Comic book creator Mark Millar has quietly been working on a new series that he hopes will tap into the global audience of Netflix, the streaming service that is home to his Millarworld comics.
The Ambassadors centers on six characters in six different countries, and the concept is described as “Willy Wonka with superpowers.” 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.
Millar, the creator behind Kick-Ass, Jupiter’s Legacy and Kingsman, sold his company Millarworld to Netflix in 2017, with the streaming service developing multiple titles into films and TV series, including American Jesus, which has already filmed season one. He sees The Ambassadors as the opportunity to tap into Netflix’s desire to have content tailored for different regions and hopes this could potentially be an on-screen franchise.
“One of the great advantages streamers have over cinema is you can do something this mad and ambitious,” said Millar. “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.”
The Ambassadors will be published by Image Comics, with the first issue dropping in March. Millar enlisted artists Frank Quitely, Travis Charest, Olivier Coipel, Matteo Scalera, Matteo Buffagni and Karl Kerschl to each tackle one issue set in a different country. For the artists, it was a painstaking labor of love, with Quitely spending two years on his volume.
“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.”
Read on for a look at Quitely’s art:
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