I Was Magic. (Spider-Man: Hooky)

1/8: Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true.

We open on a bitter January evening. A trio of crooks are attempting to rob a building with a metal door for reasons the story never explicitly tells us. In truth, they’re more akin to the three stooges than a typical thief, as they are quick to argue and get into physical arguments. Even Spider-Man notes the connection once he reveals himself to the trio. Naturally, the four don’t get on and so they fight. While the fight is going on, the owner of the building the trio was attempting to rob watches. As he watches with disdain, he notices a clicking sound. He turns his head to find a camera Spider-Man webbed to the fire escape to take pictures of the fight.

Seeing the material worth of the camera, the man decides to steal it whilst Spidey’s preoccupied with the hoodlums. But just as he’s about to cut the camera free from the webs, a little girl throws a snowball right in his face. She doesn’t take kindly to thieves and, as her western attire implies, tells the “varmint” to leave the camera be. Just before the man is about to stab the little girl, Spider-Man shows up to take his camera back, telling the old man to just walk away and they won’t say a word. The old man agrees to this proposal.

As Spider-Man goes down to thank the little girl, she says it wasn’t a problem and that he should hug his Uncle Ben to make them even. Spidey, shocked by this revelation, tries to act as if he has no idea what she’s talking about but the little girl says his secret’s safe with her and that his aura stick out like a sore thumb. She introduces herself as Marandi “Mandi” Sjorokker, though admits he might not remember her, and claims to be picking up some stuff to fight the “Tordenkakerlakk.” As the police arrive, Mandi leaves the scene, telling Spidey it’s out of his league but if he wants to help, he should come back at 6:30 the next morning. Confused by what just happened, Spidey leaves without helping a single police officer in their inquiry.

He tries to figure out who this little girl is, how she knows him. He doesn’t know any 12 year old girls and isn’t quite sure if he knew any six year old ones when he was younger. Mandi mentioned knowing Dr. Strange, so Spidey decides that’s where he should head off to next. He calls up to see if Strange isn’t asleep, but Strange’s assistant Wong tells Spidey that he’s in some mystical dimension a few doors down from our reality. When he asks about the Tordenkakerlakk, Wong relays that he doesn’t know that word or anything about the girl who said it.

While dismayed, the conversation did make Spider-Man recall that there was a Norwegian family in the neighborhood he grew up in. A pity that Aunt May is out ‘til Sunday, or he could have asked her directly. But it gives him a starting point to look up the term “Tordenkakerlakk,” which is loosely translated from Norwegian to mean “Thunder Cockroach.” With no other choice, Peter decides to help the young girl in… whatever it is she’s planning.

For once, he’s the one left waiting for someone else while their running late, but Mandi does eventually arrive. It seems she needed to get some materials and her shopping list was six pages long. “For a world where magic isn’t much believed,” she says, “you can find a lot of powerful stuff if you know where to look.” Rather than stay in the cold, Mandi reveals to Spider-Man her portable door, which can take them to an alternate dimension. And when he looks inside, Spider-Man sees a strange new landscape, unlike any he could ever exist within.

As they travel through the door, Mandi reveals she used to deliver newspapers to the neighborhood Peter grew up in when he was five and that Uncle Ben was her favorite customer. When Peter questions how a 12 year old could have a paper route when she was only seven, she reveals that she’s actually centuries old, but hasn’t aged a day. Mandi tells Spider-Man that she believes the Tordenkakerlakk is the bane that was prophesized to happen, a sort of death curse. Hearing this and acknowledging this is outside of his wheelhouse, Spidey offers his assistance.

As they fly to their destination with their magic ponchos, Mandi explains her lack of hope in defeating the bane. She thinks Spidey will not be able to help her and the Tordenkakerlakk will only kill him if he tries. She just doesn’t want to die forgotten and alone. To get off the morbid subject, Mandi commends Spidey’s ability to learn quickly, just as his Uncle Ben said. When she asks how the old man is doing, Spidey replies that he died a few years back. He admits that its taken him and Aunt May a few years to adjust to the idea that Ben’s dead, but before he can finish that thought, Spidey gets flung by the jetstreams that allow the two of them to fly. To save him, Mandi makes a portal to another dimension with fluffy pillows and a harem of barely dressed ladies. Peter has to remind himself that he can’t just stay there while Mandi’s life is in danger, so he flies off to her world: Cloudsea.

