The Ambassadors Library Edition HC Review

 

Writer: Mark Millar

Artists: Frank Quitely, Karl Kerschl, Travis Charest, Olivier Coipel, Matteo Buffagni & Matteo Scalera

Colorists: Frank Quietly, Vincent MG Deighan, Michele Assarasakorn, Dave Stewart, Giovanna Niro & Lee Loughridge

Letterer: Clem Robins

Cover Artist: Frank Quitely

Publisher: Dark Horse Comics

Price: $49.99

Release Date: December 25, 2024

 

While countries like China and Russia carve up Antarctica, someone builds a technological marvel on Earth’s southernmost continent. Those who stumble across it awaken far away, unable to recall their discovery. What is happening in this city of the future on the continent dedicated to scientific research? And how will advancements made there benefit our world? Let’s pull on our Lycra suits, leap into The Ambassadors Library Edition HC, and find out!

 

Story

Dr Choon-He Chung is serving a life sentence in the Cheongju Women's Correctional Institution. She wants to change that. Aided by Oksana Petrov, the South Korean scientist unlocks the Human condition. While building her Antarctic city, she develops a range of superpowers she can draw on. Now, all she lacks is freedom. That's where her knowledge of artificial intelligence comes in handy.

 

In The Ambassadors Library Edition HC, Choon-He Chung downloads her consciousness into a lookalike android. Then she announces a competition. Choon-He wants to share her discoveries with people around the world. She doesn't insist that they be bastions of morality. What matters most is a desire to help others and a willingness to represent their respective countries. Some work in lowly positions in society. Others profit from hurting others but vow to turn over a new leaf. Each of Dr Chung’s superheroes will enjoy health and long life. While doing good, they can borrow up to three superpowers at a time, relayed from Dr Chung's Antarctic stronghold.

 

Dr Chung’s actions threaten the countries that dominate our world. Her handful of superheroes can take on the armies of the superpowers, end wars, and protect countries from natural disasters. In Mark Millar's story, Choon-He's greatest threat is her ex-husband. Jin-Sung never loved her. Instead, he waited for the opportunity to capitalize on her discoveries by falsifying the evidence that imprisoned her.

 

While Dr Chung builds her superpowered version of Jeff Tracy’s International Rescue Corps, her ex-husband builds a team of billionaires. Jin-Sung’s recipients control the internet and the world media. After amassing fortunes, ruling the workforce, and influencing the masses, Jin-Sung’s billionaires want to further their legacies by living forever in The Ambassadors Library Edition HC.

 

Art

Mark Millar teamed with artists Frank Quitely, Karl Kerschl, Travis Charest, Olivier Coipel, Matteo Buffagni, and Matteo Scalera to capture panoramic shots like a plane flying over a domed city and a ship entering a Junk-filled Chinese harbor. Choon-He hovers above a stage while her assistant hobbles using a cane. Superheroes climb onto pogo stick-like supports to descend into a secret lair before roaring onto the streets in an exotic sportscar. Choon-He marvels as she watches orange and yellow-green fire streak through the evening sky, knowing the man flying like a bird (or a plane) used to need an oxygen tank to breathe.

 

Frank Quietly, Vincent MG Deighan, Michele Assarasakorn, Dave Stewart, Giovanna Niro & Lee Loughridge wield loaded palettes to convey gang wars in Rio De Janeiro, a rescue on a snow-covered mountain, and a man flying above a burning Australian village. They contrast these with scenes painted with limited colors in The Ambassadors Library Edition HC. People watch a red, blue, and yellow superhero on a screen in a grayscale viewing room. An organic gray spiral elevates glowing red letters circling a globe. Gray, beige, and tan fill the Oval Office as the President worries about the threats to the United States multiplying.

 

Clem Robins fills dialogue balloons and narrative boxes with uppercase black lettering that grows bold for inflection and enlarges for volume. Sound effects help us hear soldiers mowing down the opposition, villains making their bones, and an aggrieved ex-husband shattering furniture with a single blow. As superheroes bond over capturing a gang of thieves, we glimpse their takedowns through giant, colored sound effects. Biff! Pow! Smash! Thanks to Dark Horse Comics, Millarworld, and Netflix for providing a copy for review.

 

Final Thoughts

Should people who accomplish much win the most substantial prizes? Or are those who selflessly help others most worthy of power? One of history's prominent influencers claimed that those who doubled their investments (or talents) were most worthy of being entrusted with more. Then, he granted his followers eternal life regardless of their social status, wealth, or business acumen. The Ambassadors Library Edition HC ponders people's worthiness of receiving superpowers, the responsibility to represent their countries, and freedom from the limitations of age and disease.

