On "Marshal Law: The Deluxe Edition", by Pat Mills & Kevin O'Neill

"... the passion for destruction is also a creative passion." - Bakunin, of course

There's no better advert for the costumed crimefighter comic than Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill's Marshal Law. Acclaimed for its superhero-loathing vitriol, it's also the proof of how malleable and vital the genre can be. In what's still a hilariously contemptuous and absolutely relevant parody, Mills and O'Neill gleefully savaged the superbook's long-ossified pretensions and prejudices. But as with so much of the very best satire, Marshal Law simultaneously rejuvenates the very thing it skewers. In that, it reflects something of the exhilaratingly contradictory relationship between Punk and product. Just like the Stooges, the Ramones and the Pistols, Marshal Law eviscerates the opposition with a glorious mix of ecstatic cartoon energy, brutally righteous sloganeering and a knowing disdain for compromise. Yet in doing so, Mills and O'Neill revealed over and over again how absurdly exciting and provocative the form can still be. Can the superhero comic really be as mined-out and moribund as some claim, when it's capable of both inspiring and informing such an intense, astute and, ultimately, joyful experience?

    
And Marshal Law is every inch the superhero. His is an existence defined and cursed by secret bases, ludicrous costumes, customised hyper-tech, doomed personal relationships, a super-power that's more blight than blessing, a gallery of supervillains, a gaggle of sidekicks, and a perpetually-threatened world to protect. Though essentially an extravagant and vicious pastiche of an uber-violent, macho-miserabilist psycho-hero, he's as much a fascinating protagonist as a bileful critique. With the depravity that's constantly hurled against him, and with the real-world corruptions that his enemies were made to represent, he functions as a expression of the very kneejerk wish-fulfilment that Mills has always so understandably despised. The Marshal is undoubtedly a bastard, but he is, in Roosevelt's words, our bastard. How can he not be identified with? How can he not embody the reader's shameful longing for the bully who'll brutalise for our side rather than theirs?

Just a detail of O'Neill's wonderfully detailed depiction of US troops shooting glory-boating Golden Age superheroes.

What still sets Marshal Law apart isn't the fact that it satirised the superbook. There have, after all, been a great many other superhero satires, and a few of them, such as Kurtzman and Wood's Superduperman, have been every bit as sharp and cutting. Nor is it the presence of a critical mass of purposefully outrageous enmity, vulgarity and violence that explains the comic's reputation. The form's no stranger to those qualities either, although few have ever come close to Mills and O'Neill's brilliance as scornful and inspired assassins. Instead, it's their determined and protracted campaign against political and artistic conservatism which marks Marshal Law out. Even taking into consideration Frank Miller's despicably Islamophobic Holy Terror, no other American-published superbook can match Marshal Law's passionate, focused advocacy of challenging principles and innovative storytelling. For all that its set-ups and pay-offs are still coruscatingly effective, Marshal Law's uniqueness lies in the combination of aesthetic and ethical ends that its black comedy so successfully serves.

    
Over and over and over again, Mills and O'Neill hammered away at the complacency and fatuousness of the typical super-book, while concurrently lashing out at the hypocrisy and callousness of American capitalism and imperialism. If it wasn't so uproariously done, then Marshal Law would've been nothing but agit-prop hectoring. Of course, it's anything but. By contrast, the superhero comics of today rarely show anything but trace elements of the same passion, invention and insight. It's rare enough to see the genre's conventions even mildly mocked with any sense of conviction. Far rarer still are the books which resolutely challenge it's tendency towards - knowingly or not - reactionary politicking. With the exception of the work of a few laudable creators in the so-called mainstream, apathy and timidity and rightism and forelock-tugging has followed in the wake of Iran, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and 2007's economic meltdown. If  the values expressed in Marshal Law were radical in the context of the late Eighties, then they're an incendiary and insurgent business today. Few have dared - or perhaps been allowed to dare - to show even a fraction of the comic's belligerent and explicit condemnation of elite power and creative complacency.

          
Nothing highlights the bankrupt banality of the archetypal superbook more than O'Neill's joyously  idiosyncratic art. His brilliantly singular work implicitly rebukes every artist who settles for the superhero comic's most narrow and inbred influences. Exuberant and yet perfectly focused; complex and challenging and yet entirely transparent; artistically brilliant and yet never devitalisingly slick or predictable; O'Neill's incandescent synthesis of so many eclectic enthusiasms surely ought to have been as inspiring as it's gloriously heretical. For though there's an undoubted regard for Kirby and Ditko on display in his pages, there's also the same for prime-era Mad and Popeye, Leo Baxendale and Ken Reid, Loony Tunes and Monty Python, religious iconography and sexual fetishism, psychedelia and graffiti, and so on and on. Yet the influence of his ebullient storytelling, and the open-mindedness and ambition it represents, is depressingly limited in the work of 2013's seventh-generation Jim Lee-clones. Plus ca change, etc etc.

