Marshal Law / YMMV

Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Marshal Law really a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk, or a man still struggling to be the superhero he dreams himself to be, despite his obvious PTSD and other glaring, self-acknowledged emotional flaws? And is the world we're seeing truly that terrible or is it merely his warped perception of it, fuelled by his hatred of superheroes?
Anvilicious: Since the series is driven purely by simple hatred for superhero comics rather than appreciating their virtues and flaws or exploring the corporate mindset behind their popularity, its repeated hitting on the same "Superheroes suck" concept can be tiresome after a while.
Broken Aesop: The arc Super Babylon satirizes Golden Age superheroes for their conservative attitudes and prejudices, but also constantly attacks them for their supposed sexual perversion. It's rather hard to take accusations of dated attitudes seriously when the comic itself treats bondage, crossdressing, homosexuality, nudism, and prostitution as either punchlines or signs of moral decay. It's especially obvious when Law's old girlfriend (a strident feminist who gave cogent arguments against toxic masculinity) comes back evil, which is shown by having her dress in a skimpy outfit and get in a relationship with another guy.
- The crux of the comic is that superheroes are bad, nowhere as heroic as real heroes, and promote the idea that violence is the best option. The titular protagonist isn't exempt from this, when called out for how his actions inspire people to acts of violence just like the characters he fights against, he doesn't deny. The problem is what while the comic criticizes superheroes for resorting to violence, some of the "real heroes" it praises are soldiers who fought in war, ie, people who took part in horrific acts of violence.
  - It should be noted that earlier comics in the series, mostly the original and Takes Manhattan, didn’t have this problem, as they took a much dimmer view of soldiers, the military, and police, seeing superheroes as an extension of their hypermasculine quasi-fascistic methods, only for the later stories to break the aesop.
- Super Babylon mocks superhero outfits as impractical, getting them killed when they went into combat, but it occurs in a story where they are handed a defeat by Marshal Law whose outfit is equally impractical.
Crosses the Line Twice: The over-the-top art and storytelling constantly crosses many lines.
Designated Villain: We're just supposed to take it for granted that the superheroes in Pinhead Vs Marshall Law are the same hypocritical perverts as the rest, but they don't do anything evil, demonstrate self-sacrifice and bravery, and actually try to stop the threat of Pinhead and the Cenobites (and are even trying to rescue Law). But because they are seen as a disgrace to the "real heroes" who fought in war (which is in of itself the comic contradicting its earlier message about how the army was a tool of a fascist state) the comic decides that they all deserve to be tortured forever in Hell while Marshall Law not only gets to go scot-free, he also takes a known serial killer with him as an ally in his campaign against the heroes. Law never has any epiphanies about his experience, and practically brags about how much he loves hating superheroes. All in all, everyone involved - perhaps even Law himself - would've been better off leaving him in Hell to rot.
Fetish Retardant: The comics are filled with sexual imagery, but the exaggerated art style makes the characters look grotesque and ridiculous and there is a lot of rape and abuse. Then again, this is likely intentional, given the satirical nature of the comic.
Genius Bonus: Doctor Shocc having Danny choose between the "Soft Mother" and "Wire Mother" in Fear and Loathing is taken verbatim from the Harlow monkey experiments.
Hilarious in Hindsight: "Kingdom of the Blind" has the Batman Parody Private Eye's origin include the twist of Private Eye arranging his own parents' murder with the assistance of his butler. This is similar to the origin of Batman's Crime Syndicate counterpart Owlman as established in Forever Evil (2013).
Misaimed Fandom: Yes, believe it or not, some readers actually appreciate Marshal Law as another badass superhero comic series, not realizing— or a least not caring— that it is actually a satire of the genre they love. The point of the entire series is not only that superheroes suck but that you shouldn't put faith in any heroes, super- or otherwise, or even have hope for a hero to come and save the day.
Narm: Marshal Law criticizing the superheroes as a disgrace to the real heroes who fought against the Nazis is hard to take seriously when he dresses pretty damn fash himself. Of course, if you ask the creators, that was exactly the point.