While enjoying the wondrous sea of clouds that allow Spidey to fly, a fly like being called an Ephex tries to strangle the superhero and he is only barely able to survive. After that random encounter, they arrive to Mandi’s ship: The Nonesuch, which looks more like a canoe with a frog’s face than a traditional ship. While on the ship, Mandi explains that she spent the past couple of centuries exiled on Earth moving from family to family, getting an education, learning new things, and moves on when it becomes abundantly clear she isn’t aging. The reason this is occurring is because she comes from a line of unpopular (evil) wizards, her father being Kurudred the Blood Drinker.

He wanted to conquer the seven planets of Lemne, but Elmak the Light Shaper kept getting in his way. Eventually, Kurudred conjured a spell for eight days to melt Elmak’s citadel with him in it. He thought he could get away with it, but the League of Three Threes thought otherwise and killed both Kurudred and his brother. But, when it came to killing Marandi, the league was uncomfortable with the prospect of killing a little girl. To save his daughter, Kurudred used the last of his magic to keep Marandi from ever growing up. It was the curse of immortality and perpetual adolescence. With her story done, Mandi tells Spidey to get some sleep, as Roach Hunting is a morning task. They bond over the possibility of Spidey being in a harem with The Vision and David Lee Roth. But before either can get the sleep they need, the Tordenkakerlakk suddenly appears and attacks, living up to the “kakerlakk” part of the name. They’re able to lure it away with the ships sonar, though Mandi notes the same trick won’t work on it twice.

The next morning, Mandi explains that the Tordenkakerlakk is part of a prophecy told to her by an Oracle from Stoa Neroi, who claimed in the verse that many a prophecy uses that a wizard-spawned bane is trying to kill her she won’t be able to kill it until she “drink the doom it brings,” which Mandi interprets to mean “it won’t die until she dies.” When Spidey offers to help her retreat if things get too rough, Mandi says she’s sick of paper routes and adoption; she just wants this over with.

Eventually, the Tordenkakerlakk returns, right atop the Elmak’s ruin of a citadel. Mandi concludes from the bane’s current location that Elmak was the one who placed the bane on her as revenge for killing him. As Spidey fights the bane, his webs are able to web up the creature, but it quickly begins to metamorphosize into something less cockroach shaped and more akin to a hybrid between a cockroach and the bone thing from that episode of Hannibal where Will kills Randall Tier. Spidey tries to physically fight the creature, but it’s able to grab ahold of the costumed hero quickly. Thinking fast, Spidey blinds the creature and tries to fly long enough to escape back to the ship.

But the Tordenkakerlakk isn’t one to give up quickly, as it extends its neck to eat them both. When Spidey traps it with his webs, the bane transforms once more, now something more akin to an angry giant with pincers on its face. At this point, the Tordenkakerlakk is able to communicate, but it’s only able to say stuff along the lines of “DEATH TO THE CHILD!” and “DEATH! DEATH! DEATH!” among other things. After it throws Spidey to the other side of the ship, he notes that it’s in the Hulk’s weight class and since Mandi doesn’t know any spells to defeat the creature, Spider-Man has no choice but to keep fighting until he finds the anchor of the ship and stabs the bane with it.

During the respite as the bane regenerates, Peter notes the unlikelyhood that Elmak the Light Shaper would use his final breath to put a death curse on a litteral child, so he asks who could have done the spell. Mandi notes that the League of Three Threes died years before she went on the run and the power needed would have to be on her father’s level. There isn’t anyone in the spheres who could do such a thing. Spidey asks about people from Earth who could hold a grudge, but Mandi says she’s always careful and that she only knows Dr. Strange through passing. Everything else is just her and her interests in Vikings, Norse Mythology, and Clint Eastwood.

But before they can get any answers out of their discussion, the Tordenkakerlakk takes on a new form, this one more akin to John Carpenter’s The Thing. Mandi is too shocked to move, dreading the inevitability of her death. To get her out of it, Spidey sacrifices himself to the bane, not to die by its hand, but to show Mandi that it can be defeated. He webs it up faster than even he thought possible. But before they can escape to get help from Dr. Strange, the Tordenkakerlakk grabs ahold of Peter’s ankle and he tells Mandi to leave without him. When he returns to the ship, Peter finds the bane has now become a motherfucking dragon.

