‘What if Superman was your dad?’ Comics legend Mark Millar on Jupiter’s Legacy

M ark Millar is remembering one of the best bits of advice he ever came across, something he read as a teenager that was said by Alan Moore, the legendary creator of such milestones in comics as Watchmen and V for Vendetta. “Never believe that you’re a genius,” quotes Millar, himself the creator of such revered titles as Kick-Ass and Kingsman, “and also never believe you’re rubbish.” Speaking by Zoom from the office he keeps in his Glasgow home, Millar rounds this off with the words: “You’ve just got to do your best and enjoy it.”

It’s a healthy rule to live by, given the sometimes toxic fandom that surrounds the comics world. Millar, whose only dream as a five-year-old was to write superhero adventures, has experienced this vitriol a fair few times. That’s no surprise, considering the Scot’s habit of chewing up and spitting out the expectations of the genre.

For DC, he reimagined the origin story of Superman, crashlanding his spaceship in the Soviet Union rather than Kansas. He thinks Michael B Jordan, who was supervillain Erik Killmonger in Black Panther, would make a great Superman (Jordan’s also the favourite for JJ Abrams’ own reboot). Then, at Marvel, Millar helped pull the company back from the brink thanks, in part, to the success of his brutal reinvention of The Avengers as The Ultimates. This was as much a critique of superhero archetypes as it was a dig at American post-9/11 neo-conservatism, with the team reinvented as band of super-soldiers directing their fists at the war on terror. In The Ultimates 2, Bruce Banner is publicly outed as the Hulk and blamed for hundreds of deaths, while Thor is locked up after apparently developing mental-health issues.

Millar, a long-time Labour party member and a Brexit supporter, has often woven political commentary into his work, but he was rather surprised to receive thank-you letters from readers who were inspired to join the army and go off to fight in the Middle East. “People missed the entire point of the story,” he laughs.

If nothing else, this is evidence of how far Millar has come. “I started off doing stuff for seven-year-olds: Superman Adventures at DC. People were saying, ‘He’s the guy who does the junior stuff.’ So then I did something a bit more shocking to lose that reputation. The stuff I’m doing now is incredibly different to what I was doing five years ago, which is different from five years before that. When people have me pegged as something, it’s good to completely wrong-foot them.”

Well aware of the popularity of his work – written and drawn with a cinematic eye that makes it perfect for the big screen – Millar grew tired of work-for-hire rates and went solo, setting up his own imprint. By 2010, the Scot was working full time on Millarworld, which now boasts more than 20 titles. This brings us to Jupiter’s Legacy, the first Millarworld franchise to be adapted for TV, and the first to be released by Netflix, which bought his company for £24.8m in 2017.

Jupiter’s Legacy is based on Millar and artist Frank Quitely’s 2013 cross-generational saga about rifts in a super-powered family, whose conflicting politics and ideologies manifest themselves as a global power struggle, causing significant collateral damage. “People expected it to be like Kick-Ass or Kingsman,” he says, “which are quite nihilistic, really violent and ironic, whereas this show is very sincere. Kick-Ass is a pastiche of superheroes, but Jupiter’s Legacy is a love letter. The big question is: is it ethically correct, if you have the power to save the world, to stand back and do nothing?”

Millar grew up on a council estate in Coatbridge on the edge of Glasgow, the youngest of five siblings. To this day, he still visits and reinvests in the community through his charitable foundation. “I just love it,” he says. “There’s 6,000 people, 1,000 houses, five shops and a pub. And I know everyone out there.”

He credits a brother for introducing him to comics – his first was The Amazing Spider-Man issue No 121. By the age of 18, however, he had put his dreams of writing his own on hold to study Politics and Economics at Glasgow University. When his father died, four years after his mother, he could no longer finance his studies, so dropped out to make his childhood ambition a reality.

While the 51-year-old still lives in Glasgow, with his wife Lucy and his two youngest daughters, a move south to Surrey is now in the pipeline. “Last year, we did plan to move to California but coronavirus happened. We had a house and everything.” Being cut off from everyone during the pandemic made him change his mind. “It lost its appeal and I want to stay in the UK.”

