41: Morituri Birth

The story of how Peter Gillis' beloved Strikeforce: Morituri came to be is, as you might expect, not entirely straightforward. Character death has always been a hot topic in comics, yet in the early days of superheroes, killing main characters off was extremely rare and generally considered permanent. By the early 80's, the high profile deaths of Elektra, Phoenix, Supergirl and Captain Marvel (and swift subsequent resurrections of most) brought much debate. Peter Gillis was firmly in the death should be meaningful and permanent camp; after all, it's meant to be the final step in any character's journey, not the tawdry temporary publicity stunts such character deaths have since degenerated into. As Gillis put it to Peter Sanderson in Comics Interview:

"Killing somebody off is an extremely arbitrary act, and any writer with sufficient clout at any company can come in and write a story in which a major character dies. People will sit up and take notice because of that very fact. It takes no skill whatsoever; you don't have to know much about characterization. It can be a purely arbitrary element in a story... That can generate sensationalism, and it generates reader response. They will be startled by it; they will be shocked by it. If that's all you want to do, to shock the readers. if all you want is somebody's attention, then you can get it. But interest is not affection."

Peter Gillis' counter reaction to these stunt deaths was to create a series proposal where death was meaningful and lasting. Where heroes fought to save the human race from marauding aliens, with the knowledge that their powers would kill them inside a year. He called it Morituri, from the Latin "morituri te salutant", which translates as "we/those who are about to die salute you", a phrase reportedly uttered by gladiators to the Roman emperor Claudius. Gillis carried two portfolios of script proposals, one for Marvel and one for indie publishers. The latter is where he filed away the Morituri idea. One day, his Defenders and Dr Strange editor asked to look at his indie folder...

At a 1985 editorial meeting, Jim Shooter proposed a new line of comics called the New Universe, to celebrate Marvel's impending 25th anniversary. He called for properties that were unrelated to each other and not set in the Marvel Universe. Carl Potts turned to Gillis' portfolio and was taken by his Morituri proposal, while also considering a since forgotten Gillis concept set in the medieval Crusades. Gillis also to some degree pitched Chrome to Shooter for New U consideration. Potts teamed Gillis with rising star Brent Anderson, artist on Ka-Zar and X-Men. Together they made a start on flagship New Universe title Morituri. Soon however, Potts became aware he wasn't being invited to New Universe staff meetings. Somewhere along the line Shooter had decided to start over and change the entire concept into a more logical shared universe, so the future set science fiction of Morituri got frozen out. Carl Potts' full take on events here is a fascinating read.

The book eventually came out in late '86 as a standalone Marvel branded title. With hindsight, it would've been more at home under their Epic banner, where the creative freedom and full ownership would've saved a lot of future heartache. As a mainstream title however, Morituri received more distribution, attention and promotion than the undervalued Epic line. At least in theory. Peter Gillis' take:

"I viewed it as an experimental book. But if I was going to do it at Marvel, I wanted newsstand sales. I didn't want it to be an Epic book, which only got sold to the comic book stores."

The problems started early, with the simple matter of what to call the book. According to Anderson, editorial felt Morituri was too esoteric a title, so Potts suggested Total War, which the creators thought generic and misleading. They compromised by prefixing with the military like Strikeforce. Still Marvel insisted on adding the translation of Morituri as a strapline, so a one word title became an eight word mouthful: 'we who are about to die' - Strikeforce: Morituri. Hats off to the excellent logo designer for at least making it comprehensible. To compound matters, Potts' suggestion "Total War on Earth" made it to the first issue cover as a caption, which also confusingly did not feature any of the regular cast, but instead gun toting soldiers of their predecessors The Black Watch.

This muddled launch wasn't helped by a Morituri preview in Marvel Age #45. Not only had the title been bumped to the bottom corner of the cover by a Mephisto miniseries (not a promising sign), the tag line also described the series as "super heroes with a morbid twist". Brent Anderson took exception to this in a long letter to editor Jim Salicrup, which bizarrely got published as letter of the month in Marvel Age #48. Anderson's letter is too good not to paraphrase here:

"Dear Jim,

I need to take issue with the capsule description of STRIKEFORCE: MORITURI on the cover of MARVEL AGE MAGAZINE #45. The "morituri" in the title and the series concept was derived from the Latin, "Ave, [Mundus]! moritur te salutant"-"Hail, [Earth]! we who are about to die salute thee."...

"Honestly, Jim, if STRIKEFORCE: MORITURI was about "super heroes with a morbid twist...," Peter and I wouldn't be doing it (at least, I wouldn't be) because this book is not (as WEBSTER's defines morbid) diseased, unhealthy or pathological; nor is it resulting from a diseased state of mind, having or showing an unwholesome tendency to dwell on gruesome or gloomy matters. The series is about life, sacrifice, and how people cope with death; not about death itself.

We would be guilty of morbidity if we were producing a "death-of-the-month" comic book, but we're not; we recognized early in development that such a book would indeed be considered morbid, so we are doing everything we can to avoid just such an eventuality.

The only synonym for morbid even remotely appropriate to STRIKEFORCE: MORITURI is the word "abnormal," in that the book is indeed not normal, average or typical, and it does vary from the established standard, but it is not morbid, so I humbly request that, if possible, the word be removed from the MARVEL AGE MAGAZINE cover. Thank you."

Marvel Age response:

"As you can no doubt guess, it was too late to make changes on the cover when this letter came in. But we did want to let you know how seriously Marvel creators take their work, and the detail they'll go to to make sure it is presented correctly. Thanks, Brent."

That all said, it's time to crack open the actual issues.