The dragon gives Spidey an ultimatum: Flee or Die. But at that moment, Spidey realizes something: the same method shouldn’t work twice. So why do his webs keep working? Even his Spider-Sense shorts out around the bane, but never his web fluids. He speculates that maybe the reality of the fluids is throwing the bane off, because they aren’t magical at all. To test this theory, the Dragon breaths fire at Spider-Man with only a web shield to protect him. (Since I cut out the bit that was going to have this, I should note that this is a scene where Spider-Man fights a dragon as drawn by Bernie motherfucking Wrightson! I love this comic!) Fortunately, it works. Spidey uses the last of his web fluids to clog up the Dragon’s mouth and it explodes.

Mandi returns alone to find Spidey knocked out and the Tordenkakerlakk still regenerating. Spider-Man doesn’t have the strength to fight the creature again, He suggests that maybe she should improvise the way an adult wizard could. Initially hesitant, Mandi eventually makes up a spell, declaring herself “Marandi the Loyal” and the Tordenkakerlakk is defeated. When she awakens, Spidey explains his theory that Kurudred’s spell to keep Mandi young wasn’t supposed to last forever, but until he thought it was safe for her to grow up (which is to say when the League of Three Threes was dead). The Tordenkakerlakk was a way to push Mandi towards the pain and terror of adulthood. The doom in the prophecy was in fact referring to the loss of her eternal childhood. Growing up is difficult, even terrifying at times. But if Spider-Man stories have taught me anything, it’s that it’s a necessary aspect of life and one that should be embraced. It’s painful, but without that pain we’re left in a stasis that never ends. There are so many corners of the world unseen by those who refuse to grow up.

They return to New York, and Spider-Man swings off to another adventure.

“There is much that remains untold. But let us end our story here."
-Hayao Miyazaki, 1994

            The End.

07/13/2017-03/22/2017

[Photo: The Last Jedi Written and Directed by Rian Johnson]

Long ago in an American autumn.

They Said My Mother Was Insane. (Die II)

1/8: It brings on many changes.

            Tragically, You Died.

“It’s strange… I never imagined it would feel so good to realize I’ve been wrong all along.”
-Gene Luen Yang, 2009

            The End.

07/13/2017-03/22/2018

[Photo: The Royal Tenenbaums Directed by Wes Anderson Script by Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson]

Long ago in an American autumn.

You Can’t Stake Your Lives on a Savior Machine. (Hold Back The Night)

"Through the ruin of a city
stalked the ruin of a man."

Commissioned by Aleph Null

Once upon a time…

There were two men, both doctors of technology and science. For the whole of their lives, they had lived to see their parents suffer and die in a system of cruelty and pain we call Capitalism. The men, one passionate and full of light while the other wily and duplicitous, forged a plan to save the workers by building an army of robots to do the backbreaking work for them. No more will man need to die in the mines.

But the wily doctor had a far grander scheme. A scheme he would tell but one person prior to its completion: a woman named Emily Stanton. But she loved the lightness of his companion’s touch. So in a fit of passion, the wily doctor framed his lighter companion for the murder of Emily Stanton. With him on the run, the wily doctor was able to build a utopia of his singular vision on the bones of those who were too weak to deserve such a utopia. It is a utopia of leisure where all are able to live without suffering and pain… so long as they obey their betters.

One man, a lad named Joe, grew weary of this brave new world the wily doctor caged the people in. While escaping the robots that patrol the streets looking for undesirables unable to afford to live in the utopia above, Joe comes across a man once filled with light. He was a broken man, filled with guilt over letting such a cruel and wily fellow kill the one he loved. He cares not to save the world that has had is chains switch from the unknowable hands of capitalism to those of the wily doctor, but of suicidal vengeance. There is nothing left to love, so there is nothing left to save.

Nonetheless, the two set out on destroying the infrastructure of the once light doctor’s acquaintance’s utopia. But it’s a trap. Systems like that of the wily doctor’s, much like that of the old capitalism is not killed by mere terrorism. It consumes the act to make itself stronger. The act allowed the cage called utopia to tighten its grip. Remove the pretense. Bear its teeth and consume its people.

