The Secret History of Comics: Marshal Law 2
And Where Will It All End?
Welcome to part 2 of Chapter 1, 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. Chapter 1, Part 1 went up on Nov 23, and you can read a decent chunk of that for free: the rest of it is 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.
I ended my last post talking about the inspiration behind Mrs Mallon…
…Commissioner McGland was inspired by my IPC publisher John Sanders – responsible for Battle, Action, 2000AD and Misty – and there’s a certain affection and respect I have for John which comes through in McGland’s character, despite his darkness. John Sanders was still a creative, and that matters a lot to fellow creatives. His dark sense of humour appealed to us all. And so McGland and Law tolerate and even like each other, despite being endlessly in conflict. But subsequent publishers can relax – I don’t feel any such affection for them, so there’s no likelihood of them appearing in future stories.
The story structure I used was to show the plot from the point of view of a number of characters – Marshal Law, Commissioner McGland, The Sleepman and more. This was based on The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, my favourite book as a kid. Collins unravels his plot with a series of brilliant and diverse narratives and I sought to do the same.
Three scenes require special mention. The opening Jesus League of America scene with the whole League assembled: Stigmata, Shroud, Virago, Sin-Gorger, Monstrance, Private Eye, Devil’s Tool (later known as Rubber Johnny), Black Abbot and his ward Red Riding Hood, Purgatory and Whipping Boy, and the Public Spirit. It was great fun dreaming up those names and they are all beautifully visualised by Kevin. Especially Rubber Johnny, who I know Kevin was particularly fond of because of Plastic Man. Yet only Public Spirit, Private Eye, Rubber Johnny and Virago are ever strongly featured. So many great characters we’ll never see again – Stigmata for instance – but that seems to be the nature of our collaboration on Law, almost throwing characters away.
The scene I’m especially fond of is Kevin’s later depiction of Wire Mother and Soft Mother.
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