I'm a hero hunter. I hunt heroes. Still haven't found any.
October 23, 2013 11:16 AM Subscribe
"In this way, Mills achieves a genuine transgression: he admits defeat. Which is to say, he reveals himself as only creating new masculine fantasies in the same mode as his prior works – superseding Virago’s feminine motives in favor of manly rage at spoiled ambitions – while at the same time savaging superheroes in a way that is not truly destructive, but merely substituting an arguably worse status quo for the genre’s prior lies. As you say, Marshal Law is grim ‘n gritty in the fashion of its day, but I would add that Mills’s admission of inefficacy at promoting substantive change marks it as the only post-Watchmen work — and, by its murder mystery, its wartime background, its American critique, and its spoofing of extant superhero archetypes, it is very specifically post-Watchmen — that betrays some cognizance as to the ways in which Watchmen’s legacy would be processed: more violence, more darkness, more ugliness atop a hardly-cracked genre foundation." -- Janean Patience and Joe McCulloch discuss Marshall Law; part 2, part 3, part 4.
I'm reading this and saying "yep, that's Pat Mills" a lot of times.
The critical term would be deconstruct, but that doesn’t begin to capture the savage absolutism, the gleeful fury, that Mills, O’Neill and Law brought to the fight.
Yep, that's Pat Mills.
Part 2 is particular interesting, in part because it covers Takes Manhattan which is the best story, but also because of the comparisons with Ennis, who is frankly a big old softy when you put him next to Mills.
posted by Artw at 12:21 PM on October 23, 2013 [3 favorites]
The critical term would be deconstruct, but that doesn’t begin to capture the savage absolutism, the gleeful fury, that Mills, O’Neill and Law brought to the fight.
Yep, that's Pat Mills.
Part 2 is particular interesting, in part because it covers Takes Manhattan which is the best story, but also because of the comparisons with Ennis, who is frankly a big old softy when you put him next to Mills.
posted by Artw at 12:21 PM on October 23, 2013 [3 favorites]
Oh, Marshall Law. If the grim 'n gritty comics had ended with the release of Marshal Law Takes Manhattan, there would have been some justice in the world. Instead both the grim 'n gritty and ML went on too long. I still have the old issues, but I am not really inspired to take them out -- I'm not sure it's possible to go back to that time.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:28 PM on October 23, 2013
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:28 PM on October 23, 2013
Yeah, at the time, Marshall Law was just exactly the kind of "fuck you" grim and gritty deserved. It turned into the thing it parodied in real time and now, re-reading it, it seems like self-parody. I think it worked better in context than now.
That said, I still love O'Neil's art. I read at one time that his style was banned somewhere. Is this true?
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:55 PM on October 23, 2013
That said, I still love O'Neil's art. I read at one time that his style was banned somewhere. Is this true?
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:55 PM on October 23, 2013
Banned by the CCA after some Green Lantern stories he did with Alan Moore - they decided his entire art style was too unsettling.
Same Green Lantern story that Geoff Johns has been mining for years, in fact.
posted by Artw at 7:55 PM on October 23, 2013 [1 favorite]
Same Green Lantern story that Geoff Johns has been mining for years, in fact.
posted by Artw at 7:55 PM on October 23, 2013 [1 favorite]
This reminds me I need to read Marshall Law. Pat Mills is, like, the Alan Moore who never, ever would*. And I love O'Neil's art. Always have.
Incidentally, there's a book coming out on ex-Dr Who comic scribe Alan Moore by ex-Dr Who novelist Lance Parkin. And, of course, Pat Mills has his own Dr Who connection.
(*Would is called Selling Out, if you define Selling Out as working for the majors).
posted by Mezentian at 5:59 AM on October 24, 2013
Incidentally, there's a book coming out on ex-Dr Who comic scribe Alan Moore by ex-Dr Who novelist Lance Parkin. And, of course, Pat Mills has his own Dr Who connection.
(*Would is called Selling Out, if you define Selling Out as working for the majors).
posted by Mezentian at 5:59 AM on October 24, 2013
Heh. He's done Tina of work for the majors! Plus he was management over at IPC, that's practically The Man!
