"The Great Miracles" or: All I Have Left

“This is an IMAGINARY STORY (Which may never happen, but then again may) of an imperfect man who fled from the sky and did mostly good. It tells of his twilight, when the great battles were over and the great miracles long since performed; of how his enemies conspired against him and of that final war on the burnt out husk that is Apokolips; of the family he loved and the choice he made because of them; how he broke his most sacred vow, and how finally all the things he had were taken from him save for one. It ends with a kiss. It begins in a loud, messy west coast town, one summer afternoon in the loud, messy west coast present. Away in the big city, people still sometimes glance up hopefully in the theater, glimpsing a distant trap on the stage… but no: it’s only a set, only a play. Mister Free died ten years ago. This is an IMAGINARY STORY… 

Aren’t they all?” 

One of my favorite styles of review is… well, it’s kind of a rebellion against reviewing. The reviewer will, at first, approach the subject (be it a TV Show, book, or whatever) as if it’s a typical review. Over the course of the review however, the review will collapse into something else-- something more personal, a piece on inadequacy or isolation. Most of the time, it’s a thinly veiled piece on the creator’s depression and how this work really brings that out of them (and sometimes not even thinly). In the end though, the reviewer will find a new appreciation for their lot, but they will be forever changed by it. It doesn’t break them, but they move to be better because of it. Their style changes, their attitudes evolve, and their work becomes even better.

I’m not going to do that type of review here. It’s on my mind though because… I have no idea how I’m going to approach this issue. How do you approach something like this that has had such an impact on me? This is the best issue of the series, and I have no idea what to say about it. I mean, I do. I have some ideas of where to go with this, but they just seem… inadequate. Wrong for this one. The problem I keep facing when writing this review is that, well, I’m not actually talking about the issue. I’m talking about how the series led up to the issue or how this works as an ending. But it’s never really about the ending itself, you know? All that has come before often overwhelms the piece and you’re talking about something else entirely.

Then again, what’s the point of talking about the end to a story if you don’t consider what it’s ending? How can you know what the pay off to the work is without considering it as a whole? Besides, I’m nearly 500 words into this piece and I still haven’t talked about the comic yet beyond an extremely vague “this is the best issue.” To start with, the art is amazing. I know this series of reviews has had an issue with dealing with the art of the comic, it wasn’t my field of study, and I feel like an idiot whenever I try to. I feel like I’m stating the obvious. “Yes Sean, the lack of panel bleeding makes them akin to being like a cage.” or “Very good, you’ve noticed that the photorealism of the artwork, while not to the degree of Lee Bermejo, combined with the fantastical nature of the events creates a distancing effect with the reader. You get a gold star.” or even “Yes, Scott’s eyes are discolored when he’s shaving. Good job describing what’s in the comic, you rapscallion you.”

But there are some parts of the art that I freaking love and feel I can actually talk about intelligently. One’s the first page’s fire. For starters, it’s not drawn: it’s actual honest to god fire. Mitch Gerads took a photo of fire and put it into the comic. This isn’t a new technique for comics. Indeed, Jack Kirby himself did it in his New Gods comics all the time. But that was in more of a collage style to highlight the strangeness of the universe than how it’s being used here. For in this page, Gerads uses it as a means of heightening the danger. Not only does failure to escape mean Scott will be burnt alive, but the way Gerads draws the page surrounding the flames, but… Note the coloring of Scott as the flames. It doesn’t look like flesh being burnt. It looks as if the paper itself is going to be burnt. As if the flames are so realistic, the comic is being burnt because of them.

Another part is the revisiting of the first issue’s joke about drawing God. Here though, the page has deteriorated from the crispness of the beginning, revealing the ghost of Jack Kirby’s original series (no, I can’t identify the page itself; I’m a literary critic, not a minutia expert) as well as a hint of film grain. Indeed, the redness surrounding the page evokes a disintegrating film reel. Indeed, the use filmic decay in quality within the issue, and indeed the series, has been talked about at length. But the decay in that regard has been more towards the digital side of things. Characters glitch in and out of reality, details are color corrected wrongly (in particular, eyes, but note how in the third issue, Orion’s reflection [and indeed Orion himself for the majority of the series] has been colored in black and white). This move towards film has an air of reality, a sense of physicality, that digital filmmaking, for all its qualities, lacks.

But then, there are the things only a comic can do. Take for example the page where Scott confronts Highfather (we’ll get more into the encounter in a bit, but focus on the page itself). The first three rows are depicted on white paper, which has been used to symbolize places where Scott feels the War isn’t physically present. Which is to say “anywhere but Apokolips.” But by invoking that page style here, it changes the meaning to “where Scott isn’t triggered by his childhood trauma.” There’s also the stillness of the comic. Each action is drawn like a photograph with an additional white line to highlight the movement of an object as opposed to motion blur. Every frame a painting, as the saying goes.

