I had the pleasure of chatting with them one November morning from their homes in England.
Bruce Costa: With the dearth of superheroes in recent years, doesn't Law's purpose seem more appropriate? Couldn't we use a little housecleaning?
Pat Mills: Yeah, I wondered about that. There are as many as there ever have been, regrettably. They proliferate. And the majority of them don't seem to have anything very new or interesting to say -- which would be a little frustrating for Law even. He can only go after classic characters, classic superhero genres. That doesn't mean to say that, when having covered the principal archetypes of heroes, we've done it all. On the contrary: Law is primarily a character who could be set against any number of scenarios. Many of the ideas that inspire Law come from outside the superhero genre altogether. For instance, we might be inspired by a film like Victor Victoria or something like that, and then use that basic plot to create a Marshal Law story, building superheroes into it, rather than saying, "Oh, well, perhaps we should take a look at the Justice League" or whatever. We don't operate that way. I think that if we did, the character would be a parody; he would go around hunting rather stereotypical characters, and he would run out of road. People would say that that's an end to the character. But he isn't like that. I think that, if anything, he's got more energy now than he ever has.
Kevin O'Neill: Yes, I think for Law, it's a mighty task he has before him, because we've established fairly huge gangs of superheroes with varying types of skills. But like Pat said, if we just worked through a list, it would be a relatively small list of prime superhero types. We'd have been finished some time ago. Because as you get to more modern characters they have slightly poorer foundations that their earlier prototypes.
Costa: [laughing] So it's not just me observing this. Reading Mask/Marshal Law reminded me of how nice it would be to have Law possess a certain obliviousness to trademark infringement. I mean, every month comics racks are deluged with testosterone and spandex and leather and guns and breasts . . . It's interesting to find refreshment within a comic filled with testosterone and leather and guns and breasts!
O'Neill & Mills: [laughter]
Mills: That's the whole thinking of it! Sometimes it must seem to people that our interpretation of, and our reaction to, superheroes is extremely unkind. And, yes, that is totally accurate -- it is extremely unkind!
Costa: [laughter]
Mills: But at the same time, one has to look at the reasons why people read superhero comics in the first place. Being a little careful about what I say here -- it's about empowerment and disempowerment. Clearly people feel empowered by reading a superhero comic. It's a hit. To bring it down to its most simplistic level, you maybe live in a threatening neighborhood, you're perhaps quite young, and you read about this guy who can deal with the local thugs and leads a fantasy life more interesting than yours. So I can see the ongoing validity of superheroes. And I think that whole thing about disempowerment is dealt with in Marshal Law. It isn't as unsympathetic as it sometimes appears toward heroes. On the contrary, I actually think it is very pro-hero. But I like to think it is pro-hero with sincerity, as opposed to bullshit.
Here is a guy who loathes part of himself, and that becomes his alter-ego Marshal Law. But the other part of him is filled with compassion for people who have been heroic, and so he works as a hospital orderly. And there is obviously conflict between those two aspects of his persona. I think this is where it differs from a parody, which just goes for cheap laughs. I mean, we want the cheap laughs in Marshal Law as well [laughing], but we want to get some humanity into it, and a recognition of the necessity of that archetype. People do need heroes, and I think that the current crop on occasion can be a little dismal. I think Law serves a very useful purpose in perhaps casting a critical eye on certain aspects of the genre. Not that it's likely to improve as a result of it [laughing]! I think it's only going to make it worse!
O'Neill: There's been an interesting polar shift in the way that these superheroes are presented. I notice that nowadays almost none of them have a secret identity worth bothering about. The characters tend to be in costume all the time, finding action all the time, and usually doing something superheroic all the time. It makes it all kind of hyperactive, which is probably a reflection of the readership more than anything else. People can't be bothered with thinking about Clark Kent in the way that I used to, waiting for the action to follow. [This phenomenon] gives rise to a terrible paradigm. You've got nothing to fall back on, to support the fantasy of a Superman. Most people can identify with Clark Kent by feeling in some way inadequate, but certainly no one can identify with being Superman all the time, unless they're eating too much beef packed with steroids in the states. It's made all of the characters extraordinarily shallow.
The more serious stuff that you have in there, the funnier the funny stuff is.
Mills: Very much. This is evidenced in Mask/Marshal Law. We didn't sit down and say, "Let's have Marshal Law versus The Mask!" We thought about the opportunities that The Mask gives us to explore things in the Marshal Law universe that were compatible with The Mask but that were also compatible with our universe, rather than just doing a Mask story.
And The Mask, in particular, did give us that opportunity. The Mask is a key to the subconscious. It can open up many aspects there. We have a character in the Marshal Law universe -- The Sleepman -- that we've been wanting to bring back for what? Twelve, thirteen years, Kev?
O'Neill: It's been at least several years, I think.
