that name makes me tense.

Seanbaby: It's hard to explain the context of 2004 to the modern world. Some things seemed funny because you weren't supposed to say them, and we didn't bring all our irony with us when we moved into the future. I'll save the rest of my insight for an 8-hour interview with Joe Rogan, but trust me: there was no point in human history where this was a coherent joke. When this comic came out, it looked exactly as much like a sex criminal's mixed media project as it does today.

Dennard: I remember this! Buying it was formative, like sticking a fork into a tiger. That works in Prodigy., but my genius hadn’t bloomed yet. The Unfunnies taught me money could melt into 23 pages of FBI bait. Comic shops won’t take it back, no matter how nicely you threaten them. Leaving you stuck on the Illiterate Predator registry—aka the Warped Tour. One of Dr. Prof. Millar Esq.’s tougher lessons.

Seanbaby: To be fair to noted genius understander Mark Millar, let's show the next panel to give him a chance to land the joke:

Dennard: I don’t remember this! The mind’s a wonderful organ. It’ll pave over your worst year with the wikia summary of The Unfunnies, a comedy about a bird nonce vs. a genius bird nonce. Shit. Can I have my real trauma back?

Seanbaby: He could still be building to some kind of punchline! Let's give him another panel. I believe in you, Mark Millar!

Dennard: After Snagglepuss SVU, I suspected Dr. Prof. Millar Esq., DMD might not be God’s brightest star. But geniuses don’t let new data change their views. I started this journey with an answer, and I’m leaving unchanged. If my idol thinks Donald Diddler is funny, my next book is Bugs Buggery’s Bountiful Backside Buffet. Millar himself couldn’t stop me. Pile on the similes, I’ll still eat Hydrox by the sleeve.

Seanbaby: Let the record show the judge called his butthole an Oreo which is legally silly. The point I'm trying to make, and looking back I realize I shouldn't have done it with… one, two, three, f– oh my god SIX Mark Millar sex crime references, is you can tell when Mark Millar is trying to be funny. The same primitive intuition that makes you recoil from tarantulas will warn you when something is a Mark Millar joke. So he's being serious with Prodigy.. Speaking of, we shouldn't have stopped talking about Prodigy.. Let's immediately get back to talking about Prodigy.. Let me see if I can find another karate one.

Seanbaby: In this scene, Prodigy. and his also-super-genius brother are facing off against a man who is "downloading every martial art known to man." What? How? Like in ninja book form? Is he speed-watching China O'Brien and China O'Brien II? Do you have any idea what that would do to a human penis? Less importantly, since this is a Mark Millar comic, that man is also the computer-controlled President of the United States of America and the move he selects, from all moves ever thrown, is a fucking slap to the face. So either the best style of martial arts is Northern Shaolin Cop Husband, or he accidentally downloaded every episode of All My Children. Sorry, I just realized no one is going to believe me when I say this is a real comic published this year about the President downloading all karate. But I promise it is!

Dennard: Dean Dr. Prof. Millar Esq., DMD is a pure idealist. The executive branch leaks failure from every pore, and he still imagines Metal Wolf Chaos super-presidents. If you changed the tone, wordiness, characterization, and negative meaning, this would be fucking awesome. That’s why Prodigy. is for geniuses: you write the cool part yourself. A recurring theme in Millarworld: Universal changed every atom of Wanted they could without putting it in space. And only geniuses can fight autocorrect, their fingers, and good taste every time they type Prodigy. without losing Their. Fucking. Minds..

Seanbaby: Prodigy. is so smart he has an army of subconscious Prodigy.s to whom he can assign tasks. This is pretty cool, like a real intelligence superpower. Unfortunately, each of the subconsciouses is equipped with only the intelligence of Mark Millar. This means every scene in Prodigy.'s mind is multiple versions of himself complaining they don't have enough Prodigy.'s for the project they're working on. Mark Millar has imagined the creative process of a genius to be a contentious open-plan office. I think I found the only instance of the subconscious Prodigy.s actually getting something done, and in true Millar fashion, their brilliant idea is "we should look up the thing we're trying to find in the library." I love it so much. It's like downloading man's entire history of violence and just going with a face slap.