Of course all his work for Marvel and DC has been kind of quirky and weird, like the Punisher 2099 they link to a Chris Sims description of in the article, which could have been generic but ended up very Pat Mills, and his crowning achievement at IPC was creating 2000AD.
posted by Artw at 6:16 AM on October 24, 2013
Of course all his work for Marvel and DC has been kind of quirky and weird, like the Punisher 2099 they link to a Chris Sims description of in the article, which could have been generic but ended up very Pat Mills, and his crowning achievement at IPC was creating 2000AD.
posted by Artw at 6:16 AM on October 24, 2013
Of course all his work for Marvel and DC has been kind of quirky and weird, like the Punisher 2099
For the first time in my life I want to read a 2099 comic.
posted by Mezentian at 6:59 AM on October 24, 2013
For the first time in my life I want to read a 2099 comic.
posted by Mezentian at 6:59 AM on October 24, 2013
Ennis, who is frankly a big old softy when you put him next to Mills.
Well, not for lack of trying, certainly. The Boys struck me as Ennis seeming to think that he had been a bit too subtle in his Sooperheroez-R-Dumb ranting in Hitman and the 616 Punisher book, and felt compelled to kick it up a few notches, and at the very same time wanted to have his cake and eat it too, both WRT exploiting the grim-n-gritty superhero market and with presenting yet another iteration of The Authentic Hard Man That A Real Man Need Not Be Ashamed To Read The Adventures Of Well Into His Middle Age, the TAHMTARMNNBATRTAOWIHMA in this case being Butcher, of course. Some people try to give him credit for all the stuff he wrote about Vought-American's scheming, but it's mostly a load of tosh, some stuff that he crammed in between the gross-out scenes, World War II nostalgia, man-on-man rape, and potty humor to give it a thin gloss of relevance to something other than Ennis' favorite tropes. Between The Boys and his other exploiting-while-pretending-to-subvert, Schrodinger's cake exploitation genre exercises (Crossed, Jennifer Blood, etc.), "substituting an arguably worse status quo for the genre’s prior lies" covers his work for the last decade pretty well.
I honestly didn't mean to rant so, it just sort of happened.
Anyway, Marshal Law. Oddly, reading about it here makes me want to go back and read the sequels, which I didn't read the first time around because the main arc was plenty enough for me. I liked a lot of the visual puns (I used "Nuke me slowly" as the battle cry of an atomic-powered character of mine in City of Heroes), but I ultimately couldn't stomach the character both for the reason quoted above and because of the use of the loathesome trope of the death of the girlfriend being part of his motivation. Even before Gail Simone came up with the term, I was sick and fucking tired of women being shoved in fridges.
posted by Halloween Jack at 3:29 PM on October 24, 2013
Well, not for lack of trying, certainly. The Boys struck me as Ennis seeming to think that he had been a bit too subtle in his Sooperheroez-R-Dumb ranting in Hitman and the 616 Punisher book, and felt compelled to kick it up a few notches, and at the very same time wanted to have his cake and eat it too, both WRT exploiting the grim-n-gritty superhero market and with presenting yet another iteration of The Authentic Hard Man That A Real Man Need Not Be Ashamed To Read The Adventures Of Well Into His Middle Age, the TAHMTARMNNBATRTAOWIHMA in this case being Butcher, of course. Some people try to give him credit for all the stuff he wrote about Vought-American's scheming, but it's mostly a load of tosh, some stuff that he crammed in between the gross-out scenes, World War II nostalgia, man-on-man rape, and potty humor to give it a thin gloss of relevance to something other than Ennis' favorite tropes. Between The Boys and his other exploiting-while-pretending-to-subvert, Schrodinger's cake exploitation genre exercises (Crossed, Jennifer Blood, etc.), "substituting an arguably worse status quo for the genre’s prior lies" covers his work for the last decade pretty well.
I honestly didn't mean to rant so, it just sort of happened.
Anyway, Marshal Law. Oddly, reading about it here makes me want to go back and read the sequels, which I didn't read the first time around because the main arc was plenty enough for me. I liked a lot of the visual puns (I used "Nuke me slowly" as the battle cry of an atomic-powered character of mine in City of Heroes), but I ultimately couldn't stomach the character both for the reason quoted above and because of the use of the loathesome trope of the death of the girlfriend being part of his motivation. Even before Gail Simone came up with the term, I was sick and fucking tired of women being shoved in fridges.
posted by Halloween Jack at 3:29 PM on October 24, 2013
Hell to the yeah.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:34 AM on October 25, 2013
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:34 AM on October 25, 2013
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