Despondent over the realization that his was “fucked,” the doctor who only wanted a better future, who thought that people could better themselves if they never had to work again, whose sins were seeing only the chains of mining while missing the chains of capitalism and the fascism festering within the utopian ideal of “white saviors” and “let the smart people run things,” this man contemplated suicide. As a bit of closure, he read the last words Emily ever wrote to him. She begged him to save the world. He didn’t smile; he hasn’t since she died, he might never smile again. But there was resolve in his being, and the doctor named Thomas opts to save the world.

His first attempt was so disastrous that he decided to never try again.

Years pass, and the doctor lacking in light has a second son. He tells stories of his first son, of how he tried to save the world, but was met with only indifference. How the wily doctor took the lad away from him. The doctor without light does not wish that for his son. And so, they stay locked away from the rest of the world, and watch from the outside while it dies.

The second son, like many children, rebelled against his father. Surely, he reasoned, if the people were motivated, they would rise up against the wily doctor and unshackle themselves from their chains. The good doctor pleaded with his son that he doesn’t have to do this… that his plans for a better future will fail. The people won’t fight for a better future. Don’t end up like your brother! The son replied that he won’t die like him and left before his father could say another word.

Unlike his father and his brother, the second son started out by rallying the people towards revolution. A revolution will never succeed if it’s just a single voice or even a straightforward conductor. The people need to be involved or everything falls apart. They fought tooth and nail against the robot army of the wily doctor until only one soldier remained: a lone centurion, shrouded in darkness. The second son, not knowing who the centurion was, leapt to fight the servant of the wily doctor. But light shone upon the centurion, revealing him to be the son’s brother.

He hadn’t died, you see. He was turned to believe in the cause of the wily doctor after the people refused to save him as he tried to do for them. For they didn’t want to be heroes, they didn’t even want someone to save them. They just wanted a martyr, “One who moves along the line of least reluctance towards a desired death.” And so, the centurion turned against the people and towards the wily doctor. The words of his brother confused the second son and, in a fit of passion, he killed his brother. The last words of his brother were of what heroes truly are. Not dragon slayers nor martyrs nor even those who help, but simply those who know they are free.

Grieving for his brother, the second son flees from the people as they try to console him, leaving them defenseless as reinforcements come to slaughter them all. Like father like son.

NOW

The song opens with the clicking of a clock. Or perhaps not a clock. Maybe it’s the innards of an old machine ready for decommission. Suddenly, guitars and drums burst into the soundscape, galloping like bulls chasing fools.

When I was young, couldn't stand to believe it
Somewhere there was a sun left to shine
Now my heart won't be still till I've seen it
Won't be still till I've made it mine

The voice is feminine, unlike the previous narrators who have all been male. Her words talk of how the world was before the reign of the wily doctor. But not of the chains that allowed the doctor to rise to power nor the people who lived in there. But rather something beautiful that no longer exists in the world of the wily doctor: the sun. It is a rather deadly creature, something of immense light but that which will burn those who get too close. And yet, viewed from the distance of the planet earth, there is a beauty and warmth to the ball of destruction. Something the cold and wily doctor would never allow. For frozen utopias reject chaotic things with contradictions and implications. It’s more orderly to keep things the way they are.

There’s a fear, can’t be seen, it surrounds me

As afraid of the dark as the light

Was a time, long ago, these were safe streets

Now I’m the only one that keeps it alive

Keeps me alive!

The time the streets were safe most likely refers to the period wherein the wily doctor had his murder bots stalk the streets and kill the rebellious, the undesirables, and those who don’t matter. Of course, this is not the only interpretation. An alternative could refer once again to the time before the wily doctor. The fear, after all, refers both to the dark and the light, indicating that it is afraid of the change offered by embracing both. The liberation of light necessitates accepting the great power and responsibility of being free whereas the cage of darkness is essentially what Zapffe refers to as “anchoring” (“One Nation under God with Families, Morality, and Natural Birthrights for all”). The singer says the word “OOOOHHHH!” twice before the next lyric.

