Marshal Law is an English-language superhero comic book series created by Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill.
Marshal Law was first published by Marvel's Epic Comics imprint in 1987. The series is a satire on the superhero genre as well as a deconstruction of the superheroes of the Golden Age and Silver Age.
The series is characterized by its extreme graphic violence and nudity, and Mills' skewering of superhero conventions and US government policy and society.
Publication history
Epic Comics launched Marshal Law in October 1987 as a six-issue limited series. It was followed by the Crime and Punishment: Marshal Law Takes Manhattan one-shot, in which most of Marvel Comics' major characters were parodied.
In 1991, Mills and O'Neill took the character to the fledgling Apocalypse Comics for another one-shot, Toxic! Presents: Marshal Law: Kingdom of the Blind #1. This was followed by a reprint of Marshal Law: Takes Manhattan as #2, after which the series continued as Apocalypse Presents for another six issues while the Marshall Law character moved to star in the lead feature of Toxic!, a weekly comic started in 1991. Toxic! proved to be short-lived and Apocalypse Comics went bankrupt in 1992. Mills and O'Neill then took Marshal Law to Dark Horse Comics, where the story in Toxic! was completed in late 1992. That year also saw the character return to Marvel for a two-issue series pitting Marshal Law against Clive Barker's Pinhead character.
Over the next few years, Marshal Law appeared in two more intercompany crossovers, one with the Savage Dragon and another with the Mask. In 2000, Mills and O'Neill took the character to the Cool Beans World website. The stories here were illustrated novellas, rather than actual comic strips, titled The Day Of The Dead (which was later published in a paperback edition) and Cloak Of Evil. The website closed in 2002.
Plot
right|thumb|Cover of issue #4 of the original Epic Comic series
The title character, Marshal Law, is the government-sanctioned "super hero hunter" (aka law enforcement officer, or "cape killer") with superpowers in the city of San Futuro, the near-future metropolis built from the ruins of San Francisco following a massive earthquake. Law's job is to take down other superheroes who have gone rogue, which he does with maximum force and great pleasure. Aided by the wheelchair-using "Danny" and his physically imposing (but extremely polite) partner "Kiloton", the Marshal operates from a secret police precinct hidden below the city, dispensing just enough brutal justice to keep the city's many super-powered gangs in a balanced détente while safeguarding the ordinary citizenry.
Marshal Law's secret identity is Joe Gilmore, a former supersoldier consumed with self-hatred about being a superhero. In this world, superheroes are commonplace thanks to genetic engineering, much of the United States' armed forces having undergone the process. However, while their bodies may become super-powered, their minds remain exactly as they were, and in many cases the inability to feel pain causes the subjects to compensate by inflicting pain on others. Psychosis of varying degrees is also a common side-effect, and some subjects develop wildly uncontrollable superpowers.
The plot of the original six-issue series revolved around the Marshal's attempts to unmask the Sleepman,