CLiNT: Mark Millar's New Comic for Grown-Up Boys

Kick-Ass creator Mark Millar’s new magazine showcases the best of comic talent

Mark Millar, the creator of Kick-Ass and Wanted, has a new British magazine, CLiNT, out this month. If you are in India though you have to sneak one in on your flight over.

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Aimed at 18-30-year-olds, CLiNT is a ‘boy’s comic’ that will feature serialised comic strips such as Jonathan Ross’ ’30s gangster vampire tale Turf as well as interviews and features. The idea itself struck Millar a year-and-a-half ago like Wolverine’s berserker attack-out of the blue.

“I was on a train down to the Kick-Ass set,” he tells FHM, “and for some reason I was reading The Daily Telegraph and Jim White, the sports columnist, was asking, ‘Why the hell are there no British boys comics any more?’ And I knew the answer: it’s because American companies came in the ’90s, waved big cheques in our faces and got us all to work in the States and British companies couldn’t compete. It got me thinking and by the time I’d got to London I had a plan. So when I got to the Kick-Ass set, instead of getting to work I spent about an hour talking to [director] Matthew Vaughn about this and we both got really excited.”

Both Boyle and Ross will produce comic strips to run in the monthly magazine, despite neither having any real experience outside of being massive comic book geeks.

“I was embarrassed at how good Jonathan was,” says Millar, “it took me about five years to get the depth he’s got. But he just hit the ground running.”

Millar is most famous in non-comic circle for Kick-Ass, his ultra-violent, real-life superhero that was turned into a mum-displeasing film earlier this year. Millar’s mag will feature the sequel to the massively successful book (above), meaning readers can find our what happens to Dave Lizewski two years before the film’s sequel, Kick-Ass 2: Balls To The Wall, comes out in 2012.

Millar explains how his most successful creation was inspired by real-life events. “Kick-Ass as an idea is something I’ve had kicking around since I was a kid. My friend and I exercised loads and even designed costumes. We were going to try and do this whole superhero thing when we were 14 or 15. Thank God we didn’t. But that idea’s always been in my head.”

From the October 2010 issue of FHM India.