Peter Milligan

i wanna read some of ditko's shade.

Not perfect, and a tad pricey, but worth looking over at the shop, even if the art really doesn't do the story any favors.

i got skreemer and the extremist recently also. and more of shade.

he seems to tend to a thing where his conclusions are decided by a desire to neatness, story-endings, even when this is wholly disadvantageous to the work..? i might be wrong here. also i was missing issue three of the extremist. (issue four's ending = giant copout). skin and skreemer both - actually, they both have the same ending. the skreemer and the thalidomide bastard both come to the same thing.

i checked at the 2000AD site and there's looooooooads of uncollected one-shots and stuff they should collect like right now.

milligan miiiiiiiiiiight well exemplify whatever potential was lost when the british comics writers moved to america and we all realised crisis and revolver weren't any good, although i was like eight at the time so i'm not really qualified to talk about it. SEARCH enigma and until my mood changeds DESTROY everything else

Tom, you are aware that he spends much of that index making fun of how bad the books were at the time? I've known Paul O'Brien in the online comics realm for years; he's an invaluable and reliable source of information.

I don't think I understand what Tom's claiming re: potential: even if you think he's declined in the last ten years, he'd still written the glory years of Shade before that.

i didn't mean explain that comic as in "what is it", i mean explain it in terms of "why is it such an abortion"

He's a very, VERY inconsistent writer, isn't he? There's nearly always something interesting there.

Also very hard to summarise - you could define a 'typical' Moore or Morrison or Chuck Dixon or Claremont comics in about a paragraph but Milligan seems to me much harder to place (except that he has a kind of fascination with quite ambiguous or dislikable leads).

I re-read EGYPT at the weekend. There's a forgotten comic! Easy to see why, too - first few issues, terrific, everything good about Milligan (witty, dark, intriguing, well-paced). Last few issues, AWFUL - pacing goes completely wonky with lots of extra characters thrown in, wit turns to who-cares throwaway stuff, plot goes out the window and the final reveal is dire. Maybe a problem with PM is that he just loses interest in stuff...

I was just talking about Milligan with my girlfriend last night, because he's taking over one of the main X-Men titles from Chuck Austen, right?

tom's comments abt egypt totally apply, esp.re the ending

I think PM's become more consistent recently, in that you know what's going to be good (X-Statix, Human Target) and what's going to be worth avoiding (most of his mainstream Marvel work of late, cf. Wolverine / Punisher & Venom / Carnage), but like Tom said, there's little bits of goodness in even the crap he churns out.

I never actually finished Enigma - is it worth tracking down? (I'm guessing the kudos offered here are a resounding "YES!!!") It strikes me, in hindsight, as the typical Vertigo "ooooh, we're EDGY!" claptrap.

Milligan's auteur-status is easily the lowest of the successful late-80s Britcomics writers, though.

No, that's The Extremist you're thinking of.

His stuff for Vertigo, though hardly brilliant, is still consistently of a high standard (Extremist aside): Face, The Eaters, Girl, Enigma, Egypt and of course Tank Girl: The Odyssey, which I wuv. Even the Minx had a good idea or two.

I really hope DC releases that JLA graphic novel he wrote about Amazo (though I REALLY hope it's not gonna set me back $24.95).

The Minx is past it Milligan - some good ideas, but not well enough executed. cute girl, though. More cute girls in comics, say I.

I don't recall most of the others, but I thought Egypt was fairly lame - it went on and on and on for no good reason, basically being carried by the art.

I don't feel the hate for The Extremist everyone else has. It's somnething of a favourite of mine, but that might be because I wuv Ted McKeever art.

Anyone giving his recent spandex output a shot? That Toxin mini doesn't really intrigue me all that much, but his X-Men work has definitely improved from the first issue.

Also: "I really hope DC releases that JLA graphic novel he wrote about Amazo (though I REALLY hope it's not gonna set me back $24.95)." JLA CLASSIFY THAT SHIZZ!

My favorite Milligan line, along with, "I'm Bad Guy!"

The regular series of Humant Target is so so so much better than the miniseries.

OTM with the comments on the Human Target ending. I felt the series could (SHOULD, do you hear me, Karen Berger???) have gone on for a lot longer, but the ending didn't felt rushed at all, it was just perfect.

I'm buying Toxin, but I'll wait till the whole stuff's out to read it. It's supposed to be a sequel to the Venom/Carnage mini, which was Milligan writing a b-class comic book with dialogues so lame they're classic. It was pretty fun.

I think the scarecrow tale you are talking about is the one on that "New Year's Evil" fifth week event which also featured the JLA Prometheus one-shot.

