Broken Frontier

Peter Milligan was one of the British writers recruited to the ranks of American comics scripting during the post-Alan Moore ransacking of British creator talent. At the time his resume included the ultra-violent characters of Bad Company, for 2000AD and his cobbled together psychotic and otherworldly mind-trip Strange Days for Eclipse, nearly twenty years ago. Soon afterwards, Milligan would be writing Batman stories in Detective Comics. Then he’d take a trip through Vertigo-land with Shade the Changing Man, and eventually to return to mainstream characters like Carnage, the Punisher and the X-Men. Peter Milligan has written stories for the most popular characters of both the mainstream companies, and yet only a few readers have recognized exactly how subversive he could be.

One of the motifs that Milligan returns to most often is that of Identity. In his worldview, the one he presents in his comics, a character’s… scratch that… a person’s identity appears to be something completely transitory, ephemeral. It’s as if one’s face could easily slip through one’s own fingers. This topic is revisited again and again in Milligan’s oeuvre in seemingly endless and continually fascinating variations.

Hewligan’s Haircut, created with Tank Girl creator and Gorillaz designer Jamie Hewlett for 2000AD is perhaps one of the primary pieces where Milligan explores the transformative power of one’s outside trappings. In this book, Hewligan, the erstwhile hero is a patient in an insane asylum whose world undergoes a reality-melting change after he gives himself an impossible haircut with a pair of plastic safety scissors. As a kind of archetypal Milligan maneuver, Hewligan’s empowerment comes from a simple change of haircut. Hewligan is a singular sort of character, out of place within the confines of social interactions. He feels apart from the large mass of society, feigning a “sane” point of view by pretending to ignore the madness literally happening around him.  Even in naming, Milligan’s characters play games with identity, as Hewligan’s monicker is a jumble of the names Hewlett and Milligan.

The notion of mutable identity is most prevalently showcased in Milligan’s Vertigo stories. Face, The Eaters, Enigma, The Extremist and The Human Target all feature a classic Milligan take on identity.

In Face, drawn by Duncan Fegredo, a famous cosmetic surgeon named David Scholem is called upon to recreate the face of a famous and reclusive artist, in the search for a new definition of art and beauty. Scholem and his wife are relocated to the artist’s remote island location to take the artist’s task to horrific and gruesome ends. With Face, Milligan takes on the notion of changes of mask most literally, years before he’d return to the theme in the Human Target.

In Milligan’s world, a mask gives its wearer a kind of power. The same can be said for the person who wears the identity of The Extremist, from Milligan’s book of the same name with Ted McKeever. In the book, the Extremist is the masked hand behind a group of deadly perverts, a group who are dedicated to living their life on the extreme. The Extremist is an almost non-entity, but the person behind it certainly finds their lives transformed. This book shows some of Milligan’s darkest work, and as light shone upon our black and white beliefs of right and wrong cast a shadow in a vividly wretched example of gray.

A different view of identity is used in The Eaters, drawn by Dean Ormston. The story centers around the teenaged daughter of a seemingly typical all-American family as they are recognized by a famous corporation for their average American sensibility. What their prize-giver doesn’t realize is that this family identify themselves as “eaters,” by which they mean that they eat human flesh. According to the parents their dining habits are an American tradition, even though to the outside world it may seem that tradition descends from the Donner party more any other source. After the family takes a cross-country road trip to meet a long lost eater friend who has taken a role in public office, many questions are raised about the identity of the daughter.

Enigma, drawn again by Duncan Fegredo, follows the life of a man as his childhood comic book hero comes to life, violently hunting down bizarre versions of the villains from the long lost comics, a series that was cancelled after only a few issues. Throughout the book there are many shifts of identity. The narrator’s persona remains a mystery throughout most of the book, and each character undergoes a transformation of sorts as their lives are rent by the larger-than-life figure of the Enigma.

Milligan’s longest exploration of the theme is unquestionably The Human Target, his modern day revision of the popular silver age character. Christopher Chance has been known as the Human Target for a number of years, living the lives of people whose lives have been threatened. After years of undercover life, and countless plastic surgeries, Chance has lost a clear sense of who he is. His ego slips from Christopher Chance into any of the various people he may be impersonating, for instance a Hollywood producer, or a famous baseball player, or an evangelist. After years of living in other people’s shoes, Christopher Chance isn’t sure what his own feet feel like. Milligan’s own experience with tearing apart the notion of identity couldn’t be more appropriate.

Why does Milligan repeat this theme so often? Clearly it’s a favorite subject for exploration. What does this frequent visitation upon the subject of identity reveal?

One suggestion is that as each reader (hopefully) has an identity of their own, that each story would by definition give the reader something to consider. When a reader reads about the horrors seen by David Scholem, for example, they might be reminded of their own shallow look at the world. After seeing the Universe through the eyes of the madman Hewligan, a reader should know that they’re not the only person who ever felt out of place and alone. After wearing the skin of Christopher Chance, who himself must wear the faces of his clients, readers everywhere may have been exposed to a humongous range of human perception and experience.

Milligan describes a sort of fluidity to faces that dissolves the readers’ distinction between character and audience. He attacks the mainstream sensibilities of normality and American-ism by presenting reflections of them that are far less glamorous. Milligan uses Identity at times as a broken looking glass, which we can use to either shine a light on ourselves or to gash our personalities open to understand the gory horrors within.