Secret History: Marshal Law keeps on hunting
Welcome to the final chapter on Marshal Law of my new book And Where Will It All End? The Secret History of Comics. Next week I’ll take you behind the scenes to show you how Charley’s War was created.
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WARGAMING
The Secret History of Marshal Law would not be complete without a mention of his possible appearance in a Multiverse Free to Play online action game from Wargaming Group Ltd. At this time, although Law has been developed for the game, his final appearance is by no means certain. Even so, I thought it would still be fun to describe how he may feature.
Here’s Paul Barnet, Marshal Law and 2000AD fan and Chief Creative Officer of Wargaming Group, to explain the game concept:
‘The game is set in a post-apocalypse world where just about everything has been destroyed, including the internet, when the moon blew up. All cloud storage is gone, all solid state data (which most data in the world is right now) is erased.
But machine AI, called M.O.T.H.E.R, has assembled the shattered remnants of the internet from old media (cartridges, hard drives and so forth).
‘The AI takes the cartridges and tape resources and makes her best ‘guess’ at what a hero is. And she has some pretty wacky results. One of them could be Marshal Law!
‘She then 'prints' these heroes on a 'flesh loom'. As a result, all the characters are styled after a 3D printing, so they have ball joints and heightened edges to them.
‘So far the block out for ML looks like this.’
‘Marshall Law is still a hero hunter, hunting down other heroes. So he remains exactly in character. It’s just that he is created over and over on a flesh loom and sent out to kill heroes relentlessly.’
Perfect!
As Paul revealed:
‘He’d be a ‘guest character’ in the game, rather than the prime focus. So, typically, a player can have 100 heroes, Law would be one of them, but he is rare, he is only available for a small period of time and then he disappears.
‘With Free to Play games it is very common to have a guest character. Usually it’s Marvel, or Star Wars or sometimes it’s Dr Who and so forth.
‘They are quite literally there as ‘something neat’, they appeal to the fans, give a ‘cool’ factor to the game and often have a knock-on effect to the character outside of the game.’
Paul asked for my thoughts on Law’s voice. We’re not seeing the hero hunter in his vulnerable civilian mode here, only as a menacing avenger, so that narrows the field. After considering a number of possibles – such as Liam Neeson – and watching a sequence from Night of the Hunter, I finally suggested Robert Mitchum.
Paul also sent in an amazing Marshal Law tank, which greatly impressed both Kevin and I!
Here’s Paul’s thoughts on the tank:
‘This is the 'block in' on the Vehicle. It’s NOT the vehicle we will ultimately use, it’s just what's called a 'paint over' to allow us to use it in the game.
‘The size, shape, style will ALL be redesigned with as much input as you and Kev want to give.
‘The light blue guns are hologram guns that appear when anti raider (bike) technology is deployed and ML's tank basically will go bat shit crazy and kill everything within 75 feet.’
That all sounds cool and neat to me.
Kevin had some further thoughts and graffiti for the Law tank. Here’s Paul again:
‘The main memory I have is that Kev could only look at our work on his phone, this made the art very small.
So we ended up printing it all out on paper and posting it to his house.
We then followed up with phone calls and then out of the blue he sent us his ‘word graffiti’ for the tank which we happily added.’
Kev also wanted us to try out a colour scheme that was more like pen and ink, so we ended up with several tank styles.’
Marshal Law Ⓒ Pat Mills & Kevin O'Neill. Game designs Ⓒ Wargaming 2023
Below is a drill design that the Wargaming team came up with. Here’s Paul again:
I found one of Kev’s comments on the drill design.
‘I don’t understand animation in games, could it harpoon the enemy, pull them in and drill them to death like a horror mole?’
And obviously that’s exactly what we made it do, we loved the title horror mole.
Kevin then got more involved with the design process. The following two images are designs he co-created with the Wargaming team.
This front end view is Paul Barnett’s favourite render of the vehicle:
'Kev was ecstatic about the middle fingers on the dozer blade. He was very collaborative with the vehicle team.’
Here’s a turntable view of the dozer.
I’ll be sure to update you with any more news on Law in Wargaming.
Thanks to Paul and Kate of Wargaming for considering Marshal Law for their fantastic world.
We’ll know at the end of February 2023 whether Law will be included in the game.
Final words from Paul on Kevin:
‘People die, legends live forever.’
So what do gamers think of Law’s reconstituted role in this world? The designs? Law on the flesh loom? It all sounds great to me but I’d love to know your thoughts. I’m not a gamer, but this would definitely make me a convert!
For me, writing the Secret History of Marshal Law has been a way of mourning Kevin’s passing, so it’s with great regret and a sense of loss that I’ve now come to the end of the story. There is so much love for Kevin and for Law out there, it’s frustrating that we can’t add to the mythos by announcing any new plans to help both their legends live on. Hardly a day passes where I don’t meet someone who raves about Marshal Law and what a huge influence the character was on them. These include celebrities like Jonathan Ross and movie producers who were avid collectors of his work. Case in point: a Larry David Curb Your Enthusiasm writer, producer and director was a fan, a show that both Kevin and I – you won’t be surprised to hear – were equally huge fans of.
So hope springs eternal and one of Law’s legion of fans may get behind some new way of recognising the hero hunter and bringing him to the attention of the wider audience he deserves. I’ll look forward to it.
Pat.
Me, too. I love the thought that's gone into the designs
I haven't played a video game in about 30 years (unless Solitaire counts), but I'm told that the use of graffiti to add atmosphere is now quite common. I wonder how much of that is down to Kev's influence?