Politics & Power Quote by Mark Millar

Millar’s line lands like a shrug with a knife behind it: of course there’s no shame in writing Captain America or Wolverine, and the fact that anyone thinks there might be is the whole point. He’s poking at a long-running status anxiety in comics culture, where “creator-owned” is treated as adulthood and corporate superheroes as selling out. Millar’s intent is defensive, but it’s also a flex: these aren’t second-tier characters you slum with; they’re modern myths with the cultural reach most “serious” literature can only pretend to envy.

The subtext is about legitimacy and labor. Writing for Marvel or DC is often framed as renting toys, bound by continuity, editors, and brand management. Millar reframes that constraint as craft rather than compromise, insisting that working inside an industrial machine can still be art, still be voice, still be worth pride. There’s also a class note here: “shame” is what gatekeepers use to police taste, to suggest mass entertainment is inherently lesser. Millar, a writer who’s moved easily between Big Two comics and Hollywood-adjacent projects, knows that popular IP is where the cultural arguments actually happen.

Context matters: Millar rose during an era when superhero comics were getting glossier, darker, more cinematic, and more commercially central. Saying this now is a reminder that the center of pop culture isn’t a guilty pleasure. It’s the main stage.