Dennard: Hold on, a letter’s taped to my desk. It’s dated April 20, 1969, with a return address in “Strippertown, Kickflip.” Sounds legit. It reads: “Prodigy.’s think tank provides the series’ finest and only set-up. By fretting over an asteroid every issue, they prime attentive geniuses for an asteroid to solve everything. It is, as they say in French translated into Hexadecimal translated into English, a Joking of the Brick. The brick is an asteroid. Also: your testicle lump is benign, but watch that mole.” Neat. And fair: Edison on Edison action breaks up things happening for no reason. Edison mostly calculates people into exploding three years ago.

Dennard: While otherwise flawless, Prodigy. has a small tick on odd-numbered pages. Geniuses don’t do things as much as say what they already did or will do. That approach makes for nice vows, undefeatable campaign ads, and baffling everything else. I can’t defend it here, but I will defend it after the mustache suicide.

Seanbaby: Spoiler! Speaking of mustache suicide, all of Prodigy.'s enemies are also geniuses, so they might suddenly greet him from the mouth of a computer-controlled cat. And before you say, "cats can't talk," Mark Millar looked up the parts of the cat throat– all you'd have to do is surgically rearrange their epiglottis and throat cartilage, smarty-pants. Mark Millar is the only author who would think to have a cat stop the story and turn to the reader to explain, "Technically, none of this is a CinemaSin. Anyone splitting hairs about cat throats? I want you to know I'm one step ahead of you. I also developed a, I don't know, paste or whatever that speeds the recovery of cat throat surgery patients, so I'm covered there too. What else, what else? Oh! I can have cat sex in this body, but it feels like human sex on my end. I'm 79.4% sure."

Dennard: Fighting geniuses with identical voices and copouts sounds and is repetitive. But Pope Dean Dr. Prof. Millar Esq., DMD throws us a bone with Mega Man boss gimmicks. There’s Surgery Genius, Crossbow Genius, Gun Genius, Fucks and Betrays Edison Genius, Fucks and Betrays Edison Genius again, Bad Optics Genius, and Shoots Himself in the Head what–

Dennard: Perfection. The day I can read this mustache suicide without laughing, I’m next. Flipping reality as you go might ruin action, drama, and history. But it’s comedy genius when it’s dead serious. The joy here will get me through the Götterdämmerung (that’s genius for 2025). Pope Dean Dr. Prof. Millar Esq., DMD CPA is crushing every therapist in New York.

Seanbaby: Mark Millar knows geniuses have something to do with puzzles, probably, so character names are usually anagrams. Never anything that makes sense, and leads to anything– just meaningless letter jumbles Prodigy. never figures out. For instance, Froth Schroeder, the man you might remember from the cat, was an anagram of "Short Order Chef." It's why he was always peeling potatoes, a thing he did once unrelated to the plot or any events within it. It is, very aggressively, as dumb as goddamn anything will ever be, and yet Mark Millar thought it was such a profound twist, Froth shot himself in the head after revealing it. If I had a talking cat, it would turn to you right now and say, "You think I left something out. You think there's no way a character shrieked he was secretly named something else, and then killed himself. That's not a twist, you're saying. But it is. The twist is that all of this is stupid as fuck, and I gave you all the clues."

Dennard: Look, there must be brilliance hiding under stupidity this blunt. I just need a minute to find it. Otherwise, loudmouth dorks (that’s normal for genius) named themselves Ootshay Emay without expecting a bullet. I’ll snort some more Prodigy.—this year’s series hasn’t wrapped up yet. I wonder what “Bupid Stullshit” could mean.

Seanbaby: I have another good anagram one. In the climax of the first series, Prodigy.'s partner, Rachel Straks, reveals she was a bad guy the whole time. It's pretty obvious once she tells Prodigy. her name is an anagram.

