Posted in: Comics, Image, Netflix | Tagged: frank quitely, image comics, Karl Kerschl, Mark Millar, matteo buffagni, Matteo Scalera, netflix, olivier coipel, the ambassadors, Travis Charest

Mark Millar's New Netflix Comic With Frank Quitely & Travis Charest

Published Fri, 09 Dec 2022 05:07:14 -0600

by Rich Johnston

Comments

The Hollywood Reporter has been given the PR by Mark Millar for his new comic book series, The Ambassadors, from Netflix/Millarworld/Image Comics, launching in March and presumably hogging the front cover of Diamond Previews in the process. And deservedly so.

With artists he has been promising for some time, Frank Quitely, Travis Charest, Olivier Coipel, Matteo Scalera, Matteo Buffagni and Karl Kerschl, all drawing one issue each of the six-issue mini-series, which he is describing as Willy Wonka with super powers. And other people are describing as DC's Millenium series from the eighties.

"It takes place in a world in which the superhuman genome has been cracked, and the scientist behind it is a Korean billionaire who builds the world's first superhuman headquarters in Seoul and alerts the world that she will turn six ordinary people into super-people. This sparks a global competition for people who want to join a team that will be on call 24/7 for superhuman emergencies.

And he is playing up the Netflix angle for creating an international cast in the series.. "One of the great advantages streamers have over cinema is you can do something this mad and ambitious. The domestic audience is usually the main consideration for an American studio, especially opening weekend, so having an entirely non-American cast of characters and exclusively overseas locations would be a hard sell if this was a traditional theatrical release, but I'm just as excited by Korea, India, Brazil, Mexico, Australia and France as I am about the audience in California or New York. It's also exciting for Netflix as these are all growth markets. We've seen the three act American superhero origin story a lot over the past 22 years and people are just looking for something a little different now. That's where the rewards lie and the idea of a super-team based out of Korea just feels fresh. It also gives us an amazing chance to use local talent in these countries and build up the profile of the characters across the world, spinning them off into their own projects and making it an even bigger deal when we bring them back together again. You could only do this thing on a streamer so it totally takes advantage of the format in a way we haven't seen before."

And they have previews of both Frank Quitely and Travis Charest's work on the series, both notoriously slow, very much loved and rarely seen comic book artists, likely to make this one of the best-selling comic books for the month. And for Mark Millar to launch a number of PR stunts to get people interested in the project, and in him personally. We'll be looking at a couple of those today… maybe we should make it Mark Millar Day at Bleeding Cool?