But I know a hero will come

The problem the female singer faces isn’t just the society trapped within the clutches of a wily doctor, nor the capitalistic beast still lurking within the margins of this place they call utopia, but the fact that she doesn’t believe she can be a hero. Indeed, no one can. It’s not that they want a martyr, but that they can’t conceive of a hero as anything but a martyr. How many stories are out there where the hero dies for his people? Where the only solution is to go down with the ship. Indeed, the story as a whole exemplifies the speaker’s believed inability to be a hero as the main pushers of the narrative thus far have been men (and white men at that). Indeed, the centurion’s exact last words were “If these people… tell this story… to their children… as they sleep… maybe someday… they’ll see a hero… is just a man… who knows he’s free.”

There’s a face that I’ve seen in the windows

There’s a face of a stronger man

When I turn as a leaf when the wind blows

Blown away as the will in his hands

The stanza is most likely referring to the wily doctor as it is his will that controls the city. (Indeed, this is the only portion of the song that refers to this third party. The rest are talking to someone else. More on him in a bit.) While he is a “stronger man,” he is not necessarily a good one. Much like his formerly light counterpoint, he is removed from society and uses his will to control the city. There is an indication that he is losing grasp of his control, especially after the fall of the centurion. Though there remains not enough information to confirm this.

You’ve been fed what they’ve wanted to feed you

You were bled of the will to survive

Now you’ll stand just as long as they need you

But you’re the only one that keeps it alive

Keep you alive!

The “you” in this stanza is a you (pl), indicating that the speaker is trying to get the people to rise up. The speaker realizes the nature of the system and the cruel joke of it: we made it up. It’s not some distant God that requires us to suffer for its pleasure. It’s just an arbitrary set of numbers and equations that determines who lives and who dies. The only reason we keep following it is because it’s all we’ve ever known. We’re as afraid of the light of socialism as we are of the dark of fascism. Perhaps I was misguided in my despondency in her claims about the need for a hero. Perhaps she is the hero who will come.

But I know a hero will come

And the night, the night will be torn apart

And I know he won’t fight alone

And the spark that we carry will turn the dark into

A flame, a fire, a light

Evidentially not. There is a bit of optimism in this passage of course. One of my favorite actors of all time once said “Great men are forged in fire. It is the privilege of lesser men to light the flame.” And while more could be asked of the gendered nature of the quote, the sentiment feels right with the song. History is full of “Great Men,” which is to say the people History deems as important. The truth of the matter is that there are countless other people working in the background. Forgotten people whose impact greatly change the course of things. They are those who died nameless in the grand scheme of things, those who stole plans for doomsday weapons, fought with their lives for a righteous cause, or took a bullet that would have hit the hero. As said before, revolutions require more than one person to change things. Otherwise, they just return to the way things were with only a larger pile of bodies.

There must be an end to the darkness…

There must be an end to the darkness…

There must be an end to the darkness…

There must be an end to the darkness…

No one will come

This city is dead.

This is not sung by the female speaker but instead by a ghostly choir. There’s a mechanical quality to the first line sung, as if sung by the ghosts of the fallen army of the wily doctor as opposed to those who fought him. More human voices join in on the second line. The awful truth of the cruelties of life is that all tend to be victims of its cruelties. The act of performing violence on others can be just as traumatic as being violently beaten. The final lines then are perhaps the most pessimistic of the entire song. There is no one coming to save the day. No hero(es) to realize at the last minute that they are free. The cage of modernity is too overwhelming to allow people to realize its obvious flaws can be overcome. Everybody dies.

But all of your heroes are gone

And the blood that they spilled is on my hands

A darkness will blot out the sun

Not a thing could be done with so few men

That a hero couldn’t do

The singer has once again changed, this time to the masculine voice of the second son. The failures of the past revolutions seem to be preventing him from working with the female singer in bringing about a revolution. What’s the point, he thinks, if it only brings about more pain and suffering while returning to the point it was at before the revolution even begun? Heroes can’t bring about material social change on their own, so why bother when no one else will. Why persist when we’re fucked? There is, however, a bit of optimism hidden within the second son’s words. Consider the second to last line “Not a thing could be done with so few men.” When this all started, when the centurion went up against the wily doctor and fell, there were no followers. There were no people willing to fight for their freedom. Now, there’s a few. It’s not much. It’s probably not even enough. But it’s a start. A forest doesn’t grow overnight.

