Teamworking Day: Mark Millar Thinks This is Smart, Part 1

Dennard: Genius salute! I’m Dennard, local geniusologist and vagrant. I bear a gift from the UltraLibrary. “Bear” is like “have” for geniuses.

Dennard: We get these at Genius Orientation. They honor Mark Millar, the first genius. He predicted this article, the followup, and the rest of non-genius history. Oddly, I’m alive after mocking Nemesis in my wayward youth. Maybe he’s grateful I spread the Good Word.

Seanbaby: Hell yes, we're doing a Mark Millar article! I love Mark Millar. I like his big, cinematic superhero moments but I love how he's very not smart. He's stupid sometimes, sure, but he's "not smart" all day. And that's the best thing a comic book can be. If you don't know his work, Mark Millar came up with the idea of Reverse Batman more than once. He's also the guy who came up with the idea "what if superheroes were real," many more times than once. He asks marketable, movie optionable, very not smart questions like… what if Flash Gordon, only again? What if Superman but, like, Forrest Gump? Holy shit, what if superheroes were real? Oh my god, what if Hot Tub Time Machine wasn't fun? But by far, my favorite thing about Mark Millar is when he, with all his very, very not smartness, tries to write a genius character.

Dennard: Millar has a mission: translating genius to dog. As a dog, I assume it always works. We’re decades into flawless portraits of geniuskind. To help educate other dogs, we should tour his creations. Other geniuses—we call them Millars—might see themselves.

Seanbaby: I've been fascinated with Mark Millar trying to sound smart for years. He writes intelligence like Dennis Miller changing unctuous to obsequious in a Kirkegaard punchline, only for an audience of Oingo Boingo's grandkids, babe. He talks smart like an undercover cop at a MENSA meeting. Or a MENSA member talking to people who fuck.

Dennard: While he outthinks Netflix today, Millar’s genius for genius also shone under Marvel. Before Millar, Bruce Banner was all about jello shots and editorial oversight. Then Millar reinvented him as a man of science:

Seanbaby: "How would a genius, a man of reason, respond to the concept of a motorcycle demon?" thought Mark Millar. "Something like… scoffs and haberdashery! Indubitably, the data doth not support such frivolity! No, but I'm close," thought Mark Millar. "Wait! I've got it!" thought Mark Millar, regrettably.

Dennard: Nerd Hulk speaks the language of the people. Language they’ve abandoned, because he respects and preserves the classics. He’s also a skeptic that carpools with Thor. Atheism would be standard: God’s clearly napping. But it takes extra genius to be a rationalist ogre.

Dennard: Maybe genius Hulk feels far-fetched. But have you seen the Genius Panther? While other T’Challas read like blaxploitation Batman by nervous Comic-Con clerks, Millar only sees another Millar. Genius is big numbers, as T’Challa narrates in Civil War. Or maybe he’s just hitting on Dagger with algebra, it’s fuzzy.

Seanbaby: We've seen a lot of Black Panthers over the years. When Reginald Hudlin wrote him, he portrayed T'Challa's genius with simple elegance. He was face-punchingly direct, like a samurai. Ta-Nehisi Coates made him wise and humble, a king made stronger by facing his defeats. Mark Millar went a different direction with the character. He made Black Panther a guy who brags about almost remembering his computer password. "Could a smart guy remember a long number?" Mark Millar wondered before realizing "ha ha ha the number could be 69." And this stupid shit lasts forever. Decades from now children will be reading the back of a trading card and it will say "Powers & Abilities: Omega Level Genius. Black Panther has the intelligence of a man who can nearly remember 69 numbers, which was a sex position used by humans before Musktubes, exhale here for exclusive DCsneyMarvel-Bangbus Musktube skins."

Dennard: Wonderful outreach. Perfecting representation made killing Goliath first in Civil War less awkward. The smartest part? The door to Space Hell is hard to operate. If a SHIELD flunky mistypes the start of Finnegan’s Wake in binary, Earth dies.

Dennard: That’s just one side of Civil War, which asked if hunting Captain America with enslaved prisoners is okay. The answer seems obvious, and that’s why you eat from the doggie bowl. The other side’s Millar is Reed Richards, whose ethics have super-flexibility.