   
That there's been some incontrovertibly wonderful superhero comics published over the past 25 years is beyond questioning. (*1) That they've made for a tiny percentage of the industry's overall output is regrettably also true. To re-read Marshal Law in 2013 is to realise once again how little has changed over the past quarter-of-a-century. Inspiring and engaged superbooks are still being published, but they remain woefully outnumbered by pap-saturated, know-nothing product. As such, Mills and O'Neill's furious lambasting of the genre's predominant lack of artistic ambition and political principle is every bit as relevant as it ever was. Yet Marshal Law was far less a stake through the superbook's heart and far more the wrenching out of the same. What couldn't the genre achieve with just a fraction more of the technical brilliance, creative vigour and ethical commitment that's to be found in Marshal Law?

*1:- And I hope the content of this blog has made it obvious that I'm convinced of that. To note that there's a considerable number of fine storytellers at work in today's superbook isn't to contradict the statement that the genre is all too often creatively stagnant and politically disquieting.

Marshal Law: The Deluxe Edition is currently available from DC Comics. If you've not got it, then get it.

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Margaret Thatcher, Mark Millar, Miracleman & Marshal Law: "Shameless? The Superhero Fiction Of Mark Millar" Part 11

 In this week's instalment of Shameless?, you'll find reference to;

• The Saviour as the world's most frustrating super-bloke
• Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill's Marshal Law
• The Seventies as the heyday of creepy comicbook covers
• Alan Moore and John Totleben's Miracleman, a page of which can of course be found above
  
• Margaret Thatcher
• The limits of deconstruction
• Yuppies!
• The narrative advantages of secret identities
• Hyper-violence!
• And more, including lots of words and ideas and things which are just begging to be cut from this section's next draft.

If you've a moment to kill, you'd be very welcome over at Sequart for this week's section of Shameless? You can find it here.(Previous sections can be accessed via the blue numbered circles at the bottom of the page.)

And next at TooBusyThinking, there'll be a post about this year's thoroughly splendid Marshal Law: The Deluxe Edition.

On The First Pages Of Astonishing X-Men #62 & Wolverine #3

In which the blogger wonders once again what the point of an opening page might be. Who is it supposed to be speaking to, and what should it be designed to achieve?;

  
Astonishing X-Men #62, by Marjorie Liu, Gabriel Hernandez Walta et al

The first page of Astonishing X-Men #62 seems to have been crafted for the reader who's uncommonly patient, informed and undemanding. Patient, because the side suggests that the narrative captions relate to the events being shown without any hint of how or why. Informed, because Liu avoids identifying either the names or the motivations of Mystique and Sabertooth. Undemanding, because there's no hint of any plot-driving conflict to be seen beyond a minor and underplayed disagreement about kittens in the final panel. The presumption appears to be that super-people are so fascinating in themselves that their very existence compels our attention. Bad dreams, a room empty of much beyond screens showing what seems to be TV news, the awkwardly-phrased mystery of Iceman's hunger; the enigmas we're presented with appear mild and humdrum. Indeed, Liu and Walta even appear desperate to underplay the remarkableness of the mutants they're portraying. It's almost as if the story had been designed to modestly not call attention to itself, and that's what it succeeds in doing.

If Liu's script is, for all its undoubted craft, anaemic, then Walta's art is pleasantly unremarkable. His depiction of Tokyo and Mystique's progress through it lacks character or distinctiveness. Even the third panel's matter-of-fact suggestion of shape-changing seems to have been made as inconspicuous and uninteresting as possible. (The partially-obscuring presence of the caption there helps to diminish whatever interest the scene might offer.) As such, the only moment which isn't visually soporific is Sabertooth's baring of his fangs in the final frame. Yet even that lacks energy, and what might have been a dramatic shot is instead a mildly distracting one. Of course, it's hard to establish a super-villain as a seriously threatening proposition when he's having his kittens taken away from him. The very idea that Creed eats baby cats for lunch is a superficially attractive one, and yet all it does is emasculate him. After all, those three tiny felines make for a remarkably small and pathetically helpless meal for one of Marvel's most savage killers. To then have them scooped away, and with so little resistance being shown, is surely not the way to inform the reader of his character and the menace he poses. Even in establishing Mystique's authority over him, it leaves Creed seeming enervatingly subservient and unthreatening.
   