Milligan on Batman:

Batman 452-454, 472, 473
Detective Comics 629-633, 638-640, 643
Catwoman Defiant (one-shot)

It's the DC equivalent of The Champions.

The Programme by Peter Milligan is pretty ace. It is coming down to the last two issues and I noticed that Wildstorm is going to put it into trades.

I got all but a couple of issues of the Human Target out of the .50 cent bin. I'm through the first mini-series and issues 1 to 3 of the regular series. The first issue of the regular series was a bit confusing, but issues 2 and 3 and the mini were very good reads. I'll definitely read the whole run.

there's a graphic novel between the first mini and the regular series, FYI.

KID AMAZO (which I just read recently) – not awful. I don’t see why the reception for this has been, from what I can recall, initial enthusiasm swiftly fading into disinterest. Perhaps I’ve come to terms with the fact that there’s little chance of ROGAN GOSH, ENIGMA, GIRL or even “Dark Knight, Dark City” (to reel off a grade-A Milligan work that, like the opus at hand, plays it straight with a corporate property) ever again erupting forth from Milligan’s pen (but hopefully not), but I found KA neat on its own terms – slugfest with philosophical flourishes, not entirely successful, but peppered with charming Milligan-esque details: half of each issue devoted to the protagonist questioning his identity, a talking Nietzsche bust, not to mention an Oedipal scenario depicted in a monotonous DC-specific art style. Fun.

I haven't seen too many comments on The Programme here, besides Earlnash's comment above. I like Milligan, and both the concept and art of this series look cool to me, is it worth getting?

I liked it at first and then went off it. It might be better in trade, as one thing I found was that I completely lost any sense of what was going on reading it in monthly installments. I also was a bit put off by a scene of sexual violence in the last issue I read.

I find with Milligan that he has written things that I really really like (viz. Skreemer and Bad Company), but nothing I have seen by him recently seems that interesting. I am not sure if I am looking at the wrong things or have become unadventurous.

Skreemer in particular is really amazing, though not for the faint-hearted.

The 00s was a terribly uneven decade for Milligan - hopefully this one will be better. He's got a new crime noir graphic novel out, The Bronx Kill, which I'm hoping to get hold of soon.

As you people may know, CBR has been polling various characters and creators for their greatest stories, and Milligan is the latest:

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2010/05/24/the-greatest-peter-milligan-stories-ever-told/

I remember Enigma being tops, must dig it up. Also Hewligan's Haircut.

Thanks Duane, good link.

Is it Enigma that features a group of villains who break into people's houses when they're asleep, then rearrange their furniture in such a way that they go mad and kill themselves when they get up and see it?

Yeah! Those guys were called the Interior League! The Head, the Truth and Envelope Girl were great too.

Enigma is awesome, yeah! One of the first things I've ever read that made think about queer issues (even though I hadn't yet heard about queerness as such), and it's true that all the supervillains in it are wonderfully freaky. Looks like the TPB of the series is long out of print though, at Amazon you have to pay over 35 bucks for a new copy of it. DC should reprint it post-haste!

Enigma and Human Target are the only major works by Milligan that I've read, and I loved them both, what other stuff by him I should check out? In those two, I really liked how they deal with the complexity and disjointedness of identity, and in HT also how it found innovative ways of exploring real-life political issues.

I love how Morrison's introduction to the Enigma TPB and Milligan's introduction to the first Invisibles TPB both hint at a gay dalliance between the two during a shared holiday they once had.

Wait, what?

tuomas.xls

other gd milligan comics - THE EXTREMIST (w/ Ted McKeever), ROGAN GOSH (w/ Brendan McCarthy), SHADE THE CHANGING MAN and X FORCE (w/ Michael Allred).

The problem with Milligan is, very little of his 80s/90s stuff has been collected, and can be tough enough to track down. Personally I loved the Vertigo horror one-shots FACE and THE EATERS, both highly entertaining. Also the three-part miniseries GIRL, which Duncan Fegredo also drew, which is often seen as a companion piece to Morrison's "Kill Your Boyfriend". VERTIGO POP: LONDON was also good fun.

I really liked his short runs on Batman/Detective Comics and Animal Man in the early 90s, which have often been overlooked.

oh yeah, there's a great Spiderman/Rhino story drawn by Duncan Fegrado that shldn't be too hard to find

The most recent issue of Hellblazer begins Milligan's story which features his return to writing Shade, for those at all interested. I don't personally expect much from it, but I'm open to surprises.