But perhaps the biggest aspect of the comicness of this story is the nine panel grid. More so than even the works of Alan Moore, Mister Miracle has consistently used a complete nine panel grid, only breaking it on seven pages throughout the whole series. Furthermore, it never combines panels together to prevent obfuscation. Compare that to other formalistic works like Watchmen, where it does this on the first page, From Hell, where it does it in the first panel, or DC The New Frontier, which takes three pages. It’s almost like a cage in that regard. But the thing about the comic, and indeed all comics, is that it’s a two dimensional cage. Which is to say, we cannot really tell which side of the cage we’re on. Are we geeks inside the cage, peering into the outside world of strange visitors and helpful travelers or are we on the outside, gawking at these weirdos and waiting to see what torments the ringmaster has in store for them next? See what I mean about stating the obvious?

One final aspect of the art that I have been even more lacking in discussing than that of the interior, are Nick Derington’s amazing covers, each one simultaneously obfuscating the events of the issue while at the same time perfectly encapsulating what’s happened. In the case of this cover, it’s a revisit to the first cover of the series. There, Scott was trapped in a seemingly impossible trap, which was revealed to be depression within the comic itself as opposed to a physical trap. Here, Scott has escaped and is waving to the audience with his wife. The symbolic meaning of this should be obvious, and yet…

(Ok, few side notes before we get into the analysis of the issue: the editing by Brittany Holzherr and Jamie S Rich is wonderful, with the occasional dialogue hiccups that occasionally popped up in the series being gone [most notably “Scott, what you know about my breasts…” from issue issue 8]. Clayton Cowles’ lettering is top notch, highlighting the exaggerated world of the characters while still being clear enough to be legible. Also, when I first read the issue, I thought I had a cameo on the first page, either sitting next to the guy with the Doom Patrol shirt or the guy coughing. Unfortunately for me, they turned out to be Clayton Cowles and Jamie S Rich respectively. Blast.)

In the first one of these reviews published in an issue of PanelXPanel, I discussed the nature of love. Specifically, how it brings people to do horrifying things in the name of it. (Which makes Hassan’s decision to rename it “The Power of Love” darkly hilarious.) Of how love isn’t necessarily an inherent good concept. And yet, here we are, ending with Scott not going to the “other world” because he loves his family. There’s certain an ambiguity in regards to whether or not this is the “real world” or not. It’s not completely resolved at the end, as is the nature of ambiguity.

But core to that ambiguity is an examination of the loves of Scott Free. Throughout this whole comic, both those who were virtuous and those who were villainous haunt him. Let’s go through them one by one in chronological order. Granny Goodness was an abuser. She abused children for countless generations, both physically and mentally. She put children into positions that forced them to abuse one another in order to survive. She delighted in coming up with new forms of torture, even if they used the old techniques. And yet, she loved Scott Free.

There’s this criticism of Avengers: Infinity War floating around that the film’s depiction of Thanos equates abuse with love. This is close enough to the truth of what the film does as to be somewhat damaging. What the film is actually doing is claiming that Thanos’ love for his daughter is enough to redeem him for all the cruelties of the world (I too shall be saved by love, to quote a different Tom King comic). This is a mistake that Mister Miracle readily avoids. While the concepts of love and abuse aren’t mutually exclusive (and indeed at times compatible), they can’t be used to justify or nullify each other. Indeed, in her final moments in the series, Granny tries to guilt Scott for daring to escape from the woman who put him into death traps as a child and expected him to die for the immortal Death God. And yet, Scott seems to have made some form of peace with her. He can live with her memory, her influence, and yes, her love in his head. Abuse is a far more complicated subject to deal with than good and bad people…

The next ghost seen is that of Bug. In many ways, Bug is perhaps Scott’s biggest regret: someone who died not because of some noble sacrifice or in the great fields of battle. He died because Scott was so wrapped up in himself that he let Bug die just because he was a loose thread in the machinations of Orion’s plans. Now here he is on Apokolips talking about life being hell. That there will always be another devil, another super villain, another room with another robot and another group of weird animal people being dragged to another room against their will. Unlike the other ghosts, Scott can’t even say a word to him. We all have a breaking point, where we can’t deal with what’s happened to us and have to admit to our own failings. Guilt has a way of gnawing at you. Indeed, Scott’s love for him is one out of guilt. Love, after all, is a kind caring that just won’t go away. (As an aside, it’s not really a war anymore. Though we only see one fight within it, there doesn’t seem to be any animosity between the combatants. Even a battle involving two siblings would have some level of animosity, a mournfulness over having such a fight to the death. If anything, as Lightray described Scott when he started out being Highfather, it feels like King Kalibak is just playing the part of Darkseid. That he’s having a war because Darkseid would have wars. All the reasons for war are gone and all that’s left is fighting. A bit pessimistic, I suppose. And yet, though again we only get this one skirmish, it doesn’t actually feel like a traditional war. Consider that the Last War of Darkseid started with the death of Highfather, this first War of Kalibak starts with an MMA fight. It’s a very performative war, like it’s a television show for the people of Apokolips to enjoy [indeed, Kanto himself describes it as a “Season of war”].)

