Summary
- Immortan Joe's origin story in Mad Max Fury Road: Nux & Immortan Joe #1 reveals that he was a rogue military officer named Colonel Joe Morton, who took advantage of the collapse of civilization to turn himself into a tyrant.
- Immortan Joe's rise to power involved exploiting opportunities in the post-apocalyptic wasteland, using his military experience and his natural ruthless lack of care for humanity to propel himself to the status of ruler.
- The prequel comic deepens fans' understanding of the Fury Road film, while also telling a fascinating story in its own right, by showing the process of mythmaking, and how it is integral in shaping societies.
Immortan Joe, the villain of Mad Max: Fury Road, is one of the most intense villains in cinematic history – something the film's prequel tie-in comics double down on, in the process revealing the process by which a man becomes a tyrant, and a tyrant becomes a god-like figure to those he rules.
Mad Max Fury Road: Nux & Immortan Joe #1 recounts the duel backstories of these two pivotal characters from the movie: Nux, the former War Boy who finds redemption, and the one known as "Immortan", the ghoulishly terrifying ruler of the wasteland, whom Nux served for most of his life.
Immortan Joe's backstory covers his post-apocalyptic rise to power, revealing him to have been a rogue military officer, Colonel Joe Morton, who seized the opportunity provided by worldwide conflagration and infrastructure collapse to elevate himself into a position of true supremacy.
Mad Max: Fury Road's Ending Secretly Set Up the Perfect Sequel Villain
Mad Max: Fury Road's happy ending secretly set up a dark new chapter, as Immortan Joe's son finds a troubling ally who could conquer the Citadel.
Colonel Joe Morton Used The End Of Civilization To Become A Conqueror
The Ultimate Opportunist
Joe Morton's military background, and his evident disregard for human life...led him to found a new social order based entirely around his own edification. In the process, the Colonel became more than just a ruler: he became immortal.
Released in conjunction with the film, Mad Max Fury Road: Nux & Immortan Joe #1 frames itself as a history. A future storyteller – literally embodying the past by being covered in tattoos preserving his account of the past – contrasts Nux's redemption with Immortan Joe's utter lack of repentance. The villain's origin story exemplifies the thin, arbitrary line between civilization and barbarism; while Joe does eventually impose a form of order upon the chaos of the wasteland, he does so out of purely selfish, self-aggrandizing interests.
As readers learn, Colonel Joe Morton was a "veteran of the Oil Wars," and even a "hero of the Water Wars," that preceded armageddon. "The Colonel," as he would initially be known by his followers, had access to manpower, weaponry, and resources that critically put him in a position to thrive in the brutal state of nature that society's collapse reduced the Australian landscape to, in the Mad Max canon. As a ruthless and calculating leader, the Colonel was able to use the advantages at his disposal to forge himself into a despot.
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Mad Max Fury Road: Nux & Immortan Joe #1 (2015) |
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In this sense, the Colonel capitalized on an opportunity that few would even recognize in front of them, and even fewer would be able to make the most of, in the way he did. Joe Morton's military background, and his evident disregard for human life – which appears to have pre-dated the fall of civilization – led him to found a new social order based entirely around his own edification. In the process, the Colonel became more than just a ruler: he became immortal.
The mad or rogue "Colonel" is a familiar trope in fiction, with this rank giving rise to despotic behavior seemingly more than any level of the military command chain. This was most famously exemplified by Marlon Brando's Colonel Kurtz from the film Apocalypse Now.
Joe Had To Lose His Humanity To Gain Immortality
A "God" Born In Bloodshed
As he emerges victorious, after facing certain death, his followers bestow the name [Immortan Joe] upon him. However, as Fury Road made clear, more than just a title, immortality became Joe's obsession.
Whatever flickering spark of humanity that might have been in Colonel Joe Morton prior to the end of the world was quickly extinguished by necessity. The Colonel became an uncompromising, calculating monster – Nux & Immortan Joe #1 depicts him swelling the ranks of his army by force. Returning humanity to its deepest roots of antiquity, Morton's standing order was to kill any men they came across, and absorb the women and children into their numbers. Eventually, this led him to the Citadel, his base in Fury Road, and in the process, to a form of godhood.
Interestingly, the prequel comic depicts the future Immortan Joe as a student of history himself – meaning he likely drew direct inspiration from the most ferocious leaders of the past in shaping his conquest of the wasteland. He breaches the Citadel's defenses using a tactic drawn from historical precedent, in the pivotal moment that transforms him from the Colonel into Immortan Joe. As he emerges victorious, after facing certain death, his followers bestow the name upon him. However, as Fury Road made clear, more than just a title, immortality became Joe's obsession.