Seanbaby: He gets it instantly. He doesn't get hung up on "her rat slacks" or "chalk arrests." He knows she's referencing Charles Trask, the traitor in East of Eden. He's simply that smart. But nothing is better than when he figures out the anagram for the man who gave him their mission, Bear Thriftbank. My god– afterbirth bank! Wait, no, Frank the Rabbit! From 2001's Donnie Darko. Fucking what? I get that intelligence can be measured in any number of ways and is subjective to some degree, but the very first thing the smartest man in the world would do is not reference Donnie Darko.

Dennard: This is brilliant because my life is a fucking lie. I’ve wasted my best years on an adult fan of Donnie Darko. A movie for kids that couldn’t figure out how to change DVDs. For teens that found Johnny the Homicidal Maniac too wordy. For adults that tattooed over names with “Carpe Diem.” I have to channel this pain through art. Maybe a femme fatale named Klease PillMe, and her sidekick Mothing Natters.

Seanbaby: I promise this comic book isn't all pointless anagrams. Let's do an action scene.

Seanbaby: This shows the hyper-detailed way Prodigy. sees the world. If you're holding a vodka bottle, his keen observation skills will note VODKA BOTTLE. But be careful, Prodigy.! That man holding KNIFE has KNIFE IN POCKET! And the fight thug about to fight you? He may know how to fight!

Dennard: So genius is shittier V.A.T.S.? How many dictionaries do you have to eat to see a fire extinguisher? Does everyone without student debt just lie down and burn?

Seanbaby: Noticing a fire extinguisher is only the first step in being a genius. You have to know if it works, but you can't do that with observation skills. This is where the other aspects of genius come into play– fire extinguisher asking.

Seanbaby: It's almost too subtle to notice, but what Prodigy. does here is ask if the fire extinguisher has been recently tested. He slips it into the conversation imperceptibly, right after nothing and before nothing. One of his attackers says, "WHAT?" which is all the opening he needs. He asks, with the same tact you might use to guess wrong about a woman being pregnant, "DOES IT COMPLY WITH STANDARD SAFETY REGULATIONS?" He's in. Undetected. Only a class 10 intellect could know he was planning to do something with the fire extinguisher.

Dennard: The fire extinguisher? Are you sure he wants the flame elimination device? I’m thinking he exploits the eyepatch. My mind might be wandering to Kill Bill since it’s a day ending in Thurman. I mean y. But don’t let the inferno eliminator distract you from his ex. Prodigy. fucks, though they all try to kill him. I can’t imagine why.

Seanbaby: Spoilers if you haven't read Prodigy., but he does grab the fire extinguisher. He throws it through the window so he can jump out of it, which brings me to an important point:

Seanbaby: Jumping through the fucking window is how Mark Millar gets Prodigy. out of most situations. Any time he's surrounded by guns he smirks and says, "My subconscious mes have already deduced nearly sixty-nine solutions to this, and both of it are window. But first, and this has nothing to do with my plan, do you think a human guy could jump through that window?"

Dennard: With my faith in genius and nation dead, I get trying the window. Luckily for Prodigy., once you know gravity’s force to the T’Challa digit, it doesn’t count. You can leave every meeting like a 1930’s stockbroker. Prodigy. hasn’t made small talk in his adult life. Good on him.

Seanbaby: Prodigy. is a billionaire, but finding a real quick $2 million stakes poker game is cooler than going to the bank. But you know what's even cooler than that? Doing a second grader's homework on your way out. Here's five lowercase b's and all the round fruits colored in, kid. Courtesy… of Prodigy..

Dennard: “Wait, I’m not done. His mistress reads horoscopes, but doesn’t believe in them. Your manager’s afraid she’ll leave, so he pokes fun at the hobby. Just like her mother. The shouting lasts hours. They break up every two weeks, and reconcile beneath the full moon. The sex is desperate. Raw. All that’s keeping them alive. Classic Scorpio and Gemini behavior. Love is hard Jimmy, but worth it. I wrote the rest under your horse drawing.”

Seanbaby: "Can you do something cool to me with your giant brain before you go, Prodigy.?"