After Bug comes Orion. Orion’s love is an unwanted love, a love of a brother who wasn’t given up by his parents and didn’t end up in an abusive household towards one who was. There’s some resentment on Scott’s part with him repeatedly distances himself from his brother, even denying that he is his brother to the end. And yet, Orion doesn’t share this anger. Indeed, he seems more subdued in these panels than he ever has in the entire comic, more willing to understand the life Scott has lived as it could have been his own. In many ways, he’s the most sympathetic of the New Gods to Scott’s decision not to join Metron in the universe of… reborn heroes. Indeed, he’s smiling while being sympathetic to his brother. And yet, sympathy does not mean alignment. Orion thinks that life is a series of struggles and challenges; that misery is the very soil that nourishes life itself. That you can’t find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity. In many ways, Orion is Ahania to his father’s Urizen: a redemptive read of a problematic concept.

Darkseid is… interesting. Unlike the other ghosts of this issue, Darkseid says nothing. Scott Free just puts his feet atop the god of eternal suffering like he’s nothing. The embodiment of abuse and cruelty is now impotent at his defeat. Not even his presence brings Scott down like all the previous ghosts did in one form or another. This imposing force that has been haunting this whole text, that has dominated the panels with “DARKSEID IS” over and over again, just sits on the couch as if he’s nothing to Scott. Then again, for all that his influence has haunted and still haunts the life of Scott Free; Darkseid himself has been an absent figure. He’s more of an existential threat to Scott than anything else. More a metaphor than a person. There is no love to be found within Darkseid, one way or the other, because you can’t really love something that was never there to begin with. And without that love, Scott lacks any complicated feelings towards the god. He’s just shit. And Scott beat him.

And then there’s Highfather. He pities Scott for his inability not to be as strong as him. Not to be able to make the hard choices in life. Not to be able to escape Anti-Life and give up his own son to the God of “Fuck You” if it meant ending the war. I mean, it wouldn’t really be an end to the war so much as a pause while Darkseid personally torments and bends Jacob Free to his will, teaches him the way of Anti-Life. At best, he would be as broken as Scott is, tormented by the traumas of Apokolips under Darkseid. But Scott was five when he was sent to Apokolips. Jacob would be raised as a baby to be Darkseid’s heir. Molded into Darkseid’s singular vision of power and with enough eyes to use the Anti-Life equation. ”You were…” says Highfather, “not as strong as I. Sadly. You could not make the choice I had to make.” And then he says that he’s proud of his failure of a son.

In response, Scott does the only sensible thing and punches his “father.” (One detail in the art that I love here is that Highfather bleeds white. Indeed, that last close up of him is this amazing mess of whites strewn about like a scratch card.) And then he walks away. As with Darkseid, there is no love between Scott and his biological father. The truth of the matter is, he’s never known his dad. Not really. He’s gotten a few glimpses of the old man, a cursory glance when “the war” isn’t taking up all his time. But those moments have been impersonal, more akin to meeting with a boss in an exotic local than anything else. It’s an artifice of love. A role they both believe they have to play because they’re tied together by blood. But in the end, Scott realizes that blood isn’t enough to make someone your family.

Which brings us to Oberon, the first and last ghost of this story, returns to Scott. In many ways, Oberon more than anyone else was Scott’s father. He was the person who influenced Scott from being this drifter wandering the world without an aim or reason to a family man, an entertainer, a hero. Scott misses him. Scott Free missed Oberon so much, he tried to kill himself. I know, the story says it was the Anti-Life equation, but it never says how he got it. There’s no moment where Darkseid whispers the words into Scott’s ear like a snake in the desert. Scott just knows it and tries to kill himself. The fact is Oberon’s death opened the door for Scott to know the equation.

And in seeing Oberon one last time, Scott breaks down into tears. He hugs his father and cries. He talks about making the wrong call. That he should have gone with Metron. That he shouldn’t have slit his wrists. Everything is wrong. Oberon’s response is to comfort Scott Free. He talks about that other universe, the one that Metron offered. It’s easy to read what he says as a condemnation of the concept of serialized superheroes. That such a universe is lesser than that of mundane fiction. But that would ignore several aspects of the book, not the least of which being Apokolips is a crisis of that nature. What Oberon is actually saying here is that for all the wonder Metron offered of another world, a world full of superheroes who always end up hunky dory, Metron’s offer lack the mundanity of the life Scott has. His world is already full of heroes like Superman and Booster Gold and Blue Beetle and Batman and Mister Miracle. Oberon’s love is a reminder that there is more complications to this world than jet-powered apes and time travel. It’s also people dying of cancer and having kids.

There are so many people Scott loves who are still alive. Who will be alive. Who were alive. There’s Big Barda and Jacob and Funky and Scott’s soon to be born child. The audience who love his death defying stunts. The people who will know of Scott Free only from television specials and horrifyingly inaccurate biopics. And those from the higher worlds, where all of Scott’s adventures are seen on a two dimensional plane we call a comic book. Love is this complex, contradictory idea, one that can be both a positive force and a negative force. But what love requires is other people to share in it. That’s why Darkseid could never receive love: at the heart of his concept is isolation. After all, nothing else appears in those “Darkseid is” panels.

