The book that ruined superheroes for me! Mills & O'Neil's Marshal Law!
34Like the title says- this book absolutely ruined superheroes for me. I could never take them seriously again.
This was also probably the first book by Pat Mills I really "got." I'd tried to read Slaine when Eagle/ Fleetway were putting it out, but I felt like I was jumping into the middle of a long- running saga and it didn't click at the time- it would eventually though.
Published around the same time as the legendary Watchmen, this book was a much more tongue in cheek deconstructing of the superhero mythos. In this book they were all a bunch of filthy degenerates that used and abused the populace for their own twisted perversions. Many of the "heroes" are obviously thinly veiled caricatures of other super heroes, with each miniseries or special zeroing in on one specific group of heroes.
Epic put out the original miniseries, while a lot of the later stories were serialized in British comic magazine Toxic!, which I mixed up with Deadline, which was another comic magazine running around the same time. Both of which my brother had. Maybe still has. I ought to go dig those out...
Anyways if you like books like the Boys, the good Marshal was doing something similar about 20 years earlier.
Many of the points they bring up about cape comics are still just as relevant. Maybe not as hard edged and as scathing as they once were, but I'd argue the boys here did a good job of laying the groundwork.
Check it out here-
https://amzn.to/3j1KfZf