Secret History of Comics: Marshal Law 6
Day of the Dead: more Kev O'Neill art!
Welcome to Part Six of my new book And Where Will It All End? The Secret History of Comics, where I take you behind the scenes to show you how your favourite subversive characters were created.
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Shortly after the millennium, 2000AD artist Nick Percival launched Cool Beans – an early online comics subscription site. It was a brilliant and brave idea, arguably ahead of its time because broadband had not yet kicked in and loading images could be a nightmare. Nick was keen to lead with Marshal Law and suggested I write a text novella with illustrations by Kevin. This we duly did. Called Day of the Dead, inspired by the Mexican Day of the Dead, it covers Law’s war career in the Zone and explains his costume as well as his adventures on the Streets of San Futuro. Just after the millennium I’d visited Sarajevo which was recovering from its terrible war, so there were signs of its tragic past everywhere, which I incorporated into Law’s experiences in the Zone. Thus in Sarajevo the streets have red resin on the pavements, marking the places where civilians died. They’re called ‘Sarajevo Roses.’ So in Law I featured ‘Zone Roses’. It was a very emotional visit and I tried to bring the feelings of what I saw and heard in Sarajevo into the novella.
Soon afterwards, Law had moved publishers again and we went to Titan Books. We didn’t originate any comic strip with Titan because Kevin was working on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but Kevin still loved and missed Law and on-line novellas suggested one way of keeping the character alive. This we duly did and Titan published the first novella initially in a rather awkward format that to my eye made it look like a wallpaper sample book.
It may be awkward as a book, but it really suits this screen format here, because it was always designed to be seen ‘wide screen’, online. Here are three fantastic illustrations from the book which I think are as powerful as Kevin’s regular Law comic strip. Drawn by Kevin and probably coloured by Cool Beans staff, following Kevin’s close directions.
Text novels of comic characters tend to be problematic, but I think – from the viewpoint of 2022 – it was well worth doing. Because otherwise Marshal Law would have disappeared forever in 1999. Instead we have this barely known, almost secret cache of Marshal Law art.
THE TORTURE SCENE
CHAPTER ONE – DOUGH FACE
Melton Buckwright had always wanted to be a super hero. And now his dreams had come true. The costumed figures looked down on him. “Tell us again how it feels, Melton.”
“God! I’ll do anything to stop the pain!”
“Anything?”
“Anything! Please! It’s unbearable!”
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