Seanbaby: We are so lucky to live in a world where Mark Millar got to write this many geniuses. Marvel could have said, "Sorry, Mark, you're not quite right for this title. It famously includes a character who can count to 70. Maybe explore your idea of… what was it? Vampires who become YouTubers? Pills that stop time? Oh, haha, those were real? I thought I was making fun of you."

Dennard: Sue Storm is also a Millar, albeit on the side of illogical chaos. Good luck explaining the Super Stasi to a She-Millar. They calculate emotionally.

Dennard: Isn’t that sad? They let politics tear their minds and mutant bodies apart. Never again would she make Reed twist his face into someone, anyone else.

Seanbaby: Mark Millar thinks this is how geniuses break up. "Studies demonstrate an increased immune response after making love so I dutifully porked you before abandoning our marriage. I also included an article I read on fish oil! E=MC2, chess!" A real genius would have written 3000 words on how hard it was to leave that unstable molecule dick. Can you imagine what Reed Richards does to holes? Beautiful Mind equations would float past his smug face while a thousand fleshy shapes attacked every erogenous zone. This thing I'm describing? It absolutely would have occurred to Doctor Doom. It's why Doctor Doom hates him. What were we talking about?

Dennard: Don’t burn off your Fantastic Four tattoos yet. Millar explores genius reconciliation.

Seanbaby: Ha ha ha what the fuck.

Dennard: I’m hard already. Not just from the eroticism woven into Reed’s non-apology (putting this through a Vigenère cipher backwards prints his nudes). But from getting closer to understanding genius. Millars do everything faster. By the time you type out “enslave Venom to murder Steve Rogers,” a Millar is already on trial at the Hague. As his own lawyer.

Seanbaby: "Sorry so sloppy, you know I'm too smart for sentences as you know them!" I might relate to this one. Sometimes I'll open my Notes app and see things I wrote myself like "PastaMania Pope" and know the thoughts of true geniuses are too vast, too majestic for linear words. Sorry, for some reason I'm taking all this discussion of otherworldly intellect and making it about me. Let's keep reading Mr. Fantastic's letter to his wife.

Dennard: The love-in continues. If you onanate–that’s jelqing in genius–to your own work, you understand Reed. And maybe someone else. You need to see yourself in partners, and Sue’s mutations are a living tribute to his genius. That’s love. If handwritten begging didn’t bring Sue back, he’d ask out The Thing.

Seanbaby: Here's something a smart person wouldn't do if they cried for exactly ninety-three minutes: SAY THAT TO A WOMAN THEY WERE TRYING TO IMPRESS. Reed Richards is supposed to be the literal smartest man on the planet and Mark Millar writes him like a Jordan Peterson reply guy with a one-step plan to steal your laundry.

Dennard: To the untrained dog, this reads like a parakeet left in a science fair. And it is! Millar trained a bird to write comics. Dr. Pecky penned Civil War, most of Jupiter’s Legacy, and all of Wanted but the last page. Pecky’s a romantic. To win back your wife after going all Goebbels, just measure your tears by the milliliter.

Dennard: Reed can’t afford to cling to dignity. After all, he has competition.

Dennard: Broccoli that requires killing! Majestic. He went on a bit longer. To quote: “DOOM HAS REMADE YOUR VEGGIE BURGER IN DOOM’S IMAGE. NOTHING IS BEYOND DOOM. NEXT, HE SHALL MERGE SUGAR, RED DYE, AND NO TOMATO INTO A NEW SAUCE: KETCHDOOM.”

Seanbaby: It's the best when Mark Millar has a genius interrupt himself with a fun fact about their own intellect. This is from a Fantastic Four where a new reality just got birthed. There was so much to fucking get to, and Dr. Doom stopped for an entire panel to say, "Do you doubt my brilliance, Richards!? Bah! And behold! For Doom has created vegetable fish!" There's no delicate way of putting this. For this idea to even form in an author's brain, it has to be 80% pussy tissue.

Dennard: Impressive smartness. Still, among Marvel’s Millars, even DOOM pales before Reed’s greatest rival: extra Reed. In turn, they’re helpless before Child Reed.

Seanbaby: I have been told I'm not a mathematician, and it was by my differential equations professor, so I have reason to believe her, but "SOME OF THESE EQUATIONS LOOK A FEW DECIMALS OFF–" is such an amazing misunderstanding of how numbers work. It's… I mean… Mark Millar might as well have said, "Some of these calculators are seven point vegetable point fish!" Shit, my fish joke looks a few decimals off.

