Speaking to ASK MEN UK, comic book creator Mark Millar shared the following details:
QUESTION: What can we expect from Superior?
MILLAR: It's kind of like Big meets Superman. It’s a very simple idea about a little boy who’s got Multiple Sclerosis, and he’s given a magic wish. He’s in a wheelchair most of the time, and he basically wants to become Superman, so instead of just being able to walk, he can fly and he’s the strongest man on the planet.
The big twist is that the person who gives him the magic wish is a demon and the kid will go back in the wheelchair unless he sells his soul. It’s a children’s story, in a way, but we’re going to make it as a big family movie. It's quite dark in places, but it's a child's wish fulfilment film.
QUESTION: It sounds a bit different to your usual 'bitten by a radioactive spider' story?
MILLAR: Yeah. In the 1930s Superman and Batman were created and they were particularly one-dimensional - they were just 'good guys'. Whereas when Stan Lee created the Marvel characters in the '60s, he made them all a little bit more two-dimensional. Peter Parker struggled to pay his rent, Tony Stark had a bad heart - he gave them faults, made them lifelike.
What I’ve done with the Millarworld [Mark's publishing house] books like Kick-Ass, is make the hero just like any normal 16-year-old boy - he’s totally three-dimensional. He’s one step on from Peter Parker, and I try to do that with each of these concepts. Secret Service, the one I’m working on now with Matthew Vaughn is a movie about a chav kid from the kind of area that’s really looked down upon. He goes from being a chav to being a gentleman superspy. It's My Fair Lady meets James Bond. Each new character is someone from the real world - given a little twist.
QUESTION: Do you have a dream project you'd kill to work on?
MILLAR: I’m quite lucky because I’ve worked on Marvel for ten years and DC before that, and now Millarworld has become a big thing, selling well as books and now they're getting made into movies, too. My dream is in ten to twenty years, or maybe sooner, to have as many franchises as Marvel comics. I want Kick-Ass, Nemesis and Superior to be as big as Spider-Man. And we’re on our way because the first two have grossed half a billion between them, and we have six or seven in the pipeline at the moment.
Having never read Superior [it's on my to-do list] I can't comment on the likely success of the film but I can say that Kick-Ass was a stellar treat. Having just read Supercrooks, Millar's latest comic book effort, I can also say that Millar is definitely creating comic books that would lend itself well for a big screen adaption. In fact, Supercrooks felt like I was reading the opening number for the next chapter in the Ocean's 11 franchise, I could literally hear a soundtrack playing while I was reading it. Regardless, with a number of projects from MillarWorld currently in various stages of development, it will be curios to see which property will make it out of limbo next following trailblazer, Kick Ass.
Superior is a creator-owned comic book series written by Mark Millar and illustrated by Leinil Francis Yu. It is published by Marvel Comics under the company's Icon imprint.
Simon Pooni, an angry, bitter 12-year-old boy suffering from multiple sclerosis, idolizes superheroes, particularly Superior, a Superman analogue. An alien monkey named Ormon appears at Simon's bedside, informing the boy that of all the people on Earth, he has been granted the honor of being bestowed a single magic wish. Simon is then transformed into Superior.
The Secret Service tells the story of a young kid trained by an older spy to be his replacement. Millar has described the project as his version of S.H.I.E.L.D.