Rooting for the Empire: Private Eye is a monstrous human being, however, it's quite cathartic to watch him and his butler gunning down his own parents, considering how they treated him, and the fact they're indirectly responsible for making him who he is.
Sequelitis: Fear and Loathing is considered very good, and Takes Manhattan and Kingdom of the Blind are on about the same level. However, The Hateful Dead/Super Babylon suffered heavily from bad pacing and Schedule Slip due to its magazine's Troubled Production and O'Neill being unused to a weekly series, and also went after significantly lower-hanging fruit than the earlier parts (trying to make the big point that stories written in the 40s for children are stupid, decades after most of those characters had dropped to C-List Fodder at best). Every single following installment was either a crossover or an attempt at one, and very few of them had any coherent point. By that point, Mills's fatigue with the character and world was quite obvious - that, as one blogger put it, "...after the death of the superhero, the autopsy, the brass-band funeral and the Danse Macabre with their bones, the fucking things are still the only thing that sell."
Shallow Parody:
- The comic's criticism of characters Golden and Silver Age comic characters ring hollow and demonstrates the writer is mostly projecting his own values. The Deliberate Values Dissonance treats the characters as though the characters' values were never updated as the times changed. Saying they only went after easy targets is just plain untrue as Captain America was created before America entered World War 2 and was in fact a controversial character at the time. Superman's radio show had him battling against the Ku Klux Klan back when the Klan was considered a respectable organization. Likewise it criticizing superheroes as being a disgrace to the "real heroes" of World War II ignores that Captain America's comics were actually very popular with American servicemen, and Jack Kirby, one of Captain America's creators, actually served in the war.
- The Jesus Society of America are a pastiche of Golden Age heroes who based on their name are overtly Christian. No such heroes with those traits existed in comics. In fact, the most notable case in superhero comics of a group who were religious fundamentalists were the Purifiers, who were villains. Additionally, a lot of the most famous comic creators of the Gold and Silver Ages were Jewish.
Spiritual Successor:
- It can be seen as one for Harvey Kurtzman's Superduperman, his MAD magazine spoof. Like Kurtzman, Mills hates superheroes and heaps scorn on it, and where Kurztman made fun of classic heroes for being pathetic adolescent fantasies, Mills updates it in general to all other superheroes that came since The '50s, including vigilantes, revisionist heroes and teenage heroes.
- Marshal Law can also be seen as one for Ben Edlund's The Tick, since both are satirical parodies of the superhero genre featuring caricatures of well-known Marvel and DC superheroes. However unlike The Tick, which is more of a silly and light-hearted spoof of said genre for kids, Marshal Law is a dark and cynical parody of the genre for adults.
- Garth Ennis' The Boys is one for Marshal Law. Where Mills played his superhero satire for laughs, Ennis plays it, generally for drama with characters like the Butcher and Hughie being more than the caricatures like Joe Gilmore, and tackling the corporate structure behind superhero stories and fandoms.
- It has also gained a Spiritual Antithesis in the form of My Hero Academia with direct comparisons between Big Bad Shigaraki, our Designated Hero Marshal Law and the very similar art style.
- Marshal Law also borrows a lot of inspiration from Judge Dredd (Pat Mills and Ken O'Neill even helped create some comic strips for Judge Dredd) to the point where the series was even originally going to be a flat out copy of Judge Dredd.
Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: You could probably replace the narration with "Everyone sucks but me! (And I'm not that great myself)". Kevin O'Neill noted that one Batman writer felt offended by the series' piss-take of Batman in The Kingdom of the Blind noting that he and Pat Mills had parodied the character without putting anything in its place. O'Neill said that this was an Intended Audience Reaction because to them the concept of The Hero was out of favor and there weren't any more stories to tell in that genre and Mills and O'Neill were frustrated that the genre's Dead Horse Trope keeps being recycled and updated.

YMMV / Marshal Law

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