So at the end of the day, we return to the question that this series started out on: Why shouldn’t I commit suicide? There are many answers to that question, some better than others. None of which can truly apply to everyone, but to those that it can it does wonders. For Scott Free, and subsequently this comic, the answer is because we are not alone. There are other people out there in the world, with ideas that are alien to our own. Sometimes bridges will be burnt, relationships will crumble, and love will not be enough. But if we’re together, if we try to build each other up rather than assume the worst. If we embrace differences, then we can escape any trap.

“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, Mr. Burns

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I Can't Escape

The second greatest Darkseid moment comes from The Forever People #4. (The greatest is his analysis of Weird Al Yankovic in the Teen Titans Go! episode Two Parter.) In it, the diabolical demiurge wanders around Happyland, his thriving amusement park that is most assuredly not Disneyland. While there, a small child sees him and is quite sensibly terrified. His grandfather tries to assure the child that Darkseid’s just some guy in a costume, but Darkseid rebuke’s the man’s efforts. Darkseid then explains that young humans can see monsters such as Darkseid for the evil that they are, but the adults of the world like to tidy up such things with “cock and bull stories” so as “to keep the premises smelling sweet.” Darkseid laughs maniacally whilst the old man takes the child away whilst calling the God a fool.

This is the nature of Darkseid at his purest. Not that of the paper tiger who occasionally gets punched in the face by Superman while having a side gig of sitting on people’s chairs. Nor a mere conqueror of worlds that wishes to dominate and control everything and everyone until they love him for it. Rather, what Darkseid is… what Darkseid represents (for characters such as Darkseid, Highfather, and Mr. Worldly Wiseman are metaphorical figures more than they are straightforward characters) is the willingness to ignore the suffering of others for our own gains.

Let’s start with Happyland itself. It’s a theme park like any other with rides and games for the people to play. But underneath, there’s a dark underbelly of abuse and cruelty including the torture of the titular Forever People as well as several humans unaffiliated with either side. In regards to non-comics worlds, there are the numerous sweatshops that exist in third world countries that build our smartphones, laptops, and clothes. There are the numerous disenfranchised people who are being beaten to death by the police solely due to the color of their skin. Then there’s homeless who starve slowly on the streets of our beautiful cities. And then there are the children we bomb because their nation has a resource we want.

There are so many other children of Omelas I could mention. So many horrors that fuel this utopia we call capitalism. And Darkseid is the voice in our heads that tells us to ignore the screams. “Worry not of the children of some backwards foreign country,” he’ll whisper in an insidiously calm tone with the voice of Tom Hanks, “there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s no ethical consumption in capitalism, so it’s best not to think about it and enjoy what you have. Don’t listen to those people who claim what you have is wrong. Those “Social Justice Warriors” want to destroy comics. Thankfully users like Sledghammer1488 and MagaSpiderman are dealing with them and their ilk, so you don’t need to worry. Who cares if the tactics make those SJWs ask themselves

Why shouldn’t I commit suicide?

They deserve it for ruining your fun. They’re evil that must be stopped. Everything was fine before they invaded. Everything will be fine again. Everything is fine. Everything is fine. Everything. Is. Fine. Obey.” And in ignoring the screams, they grow ever louder…

Which makes his ultimate fall in Mister Miracle #11 a bit… anticlimactic. Not to say that the issue itself is bad. Quite the opposite, it’s an amazing read full of wonderful, brilliant moments. From Scott Free slowly crawling over to the food tray while Darkseid’s shadow looms over his broken body (an apt metaphor for this his role within the series) to Barda’s interacting with Leilan before the main action begins being more akin to sorority sisters reuniting than representatives of opposing sides of the war to the third best Darkseid moment ever, where the villain remains stone faced while baby Jacob plays with his nose to Dessad’s “Misery Builds Character” monologue, and so many other little moments.

The art and structure of the issue remains brilliant as always. In particular the opening of the trade where it’s clear that the obvious way to depict the scene would be to combine panels, but by not doing so it emphasizes just how small and trapped Scott and Barda feel and how imposing Darkseid is. There’s the way Mitch Gerads draws the darkness of Dessad’s hood, always making clear how smug his smile is even when you can’t see his mouth. And then there’s the moment where Scott is stabbing Darkseid to death, finally getting the catharsis for his years of abuse, where the arm in one panel nearly perfectly connects to his body in the next. But the big, “Holy Shit” moment of the comic is of course the two-page spread of all the superheroes. And it is here where the comic feels the most… off. 

There are many pathways one could take with this spread. One could note that of the three superheroes of color, two of them have their faces obscured in one form or another. Someone could explore the implications of the phrase “There is another world” and how it ties into Grant Morrison’s final issue of Doom Patrol (another narrative about trauma). Alternatively, one could look at the placement of the “Trinity Heroes” and extrapolate the implications of Wonder Woman being in the center of them. Or one could write an extremely nerdy piece on the placement of Adam Strange on the “Heroes are a thing of wonder” spread and how it contradicts DC’s current MO of the character as “ADAM STRANGE MUST SUFFER FOREVER!!!!!!!”