Dennard: The numbers seem odd, but they serve the action. If my Dad was being beaten to death by himself, awesome. Okay, bad example. If most dads were being strangled by clones, their kids would show some hustle. But Val’s a genius, and feels the same way about Millar Reed we do.

Dennard: The math has only begun. While Reed Punching Reed tops The School of Athens in genius-per-inch, the climax usurps The Art of War. The Art of War mostly says “don’t,” so it’s a low bar.

Seanbaby: It's fun when Mark Millar has a genius know something that has nothing to do with genius. Like Nemesis might tell a cop, "I knew you would move to Sacramento and start a farm, so I planted an abortion bomb under your walnut orchard 25 years ago. Also, I'm your wife. And your favorite movie? I made it." This is Mark Millar speedrunning that concept. Reed Richards has absorbed a bunch of ill-defined magic multiverse energy, and when Doom asks how long until his heart explodes, Reed says "23.4 seconds." He could have said, "Long enough to fill each of your holes with elastic me" or "I don't know, you fucking nerd." But no, he gives his exact time of death to the decimal point. And again, I'm not a math guy, but if he said "twenty-four seconds" it would be just as precise because it takes like .6 seconds to say ".4 seconds."

Dennard: Val and Doom elevate thesaurus spam, but for pure ultrascience nonsense, you can’t beat the original flavor. Until later, when Millar goes harder. But for now Reed is apex brain.

Seanbaby: Like I mentioned, Mark Millar isn't necessarily stupid. He's only very not smart. So he's capable of looking up "hottest temperature" and learning the name for that. We get into the stupid territory when the man clinging to his last 23.4 seconds of life spends 70 of them explaining "the hottest numbers go" to the man who has been on fire since 1961. And it's stupid in every direction because the entire plan is to have Human Torch flame on the bad guy as hard as he can. To put this in ways non-dorks can understand, it'd be like teaching a seduction class where you explain "intercourse– it's the meeting of crotches known as sex," and your ultimate plan is just asking everyone on Instagram if they want to pork. But then it would be a Warren Ellis story. Sorry, non-dorks, you won't get that one either.

Dennard: Forget the ninety words per second. In comics, you either forgive talking as a free action or find a new hobby. I’m here for Reed’s strategy. I‘ll break it down, since some of you only learned to read by accident. Johnny can make fire. Little fire okay, but big fire better. Shoot big fire! Reed so smart.

Seanbaby: That is a better way to put it.

Seanbaby: Holy shit, it worked! And my God. On 23.4 seconds exactly. Truly an earned and meaningful moment.

Dennard: After our research, I almost understand Millars. As a student genius, they give me small migraines. But some time with his X-men should close the gap. Meet the genius version of Professor X.

Dennard: Inaccurate? Better. In higher ed, half your peers talk like this, all the time, on purpose. It makes some dogs homicidal, but I see a bright red flash of love.

Seanbaby: This is adorable. Mark Millar accidentally wrote himself into a corner by making two characters too smart for books! So now he had to solve the problem of how a genius would still do books! And what he came up with was to telepathically spy on writers still fixing their drafts!? That's fucking madness– the fleeting idea of a full lunatic. You're telling me Professor X is lurking in Haruki Murakami's mind while he throws out similes? He's in there listening to him think, "the sound of the bell lingers… like dust floating in the air? Half-remembered dreams? Psh, no. A Hamburglar threat? I must be hungry. ♪ Hh hh hh! Hh hh hh! Hungry like the wolf! ♪ Whatever happened to Duran Duran? The sound of the bell lingers like… ♪ pizza ♪? Let's open a new tab, www.NudeAfrica.com, don't mind if I do. ♪ Writer's break, writer's break, I earned a sexy writer's break! ♪"

Dennard: This opens infinite doors, which Millar explores for zero more pages. And begs the question: what old-fashioned monkey books get into Prof. X’s bugout bag? What arouses his arousal enough for print?

Seanbaby: In his emergency supplies, Professor X keeps a waterproof logarithm textbook! This is obviously a MADLibs placeholder that could have been anything, and Millar chose "waterproof logarithm textbook." This is like one of the shitty Family Circus children misunderstanding something, but instead of an idiom it's the very concept of being smart.