"Indubitably. You're going to die soon, and the answer to four down in the crossword in your left pocket… Single Panel Party Pooch? The answer you're looking for… is Marmaduke."

Dennard: I know what you’re thinking. And yes, Prodigy. vs. Nemesis is a comic. Strangely, other things also happen in Big Game. 4.9 out of 5 issues are something other than Prodigy. and Nemesis geniusing at each other. But it happens, there’s a winner, and Millar even chooses the fun answer.

Seanbaby: I read Big Game! This is true: in the middle of it, I literally said to my wife, "Babe, Mark Millar made a comic with every single one of his characters in it, and he unceremoniously killed them all in the first issue. Like he knew they were trash." I think she might have said, "Who?" so this story doesn't have a good ending. Unlike Big Game where I think time travel fixed everything. Wait, no, a space wizard showed up which was the technicality the wizards needed to save everyone with magic. That can't be right… let me– wow, holy shit, that's right. Sorry, I thought I was kidding, but those were spoilers.

Seanbaby: The standard template for fictional genius is Sherlock Holmes, but the thing about writing a Sherlock Holmes is it doesn't work if you cheat. Your Sherlock's observations have to be possible. For instance, if you say something like, "I know by your shampoo your mayor has Wilson's disease," the reader can tell you're too dumb to write a Sherlock Holmes. Mark Millar doesn't know this. He wouldn't even consider knowing it. So his geniuses will do things like guess a woman's name is Madeline because…

… she looks like a Madeline, and then just leave. Shit, I take back everything I said. That's so fucking cool, Prodigy..

Dennard: I take it back, Nemesis should’ve won. I don’t know how much self-stroking tops poop-napping the First Lady, but we breached it three anagrams ago. The universe contorts to make Prodigy. right, and he struts with the unearned confidence of six polling experts. You’re not wizards, you’re gambling addicts with podcasts. And not the fun kind who know mob bouncers by name. The kind who gnaw Twitter’s corpse like ants. Anyway, Prodigy. gets grating in medium doses. I recommend two-page bursts.

Seanbaby: Here is Mark Millar doing maximum fake Sherlock. By this woman's posture Prodigy. guesses her age and mommy issues. He probably shouldn't have. But then he says he can tell from her thumb bruises that she collects records? That would be preposterous if she wasn't wearing gloves. But she's wearing gloves! Over hands belonging to a species that do not bruise when they touch albums! Jesus motherfucking God fucking damnit, Mark Millar.

Dennard: Hear me out: this is a stopped clock moment. Purely accidental, but it’s there. She’s a plant, and he knows. So instead of a genius-off, this is a pretentious moron contest. Mankind’s fate hinges on the best dumbshit impression. They’re idioting to the death. “Yes. Tell me more about the degrees you earned while flipping Kabul heroin in Iowa. Me am dumb mark. How record player work? Why glass in windows hurt face?”

Seanbaby: I'd say you were right if this wasn't how Prodigy. spoke to every single character including the very few who don't have sex with him and betray him.

Seanbaby: Sometimes the genius observations aren't Mark Millar's fault. Like when Prodigy. knew they were flying 8000 feet over India by the position of the constellations and the artist illustrated that conversation with a starless noon sky. The fact that 8000 feet is 33,000 feet lower than the cruising altitude of a private jet is Mark Millar's fault. I don't know who to blame for Mark Millar being an anagram for "milk Mr. Lara," but I know who to milk.

Dennard: At least Prodigy. teaches us about propaganda. As Madelines and constellations pile up, you stop questioning basic shit like “he should probably kill James Bond.” Flooding the zone works. Now your cousin thinks you inject adrenochrome instead of snort it.

Seanbaby: "I'm the smartest man in the world, so I can tell by your nails and teeth you can't operate on a gunshot wound."

"I'm wearing gloves and a mask, so you're wrong about every single one of those things you idiot fuck."

Dennard: I don’t buy Prodigy. as a genius or detective or vinyl collector, but he’s definitely a billionaire. Half of Silicon Valley would flatline themselves to prove a point to no one. It’s like being your own lawyer, without living through the results.

