Brand Echh: MARK HAZZARD: MERC #1

This next New Universe release was a bit of an outlier, as it didn’t truly have anything to do with the overarching concept of the New Universe at all. It featured no super-powers, no White Event, nothing at all extraordinary or beyond the realm of believability. What it was instead was an attempt to do a kind of contemporary military adventure series of the sort that filled the pages of men’s paperbacks. Created by Archie Goodwin–one of four concepts that Archie would whip together for the New Universe initiative, MARK HAZZARD: MERC seemed like a bit of a gamble for the direct sales market. Still, during this period, Marvel was continuing to fight to maintain its presence in the mainstream Newsstand marketplace, so you can see why having a book like MERC among the New Universe offerings made some sense. The company wasn’t quite yet at a point where absolutely everything it published had to be super heroes, even if it wasn’t as wide-reaching in terms of genre as rival DC.

MARK HAZZARD: MERC #1 was written by Peter David, who was then just starting out his career as a writer. He had been laboring in Marvel’s nascent Direct Sales department working under Carol Kalish and trying to make inroads into getting stories published by the company. But there was strife and division between the sales department and Marvel editorial, so it was a difficult divide to bridge. David’s benefactor in this regard was editor Jim Owsley, who hired him to do a SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN Annual. From there, Owsley would turn to David with increasing regularity–as in this instance, when he needed somebody to execute Goodwin’s basic concept. David put his effort into making the series more than just a testosterone-fueled A-Team romp in which muscular men shot up foreign bad guys while making one-liner quips. He gave Hazzard a home life, with a wife who had divorced him due to his mercenary lifestyle and who had subsequently remarried. Hazzard was caught in-between wanting to be there for his ex-wife and their son and his obvious skill and love for the art of warfare through which he plied his trade.

Artistically, MERC #1 was the work of Gray Morrow, a fabulous artist whose style and approach wasn’t really suited to super hero work. Morrow’s characters were elegantly illustrated and realistically drawn–his influences were the great newspaper strip cartoonists rather than artists such as Jack Kirby of John Buscema. Morrow gave the series a strong visual identity. Unfortunately, due in part to the fact that these titles all went into production late, Morrow would only be on two issues before fill-in art jobs began to show up. He’d never entirely abandon the title during its short lifetime, but of the book’s dozen issues plus one Annual, he wound up drawing only five. Like the rest of the New Universe line, the series bounced from artist to artist for the duration of its run, never completely settling into a regular rhythm.

This first issue opens with an introduction to Hazard, who is walking back to his apartment from the market. He casually stops a would-be thief from making off with a piece of fruit before getting back to his place, which is filled with tomes on military history and tactics as well as a bevy of firearms and other weapons. Listening to his answering machine, Mark hears from his son Scott, who hopes he’ll be able to come to his little league championship that weekend. But Hazzard’s attendance is thrown into question when the final message is from his mercenary cohort “Treetop”, who tells Mark that they’ve got a job. They’re being hired by a band of rebels in a South Pacific island nation to either capture or kill the nation’s President, thus paving the way for a regime change. Hazzard and his buddy Mal Rossi make their way into the Presidential home and carry out their assignment, killing the occupants. All except the President’s teenage daughter.

Having carried out their mission, Hazzard and Mal are paid by the rebel leader, who indicates that despite their slogans about freedom and democracy, doesn’t intend to hand over control of the nation now that he’s wrested it away from its former President. Hazzard is disquieted by the notion that he’s just replaced one greedy scumbag with another, and so when he comes upon some of the rebel soldiers arguing over who will get to have their way with the daughter first, he intercedes, carrying the girl off despite her protests. But thanks to his actions, he and Mal have gone from being heroes of the revolution to dangerous wanted criminals, and they have to fight their way to the exfiltration zone where they can be picked up by Treetop. Along the way, we learn more about Hazzard’s past in flashback, how he was once a promising West Point cadet before dropping out to join the army to fight in Vietnam, where he served three tours of duty. But as they get to the pick-up zone, the terrified girl breaks away from Hazard and runs back towards her attacking countrymen–who cut her down without a second’s hesitation. This is an appropriately nihilistic comic book.

As the story wraps up, Hazzard, Mal and Treetop are able to get away, but not before having to kill the rebel leader in order to secure their departure. Mal’s pretty fed up with Hazzard’s strange moralizing, and even Treetop tells him that if he can’t get his head straight, he’s going to wind up getting himself or somebody else killed. As the book ends, Scott gets a call from Hazzard telling him that he’ll be able to make it to the little league game after all–much to the consternation of Hazard’s ex-wife Joan, who would prefer it if Scott could move on with his life without Hazzard’s self-destructive influence on it. So this is an attempt to do a more realistic sort of mercenary story–which has the unfortunate effect of making it difficult to find somebody to root for. Hazzard is clearly the central character, but he’s so morally compromised and ethically challenged that even when he tries to do the right thing, it’s tough to be in his corner.

MARK HAZZARD: MERC was one of the New Universe titles that was cancelled after only a year, and it was the lowest-selling book in the line. After four issues, Peter David moved on, and incoming replacement writer Doug Murray dialed up the military adventure and virtually wrote out the civilian cast, making MERC more of a straight-up war comic. But this clearly didn’t work in terms of increasing its popularity. For some reason, the decision was made to do a MERC Annual that year right before the end, and Murray made the audacious decision to kill off Mark Hazzard unexpectedly in that book. The final issue, #12, revolved around the extended cast of mercenaries who worked alongside Hazzard dealing with the aftermath of his demise. It’s perhaps the most memorable thing about this run, though this first issue isn’t badly crafted as a comic book. It was simply the wrong approach for the wrong concept at the wrong time. But a noble attempt at doing something different.