When the voice from the shadows calls you

When the wind whips past your ears

Will you stand when the weight is upon you?

Or will you go to your knees in fear?

We return to the female speaker. This is more straightforwardly propaganda to get more and more people to rise up. Though, it should be noted that both the female singer and the second son sing the final line. Perhaps her words are getting through his pessimistic malaise.

There’s a chance, though I know it’s a long shot

And the city is out of time

All forgot if the heart stops beating

‘Cause you’re the only one that keeps it alive

God, keep it alive

At last, the song explicitly states the nature of the world they live in. We’re the only ones keeping the system we live under alive. We could lift our chains off at any time, but we choose, consciously or otherwise, to remain within them. But we’re also not alone. We have each other. We can rebuild a better city than the one of the wily doctor or the one that let him rise in the first place. It might end in failure, we might very well be fucked, but the important thing is that we try. The singer gets another two “Ooohs.”

The next portion of the song is a bit difficult to parse, as all three sets of singers sing over one another. From what I’ve been able to parse, the second son is acting as a counterpoint to the female singer’s optimism, pointing out that there’s no one else left to hold back the night. But at the same time, he joins her in declaring the need to do so. To save the world from the cruelty of darkness.

For the sake of competion, here is the conversation as best translated (bolded text is sung by both):

Female singer: But I know a hero will come

Second son: And all of your heroes are gone

FS:Someone’s got to

SS:No one left to

Bring back the light

FS:And I know he won’t fight alone

SS:A darkness will block out the sun

If we can’t

Find a way to

Hold back the night

FS:But I know a hero will come

SS: And all of your heroes are gone

FS:Someone’s got to

SS:No one left to

Bring back the light

FS:And I know he won’t fight alone

SS:A darkness will block out the sun

If we can’t

Find a way to

Hold back the night

FS:But I know a hero will come

SS: And all of your heroes are gone

FS:Someone’s got to

SS:No one left to

Bring back the light

FS:And I know he won’t fight alone

SS:A darkness will block out the sun

If we can’t

Find a way to

Hold back the night

However, more interesting are the lines sung by the choir:

We can hold out past the endless dark

All a fire needs is a single spark.

If we were to assume that it is true that great men are forged in fire and it is the privilege of lesser men to light the flame, it would follow that heroes are not necessarily great men. They are the lesser men who inspire the greatness of people to burn their chains. They’re stories that make us better people. We may not be able to live up to the mythology we’ve made out of them; few ever live up to their ideals. But then, an idea can’t be killed as easily as a person. They might not work for everyone, or even more than one person. But for that one person, it’ll change them forever.

If just one person believes in you

Deep enough, and strong enough, believes in you…

Hard enough, and long enough,

It stands to reason, that someone else will think

“If he can do it, I can do it.”

-The Muppets, 1990

And I’m Going to be Free. (Seekers into the Mystery)

CW: Discussion of Pedophilia

                    1/8: You are sleeping off your demons when I come home.

There are many ways I could approach this one. The most obvious would be to look at it through the lens of JM DeMatteis’ belief system, though that would require a knowledge of said belief system that I neither have nor have the time to research. Alternatively, I could look at it from the perspective of Spider-Man and point out that, much like the main character Lucas Hart, Peter Parker has some… experience with being sexually abused as a kid. But that would be a bit too miserable of an ending for this project. Another possibility would be to point out that the T-shirt Lucas wears from his film “Rocket Starfield” is akin to the shirt Steven Universe wears, but that doesn’t really say much beyond “Oh, look. They wear the same shirt. Isn’t that interesting?”

In the end though, what I’m focusing on is the fact that somehow, someone from 1987 was able to predict the existence of Quentin Tarantino. The obvious answer would be to point out that this was not a story written in 1987, so DeMatteis most likely forgot (or was unaware that) Tarantino wasn’t a thing until 1992 (though My Best Friend’s Birthday did come out in ’87). However, there are mystical implications to invoking Tarantino in a mystical work. For starters, Alan Moore is apparently a fan of his. Or, at the very least, the movie Reservoir Dogs, which is referenced and invoked in his two most personal and mystical works: Promethea and Jerusalem.

