Sixteen Volts

Last weekend they finally opened in Mississauga an outlet of T&T, a chain of Asian supermarkets that I have understood to be big in Van and around there. I am slightly suspicious towards anything that comes from west of Ontario, since all those provinces seem to have just towns with weird names like "Banff" (isn't that the sound that Nightcrawler makes when he teleports?), "Medicine Hat", "Kamloops" or "Flim Flam". Even so, we took a stroll there last night to see what all the fuss was about. Even though it was almost dark, the place was full of people, some of whom even were non-Asians. The place didn't look that different from the other big Asian supermarket around here, but at least it is located a lot closer to us. Now I know where I go when I want all those exotic Asian foodstuffs that I like, such as "Little Cook" spicy seafood noodles.

While we were setting down to bed, I re-read the two Marshal Law collections that I have. It has been a while since I have read this series, and I had forgotten how good it is. In the near future, San Fransisco has been destroyed by an earthquake and the new city of San Futuro has taken its place. USA has engaged in a Vietnam-style war in Central America, which it fought by creating legions of superheroes. Unfortunately, these sociopathic and violent superheroes who are completely impervious to pain tend to have great difficulties in adjusting to the civilian life, many of them becoming either street gangs, criminals or just sideshow freaks that the normos can abuse for their entertainment. So it takes a one man secret police force in the form of Marshal Law to keep them in line by shooting bullets at them administering "attitude correction capsules" whenever necessary.

The artwork of this series is grotesque with its hypermuscular men and huge-breasted women, large blocky cars and buildings and omnipresent offensive and nihilistic signs and T-shirts, but in a way that feels very natural after a while. Even Marshal Law himself wears what is basically an S/M outfit, complete with barbed wire wrapped around one bare muscular arm. The character is essentially the same as Judge Dredd, except with more angst and sadism and better one-liners such as "Calling you a hero is like calling shit caviar!", "If you are the new Messiah, I'm going to be the one driving in the nails" and "He was responsible for the triplets serial murders... naturally I shot him three times."

However, it should be emphasized that against this harsh backdrop the plotlines and social satire of the series are intelligent, far above the mainstream of its era of the late eighties and early nineties. There is probably little chance that this comic will ever be turned into a movie, but bits and pieces of it would greatly improve any other superhero movie.

Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen on Thursday, August 31, 2006 at 9:21 AM