 

Rating 9.8/10

 

To preview interior art see my review at Comic Book Dispatch.

Getting Reborn With Mark Millar

What happens when you die? Where does your spirit go? Is death the end of one journey, and the beginning of another? Or is this life all that there is? These are questions that everyone wonders about, and even the most scientific of authors, such as Arthur Conan Doyle, have wrestled with.

In his current series Reborn, comic writer Mark Millar addresses these issues. Through his eyes, we follow Bonnie, an old woman eking out her final moments of life in a hospital. When she dies, she reawakens in a fantasy land brimming with fairies, mythic monsters, and yes, even the occasional dragon. Bonnie discovers that she is no longer feeble and suffering from cancer. Instead she is young and energetic. Her youthful body is far stronger than in her former life, she clad in armor, and she wields a sword. Amid a battle, she reunites with her father, her dog, and begins a search for her husband, who journeyed to this fantastic land before her.

Not all who populate this realm live as soldiers. Some settle down and have families, while others enslave the weak and perpetuate their evil schemes. Still, the fact that monsters and evildoers inhabit this realm means that those who seek to live by the sweat of their brow, and in harmony with others, must occasionally band together to protect themselves, their families, and their villages. It may be the afterlife, but that doesn't mean that Bonnie has reached Heaven. This is a world like our own, in which evil exists alongside good, and often fights for supremacy.

Bonnie isn't just another new resident of this fantastic land. People see her as a great hero who has long been prophesied to rescue them once and for all from the forces of evil. While Bonnie never refuses to help others, she isn't interested in building an army and launching an all-out assault on evildoers. Her first priority is more personal: she wishes to find other members of her family on Earth. So she travels this new world with her father and a pet from her childhood, the latter a dog that, like she and her father, is far larger and stronger than he was on Earth. 

Issue 5 of Reborn was my favorite thus far, featuring some major revelations about her husband, and leading to the final confrontation in Issue 6. But it was also bittersweet, as only one issue remains in the current series. From all accounts, the series is selling well, so depending on what occurs in the final issue, it's possible that Millar will write a sequel series sometime in the future. He's done that before, with series like Kick-Ass and Jupiter's Legacy. 

Interestingly enough, a hardcover novelization by Sarah Lotz is due to hit bookstores later this year, so those who missed the comics will have a choice of purchasing all six issues in one volume, or purchasing a prose adaptation. Many of his stories also get adapted for the big screen, so there's always a potential movie version to hope for. Still, that's far and away, while Reborn is pulsing with vitality, and available to read now. 

In many ways, Reborn seems like an interesting series for Mark Millar to write, as he's a devout Catholic. Reading Reborn seems a little surreal when Millar posts on Facebook and Twitter about attending Mass more often during Lent, and giving up things during this holy season of the Christian calendar. But Reborn is all in good fun. At its core, the story reminds us that Life, in whatever form, is always a battle between good and evil. Just like Bonnie's, our lives should be quests in which we fight for what is right, aid those in need, and strive for the people and things that matter to us. 

Even if that means we too must battle the occasional dragon.

Dragon Dave

Understanding The Fantastic Four: Part 3

"Better run, T-Rex. It's clobbering time!"

The Ultimate Fantastic Four comic book series championed the brilliance and idealism of youth. It proved popular with fans, lasting for 60 issues, far longer than most Marvel comic book series endure these days. And ultimately, it served as a basis for this year's new Fantastic Four movie. The only question is: will anyone bother to see it?

Hollywood can be a strange place for a writer to navigate. Stories, or properties, are bought and sold, and most often not made into films or TV series. But whether these stories get made or don't get made, whether contracts are fulfilled or expire, buying rights to stories back, once they've been sold, can be a tricky business, argued out over years or decades via lawyers and the courts. Currently, Disney, a vast multimedia conglomerate that owns Marvel, Lucasfilm, and the ABC TV network (among, no doubts, hundreds or thousands of other media companies), are embroiled in a battle to win back the rights to make their own Fantastic Four movies. So they obviously don't want this new movie, made by a rival studio, to succeed. Marvel has also done some interesting things lately, including canceling the Fantastic Four comic book, and killing off the actors portraying the Fantastic Four in the movie in an issue of The Punisher. 

Sometimes, you really don't need that extra caffeine.

This situation no doubt puts Mark Millar and Brian Michael Bendis is a difficult situation. Here's a movie, which seems a fairly faithful adaptation of their story, and they're not allowed to promote it or celebrate its release. It pits two writers who have lived their lives regaling us with wondrous stories against other writers and artists who are attempting to translate their story into another medium. And in the process, it puts all of us, as readers and viewers, into a dilemma: Should we support Marvel and boycott this movie? Or should we embrace it and celebrate it for what it is, recognizing how true to Millar and Bendis' reimagined characters and story the filmmakers have remained? 