Seanbaby: There is nothing Mark Millar likes more than geniuses predicting what's going to happen next. He might like it more than things happening next. So it's not unusual for him to replace a fight scene with a character extrapolating the results from how everyone is standing. Dennard, let's just sit back and let these two brilliant men settle their dispute like geniuses.

Dennard: I’m here for it. All two hundred years of it. I’m sure these two can talkfight until violence and words are memories. They’re already narrating at their next opponents.

Seanbaby: Remarkable. Remarkable! He knows every last potential detail, down to the last karate!!

Dennard: Their crystal ball even follows wrestling promo rules. Insulting and glazing in one breath, without cutting into ad time. Truly elegant. Who needs the match? Me. Please stop this. We’re watching Bond read the Wikipedia page for gonorrhea.

Seanbaby: Their mental showdown continues! Can Prodigy.'s "every martial art known to man" stand up to his archenemy's "fourteen ancient fighting styles lost to history that neither you nor anyone else has ever heard of"? Only their imaginations know, because they are not going to fight!

Dennard: Why has Millar forsaken me? I thought Ultimate Cap’s line about France was cool for months until puberty kicked in. And this is my reward? Combat sexting in a long-distance duel? “Baby, if I was there I’d kill you so hard.” Punch. Him.

Seanbaby: It's still going! The entire climax of the comic is being told to us by the guy refusing to engage with it. You know when you buy a comic book and when you open it, it's just someone telling you the concept of their idea for a comic book? I have! That's what Mark Millar did! That's what you're looking at! And dear sweet lord, did that fucker say "there's a 56% chance I lose"? That's the level of certainty we're dealing with with these guesses!? That's six percentage points away from flipping a coin and saying, "tails, but I'm still the world's smartest man and extremely correct if it's heads."

Dennard: For a shitty novel, this captures the glory of comics. Random House lets things suck, but never in a way this insane. On Netflix, these two will punch each other with the full force of shareholder value. This bullshit belongs to comics, and uses none of its tools. A perfect merger of boring art and aimless dialogue. The rare anti-McCloud.

Seanbaby: Sometimes Mark Millar will try to add some believability to this stupid bullshit by making one of the geniuses a tiny bit wrong with his predictions. For instance, a sudden woman will obviously cut someone's throat 23.4 minutes into their machine gun fight, but will it be from left to right or right to left? Their genius is clashing in such a compelling, exciting way that one of the participants lets his brains get blown out rather than discuss it a second longer.

Dennard: I’ve received faith’s traditional reward: nothing. This issue is fucking impossible. Not the events in it; I ditched reality at ten and never looked back. The comic. I’ve hated it in my hands, and it still can’t exist. An artist or editor or intern would say “Don’t try it. You’ll hand me bullshit. Then I’ll smack you with the rolled-up script like an incontinent chihuahua. Finally, after regaining consciousness, you’ll bring me a real ending.”

Seanbaby: It's not only the battles that take place entirely in the prognostication of the world's smartest man. The love scenes take place there too. As long as I live I will never forget the time Prodigy. let an entire eight year relationship run its course before he introduced himself to a girl:

Seanbaby: He saw a woman at a party and imagined having kids with her! And he was such a bad father he gave one of them clinical depression! This happened before he shook her fucking hand, and he tells other women this story in bed! I don't have a joke, I just want researchers to know Mark Millar tried to think like a smart person and invented some new kind of disorder that needs a name and treatment.

Dennard: Remember Prodigy.’s think tank? Where his daydreams have full thoughts and feelings? As a walking supercomputer, Prodigy.’s failed non-marriage is a full Matrix. This could be our reality. Our struggles and triumphs might be Prodigy. daydreaming about being a bad fuck and worse sperm donor. PLATO’S CAVE IS ONE MORON’S UNMEDICATED ANXIETY. I will rage against heaven forever. Even if I have to counter-dream a hell where I’m a catty writer instead of Uma Thurman’s pleasure cyborg. The siege of God’s fatal throne starts here.

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