Wanted (Comic Book)/WMG

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


It's all a lie?

An old, dying supervillain has suffered his last defeat. In his last moments, he begins to hallucinate of a world where he did win. Or perhaps a hero took pity on his enemy and trapped him forever in an endless dream.

Everything in the comic is all true.

Think about it. Isn't it all horrifically plausible? Why the world's in such a crappy state, the truth behind all those "Disappearances" and "Unsolved" crimes? Ever walk down the street and see someone who looks JUST LIKE a character? What if it's because they are? If super powered beings like the ones in comic books existed, it would be childsplay for them to use their godlike powers to make us forget they ever did. And the ultimate sick joke, Mark Millar who is in on the whole thing as is every comic writer, was hired to print a comic about how comic characters were real and running the world, just to make it seem all the more ludicrous. He even comes right out and says it: Who even reads comics any more? He creates a story that makes the theory of real life super villains running the world impossible to believe and all but states, in story, that that's the whole POINT of the story. It would make so much sense. How did Lee, Kirby, Miller, Brubaker get the idea for all these strange and bizarre characters? They got them STRAIGHT FROM THE CHARACTERS THEMSELVES.

  • Why no, that is merely a silly paranoia. (He knows too much, get a mindwipe ready!)
  • Gets weird when you consider the idea for the comic came from what Mark Millar heard from his father (the superheroes don't exist because supervillains killed them all).
    • Older brother, not father I think.

Wesley has no powers, he just got really, really lucky.

As Larry Niven once said, there has to be someone at the extreme end of a probability curve.

The movie "Wanted" is a sick joke made by the Fraternity, who are real.

It's a twisted joke made by Wesley, now one of the arch-villains of the world. To further tease us, he's made a movie which is warped to be nothing like what reality is, much like what Professor Solomon Seltzer did along with the other arch-villains.

The comic takes place in the same world as Kick-Ass

Dave flat-out asks where all the superheroes are and why no one has ever done what he has before...and even he and Hit-Girl both hang up the tights by the end. Maybe the Fraternity's control is stretched so thin by present day that even though they're able to squelch him and Hit-Girl, they aren't able to keep the new rise of the superheroes under wraps once Kick-Ass accidentally gets the ball rolling?

  • And possibly Dave is that kid whose parents get killed by Mister Rictus. They wipe his memory, but he gets... fractious, buys a wetsuit and a set of clubs, and is away with himself.

The comic takes place in the same universe as "Nemesis"

Before the events of the comic, they villains had an alien supercomputer being, an extradimensional imp, a large cadre of time-traveling super Nazis, the world's smartest man, and some of the world's smartest psychopaths. By the end of it, the Fraternity has... what, the Lgion of Substitute Villains? They can't maintain control to the same degree they had. Meanwhile, the criminal underworld has been bucking against their level of power. The absence of athe big fish at the top if the food chain leads to one lucky sociopathic son-of-a-gun to bootstrap his way up to World's Most Wanted.

The comic takes place in an alternate version of the Marvel Universe and The DCU.

Throughout the comic, numerous paralells to Marvel and DC comic books are made. For example, many of The Fraternity's members are Expies of villains from either continuity: The Emperor is obviously The Mandarin, Fuckwit is supposed to be Bizzarro, Johnny Two-Dicks is The Ventriloquist, Mister Rictus is The Joker, and so on. Additionally, several Fraternity agents bear an uncanny resemblance to The Headsman, Darkseid, Reverse Flash, and Venom. When the Professor shows Wesley his secret, it's obviously supposed to be Superman's cape, and someone who is implied to be Superman himself is seen confined to a wheelchair. If that's not enough, the comic also makes reference to seven-dimensional imps, level nine intelligences, and the two actors Rictus killed are more or less outright named as Batman and Robin (especially considering how he taunts them as they die).

  • As an aside, this Troper also believes that Wesley is the alternate universe's Deadpool. They both break the fourth wall, have similar senses of humor, identical fighting styles and weapon abilities, and even share the same fundamental character design.
    • Some are a cross between both Marvel and DC, though. Wesley's dad is analogous to Bullseye and Deadshot. Emperor is also partly based on Ra's Al Ghul (refers to the Batman analogue as the detective). Frightener looks somewhat similar to Marvel's Carnage, but his name and the fact Rictus' team are mostly made up of Batman villain analogues could mean he's a Scarecrow analogue.

The Kid gets revenge.

What if Rictus was right and the kid he orphaned did train himself up for revenge? But chose to take out the Fraternity once he learned his revenge was denied...and then expose the entire Fraternity and bring back superheroes? Personally I'd pay Millar to write a sequel where something similar happens...or if Hit Girl chose to take out the Fraternity for some reason, either way both stories are ones that'd be great in my opinion.

Wanted is set in an alternate version of the DCU.

Its kind of hinted to be. The villains are all Captain Ersatz of DC villains and none of the heroes are ever named. Seltzer and Wesley are looking at a red cape from an angle we cant see meaning there might be a superman logo on the other side. In parallel 2 Wesley is fighting a character who looks very like Superman but we only see him from behind. The actors who used to be superheroes; One is in a wheelchair, obviousely meant to be Christopher Reeve who played Superman.