I’m not going to go into the Jerusalem reference, as that would require rereading that book, and I frankly don’t have the time, energy, or coping mechanisms to do so. Suffice it to say, there are two, one of which is in the chapter narrated by Alma Warren, Moore’s author insert character, so there’s some importance there. Promethea meanwhile tells the story of a hybrid between Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel being lectured and lecturing about the mystical implications of the universe. In the third issue, she enters the land of Fiction and meets up with her imaginary friend, a machine gun toting version of Little Red Riding Hood. Somehow, she got the idea for this character after watching Reservoir Dogs.

Out of all of Tarantino’s films released at the time the issue came out, that is perhaps the most ill fitting option Moore could have picked. Not just because the film isn’t all that violent (it has the infamous ear scene, sure, but the majority of the film is a group of angry men talking about who fucked them over), but also because men exclusively dominate the film, with the sole female character (a minor police researcher who I don’t think was given a name) being cut out of the film entirely. Tarantino would certainly improve on the roles female character would have in his films (in that he would give them actual roles), but that doesn’t change the fact that Reservoir Dogs is brimming with testosterone (and I’m saying this as someone who views Reservoir Dogs to be one of his three favorite films).

Given this, the most likely explanation for Promethea to create such a character after watching such a film is either a) She was so bored by the lack of violence implied by the statement “Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino” that she created a character who inverts all that film stood for or b) Alan Moore has never seen Reservoir Dogs and is basing the character off of his assumptions of the phrase “Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino.” (Indeed the aspects of Jerusalem that invoke Reservoir Dogs are very much the aesthetics of the film rather than the narrative, or so I recall.) Both are equally likely.

But of course Seekers into the Mystery predates both texts, and its invocation of Tarantino is extremely interesting. In the penultimate issue (drawn exquisitely by Jill Thompson), Lucas is offered the possibility to abandon his reality in favor of one where his father didn’t rape him, his brother didn’t die as a kid, he isn’t divorced, and is in fact a successful screenwriter. To highlight the absurdity of this false reality, it postulates that the fourth film of a science fiction film series seeped in the works of Joseph Campbell and has characters with the name “Obidiah Crater” can win Oscars in categories like “Best Original Screenplay.” (Not that the film is inherently bad, but rather the Oscars are notorious for their refusal to let even the barest bones genre piece get recognized.) Suffice it to say, it’s too good to be true.

Which in many ways is the point. If we were put into Lucas’ position, we would want to believe the lie. That life isn’t a series of painful events that often ends in anticlimaxes and despair; that you can be successful if you set your mind to it; that your father’s love will be enough to not make him want to rape you as a child and those complicated feelings of love won’t be around once he’s dead. Lying has its uses, certainly but lying to that degree is delusional at best. It only hurts us in the end.

Which brings us back to the work of Quentin Tarantino. As a storyteller, Tarantino has an extreme investment in the concept of lying. His films are full of liars attempting to one up each other in their lies. Existence within a Tarantino film is performative (fitting as his films are invested in the implications of movies, but that’s a different matter entirely). But at the same time, he is keenly aware that one can easily fall into delusions of grandeur. For example, let’s take a look at the film that came out the same year the final issue of Seekers into the Mystery came out: Jackie Brown. Not so much the main character herself, but rather the central antagonist: Ordell Robbie. Robbie believes himself to be this bad mother fucker who no one should fuck with, less they end up with a bullet in the head. But in reality, he’s a fuck up who gets conned out of his money twice, gets all his sales pitches from crappy infomercials, and he puts way too much trust in someone whose been in prison for 20 years because he’s played by Robert DeNiro. He needs to play the role of a bad mother fucker because it’s expected of a drug dealing gun runner to be as such. But he’s not good at it, and it kills him in the end.

But at the same time, there’s the Tarantino film DeMatteis inadvertently predicts. In the aforementioned Oscar win, the other films nominated include films by Mitchell Rose (a short film director whose short film “Helicopter” was somehow good enough to get nominated), Jeff Maguire (the screenwriter of Timeline), Chris Columbus (who for some reason was pinched to direct a remake of a 1972 Hammer Studios piece), and Quentin Tarantino for a film called “Little Men.” Within the filmography of Tarantino, the term “Little Man” appears in his 2009 film Inglourious Basterds as the inexplicable derogatory nickname used for BJ Novak’s character, a character so minor you don’t even remember him being in the film at all.