I really hope they do manage to collect all of Shade with the revived reprint series (volume 3 coming v. soon, which is promising). That was real formative stuff for me (along with the aforementioned Enigma).

I remember being very fond of the Extremist, but only had issues 2 and 2. But I know how it ends, so no problem.

Tuomas - have you ever considered a career in writing Morrison-Milligan slash fiction?

Is The Programme any good?

I decided to order it on Amazon, and the first volume just arrived. I'll report back once I've finished both books.

..Milligan's story which features his return to writing Shade

Wait, what? I was going to pull out my run of Shade to reread (or be lazy and track it down in scanned version) over my vacation, but this gives me a sense of urgency! Is it just Shade in Hellblazer?

Probably just Shade in Hellblazer, but one never knows!

Peter Milligan, perpetual underachiever, and best work long past, if the awful Greek St was anything to go by. Shame.

Shade hasn't really stood up that well, has it?

Human Target was only a few years ago, and that was pretty awesome. But yeah, it looks like Milligan has a pretty high hit-and-miss ratio. I revived this thread I tried to read a couple of other things by him (Kid Amazo and The Eaters), and wasn't particularly impressed by them. It feels like his comics tend to have interesting ideas but he doesn't always have the craftsmanship to make them into compelling stories. Kid Amazo especially had some really awful characterization, all the characters basically just worked as mouthpieces for the ideas he was trying to get across. Which is kinda weird, since it looks like it came around the same time as Human Target, where the character writing was one of its strongest points.

Kid Amazo was pretty bad. The last thing I read from him was the first book on that X-Force/Statix run, which was all right.

Human Target was only a few years ago,

Eleven.

X-Force was great, but it's kind of an oasis in the last decade of Milligan from what I've seen, along with the very fun "My Generation" (aka Vertigo Pop! London). Oh, Flowers For Rhino would have been '00s, that was fantastic, but he always is with Fegredo.

I'm buying the Hellblazer on and off, it's pretty autopilot Constantine, but the Vertigo-house-style artist contributes to that as much as the "John creates his own suffering!" "He places a girl in danger!" "Chas to the rescue!" tickboxes. I actually enjoyed the Bisley two-parter more than other issues because of this, although the story was so ludicrous it probably needed a lighter touch.

Tuomas' problems with the characterisation I dare say come from woorking under superhero editorial restrictions; Milligan usually seems capable of doing real characterisation OR madcap ideas, depending on what he feels like. Try Girl, maybe, for more deep character work. And if you didn't like The Eaters, Face was his other book from that mini-line of horror one-shots, and is fantastic.

I've enjoyed the first two trades of Shade, which I had never read before. It does have the tendency to meander a bit.

As for Milligan's recent work, it has been a terribly uneven decade, but Sub-Mariner: The Depths is an enjoyable take on the character, with a sceptical scientist setting out to debunk the mythical phantom.

This thread inspired me to dig out the Animal Man run, which is still great. That last issue, "Schrodinger's Pizza" makes me feel like a complete moron.

Human Target was only a few years ago,

Eleven.

The first mini was eleven years ago, but the ongoing series (which was better than the mini) ended in 2005.

A Milligan take on Sub-Mariner sounds cool, I'll check that out.

(which was better than the mini)

I think you're the only person in recorded history to say this!

ended in 2005.

Huh. Feels like a couple of eras ago in "mainstream" comics though, doesn't it?

I think you're the only person in recorded history to say this!

Er, if you look upthread, you'll see Lee saying the exact same thing. Also, most of the reviews and comments I've read on HT agree that the onoing series was at least equally good as the mini, if not better. Do you think the ongoing series was worse than the mini, then?

I've not read it! But I've seen lots of people saying it wasn't as good.

I read Milligan's run on Animal Man based on the comments in this thread (I hadn't even realized such a thing exists, I'd forgotten that the book continued after Morrison's run ended). It was okay, though I felt Milligan extended a plot that could've been done in 2 issues to 6 issues, the revelation in the final issue certainly didn't feel big enough to justify a 6 issue arc. Also, the various freaky superheroes and villains in this story were biting Morrison's Doom Patrol a bit too much. I think Milligan did a better job at creating surreal superheroes/villains in Enigma. (Interestingly enough, his Animal Man arc makes a passing mention of Envelope Girl, who would be later on introduced properly in Enigma.)

