{"id":9645,"date":"2023-03-15T01:06:52","date_gmt":"2023-03-15T05:06:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tempestmag.org\/v01_2020\/staging\/?p=9645"},"modified":"2023-03-16T15:46:30","modified_gmt":"2023-03-16T19:46:30","slug":"remembering-marshal-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2023\/03\/remembering-marshal-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Marshal Law<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

A<\/span>cclaimed British comic book artist Kevin O\u2019Neill<\/a> passed away November 3, 2022 at the age of 69. O\u2019Neill was well known for his work with Alan Moore on the popular series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen<\/em>, which featured a team of adventurers made up of characters from Victorian literature. He had humble beginnings in comics, his first job being to erase the page credits for creators in order to keep them anonymous and subservient in the companies they worked for. But later, O\u2019Neill illustrated a wide array of British series such as the ever popular Judge Dredd<\/em> and co-created<\/a> ABC Warriors<\/em>, Nemesis the Warlock<\/em>, and Ro-Busters<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Infamously, O\u2019Neill\u2019s style of cartooning was rejected by the censors at the Comics Code Authority for a Green Lantern<\/em> short horror story written by Alan Moore. O\u2019Neill asked what could be done to ensure the story passed the requirements of the Code. He was told<\/a>, \u201cNothing, it\u2019s the whole style.\u201d The story was not published for a year before eventually being released without the Comics Code seal of approval. While O\u2019Neill\u2019s whole career is admirable, this article will focus on a series he worked on that has many things to say of interest to the Left: the dystopian superhero parody Marshal Law<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Writer Pat Mills claims that the impetus for the series came from Kevin O\u2019Neill\u2019s idea for the title, as well as his sketches of the character. As soon as he heard the title Grant said, \u201cWe both knew we wanted some kind of fantasy cop of the future. There are many ways it could be done but I can\u2019t think of anybody I\u2019d like more whose job it is to hunt down superheroes and give them what they so richly deserve.\u201d1\u201cSuperduperman\u201d<\/a>, but Marshal Law<\/em> was something altogether more vicious. Marshal Law<\/em> originally appeared from 1987-1989 as a six-issue miniseries published by Marvel\u2019s Epic imprint, a line of titles for more \u201cmature readers.\u201d The series came out shortly after the \u201cgrim and gritty\u201d superhero deconstructions Watchmen<\/em><\/a> and The Dark Knight Returns<\/em><\/a>. However, problems of censorship appeared shortly into the series when a company doing production work on the title refused to handle the second issue unless the over the top violence was toned down. Epic also lost a distribution deal with Waldenbooks due to complaints from a parent who had bought their child an issue of Marshal Law<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In addition to its criticism of superhero comics, the series was also fiercely political. Much of Pat Mills\u2019 work has been praised by elements of the political Left. The anti-war comic Charley\u2019s War<\/em> was praised by both the Socialist Party\u2019s Socialist Standard<\/em><\/a> and the SWP\u2019s Socialist Worker<\/em><\/a> as offering an accurate portrayal of World War I. In the Socialist Worker<\/em> interview Mills claims, \u201cI know first hand that the strip [Charley\u2019s War] influenced many young men not to join the army.\u201d The Young Communist League\u2019s Challenge<\/em><\/a> recommended the later series Third World War<\/em> saying, \u201cThe world painted by the comics matches the emancipatory imagery of neoliberalism with the harsh repression of the state and the multinational corporations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mills was a speaker<\/a> at the 2017 Marxism conference, during which he laid out the politics of 2000AD. Marshal Law\u2019s politics run in this vein. Mills bragged, \u201cKevin O\u2019Neill and I have explored the true cost of U.S. military interventions (Fear and Loathing), the darker side of the C.I.A.(Marshal Law Takes Manhattan), the real motivation of the super-rich (Kingdom of the Blind<\/em>), and corporations who trade with the enemy.” (Super Babylon<\/em>).2

The plot of Marshal Law<\/em> takes place in the then-future 2020s in the metropolis of San Futuro (as rebuilt after a devastating earthquake). The United States has been engaged in an imperialist conflict in \u201cthe Zone\u201d (virtually all of Latin America) against Marxist guerillas. The U.S. has employed ex-Nazi scientist Doctor Shocc to create a new race of superhumans through genetic engineering, both to act as more efficient soldiers in the war in the Zone as well as to serve as pro-war, pro-American propaganda. Our protagonist is a veteran of the war, Joe Gilmore, who serves as a secret policeman called Marshal Law, working in the service of the totalitarian government. Law has a visceral hatred of superheroes, viewing them as debased hypocrites.<\/p>\n

\"Three
Covers for the Marshal Law series. Photo Credit: MARVEL [database]: Left<\/a> \/ Middle<\/a>\/ Right<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This attitude was not the only thing that set the character apart. Law dresses like a combination of leatherman and Nazi officer, carries comically huge guns, and, along with the other superpowered characters, has grotesquely huge musculature. Comic artists in the 1990s would adopt these artistic tropes with no acknowledgement of their origin or meaning, but the idea was to shock readers and make them laugh at the absurdity of an over-the-top superhero character.<\/p>\n

