The Secret History of Comics: Marshal Law 4

The Dark Horse Comics era

Welcome to part four 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.

I published the intro a couple of weeks ago, available to everyone. Each subsequent part has a free preview, with the rest for paying subscribers only, so if you’d like access to ALL of my Secret History of Comics as I release it every week (plus other benefits, check them out here), please consider subscribing: it’s £5 per month or £50 per year. I’m offering a free seven-day trial on Iconoblast, so you can try it out. You will need to select a subscription plan and provide your payment details to do this.

With Apocalypse in ruins, it took a little while before we found a new publisher. 

Mike Richardson, the Dark Horse publisher, was keen to have Law and so we happily agreed. Overall, Dark Horse did a really good job but I think both Kevin and I had somewhat unrealistic expectations of sales. Dark Horse were not Marvel or D.C. Comics and there was a limit to how many copies of Law they could sell. We were not Star Wars or Alien, after all. 

We began with a zombie sequel Super Babylon, featuring superheroes from the 1940s. The books Kevin sent me on the super hero Golden Age were invaluable. I had no idea these lunatics in leotards went back so far in time, so it was a real education for me. 

The 1940s suggested to us our Committee For Unheroic Activities. In true McCarthy style, we had them investigating H2O man for molesting a dolphin and subjecting other phoney heroes to forensic interrogation.

And this was also the period when the United States was at war, so I was able to highlight an hypocrisy that was particularly important to me. In recent years, the writer for an abortive Hollywood Marshal Law film (see later) said how his favourite sequence was where dead superheroes have a conversation with a dead G.I. soldier. As follows:

Superhero: What’s wrong? Why are you looking at us like that?

Dead G.I.: We remember… How you glamourised war… Made it look too easy – with all your ‘hero’ bullshit.

(2): You never showed the reality – the wounds… the suffering… the deaths.

Superhero: You’ve got it all wrong – we specially gifted heroes have always acknowledged the great debt we owe to the ordinary G.I.s who gave their lives for their country.

Dead G.I.: I hate it when they say ‘He gave his life for his country.’ They took our lives, asshole.