Prevent pest infestations before they start with
the Ultimate Fantastic Exterminators.

Still, I suppose we can't feel too bad for these two creators. Two years ago, the Queen awarded British citizen Mark Millar with an MBE for his services to film and literature. American Brian Michael Bendis has garnered plenty of awards over the years, and last week even celebrated his birthday. It seems an odd time and way to celebrate one's birthday, let alone the translation of one's story onto the silver screen, amid controversy and battles over ownership of classic characters and stories. But then, Bendis loves to tell stories about superheroes. And if there's one thing we know about superheroes, when they're not rescuing the innocent or defeating villains, they're fighting each other. This fact was illustrated most profoundly, perhaps, by Mark Millar's Civil War series, which serves as the basic for next year's Captain America movie. So perhaps it's fitting that, while the superheroes fight each other, Disney and Fox should be battling it out over who gets to make movies about the Fantastic Four.

Dr. Doom: the reason every smart homeowner buys Fire Insurance.

As for me, all I can suggest is that you see this movie and decide its merits for yourself. Ultimately, that's what superheroes are supposed to be fighting for anyway, isn't it? The ability for each of us to decide how to think and act, instead of allowing far more powerful entities to dominate our outlook and actions. That's certainly what young Reed Richards was trying to do, in the Ultimate Fantastic Four comics, when he struggled against parents and school teachers who didn't understand him, and persisted with his experiments to develop the world's first working teleportation system.

Dragon Dave

Related Internet Links
Marvel Influences in the new Fantastic Four movie
Cast of FF movie killed in Punisher comic
Is Marvel sabotaging FF and X-Men movies?

Understanding The Fantastic Four: Part 2

In the Ultimate Fantastic Four origin story, written by Mark Millar and Brian Michael Bendis, Reed Richards leaves school to join the government-funded think tank run by Dr. Storm. There he meets Dr. Storm's children, Sue and Johnny, as well as Victor Van Damme. He spends four years there, working with other scientific prodigies to help iron out the problems in the experimental teleportation machine the group has constructed. Victor, meanwhile, works on his own projects, and never deigns to speak to anyone. Then, one day, Reed returns to his room, to find Victor there, going through his notes.

Reed: What are you doing, Victor?

Get out of here! This is my room!
Victor: You're doing them wrong.

Reed: Hey, what? You can't touch that!
Victor: You're attempting to calculate the densities as if they still held a gravity.
Reed: You can't touch my--these are my formulas!
Victor: You don't know the gravity equation in the--

Reed may force Victor out of his room that night, but later realizes that Victor is intelligent, and his participation may help speed the realization of his dream. So he approaches Victor, and asks him if he will join his team. 

Victor may be as intelligent as Reed, but he doesn't understand what Reed is doing. His overwhelming self-belief keeps him doubting Reed's conclusions. So he continually fiddles with Reed's calculations, and when the final test comes, of teleporting something organic through the machine (an apple), he corrects Reed's numbers again. Instead of teleporting the apple, the machine expands the field outward, drawing himself, Reed, Sue and Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm into another dimension. When they emerge, this descrambling of their atoms, similar to the transporter systems on the USS Enterprise in the TV series Star Trek, has changed their physical forms. Instead of reassembling their bodies correctly, they are now, and will forever more, be known as Mr. Fantastic, The Invisible Woman, The Thing, The Human Torch, and Doctor Doom.

Victor may be intelligent, but his belief in his own infallibility gives him a god complex. Like so many intellectuals, he knows exactly how to order the world so that it functions at maximum efficiency. Unlike Reed, he cannot truly work with others. He believes he should be in charge, and anyone whose beliefs or actions are at variance with his becomes his enemy. And, as any enemy threatens the proper structure he wishes to impose on the world, they and all their allies are dangerous and must be destroyed.

This, naturally, makes all human governments his enemies.

The new Fantastic Four movie draws their conception of Victor from this template laid down by Mark Millar and Brian Michael Bendis. When the military continually frustrate his efforts, he leaves Dr. Storm's think tank to continue his work elsewhere, and destroys the group's computers (and presumably, much of their progress) on the way out. After Reed joins the group, Dr. Storm reaches out to Victor, who has not achieved his goals on his own, and convinces him to return to the Baxter Building. Unlike Reed, Victor has not learned humility. He will continue to believe that he should be in charge, that he should be running not just the think tank, but the world. And after he and the others are physically changed, and the military take complete charge of the think tank, Victor realizes that, regardless of how powerful he becomes, he will never be able to control everyone on Earth. 

