- Is it ever possible to escape your origins?
- Is it ever alright to change yourself?
- Are societal expectations about appearance and behavior, despite being arbitrary, automatically negative?
- Is James Bond still a useful male role model?
- How about John Steed? John Drake, the Prisoner?
- Are certain lifestyles and habits superior to others?
- Is getting a better job and moving away more of a fantasy than any of the superspy gadgets and martial arts?
- Would you rather live in a fancy apartment or a council estate?
- Is the portrayal of the lower class men fair in this book? Are “not all men” like that?
- Is the bit about “staying in and watching Supernanny” instead of going and becoming a super spy yourself a thinly veiled dig at Grant Morrison?
- Is the suggestion that we take responsibility to change our lives and transcend our circumstances automatically a negative one because some people are unable and/or unwilling to?
- When was the last time your worked out?
- Paid attention to what you ate?
- Do you think the outfit Gary wears to go pick up women with the other young recruits is a handsome one?
- What level of responsibility do we have to our families?
- Is it wrong for Uncle Jack to move his sister and nephew out of their neighborhood, rather than improving the entire area?
- Did it occur to you that Gary’s family would almost certainly be among those killed by Dr. Arnold’s plan?
- Why don’t you think that Arnold can’t watch the wedding party kill each other? Is fifty too small a number to be a statistic? Has he not played enough video games or watched enough feature films?
- Would you have enjoyed this comic a lot more if it had Grant Morrison’s name on the cover?
- How do you feel about male role models? Do they provide us with adequate examples for young men to emulate?
- Given the choice, would you rather they emulated the suave gentlemen like Jack, or the wife beating drunks like Dean?
- Did it occur to you while reading that military service is often the only way out of lower class poverty for many young men?
- How do you feel about the military?
- Do you know how heavy a rifle is, and how much it kicks with recoil when you fire it?
- How did you feel when Gary broke down crying and admitted that he didn’t want people to laugh at him for being poor anymore?
- Do you think that rich people would be spared in an apocalypse, man made or not?
- Is it right that none of Jack’s world saving accomplishments make the front page?
- Is a life dedicated to silent public service and helping other people really the true masculine ideal?
- If so, why do so many films and television shows and novels and comics extol personal glory, individual prowess, aggressive competition, and massive braggadocio? If not, what is? Assume performative gender roles as per Butler here.
- Who teaches these ideals to the young men of the world? And why are so many of them apparently not learning the right lessons?
- Grant Morrison said: “Hollywood doesn’t work that way, you can’t walk in a room, and he doesn’t… you know I live in Hollywood, I live here four months of the year and I can know what goes on, there aren’t 200 million dollars films being made, what can I say… I don’t really want to say… I don’t want to come out against somebody who will see it as an attack, it’s all too easy to do.” about Millar’s seeming ability to walking into any room and make a film any time he wanted. The Secret Service was made into Kingsman: The Secret Service almost instantly, and director/producer/screenwriter Matthew Vaughn has a co-plotting credit on the comics. Is Morrison wrong about Hollywood, wrong about Millar, or is he just walking into the wrong rooms?
- Would Grant Morrison be one of the people Matthew Arnold saved? How about Mark Millar?
- How about Arnold’s janitorial staff?
- Were the Star Wars prequels really the equivalent of the Kennedy Assassination for our generation?
- If so, what does that say about our level of political engagement vs. fictional media engagement? If not, what is? 9/11 perhaps? What do you think Žižek would say about The Phantom Menace and its place in the franchise?
- And if not, why does this kidnapper working for a cell phone billionaire who wishes to wipe out most of the world’s population think that they were?
- What kind of movies would George Lucas make in a post apocalyptic situation like that?
- Did you notice that everyone in the comic thinks that they are doing the right thing, and that their actions are completely justified?
- Do you enjoy when media makes you think? or should it lull you to sleep and provide a break from how awful the world is? Do you dislike when you think you’ve got one and it turns out to be the other?
- To what extent is schadenfreude a useful emotion?
- What do you think it means that Rupert Greaves means to join Arnold in killing off most of the planet’s population, and Gary has managed to kill him accidentally simply because of how he was trained?
- The film was wildly successful. Do you think there will be a sequel? What would it be about?
- Would you have enjoyed the story more if Gary were a woman?