But what I want to focus on are the two central figures of the spread: Highfather and Metron. Highfather’s relationship to the narrative has been, not necessarily negative per say. He’s not the surprise villain like Ozymandias or a villain the text treats as heroic like Dumbledore. Rather, Highfather is a character the story up to this point has treated with some mixed emotions. Most notably in the fourth issue, Scott has a monologue about his… issues with his father. He speaks of how Highfather was willing to give up his own son to stop the war (regardless of the traumas the son would experience) and his desire to have at least been given a name. There’s a sense in his words that there was never time to ask. Even in the first issue, when Highfather was alive, there’s a distance between Scott and his father in how they talk to each other.

At the same time though, it’s more complicated than that. Consider Scott’s “final” words to his son. In them, he remarks about the similarity between his situation and his father’s. He doesn’t remember what his father said to him and he admits he’d probably hate what it was. But at the same time, the feeling of those words was a comfort to him when he was in places he couldn’t escape from. He knew, or rather believed, that someone out there loved him. Someone who’ll be there when thunderstorms get too frightening or when the spinach needs to be eaten. Highfather, the person, could never be that for Scott. He’s too much of an idea, an abstract, a ghost in Scott’s life to be such a father. But the hope for someone like Highfather certainly was enough to keep Scott going.

Which leaves us with only Metron where the ending truly feels off. Consider his previous appearance in the second issue: a haggard old man screaming “YOU ARE NOT TO KNOW THE FACE OF GOD!” at Scott over and over again. Now, all of a sudden, he’s a younger, sleeker version of himself telling Scott to look into the face of God as if doing so in the sixth issue didn’t traumatize him enough. Furthermore there’s the paralleling on the final page itself, wherein the heavily distorted image of Metron is structurally paralleled with Darkseid’s corpse to imply a connection between the two. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Then again… The Jack Kirby narration on that last page talks of how easy it is to trap a man such as Scott Free. A man who has achieved a long sought out catharsis for his childhood trauma; a family man with a wife and son who love him very much; one whose friends will be there for him through thick and thin; a person who has seen darkness and cruelty, but who is at the end of the day happy. And indeed, it is easy to trap such a man: tell him that his happiness is a cage and the world that he finds himself in is wrong. Then laugh as the man calls you a fool while reinforcing the cage with cock and bull stories.

One more issue to go…

“Is someone behind it all, I wonder? Some Idiot-God… Some cruel audience out in the ether, taking joy in my downfall? A-And if there is? If… if you’re listening? You should know that I hate you. I hate you for building a world where I can’t escape what I am. I hate you for cursing me with the simple fact of my birth. I hate you for crushing me beneath the impossible truth that I… cannot ever overcome-- my destiny.”
-Simon Spurrier, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

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A Myth is Inconsumable (Superman The Dark Side)

Commissioned by Michael

Mister Miracle by Tom King and Mitch Gerrads

Superman does not belong in the realm of the New Gods. This is not a condemnation of the character, but a simple statement of facts that many a writer has missed for very sympathetic reasons. Those being the New Gods saga written by Jack Kirby began in the pages of a Superman title. Indeed, Darkseid himself first appeared in an issue of Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen (specifically, issue #134). But the thing about Superman’s interactions with Darkseid is that there’s never a face to face confrontation between the two. Superman’s always in the margins of the narrative of the war between the New Gods, dealing with minor concerns of the war such as the planet of the Universal Horror Monsters or Don Rickles’ evil twin brother (it should be noted that though Darkseid appears in an issue of a Superman comic, he only appears on a television screen, never once actually being present in the flesh). Contrast that with the Forever People literally going to war with Darkseid’s version of Disneyland or Orion acting as a subversive agent against Darkseid’s ploys to make everyone afraid of everyone, and you can see a marked difference in importance.

The closest Superman ever gets to a one on one fight with Darkseid is an issue of The Forever People, easily the weakest of Jack Kirby’s New Gods stories. There, Darkseid has kidnapped one of the Forever People, Beautiful Dreamer, in order to discover the Anti-Life Equation: the ultimate Red Pill, which will make people realize that the only way is through Darkseid. And yet, Superman never has fisticuffs with Darkseid throughout this encounter. Indeed, he’s a largely passive presence in the scene, to the point where the sole panel where both Superman and Darkseid appear, the Man of Steel is shaded to such a degree that, without the rest of the page, you could imagine any other superhero taking his place.

But perhaps the most telling bit is in the penultimate issue of Superman’s involvement in the New Gods saga, Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #147: Superman in Supertown. There, the Man of Tomorrow gets a chance to visit New Genesis, where, as shown at the end of the first Forever People issue, he longed to be. There, a flying strong man is considered normal to the point where him entering New Genesis isn’t even remarked upon with a “Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s Superman!” And yet, every time Superman tries to help, he ultimately misunderstands the situations and ends up doing more harm than good. Ultimately, as Superman confides to Highfather (without ever identifying himself as such), there’s little need for someone like Superman on New Genesis. He doesn’t adjust well to a world where being a superhuman is just another mundanity like being able to sing or be a pal. And so, Superman returns to Earth instead of remaining on this strange alien world that, by all rights, should be his home, but isn’t. Earth certainly wasn’t where he was born, but it is where he feels the most at ease. It’s a place where he believes he belongs. The same could be said of Scott Free, I suppose (though, to a different degree. Ultimately, putting Superman into the mythology of the New Gods would be akin to putting him into the mythology of William Blake’s pantheon).