People who truly wish to help and empower others would channel this realization into working with the present system to achieve their desired goals. Victor choses a different path, a more destructive one. But I'll let you discover how he responds to the world's rejection as he sees it, and how he earns the name Dr. Doom, should you venture out to the cinema to see The Fantastic Four.

Dragon Dave

Understanding The Fantastic Four: Part 1

While I enjoyed the new Fantastic Four movie, a lot of people didn't. Some fans hated it, and shared their outrage on social media. Casual superhero fans heard this outrage, took to heart the critics' poor reports (When do critics rate comic book movies highly?), and decided to spend their money on other movies. Some fans have even ranted about how terrible the movie is online, without having first made an effort to see it. But I'm convinced that most people simply didn't understand where the director and script writers were coming from in telling their story. So I thought I'd take a break from these posts on England to explain the movie to anyone who might be interested. 

The first thing you need to know is the source material for this movie is based on the Ultimate Fantastic Four series, which rebooted the classic series for Marvel's Ultimate Universe line. This series was the brainchild of Mark Millar and Brian Michael Bendis, two powerhouse writers beloved by comics readers. Both have written stories that have been adapted into movies. For Mark Millar, some stories of his that have been made into movies include Kick-Ass, Wanted, and this year's Kingsman: The Secret Service. Brian Michael Bendis has served as a consultant on Marvel-related animated TV shows, including Ultimate Spider-Man, and his series Powers has been adapted into a TV series. So it's safe to assume that Hollywood takes many of its cues from Millar and Bendis when making superhero movies and TV shows.

Ultimate Fantastic Four reimagines all the characters younger, and starts off with Reed Richard, a young boy struggling through school, brilliant but misunderstood. When he falls prey to bullies, Ben Grimm stands up for him and defends him. As a result, Reed welcomes him into his world. Even at a young age, he knows what he wants to do. Teleportation--the ability to instantly transport oneself from one location to another--has long been the stuff of science fiction. He wants to make it a reality. He looks to the real of real science, in which other dimensions are postulated. His idea is to use one or more of these other dimensions as a transit path or gateway. Or, as he explains to Ben Grimm about these other realms:

Reed: No, no, it's it's everywhere. It's all around us. There's, well, there's any number of dimensions of--of time and space right on top of us and next to us and under us and around the world that we live in.

We live in this one and we're genetically custom-made to fit here--on the planet. And well, right next to us, right here, right now...is any number of other places and times. Any number of them. I mean, this is common knowledge. This is--yeah.

We just can't see or feel them. But they're there... They've always been there.

Ben: Dude, you are freaking me out.

Ben Grimm may not be able to visualize what Reed is trying to explain, but his ideas are drawn from current scientific speculation. Unfortunately, Reed's father is far less accepting of Reed's brilliance, especially when he takes apart household appliances and uses the components to build his teleportation devices. But Reed carries on, despite his father's displeasure and disbelief in him, and later presents his invention at the school science fair.

Reed: Whether it can be done (transported) for larger systems, such as atoms, remains a mystery. But my hypothesis here today is that instead of disembodiment, the real key to teleportation may be shifting objects through a parallel dimension. Shifting the objects through dimensions similar to our own, that are using the same space as our own. Once equations are properly calculated to breach this space, one would imagine that this kind of teleportation could, in fact, change every part of our society.

Starving people could have food distributed to them in an instant. Our transportation systems would totally change. The possibilities are endless. But this is only phase seven of my project. I can only transport a small object one way. Hopefully, by next year, I will personally be able to go and get my---uh... 

Well, uh... Maybe I'll just show you what I am talking about. Um, okay... You, uh, you might want to step back.

At this point, the fireworks start, and when they finish, Reed's model car has vanished, and the man wearing the red beret gets out his cell phone, dials a number, and says, "Yeah, it's me, Lumpkin. Found one."

A key difference between the film and the movie at this point is that, in the comic, Reed has only transported subatomic particles there and back again. Large items, such as the model car, have disappeared and proved unretrievable. But when the people on the other end of Lumpkin's cell phone invite Reed to join the prestigious, government-funded think tank operated by Professor Storm, he discovers that the team have built a much larger teleportation device. Within its confines, he can visibly see these other dimensions, or at least the gateway leading to them. And within them, floating like items cast into the ocean, are the model toys Reed has sent away with his small invention, but been unable to retrieve. 

Doesn't it stir your soul, to see an idealistic, hard-working person's years of creativity and persistence validated?

Dragon Dave