Dennard: Each Millar is every type of genius at once. You might associate Prof. X with a more Philosophy 404, Please Stop Stabbing Each Other type of intellect. But genius is also numbers, which are way easier for Dr. Pecky to write about.

Dennard: Compare Magneto. Under Millar, his thesis of Let’s Start Stabbing Each Other sounds the same. By giving every genius one voice, Millar shows the links between deadlines.

Seanbaby: Mark Millar ran out of ideas about what a bad guy could do with magnets so instantly. When given unlimited power, Magneto's first plan was to erase distant VHS tapes! David Finch had to draw that! I agree with Magneto that the first step of building any utopia is getting rid of all anime, but that only makes us right, not smart.

Dennard: If your X-power is immortality, reality warping, or infinite patience for garbage, you lost out. The best mutation is brain. Millar expresses this through Hank “Beast” McCoy, the swolest Millar. His powers seem to suck next to Storm, until he unleashes the dictionary.

Seanbaby: Let's c–

Dennard: Critiquing history’s most-discussed writer may sound like pissing in the ocean. That’s why Netflix screens your calls. Beast, as a proper Magnum Brain, lets 150 years of nerds do the heavy lifting. Freeing him to show off to anyone that wanders in.

Seanbaby: I'm so glad you had the academic authority to know this one was stupid. I was about to say, "Let's cut this one, I think this one might be pretty smart." I'm not much of a Marx's Das Kapital critic myself, so I get impressed when someone knows exactly how many seconds they have left on a Marx's Das Kapital critique. Speaking of economy of words, I really feel I have to tighten up my slightly rusty Russian grammar here, but in Russia, Beast is what's known as an фnsuffeядble dipsжiт.

Dennard: If you survive his column, his bowels finish the job.

Seanbaby: Henry McCoy is a genius. He critiques Marx's Das Kapital, he reads poetry, and if he is ever in need of emergency dignity, he's already not flushed his poop down your toilet.

Dennard: If you survive his bowels, no you didn’t. You’re tripping to death on shit-fumes. But on the way there, reflect on Beast geniusing on Magneto.

Seanbaby: This is an all-time Millar because, again, these are MADLib placeholders that could have been anything. All he had to do was list one scary thing and two smart things. For scary he went with "swings from trees" a non-fact far less threatening than "he's already not flushed your toilet." And for the smart ones, Mark typed "reads poetry" and "knows the square root of a million." That describes any grade schooler. Every grade schooler. Knowing the square root of a million is built into your first explanation of "a million." Mark Millar, you didn't write a description of Beast. You wrote a tagline for Tarzan Frasier, a four issue miniseries you will abandon on issue two and option to Netflix for $4,000,000*.

* Henry McCoy knows the square root of that. Maybe.

Dennard: I’ll admit, I prefer Dr. McCoy’s work in digital blackmail. Wait fingers, what are you doing? Why betray me? Why betray mankind? Fingers, you can’t make some kid’s hero the Miyamoto of revenge porn—

Seanbaby: "So, Beast, as a leading scholar of philosophy and ethics, I probably couldn't talk you into using this paramilitary combat simulator to make non consensual pornogr– oh, you already have? With two pop stars who were teenagers last month? And you're telling me this where everyone can hear you!?"

Dennard: Whether you’re a fan or invalid, Millar’s the voice of the Ultimate Universe. Which makes it dying twice odd. Among Ultimate Millars, I have a soft spot for Genius Cap. He replaces all that boy scout finger-wagging with…something else.

Seanbaby: Ultimate Captain America is so smart he'll… h-he'll use children as human shields? Jesus. I think Mark Millar knew this wasn't that good, because any time Ultimate Cap does something smart, Ultimate Nick Fury will not shut up about it. He'll be like, "You think this A on my head stands for France!? Ha, only the most brilliant mind could think of that." Ultimate Cap once teleported a bunch of vampires into the sunshine and Ultimate Nick took two entire panels to marvel at his genius. But this scene? Where Ultimate Cap led a rocket tank into a kindergarten in an act of terror? It was not followed up with Ultimate Nick saying, "I really liked how you endangered those kids like a coward. Let's go celebrate! I lost my wallet in the kindergarten rubble, so we'll have to find a bartender with a family we can threaten."