A key aspect of Jonathan and Martha Kent
is that they're both flagrantly socialists.
This is what they'd be like if they were capitalists.

Which brings us to Superman The Dark Side, an Elseworlds comic that hypothesizes what would happen if Superman’s rocket landed on Apokolips. What would happen if Superman were an actual main figure within the New Gods saga and how would that warp the DC Universe around him? The answer, as it turns out, is actually a lot better than it could have been. For starters, the narrative is aware of the anticapitalist aspect of the original New Gods comics (again, literally going to war with Disneyland) as well as the ultimate message that it’s our connections to one another that help us through the darkest times. Most tales of Superman dealing with the New Gods would simplify the narrative such that Darkseid would be a mere Super Duper Bad Guy Who Punches Really Really Hard.

But The Dark Side knows that Darkseid isn’t merely the baddiest baddie there is. He is the ultimate shape of evil; that which desires simply to be the boot that stomps on the face of existence forever. Complex in his multitudes, but simple in his ambitions. To even try to play the game on his terms would only end in a sound and thorough defeat. The logic of a (modern) Superman story where all can be defeated with a few punches is rejected as useless in favor of collective action.

That isn’t to say that the comic is perfect. I don’t fully agree with the decision to have Scott Free be displaced into the Metron role as part of the consequences of Superman being on Apokolips, not the least of which because the comic doesn’t really sell the Kal-El/Big Barda romance. Some of the plot details are a bit off as well. One moment I remember finding a bit odd even on my first read was that Lois was perfectly fine with Kal-El being a planet murdering bastard until Orion told her he destroyed New Genesis (a thing Kal-El brought up three times). And the comic doesn’t really explore the imperialist implications of Krypton that it brings up near the end of Act II/beginning of Act III.

But there’s a lot to love with the comic. The designs are delightful in both their adherence to the original Jack Kirby designs as well as the new spins Kieron Dwyer brings to them. I love the riff on Jon and Martha Kent being less a lonely family in need of a child and more capitalists who would sell each other out if it meant they could get rich. Making Bibbo the heart of the book is an inspired choice that highlights the themes of community and shines a light on a path forward for a war torn society such that the New Gods find themselves within. And Granny Goodness doming Lex Luthor is always going to be delightful.

It’s not as good as, say, Grant Morrison’s or Jack Kirby’s or even Tom King’s efforts with the New Gods. But, if you want to read a fun little comic, you could do worse.

"Now, Superman cannot "consume" himself since a myth is "inconsumable." The hero of the classical myth became "inconsumable" precisely because he was already "consumed" in some exemplary action. Or else he had the possibility of  continuing rebirth or of symbolizing some vegetative cycle--or at least a certain circularity of events or even of life itself. But Superman is myth on condition of being a creature immersed in everyday life, in the present, apparently tied to our own conditions of life and death even if endowed with superior faculties. An immortal Superman would no longer be a man, but a god, and the public's identification with his double identity would fall by the wayside."
-Umberto Eco, The Myth of Superman

A Kind of Uncle

A Poem

To Fred.

Hey little guy. My name is Sean. I’m not quite your uncle, for I am not your father’s brother. But I am his cousin, so I guess that makes me an uncle of a kind. Perhaps I’m an uncle like Scrooge McDuck is. Not so much by blood, but by relationship. I chose to be close to you and yours when I could have not. But here I am, writing this story for you, one about having a younger sibling, a difficult one for me to tell, as I am the younger sibling of my end of the family. So it’s not like I know what it’s like.

I could tell you what it’s like to be the younger sibling. In truth, it’s rather drab. Most of the time, my brother and I talk like people who know each other. They say that there’s a special bond between siblings, that they inherently love each other no matter what. I’m here to tell you, little Freddy Frey, that’s a load of hooey. The truth is a brother, or in your case a sister, is just another person. We’re just people, you see. We hurt, we feel mad, and sad as well. But we feel happy, and cruel, and we help as well. We do these things to strangers and siblings alike.

So then, why care about your little sister? Why should my brother care about his younger brother? If, after all, we are just people, why should we care at all about our blood? About anyone at all?

Why should I care about you?

Simple: because you exist. It’s an odd thing, isn’t it: to exist. The world is such an odd place full of people who think they can be one thing, and one thing only. They can be cruel. They can be kind. They can sing. They can dance. They can think. They can do. They can dream. And that’s it. It’s terrifying, to them, to be able to do more than one thing. To exist is that ability they reject.

It’s so special to see people exist. To see a child be born, sometimes more than once. To see people dance about while singing long forgotten songs, to be cruelly kind, to think about our mad dreams.

I had a dream once. My brother and I were in the woods. Not a real wood, little Fred. It was a memory of a wood. You’ll remember them, one day. We were in the woods, walking about when we came across a little duck. Back then, my brother was deathly afraid of birds, so the sight of the duck caused him to faint. Not me though. I was saddened. The duck was dead, you see. His eyes were closed, his feathers drooping. And not a breath was felt.