The political critique of Marshal Law<\/em> begins with its logo, which is a gun with the colors of the American flag. This image draws a connection between the \u201cAmerican way\u201dand violence. Many of the superheroes are depicted as members of an underclass, used and discarded after their service in the Zone. They are depicted as suffering from mental illness and live in slums, some resorting to degrading work or gangs to make ends meet. The antagonist of the first story is not like these superheroes. He\u2019s a Superman-esque hero named Public Spirit, an obvious analogue for then-President Reagan.<\/p>\n

Mills admitted as much in a 2002 reprint of the story, writing, \u201cHe\u2019s got a bit of ex-President Reagan in him; Reagan as a young man was a hero, an athlete, a figure of virility.\u201d Like the real-life Reagan, Public Spirit avoided military combat while encouraging others to sacrifice their lives and limbs. Public Spirit is a xenophobic super patriot, a homophobe, and a raging hypocrite, making him the perfect Reaganite punching bag. After Law has exposed that Public Spirit attempted to murder his pregnant girlfriend, the \u201csuperhero\u201d flips out and yells, \u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s wrong with this country today … the feminists and the pinkos and the faggots are trying to take over … spreading subversion like AIDS!\u201d<\/p>\n

The second Marshal Law <\/em>story, “Marshal Law Takes Manhattan”<\/a> (1989), combined an attack on C.I.A. torture with lowbrow, cruel parodies of Marvel\u2019s superhero characters. The publication of this parody was all the more surprising given that Epic, which published the book, was an imprint of Marvel. “Marshal Law Takes Manhattan” pushes the portrayals of Marvel stars\u2019 derangement to the extreme in ableist caricatures of mental illness. \u201cMr. Fantastic,\u201d famous for being married to the Invisible Woman, is depicted with an imaginary wife that he only thinks<\/em> is invisible. The normally introspective \u201cCaptain America\u201d is so absorbed in his own thoughts that he\u2019s catatonic. \u201cThor\u201d believes the delusion that he\u2019s a thunder god. \u201cSpider-Man\u201d is a compulsive masturbator, shooting his \u201cwebs” all over New York. Most pointedly, the Punisher parody known as the Persecutor is a sadistic fascist, complete with swastika tattoo, who used to get his kicks torturing South American dissidents for the CIA. Law dismisses them and, by extension, the superhero genre\u2019s dominance of the comics medium as \u201cexotic variations of nothing.\u201d The story ends with the remnants of the superheroes splattered all over the New York sidewalks with the Marshal scraping them off his boots.<\/p>\n

“Kingdom of the Blind,” the third Marshal Law<\/em> story, aims its satirical barbs at probably the most famous comic book superhero of them all: Batman. The version of Batman is called the Private Eye, but all the trappings are there: billionaire industrialist, orphan, nocturnal crime fighter. Private Eye fights criminals because he fears that\u00a0 the underclass of society will take away his wealth. As the Marshal puts it, \u201cThe only reason a billionaire becomes a vigilante is to hold onto his money.\u201d Most gruesomely, Private Eye harvests the organs of his young sidekicks to prolong his lifespan and his pathological war on crime (shades of Peter Thiel<\/a> here). When Private Eye meets his gory end, it feels generally subversive (given Batman\u2019s iconic cultural status) akin to someone burning the American flag.<\/p>\n

Contemporary reception of these stories was generally positive. In a Comics Journal interview Alan Moore said,<\/p>\n

If Watchmen did in any way kill off the superhero – which is a dubious proposition – then Marshal Law<\/em> has taken it further with this wonderful act of necrophilia, where it has degraded the corpse in a really amusing way. I think that’s great… Pat and Kevin do it so well, with such style and with such obvious malice; that’s the fun thing about Marshal Law<\/em>. They’re not just kidding, they really hate superheroes.3

Artist Phil Foglio praised Kevin O\u2019Neill\u2019s art writing \u201cEach issue looks like Halloween in Hell. I love it.\u201d4

However, subsequent Marshal Law<\/em> stories failed to live up to these highs. The \u201cHateful Dead\u201d story was serialized in the British title Toxic<\/em> for British publisher Apocalypse Comics. As a serial, it suffers from pacing issues, and the story ended on a cliffhanger when Toxic<\/em> was canceled and Apocalypse went bankrupt in 1992. Apocalypse was also notorious for not paying its creators on time, and this provoked a group of comics professionals, including Pat Mills, to occupy the corporate office until they were paid what they were owed.6

The storyline was concluded by Dark Horse comics as \u201cSuper Babylon,\u201d and here many of the satiric barbs seem misaimed. The story satirizes the \u201cGolden Age<\/a>\u201d of superheroes, but many of those characters had already fallen out of popular favor. It\u2019s like kicking a person while they\u2019re already down. The creators also depict these characters as moralizing born-again Christians, something with no basis in older comics, especially given how many creators in the Golden Age were Jewish. The only biting sequence comes when Law expounds on how the United States government turned a blind eye to corporations trading with the Nazis<\/a> and utilized Japanese war criminals<\/a> to further the military\u2019s biological weapons program.<\/p>\n