It’s at this point that I realize that I don’t really have much to say about Seekers into the Mystery. It’s not a text that inspired a lot of weird and interesting ideas in me; it’s not Moonshadow, what DeMatteis followed Kraven’s Last Hunt up with and the other “piece about the nature of the universe from a mystical lens” that Seekers is a complement to. It’s a wonderful book, full of ideas and implications that someone far more interesting than I should write about. But at the same time, the book left me a bit cold after reading it. Not in the “I hated this book” or “I missed something within the text” but rather in the “I have nothing to say about this book beyond the technical aspects, which make for terrible analysis.” There are some moments of charm, dangling themes and threads that could make entire books on their own.

At its heart though is a somber story of a man coming to terms with being sexually abused as a child by his father by falling in love with a magician. I use the term somber not in the humorless sense one would expect (there are a lot of jokes made in regards to the [in both the academic and literal sense] magical negro’s bodily fluids), but rather in the stark look it takes at the history of repression and abuse Lucas has gone through and how its affected his ability to be in committed relationships. Even worse is the fact that he comes to this revelation shortly before his father dies. So there’s no moment of confrontation between the two. No point of closure for Lucas. Just complicated feelings of love, disgust, hatred, and compassion towards his father.

I suppose, since I talked at length about Alan Moore, I should discuss a work by his opposite, Grant Morrison (I need another 500 words or so, so why not). In his major piece about the nature of the universe via a mystical lens, The Invisibles, Morrison centralizes the narrative around the character of Audrey Murray, a minor character who only appears in two issues and never as the main character. Her husband, both through gas lighting Audrey in front of her friends and physically assaulting her, abused her. But in the end, he dies at the hands of the Grant Morrison self insert character not for her sake, but because he was just another faceless mook in the army of the enemy.

And yet, for all the pain she’s gone through, all the trauma and torment, she doesn’t let this make her a shitty person. Likewise Lucas Hart, for all his shittyness (there’s a reason why he got divorced), doesn’t let his trauma turn him into a shitty person. It’s only when he acknowledges the trauma as something that happened rather than repressing it that he becomes a better person (with the occasional relapses into shittyness). (Alternatively, there’s Dean Trippe’s autobiographical comic Something Terrible, which deals in these same themes as well as the constant worry that his abusive past will make him want to hurt his kid the way he was hurt.)

For some, trauma is the “be all/end all” of existence. It’s the moment where life stops making sense and everything just hurts. For others, it might be too much to handle and thus needs to be repressed until such a time they’re ready to cope with it. But it comes out eventually and the fact is no one is ever truly ready. But people have their way of trying to find their true self, to seek the answer to the mystery of existence. And the answers aren’t always pleasant.

But we seek anyways because we are a species that can’t handle not knowing. We want to know about why we’re here, if we have free will, and what other people are keeping from us. We don’t like being left in the dark, so we go out and try to find out why. Even if the methodology is weird like looking at a work of fiction from the perspective of the historical context it comes out in or by making a movie critiquing another movie. Nonetheless, we seek the answers to the problems we face as if there’s one coherent answer that’ll explain everything to everyone.

But that’s rarely if ever the case. The answers tend to lead to more questions, which lead to further questions and so forth. We’re never going to have all the answers to the meaning of life, be it personal or mystical. Not because there is no correct answer, but because the correct answers contradict each other. Seekers into the Mystery and Promethea and The Invisibles are all contradictions. But then-- aren’t we all?

“And now that I’ve lost everything… now that everyone I love is gone, all I have left is everything. The river carries me on, though every fear is facing me. And I do not know what next will be, and I cannot know what next I’ll see. I’m running forward anyway. I’m not afraid to meet the day! The world is filled with everything. I’m a boy who could be anything. And now, I will do everything! The whole world unfurls before me; a great adventure lies before me. I’m reaching out for anything. I’m calling out to everything. There’s nothing I’m afraid to be: the world is new and glittery. I run to meet it, hopefully! Love never dies in memory and I will meet life gloriously.”
-Anne Washburn, 2014

            The End.

07/13/2017-03/22/2018

[Photo: Praying Directed by Ross Shuman Script by Dino Stamatopoulos]

Long ago in an American autumn.