Three little ducklings came by to see the duck as I held him. They wanted one more story from him, one more adventure. Alas, not all things can come true. The duck was dead.

“Quack! Quack!” replied the dead duck. He was alive and well, little Fred! He was also quite cross with me. “Quack Quack Quack!” he said, which I took to mean, “Why did you think I was dead?”

“I…” I tried to say, but the duck interrupted me.

“QUUUUUUUUUUAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCK.” Which I thought meant “I was just taking a nap.”

“I-I’m Sorry,” I stammered.

“Oh, not at all.” Replied the duck. “Now then, is he dead?” the duck pointed towards my brother.

“NO!” I said, not realizing I was shouting.

“Ah, a pity,” said the duck. “He seemed like a comfortable couch.”

And then I woke up. My brother was in the other room, still asleep having spent the night with his grandfather, whom you’ve met before, but don’t remember. They were working on something or other, I don’t recall. But what I do recall is that I agreed with the duck: he did look like a comfortable couch. Comfortable enough to sit on, perhaps. But then I thought, “Nah… wouldn’t be nice. Wouldn’t be nice at all.” Somedays, especially when I was young, I thought it would be funny. And… sometimes it was. But I don’t think it was ever nice.

That’s what it is to be a sibling, to live with other people for long stretches of time: you care for them, certainly. But you also have to deal with them when they’re crabby and thinking that comedy trumps niceness. And you have to deal with your own considerations of comedy and niceness. For there are times, little Fred, when one trumps the other. I don’t know. It was five in the morning when I wrote this poem for you. I don’t want it to be as dead as a duck.

(Not) On a Series of Unfortunate Events

To Aleph Null—

[Insert poetic death pun here]

Sadly, I cannot write this article. There are several reasons whyI could write about the lives of the Baudelaire Orphans and those they have come across. I liked the show quite a bit, I have fond memories of the commentary of the movie where Lemony Snicket just takes the piss out of the whole damn thing, and I grew up with the books.

And therein lies my problem, a phrase which here means, “This is why I can’t help you” and is used as a transition to lead to the core problem instead of simply saying why the thing cannot be done: I never finished them. I certainly got well into the series, all the way up to the Penultimate Peril. Alas, I never read the final book in the series, The End. I’ve sneaked a peek at bits and pieces of the book, but I’ve never finished. It’s a hole in my library and to fill the hole would require me to finish the series, which is something I cannot do, what with my other… commitments. Alas, I would love to wax poetically on the themes and implications of the series, how they tie into the way the world was and is, and whatnot. But I literally cannot do so at this time.

Regretfully yours,

Sean Dillon.

PS Patrick, you’ll find the package in the basement three buildings to the left of where we last met. I figured it was too important to tell you this in secret code. 

An Escape Artist

Originally published in PanelXPanel #14.

To open his video on Hocus Focus, Greg Stevens of Pop Arena asked a simple question: How many professional jugglers can you name? Take as much time as you need. Not that many? (Unless you’re in the community, of course.) In truth, I wasn’t able to name a single one and even Greg was only able to name a handful. He then asks how many film actors can you name? It’s a larger number, isn’t it? Even if you aren’t really into the film business, cultural osmosis at least places a double digits worth of actors into your head.

The point of this exercise wasn’t to shame people into learning more about juggling (or any of the other arts he brings up). Rather, it was to highlight the hierarchy of arts and the way performance art is considered to be a lesser art. One not cared about in the grand scheme of things enough for information to be preserved. Speaking from experience working at a puppetry museum, it’s disheartening to learn that all the available information on a given puppeteer is just a paragraph on the back of a baseball card. The truth is our society, for whatever reason, places knowing who an actor or a musician is over knowing who a performing artists is. How many jugglers can you name? How many stage magicians? How many escape artists? 

Which brings us to issue 10 of Mister Miracle, the best issue thus far. There’s a lot that can be said about this issue from Mitch Gerads’ crisp artwork (that, in an uncharacteristic move for the comic, instead of highlighting the mundane absurdity of superheroes is used to hone in on the isolation Scott is feeling as the looming idea of Darkseid comes ever closer to the forefront) to Tom King’s clever script (to give an example that I don’t plan on focusing on in the remainder of the review, the blatant nicking of the Galactus story as a dog comic) to Drunk Skeets (which is somehow a better idea than “Evil fucking Skeets”). There are so many good bits that I’d just be retelling the issue if I just talked about them.

But at its core, issue 10 is a character study of Scott Free. Who is Scott Free? We are told that he’s Mister Miracle-- Super Escape Artist, but he doesn’t seem to belong to that community. When discussing who to invite to Jacob’s birthday party, there’s talk of inviting members of the Justice League and some backstage people. But no one brings up inviting fellow performers. Is Scott then more a superhero than a performer? Well, how does one define being a superhero? By the number of lives saved? Well, no. Scott spends more time fighting a war than saving people in the traditional superhero manner. It has been argued that the superhero is a manifestation of traumatic experiences, a means by which an individual may be protected from the dangers of the world. But said dangers involve changes such as ending the endless war or being a father. Change is always painful, and Scott’s life just won’t stop changing (unlike a superhero’s which, with few exceptions, has a status quo to fall back on).