It also made him realise what has been the key to his writing success. “Don’t move to Hollywood!” he says. “Stay where you came from – because all those little things that came together and made you who you are – they’re unique to you. If you move, as we were planning, then you’re just going to be hanging out with other guys who do the same thing you do. It brings something to the job if you can reflect the real world as opposed to reflecting on it.”

So he will continue to work from the UK: after selling up to Netflix, a deal Lucy (also his business partner) made happen, he was taken on as president of its “Mark Millar division” – which, he says, felt like selling your house for a fortune and then being handed back the keys. “I don’t have the same autonomy I had, but I talk to other execs every day and decide which directors and showrunners we’ll interview. I read every script and give notes. I was watching cuts of Jupiter’s Legacy and sending in suggestions. I didn’t realise what a massive control freak I am, but my name is at the front of the credits. I want it to be good.”

The series contains what Millar calls a “boomer versus millennial argument”. This is reflected mostly through the Sampson family: Sheldon (AKA The Utopian) and Grace (AKA Lady Liberty) are the elder, age-defying leaders of The Union, a paramilitary team that has symbolised the American ideal ever since they gained their superpowers during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Cut to the present day and we find their children, Chloe and Brandon, are increasingly disillusioned by their parents’ code and expectations. “Superman is the best guy you could possibly have,” says Millar, “but imagine if he was your dad? That’s the idea with The Utopian, who the whole world loves. But what does that mean for your children? Because the pressures are incredible.”

Star Wars, King Kong and Roman mythology were influences – as was Carrie Fisher. “I remember reading Wishful Drinking and Carrie saying her mum was Debbie Reynolds and her dad was Eddie Fisher – and, even though she was Princess Leia, she felt she could never live up to them.” Millar met Fisher at the bar during a Star Wars: The Force Awakens premiere in 2015. When he excitedly told her she was the inspiration for Chloe, the late actor’s response was decidedly nonchalant. “She was like, ‘That’s very interesting – now go get me another drink.’”

So, was the superhero Sampson family at all inspired by his own? Millar’s eldest daughter Emily, from a previous relationship, is an artist who recently released her own original comic – and designed a cover for an issue of Hit-Girl, the ultra-violent vigilante tween from Kick-Ass she partly inspired. But Millar believes he’s the complete opposite of the superhero patriarch he created. “The Utopian’s idea with his daughter is, ‘I want you to do what I did and I’m going to choose your path’ – which is the worst thing a parent can do. I don’t think you create a healthy individual or a great artist by forcing them to do it. Jupiter’s Legacy is almost like a warning: don’t do this to your kid.”

Millar has slowly moved away from writing mostly male stories where people spend their time “shooting each other and climbing walls”. By the time his third daughter arrived, most of the lead characters in his creations – from Reborn to Hit-Girl, from Empress to The Magic Order – were women. “I was watching movies and shows with my daughters,” he says. “Maybe subconsciously, I was picking up all of these Hannah Montana facts. I liked the idea of doing stuff my kids would be interested in, so I found myself writing female characters.”

He recently read Jupiter’s Legacy to his nine-year-old, skipping the more “scary” panels. When she asked to watch the TV series, he promised she could – “in about six years’ time”. Clearly, Millar’s edge hasn’t been completely blunted: Jupiter’s Legacy promises to echo such recent TV series as Falcon and the Winter Soldier, The Punisher and The Boys, which adopt a more brutal depiction of violence even as their leads are positioned as symbols of hope. And, increasingly, heroes are being celebrated by audiences because of their flaws as much as their greatness.

“Superhero stories, and I think comic books in general, are about being our best possible selves,” says Millar. “But they need to go through a lot before they can be a hero. The hero story in Jupiter’s Legacy is one of these kids realising there’s honour in public service – just stepping up when it looks like there’s no hope. This is the classic hero’s journey. It never goes out of fashion and it feels great, as an audience, to see someone fulfil this, because it appeals to the best aspect of ourselves.”

Despite this, he says, providing inspiration is not his priority. It’s just a bonus. “Entertainment,” he says, “has one function: to entertain. Whether something is filled with hope, is incredibly nihilistic, frightening or moving, I just want to be entertained. Superhero stuff rises to the challenge. And every year, they are trying something new – which is why it’s thriving.”

• Jupiter’s Legacy is on Netflix from 7 May.