It appears that Liu believed that the juxtaposition of Drake's confessional "voice-over" and Mystique's everyday walkabout would prove compelling in itself. The reader, it seems, is expected to become involved in the mystery of how the two narratives relate to eachother. Yet anyone who doesn't know who these various characters are will most probably be alienated from the off. For it's only regular readers of the X-Books who'll have the background knowledge to make the sequence meaningful. Mysteriously, the issue's introductory text page makes no mention of Mystique or Sabertooth at all. Equally baffling, its explanation of why Iceman might be seeking counselling fails to mention his civilian identity. Confusion can only emerge for the neophyte when the captions of the story itself refer to "Bobby" rather than his mutant code-name. Why even have a text page when it offers so little assistance with the story it's designed to inform?

The beginning of a monthly book needn't involve a hysterical measure of world-threatening hype, and unfamiliar readers can certainly be intrigued by situations and characters they know nothing about. But this page's lack of visual distinctiveness, key information and, most deleteriously, liveliness does undermine the scene's appeal. For all that the art is careful and competent, and for all the undoubted craft that's evident in the script, this really isn't a particularly enticing introduction.

The marketplace is saturated with super-books. Some of them are excellent. Why would either the casual browser or the uncommitted consumer opt for Astonishing X-Men #62 on the evidence of this opening page?

Wolverine #3, by Paul Cornell, Alan Davis, Mark Farmer et al

There's no mention of the main character's names in Paul Cornell's script for the first side of Wolverine #3 either. But the book's text page has already done that. Both Logan and Fury are well-known even in the world beyond comics, and some might have been tempted to take that knowledge for granted. Yet the team behind Wolverine have made sure that the book is as clear, welcoming and involving as possible. That that clarity hasn't arrived at the cost of depth and detail is a mark of its creator's craft. As with the likes of Demon Knights and London Falling, it sees Cornell continuing to streamline his storytelling. Always working to create a maximum of effect with the least possible degree of show, he doesn't even reprise the Watcher's spectacular appearance from the previous issue's conclusion. It's been done, and done well, and now there's the rest of the story to be told. Instead, Cornell presents the necessary backstory in the form of a grand bout of bickering between super-spy and superhero. The opposite to redundant exposition, it ensures that the new reader's informed while the returnee learns something new about Logan and Fury's tempestuous relationship. As such, personalities are clearly defined while the scale of the emergency is established. More impressive yet, it's all wrapped up in a mere three panels, which frees up the final two frames for a new plot twist and a rather sinister page-turner

    
It's still a sequence which might have seemed static and uninvolving in the hands of a less accomplished artistic team. At worst, it might have ended up as nothing but a page of two shouting super-blokes, a mysterious knife-wielding woman and generic back alleys. But the dynamism of Alan Davis and Mark Farmer's collaboration capitalises on the potential of both Fury and Logan's testosterone-charged dispute and the enigmatic appearance of Victoria Frankenstein. Much of this is down to Davis's rarely-equalled ability to create physically distinctive and emotionally compelling characters. Some rely on the super-book's stock types, but Davis designs distinct individuals with their own particular frames and their own idiosyncratic body language. His super-people aren't objectivisied bubbles of muscle and fat, but fascinating human beings whose appearance transmits character rather than cliche. Even the more peripheral details of Davis and Farmer's art can be compelling. The suggestion of Wolverine's claws in the first panel's shadows, for example, is a smartly surreptitious way of foreshadowing future crises.

Accessible, distinctive and entertaining, the first page of Wolverine #3 shows one way to make an opening side matter.
 
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A Super-Hero For The Market's Sake? ;- Shameless? The Superhero Comics Of Mark Millar Part 10

Of all the things to be writing about. Mark Millar's The Saviour gives every impression of being a superhero - or at the least a supervillain - book. Yet there's very little of the costumed crimefighter genre in its pages. It feels odd to suggest that there's a Millar comic which isn't obsessed enough with superheroes. Yet a book which seems to promise one kind of tale while delivering another will almost inevitably confuse and disappoint.

I make no bones about my admiration for how Millar has worked and worked at his craft. To discuss his earliest weaknesses is to celebrate how disciplined and focused his Post-Millennium scripts have been. None of that is to say anything ill or positive about his later work's content, but credit ought to be given to Millar's development as a distinctive and purposeful stylist. Yet beyond his admittedly substantial circle of admirers, credit is rarely given.

Should you think it's worth a moment or two of your time, the latest instalment of Shameless? can be found over at Sequart's site here.

In This Month's 'Q', In This Week's 'Shameless?'

 
Just to say that the comics column in this month's new Q features reviews of Verity Fair, Montague Terrace, Happy, Marshal Law: The Deluxe Edition, The Twelve and You're All Just Jealous Of My Jetpack.

It's the last Q Comics to be overseen by departing editor Andrew Harrison. Writing for him was always a thorough education as well as exceptionally good fun. It's been a privilege to have worked for such an all-round good egg.

