The world that Marshal Law inhabits is a
Red Scare era, but
Twenty Minutes into the Future. Having learned from Vietnam, when Joe Red shows up in South America, the American Government turns to
Former-Nazi Mad Scientist Doctor Shocc, who creates an army of
Super Soldiers through genetic engineering. The war in South America becomes known as the Zone, and its found that Shocc's process to create super-strong and pain-resistant soldiers is more
Psycho Serum than
Super Serum. Despite the Super Human soldiers pumped into the Zone, the war still ends in stalemate and the super soldiers are sent home but a lot of the returning soldiers suffer
psychosis of varying degrees, causing them to run riot,
killing and maiming as they please.
Marshal Law, formerly Joe Gilmore and a member of the Super Human squad the Screaming Eagles, however, is having none of it. Having seen the war crimes done by the so-called-
Super Heroes, he became a cop to combat the gangs of Surps (Surplus Superheroes) in the San Futuro area. Not only does he fight from his secret police headquarters, fighting the nearby gangs like Gangreen, but he also fights Super Heroes like Public Spirit and Private Eye. (Superheroes in Marshall Law's world fall into two categories: dangerous, or pathetic and delusional. The categories frequently overlap.)
To help give you an idea of the kind of minds that created Marshal Law, creator Pat Mills also wrote a lot for
Judge Dredd, and artist Kevin O'Neill went on to draw
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
And with
DC Comics having sour grapes over unwittingly giving away its
Spiritual Successor The Boys off to an indie company,
they're in talks to license and release this series out to the US.
Also, whatever you do, do not mistake this character as the resident
Bruce Lee Clone of
Tekken Marshall Law. Or mistake this series for the late-nineties TV series
Martial Law. Or, of course, the governing tactic of the same name.
Tropes included:
- Abusive Parents: Private Eye's parents.
- Anti-Hero: Marshal Law himself.
- Badass Normal: Law himself. He thinks that heroes with actual powers are phonies because they're never in any real danger.
- Well, he's more of Badass Abnormal as he was subjected to the same Super Serum treatment that produced all supers, just failed to draw the best ticket at the Superpower Lottery.
- Law came out of the procedure with moderately superhuman strength, speed & durability as well as a low level Healing Factor. Due to his opinion on supers he's not big on bragging about it... but it is mentioned in his narration.
- Beware The Superman
- Body Horror: At virtually every opportunity.
- Captain Ersatz: Public Spirit (Superman), Private Eye (Batman) and The Persecutor (The Punisher) all appear, but in a twisted fashion, emphasizing the sadistic or tragic aspects of the characters.
- Later we are introduced to the Golden Age Jesus Society of America (JSA), the predecessor to the Jesus League of America, featuring Public Spirit (here being more like Captain America), Private Dick (Bucky/Robin), Miss Victory (Wonder Woman), Tomcat (Wildcat), the Blue Battery (Green Lantern), the Lightning Streaker (The Flash), Hyperman (Hourman), G-Man (Starman), and a bunch of other nameless ones. And where the more modern heroes are Darker and Edgier, these guys are incompetent, condescending, and anything but heroic.
- Similarly, the League of Heroes (The Legion of Super-Heroes).
- Catch Phrase: "I'm a Hero Hunter. I hunt heroes. Haven't found any yet."
- Character Filibuster: the excerpt from Lynn's thesis on the evil of her universe's "heroes", which is also a metafictional denunciation of the superhero genre, laid in as text boxes over the climactic fight between Law and the Public Spirit at the end of the original "Fear and Loathing" story.
- Cross Over: Marshal Law has had a couple of these, mainly with Savage Dragon. He has also met The Mask and the main Cenobite from Hellraiser.
- Dead Baby Comedy
- Deconstruction: More like outright demolition.
- During The War
- Genetic Engineering is the New Nuke
- Growing Muscles Sequence as some superheroes "pump ions" to gain bulk
- Gorn
- Hollywood California: Subverted, mainly because after Twenty Minutes into the Future, San Francisco has been hit by a huge earthquake which largely destroyed the city, leaving miles of it still in ruins years afterward.
- Legacy Character: The American Spirit has Golden Age, modern, and outer space incarnations that have all run afoul of Marshall Law
- Satire/Parody/Pastiche: Marshall Law combines attributes of all three.
- Nineties Anti-Hero: Marshal Law himself, and in The Eighties no less. Wearing full bondage gear and with a barbed wire tattoo actual barbed wire along his arm...
- Also the Secret Tribunal, which is a parody of the X-Men.
- Once an Episode: At least once an issue, Marshal Law says his catchphrase
- Putting on the Reich: As the Golden Age heroes note, Marshall Law's costume resembles that of a Super-Nazi.
- Super Serum (and its counterpart, Psycho Serum): Hyperman, a parody of Hourman, who used pills to get his powers, snuffs a mysterious powder and injects a dodgy liquid into his arm to get his.
- Twenty Minutes into the Future: A recent gravestone says it's 2020, and America is still fighting off the Soviet Threat, nearly 30 years after it ended in Real Life.
- Unbuilt Trope: Of the Nineties Anti-Hero and the Deconstruction of superheroes that would be common in comics in the late 1980s-1990s. It's worth noting that while the series takes a dim look at super "heroes", anti-heroes of Marshal Law's ilk don't exactly escape condemnation either.
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