Anyway, reading this run made me remember why I never considered Animal Man among the finest works by Morrison, even though it has some of his best ideas. The thing that's supposed to make AM different from other superheroes is that he's a family man, but his wife and kids are total ciphers. Even though awful things happen to them, it's difficult to really care about such cliched and bland characters, either in Morrison's or Milligan's AM. And Animal Man himself is a pretty bland character too, his distinguishing feature is the moral crisis that leads him to support animal rights, but other than that his personality is that of a generic superhero. Morrison did a much better job at making Doom Patrol into interesting and idiosyncratic characters.

I enjoyed the journey more than the ending of Milligan's AM arc.

Have you read any of his Batman stuff yet, Tuomos?

No, I didn't even know he's written Batman too. Which issues should I look for?

Volume 2 of The Programme arrived in my mailbox today, so that will be the next step in my Milligan Reading Project...

Was vol 1 good?

No, I didn't even know he's written Batman too. Which issues should I look for?

BATMAN 452-454, "Dark Knight, Dark City", is swell swell swell, a dry run for ENIGMA (with Batman as Michael Smith and Gotham City as the Enigma) as well as a direct influence on Morrison's current run. He's written other things Bat-related, none of which I own aside from one issue of DETECTIVE that's kinda unreadable thanks to the then-waning abilities of Jim Aparo.

DKDC is a must-read. He followed that story up with a string of single-issue Detective Comics with Aparo: 629-633, 638-640, 643. Issues 639 and 640 cross over with Batman 472 and 473.

Mostly good single-issue stories, though the supernatural aspect of most issues met a mixed reaction - some simply thought his subject matter was too "out of the box" for the character. Cursed Irish grass, a killer librarian, Siamese-twin hitmen etc. The best issues IMO were "Identity Crisis" (633) and "The Bomb" (638).

I wish Milligan could have stayed on for longer, but I doubt he would have enjoyed playing along with the whole Knightfall/Knightsend thing. Although, I did read someone (Chuck Dixon, I think) describing a meeting between the writers and artists on the Batbooks at the time, where Milligan first came up with the idea of someone else taking Batman's place for a while......

I just finished reading The Programme, it was... okay, I guess. Very confusing series. The first volume felt like Milligan was doing something similar to Superman: Red Son: the basic concept is that during the Cold War, Russians develop superpowered humans who are supposed to function as living weapons against the West. But they never get to use them, and they remain frozen for decades, until they wake up in American-occupied "Talibstan" (don't know why Milligan couldn't just say Afghanistan) of today. And since the Russian superbeings are programmed to fight for communism and against Western imperialism, they of course go to war against America. But back in the day USA had built its own superheroes, which are also lying dormant, so now the US top brass wants to reinstate them to fight against the Russians. I've never read anything by C. P. Smith before, but his art is pretty cool, photorealistic backgrounds combined with strong, contrasting colours and thick brushlines on the characters. Kinda reminds me of J. H. Williams III's artwork on Desolation Jones. One problem with the art, though, is that Smith uses some heavy, heavy shading on the characters, especially on their faces, and because of that sometimes difficult to tell which character is which.

Anyway, the "communist superheroes vs. capitalist America" conflict is done in a rather heavy-handed manner in the first volume, but in the second volume Milligan puts a few twists to the story, so it takes a more serious and politically relevant tone. Unfortunately Milligan's political analysis still doesn't run particularly deep, not as deep as it did in Human Target, for example. It feels like the elements of the story don't quite add up to the sort of ambitious social commentary he's obviously aiming for. In many ways The Programme is Milligan's own Watchmen, but he doesn't really manage to marry the absurdity of superheroes with a keen view on realpolitiks as succesfully as Moore did. I think The Programme also suffers from the fact that it has about a dozen different main characters, and it simply lacks both the space and effort to develop them much. However, the whole series ends on an open note, so maybe Milligan and Smith will one day do a sequel, which might also allow the characters to become more three-dimensional. Even though I thought The Programme was very uneven, there were still enough interesting ideas in it, so I'd probably pick up the sequel if they'll ever produce one.

I guess I'd still recommend checking it out, but it's one of those comics where you often find yourself thinking, "this would've been so great if he'd just put some more effort into it". Like it's constantly lagging behind its own potential.

He's got a website now, which is nice

http://www.petermilligan.co.uk/

Looks like a new Human Target TPB is coming out next February, presumably it includes the first 10 or so issues of the HT ongoing series. So it seems Vertigo is finally collecting the whole series, which is nice, as it's mostly great.

The new Dark Horse Milligan & McCarthy collection is just amazing, on every level. Well, except for the fact that Sooner or Later and the original Freakwave weren't fully included.

There's hint of a companion Milligan & Ewins volume next year.

How is Sooner or Later not fully included?

They put in about eight of the strips

Fuck, I was most excited to see that again.