In 1987, Marvel Comics picked the two worst guys for the job, and we're glad they did. When the publisher told the 2000AD team of writer Pat Mills and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen artist Kevin O'Neill to create a new, edgy superhero for the Epic Comics imprint, the two came up with Marshal Law, an ultraviolent satire of the genre that skewers classic beacons of purity like Superman and Batman both literally and figuratively. "Pat said, 'Why not make the character a guy who hunts superheroes?' " recalls O'Neill. "And I said, 'Don't you mean supervillains?'"
He didn't.
Now, on September 2, Titan Books is putting out a new paperback, Marshal Law: Origins ($12.95) collecting in black and white (with new artwork) two out-of-print Marshal Law novellas called Day of the Dead and Cloak of Evil, with text by Mills and O'Neill and plenty of O'Neill's spot illustrations, along with a cover pulled from their friend Nick Percival's short CGI Marshal Law cartoon. The two men have plenty of ideas for future work on the series, and in a way, that's their biggest problem: they've got a huge backlog of great concepts.
"We stopped making notes on future graphic novels because we just had too many," sighs Mills. "I think if Origins goes well for us, we'll continue to do a few prose novels, and that's where we'll draw the material from." If those books ever do get written and drawn, they'll look pretty unusual: Mills and O'Neill have been inspired by some strange places, like the post-perestroika prison they found in Vilnius, Lithuania, housed in a Russian Orthodox church. For two men who vividly remember their Catholic upbringing (remember, these guys created the Jesus League of America), this was pure gold, and so it became one of the settings in Marshal Law: Origins.
Asked about the out-there quality of the writing and art in Marshal Law, Mills insists that truth is stranger than fiction. "The second story, Cloak of Evil, really is inspired by the Profumo scandal," Mills says. "On one level, it was a tragic event, and on another level, it was a hilarious romp. And from a Marshal Law perspective, you put superhero costumes on characters and you have a very potent story."
Mills says that he and O'Neill have considered all kinds of real-world parallels: "We at one point considered doing superhero versions of a lot of scandals throughout history—the Marilyn Monroe death, for interest. Imagine putting superhero costumes on the people involved in that!"
For his part, O'Neill is in love with the oddity of the superhero world and its various opportunities for surrealist humor. The MAD Magazine-style Apocalypse Comics issues of Law (as a creator-owned book, it went through publishers like most people go through socks) feature plenty of sight gags and Wally Wood-y puns on top of the crazed storytelling.
"Pat had never seen a superhero book until he was an adult," O'Neill recalls. "If you've only ever seen, for example, Green Lantern as an adult, it's kind of weird material." Especially when drawn by O'Neill. The artist's own Green Lantern Corps backup stories got him into such hot water with the recently deceased Comics Code Authority that the artist says he became persona non grata.
"I was sort of banned by the Comics Code for that one," O'Neill recalls. "[Editor] Andy Helfer rang me up and said I'd been rejected by the Comics Code, and we rang them up and said, 'What can we change?' and they said, 'Nothing, the artwork is so offensive.' "
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A panel from the Kevin O'Neill Green Lantern story which was once banned by the Comics Code. |
The artwork in question, written for Alan Moore's script, depicted a planetful of grotesque demons held captive by the GL Corps, which manages to play a fatal prank on Hal Jordan’s predecessor, Abin Sur, even while locked up. There's no gore or sex in the story, just O'Neill's intricately drawn, "offensive" monsters. DC eventually published the tale (and the Mills/O'Neill Metalzoic graphic novel), but it was the last thing O'Neill did for the publisher until the bestselling League of Extraordinary Gentlemen years later.
Of course, the punch line to this anecdote is that not only has DC reprinted the Moore/O'Neill short story time and again, with great success, most recently in the DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore collection), but current Green Lantern writer and DCU mastermind Geoff Johns has used the 12-page backup story as the cornerstone of the company's upcoming crossover "Blackest Night." When PW asked O'Neill if he'd been informed of his vindication, he said he hadn't, but he got a kick out of the news.
O'Neill says that he and Moore are hard at work on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century, with only occasional breaks while Moore finishes up the finale to his suburban vampire goof, The Bojeffries Saga, a collaboration with artist Steve Parkhouse.
So more fully drawn Marshal Law stories will have to wait until Moore and O'Neill are tired of the League (which may be a while). Mills, too, is busy with his recent creation, American Reaper, slated as an upcoming graphic novel and optioned for the big screen by Trudie Styler's Xingu Films just last month. But is that the only movie in the works?
The idea of a Law movie seems a little off the wall, especially given O'Neill's stylized depictions of the stories' characters and settings. O'Neill himself sounds worried about a film version, though he's not as burned out on the idea as LoEG collaborator Moore. "We've got interest in movies again, and I think that since movies have gotten darker, it's more likely," O'Neill says. "We always used to get 'We like it, but...'
"Now people are more prepared to run with it, although one director wanted to do it but not have any superhero content or costumes, and then you'd just have a guy with a gun." O'Neill laughs. "We were kind of baffled by that approach. The prelude to all these overtures is 'oh, we love your work, we want to respect your vision.' And then they do what they want, because once you've cast movie stars, the engine is completely different and doesn't have anything to do with us anymore. Nothing is ever changed to a positive effect."
And frankly, the most faithful Marshal Law movie would probably be a cartoon, and the days of NC-17 theatrically released cartoons may be a ways off yet. For now, fans will have to settle for Titan's reprints of the old novellas, and next year, Top Shelf's mammoth anthology of the duo's work on the title. It'll be the first time all the Law material has been in print at once, and between Titan, Marvel, Dark Horse and Apocalypse, there're more than 500 pages of the old ultraviolence floating around in back-issue bins. For fans of the series, it's reason enough to follow one of Mills and O'Neill's best suggestions. That can be found written on the side of an axe at the beginning of Marshal Law #1.
"Smile!"