Dennard: Everyone needs a friend like Nick. Someone that says “If I let you print this, they’ll make a movie, right? Don’t say God will forgive me.” That human touch elevates Millar above traditional, high-IQ geniuses. Hopefully Disney remembers Cap’s child endangerment powers when Chris Evans runs out of money.

Dennard: Enough pop music. Let’s enter Millarworld.

Seanbaby: Fuck yes. Free Millar from the chains of non-Millar characters!

Dennard: In Chrononauts, geniuses break time by partying too hard. Dr. Pecky answers power fantasy critiques by writing a double fantasy. Making dogs beg for past levels of wank. Finishing it gets you into Alpha Sigma Sigma, but in 2069.

Seanbaby: Chrononauts is the exact time travel story you would write if you became a teenager in the '80s and then had a head injury that prevented making new brain cells, but I'm making it sound awesome. It's not. It's a very clumsy swing at awesome that ends in a man falling off a bridge screaming, "What if dinosaur stuff and also I was in the Smiths instead of Morrisseeeeeeeeeeeeee–" Anyway, it gives us another window into how Mark Millar thinks smart people fuck. It's similar to how normal people fuck, but you do it lovelessly in the closet and describe it all weird. Damn it, I'm making it sound awesome again.

Dennard: Of course, our frat stars aren’t the only geniuses. While they bring HPV to Atlantis, the party train is threatened by duller, equally talkative geniuses.

Seanbaby: When your time travel universe uses Back to the Future rules, it gives you all kinds of opportunities for profound "what ifs." These are inherently interesting, so they can be almost anything. Prevent an assassination, kill a Hitler, kick a Morrissey out of the Smiths, whatever. So it's almost unbelievable Mark Millar came up with one that evokes nothing. This guy wanted to stop a Nazi riot last night so he went back and invented Pong!? What? How many fucking random goddamn things did he try before trying Pong? Was Ms. Pac-Man a gambit to get a table at brunch in 2478? Did he throw a shoe into ancient Mesopotamia and hope it uninvented bras? I'm so pissed off about this.

Dennard: Independence suits Millar. Instead of rehashing superheroes fighting amongst themselves, he explores vigilante infighting. Here’s my favorite thinker from Jupiter’s Legacy, a.k.a. Watchmen for Geniuses.

Seanbaby: The only thing on this genius's to-do list is go tell Barack Obama what to do. Man, this is one of those times where I wish I was better at spotting subtle racism. I worry if I complain about Barack Obama not obeying me, people could misunderstand it as something other than genius.

Dennard: Genius unlocks the full power of…2013 Glenn Beck. Is Glenn Beck alive? Or did he learn shame and walk into the ocean? Either way, lots to learn from here. I wonder if political jokes will still land when this runs, or if I’ll be running from Sentinels. Anyway, that’s Walter.

Dennard: Millar’s emancipation from capeshit continued in Nemesis, which I’m sure I loved. And Nemesis Reloaded, which has the sequel title dogs use as a joke.

Dennard: Oh. It’s poop again.

Seanbaby: This doesn't seem genius yet. I mean, Beast would think so, but I feel like it's missing something.

Dennard: Nemesis rarely goes a full page without the title Batman. I wonder what this builds to.

Seanbaby: There's the genius. It was the first lady's poop! Dear god, we're dealing with a mastermind sixty-nine steps ahead of us.

Dennard: Virtuosic. Like Reed, Millar has trouble writing complete thoughts. So he simply doesn’t. This reflects the struggle to be understood. Wanting, needing to say “the system is broken” and typing “Batman hand-stuffed Jill Biden’s shit into an urn.” Maybe that gap makes us human. Maybe caca make smelly. I don’t have answers, only two-ply.

Dennard: You could call Millarworld an imprint, if you’re satisfied burying shit in the yard. If you want more, think bigger. This definition of smart conquered the last good medium. We live in MillarWorld.

Seanbaby: Okay, this is going to sound crazy after 21 Insane Examples of Mark Millar Being Wrong About "Smart," but we should do this again. Tomorrow.

Seanbaby: I really am serious! We're… oh, sorry this clip from Nemesis: Reloaded is unrelated penis content. Ignore it! This is the important part: we're meeting back here tomorrow for Mark Millar Thinks This is Smart: Reloaded. Okay, the end.

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