Mills: So by using the Mask as a vehicle, rather than using it as a satirical device to parody superheroes, the parody comes out in a secondary kind of way. For example, in the end of book one is something I was delighted with. The Eye in the Sky that alerts Marshal Law that he's got to come home gets ignored while he's grappling with his latest girlfriend. So new messages come up in the sky ---"More Money" and all this kind of stuff. Ultimately the message comes up, "The Sleepman Lives!" He pushes aside his girlfriend -- even though they're in a really hot position -- and says, "I'm going back!" The Eye in the Sky parodies all those wonderfully archaic methods of communication from yesteryear, from the Golden Age of superheroes. But we didn't set out to parody it, it just arose naturally out of the plot. That's probably our strength, that we don't set out to take the pith out of things or pay homage to them. It just comes in naturally, and that's when it works the best.
Costa: For new readers -- who is Marshal Law?
Mills: Do you want to hit that one, Kev?
O'Neill: He's a former U.S. Super Soldier [who was] caught in a central American conflict. The returning soldiers began forming gangs on the West Coast of the U.S., similar to the way former Air Force guys began forming the Hells Angels after the Second World War. Law, due to his previous identity, was appointed by commissioner McGland of San Futuro -- the future San Francisco -- to police his own kind as a sanctioned vigilante. [He operates] outside of the normal police force to keep these superhuman gangs in check. I think that's about it, isn't it, Pat? Without going into elaborate detail . . .
Mills: Amazingly accurate, actually. Quite overwhelming, at this time in the morning.
Costa: Titillate us with a suspenseful and incomplete story synopsis of Mask/Marshal Law, will you?
Mills: I'll kick off, shall I Kev? When I run out of road you can pull me over.
It begins when Marshal Law is about to resign as hero hunter. He's had enough, and he's knocking the shit out of a bunch of superheroes. I think it's one of the most gratifying scenes in Law for a long while, 'cause here is a guy who no longer hates superheroes. All of our readers are saying, "Oh, no! He's not going to do anything if he doesn't hate them!" I'm afraid it's actually to the contrary. He's more likely to do more horrible things. He's beating these guys up and thinking how it's not fun anymore: "More paperwork, more blood on my boots . . ." He's intending to resign. He's found a superheroine who's quite ambitious to take over his job.
Meanwhile the scientific headquarters, S.H.O.C.C. (which stands for Super Hero Operational Command and Control), has come across this mysterious artifact -- the Mask. The [scientists have] figured out that it has a very strange psychic power -- the ability to transform reality and so forth. So for reasons best known to them, and in the best tradition of lunatic scientists . . .
Costa: [laughter]
Mills: . . . they decide that the ideal person to put this artifact on would be the Sleepman, this character who's been in a comatose state in the vault of S.H.O.C.C. H.Q. for some 13 years. The fact that he is America's most lethal, most dangerous superhero never deters scientists because, of course, they say, "It's no problem. We have two fail-safe devices. We have allowed for every situation. We know there isn't going to be a problem here. We know that if things get out of hand, we can contain him." Of course, we all say at that point, "Oh, my God -- what is it with these people?" You know -- it's like science anytime, isn't it? The atom bomb . . . scientists have got to tamper.
So what we've got here with The Mask is a slightly different spin on it. It's being treated very much as a scientific artifact. We go through the process of The Mask going onto Sleepman's face. All of these very grotesque and hideous metamorphoses take place as The Mask plumbs the foul depths of Danny's psyche. I mean, this is a guy whose mind is like a total sewer, who is tormented by the ultimate dysfunctional childhood.
O'Neill: He puts on The Mask and becomes increasingly unstable. He breaks his bonds and they immediately go into their fail safes. They pump him with Prozac . . .
Mills: So you get this grotesque, archetypal Mask grin appearing on his face . . .
Costa: I loved that -- "The classic Prozac smile!" I wanted to cut out that panel, blow it up, and fax it to every nursing home in the country. It was beautiful.
Mills: [laughter]
O'Neill: [laughing] It looks nicer in green, as well!
Mills: And then, after that, they decide to go for a full craniotomy.
O'Neill: Yes, the delightful thing about The Mask is that it enables us to venture into territory where we otherwise couldn't go, such as having our principle character beheaded. Normally the reader wouldn't expect to see him walking around again a few panels later, but The Mask has afforded us that opportunity .
Costa: So you enjoyed working with The Mask.
Mills: I think it worked really well. I think it was great, because we could do things in Marshal Law that we weren't able to do before. We were able to have things that could be loosely described as magical. Because The Mask doesn't have a complex mythos behind it, it wasn't a case of our editor, Scott Allie, saying The Mask can't do this or The Mask can't do that. It's such a flexible character; it gave us a lot more creative freedom than if we were doing, say, a DC character. There would be a very long back-story and one would have to be familiar with that. It was very free. It was a very easy thing to do.
Mask/Marshal Law #1 (of 2) is written by Pat Mills and drawn by Kevin O'Neill. The full-color, 32-page issue ships February 25.