      
And over at Sequart, this week's instalment of Shameless? The Superhero Fiction Of Mark Millar takes a closer look at 1989's The Saviour and its fascinatingly chaotic contents. You can, should you choose to do so, find the piece here.

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Capsule Review: Avengers Assemble #14au

Avengers Assemble #14AU, by Al Ewing, Butch Guice, Tom Palmer et al (Marvel digital)

It feels wrong that Al Ewing should be such a consistently disciplined and generous team player. Surely any writer this unconventionally smart, sharp and sceptical ought not to work well with others? Far easier to imagine him in a land-fill of a garret, consumed by hatred over a cruelly-edited semi-colon and weeks behind on his deadlines. But his script for Avengers Assemble #14AU is both characteristically astute and entirely in keeping with Marvel's current output. Just as with his work on 2000AD's Judge Dredd and Garth Ennis's Jennifer Blood, Ewing has nailed the form that the franchise demands without settling for the formulaic.

In his first published script for Marvel, the writer offers an emotionally-compelling explanation for the Black Widow's physical and physiological traumas at the beginning of Age Of Ultron. In doing so, he turns what threatened to be an inessential, digital-only crossover into an unanticipated pleasure. Defly creating a previously-unseen surrogate family for Natasha Romanoff out of largely-forgotten supporting characters, he grounds Ultron's all-too-familiar robot holocaust in the pathos of a concisely sketched personal tragedy. It's a strategy that helps dissolve the sense that the Widow's suffering in Age Of Ultron is little more than an easily-reversible fan-snare.
 

   
He's assisted in no small way by Butch Guice and Tom Palmer's artwork. In particular, the low-key opening conversation - above - is delivered with an absorbing attention to character matched to a determined avoidance of repetitive talking heads. It's as meticulously-framed a job as I've seen from Guice, while Palmer's inks have swapped a touch of their once-typical lushness for a somewhat more energetic and involving style.

Avengers Assemble #14AU may seem at first to be an entirely disposable title. But the task its creators were set has been ably fulfilled, and the result is a below-the-radar comic that's considerably more satisfying than Age Of Ultron itself.

Sunday Capsule Reviews: Jupiter's Legacy #1 & The Sixth Gun #30

There were launch parties held in different cities, we're told, to celebrate the release of Mark Millar and Frank Quitely's Jupiter's Legacy. The lord of Millarworld even bountifully stumped up for a round or two. No matter how the unfan attempted to avoid such hype, it was tough to do so. Was the book guaranteed 150 000 first week sales or more? Is a film adaptation nailed on or simply very likely? Yet there's no prospect of hubris inspiring nemesis just yet, for Jupiter's Legacy turns out to be an undeniably fine superhero tale. By turns, it's an inter-generational soap opera, a furious condemnation of the Right's politics of greed, an Eighties-style genre deconstruction, and a smartly executed costumed crimefighter epic. As such, it's so well-crafted that you can't even catch sight of your own cynicism when reading it. Quitely's art is ingenious, meticulous and consistently compelling, while Millar establishes the book's status quo with an admirable mix of precision and enthusiasm. Smartly sprucing up the superbook's perennial fascination with law-breaking do-gooders, Millar delights in suggesting that complicity with big business has destroyed the legitimacy of both Washington and Westminster. It's a strategy which allows him to play with the genre's long tradition of state-defying super-people while implying that the real-world has its super-villains too. 

As such, it ought to be conceded that the wave of apparent hucksterism which preceded the comic's appearance wasn't anything of the sort. Jupiter's Legacy really is a quality book. Whatever riches are coming by the truckload to Millar and Quietly's front doors, they've all been earned.

  
That I've only a partial grasp of The Sixth Gun's backstory is a reflection of my finances rather than my taste. Thankfully writer Cullen Bun and artist Brian Hurt have ensured that the less-than-expert reader of their weird western is neither weighed down by exposition or baffled by its absence. A complex comics-cosmology; a mass of personal relationships and individual character traits; a suspenseful drama leading to a hooksome final panel; an astute critique of the cliches of Western pot-boilers; it's all delivered in The Sixth Gun #30 with a degree of unshowy craftmanship that's as admirable and enjoyable as it's inconspicuous.

It's all-too-often argued that the use of magic in the action/adventure comicbook undermines its dramatic potential. It's a hoary old truism that's contradicted here by Bun and Hurt's depiction of Becky Montcrief's trials in a nightmarish reality. Publishers who've failed to exploit the potential of their own sorcerous characters ought to be taking notes.

The Sixth Gun is published by Oni Press, while Jupiter's Legacy is a Image/Millarworld book.

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