But one cannot be truly defined by their profession. Take, for example, the life equation sequence. The conversation is between Scott and a retail worker named Chet. Based on the cultural beliefs of retail, what kind of person would you say Chet is? Is he a poor person working nine to five to feed his family? Is he a recent graduate who realized too late that his degree isn’t enough to get him a job? Does he vote democrat or republican? He seems like a good person, or at the very least someone willing to indulge in the customer’s weird questions.

So then, what kind of person is Scott Free? We certainly have more information on him than we do on Chet (Scott’s the main character after all whereas Chet’s a two page cameo). What are Scott’s defining traits? The most obvious would be his depression. Indeed, the issue’s greatest moment focuses on this as Scott crawls into a ball while taking a shower. It’s a devastating experience where all those emotions he’s repressed to lead the war effort and be a good father break through. Throughout the whole sequence, we never see his face, and yet we can feel his pain.

At the same time though, his depression isn’t viewed as completely selfless as many a story about people with depression tends to frame it. There are other people in Scott’s life. People who are suffering as much as he is. Going in chronological order, note the way Gerads draws Ted Kord and Michael Carter. There’s an air of sadness to them (or, in Michael’s case, an air of Frazier Irving, which always comes off as sad no mater what expressions he’s drawing). We haven’t seen any of the other superheroes in the book (aside from Scott’s tee shirts and a plushie), so this might be the first time he’s seen these two since he was in the hospital. Plus, they know about with Jacob, how Darkseid wants him for his own. For all their jokes and silliness, they’re still friends. They’ll be there for him as best they can.

But the big one is Barda. Barda, who for this whole series came off as is she had her life together, Barda who got the catharsis of killing her abuser, even she’s, to use the language of the comic, “all #$&@# up.” How dare Scott try to kill himself because “he’s in a bad place” and “he wants to escape from it.” She’s in that same place. They were raised by the same “mother” who abused them and countless other children. And she doesn’t get to escape from this existence. She has to be there for Scott because… that’s all she can do at this point. There’s no one else she can talk to. Maybe the Furies, but they dealt with their trauma by lashing out and hurting people. She never thought Scott would be so selfish as to do the same.

Many have argued that this is all leading up to the reveal that this is all a simulation caused by the Lump or it’s Scott dying in the bathroom. But, to me, such a reveal would undercut this raw moment of emotional honesty. It’s an ugly moment where both parties are at fault and both parties feel the pain. While there is a level of selfishness to committing suicide, the hurt that caused Scott to do such an action is real. He wants to be out of that bad place of pain and misery, to finally come in out of the rain. But Barda doesn’t think it’ll ever stop raining. Unhealthy? Perhaps, but it’s understandable. People manage their pain differently. To say a person is defined by their depression is to say they are defined by their anger.

Perhaps it’s better to understand Scott through what his actions say about him. He cares about people. In spite of everything, all the pain and suffering and cruelties he’s experienced, he wants no one else to hurt. He’s somewhat self-absorbed as his nonchalantness towards Forager’s death shows. He has a sense of humor to his lot in life and he’s cordial to even his enemies (then again, how else are you supposed to act while taking a piss with a God?). He’s indecisive as well. He doesn’t have straightforward answers for things everyone else seems to know instinctively. For example: should he give up his son to Darkseid to end the endless war? Were Orion in his shoes, he would have given up Jacob if it meant wining the war. Barda’s feelings on the matter are quite explicitly counter to this.

But Scott doesn’t know what he wants. Do anyone of us know what we truly want? Is there a means by which we can be defined like numbers on a chart? Or is it possible that maybe, just maybe, life is far too complicated to be boiled down to mere mathematics. It would be like defining poetry by the logics of biology. That is the path of Darkseids Sleep. The tormenter that says that there are people out there who must suffer for the sake of the many. We cannot abide by such a logic.

So once again I ask: Who is Scott Free? Is he a master of spectacular trickery or is he something more? Is he a superhero or an escape artist? The father of Jacob Free? The husband of Big Barda? A member of the Justice League? Son of Highfather and Darkseid? Is he the kind of man who could kill his own father, no matter how much suffering he’s brought both to Scott and all the other people of the world? Does he want to be remembered? Is he a God? Is he a good man? Does he care for those around him? Is he the spirit of freedom or an agent of Anti-Life? Or did he reject the premise of a simple, yet cruel, question:

Why shouldn’t I commit suicide?

“You are the shackles gone tarnished.
You are at last the unharnessed.
You’re an escape artist.
You’re an escape!”
-Alex Reed, Escape (Abandoned demo)

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Please Don't Tear This World Asunder

Originally published in PanelXPanel #12.

One of my favorite songs growing up was The Devil Went Down to Georgia. It wasn’t one of the songs I thought as my favorite at the time, but it was one that was obviously a favorite in retrospect. The song, as you are probably aware, tells of the time the Devil, in need of a soul, went to Georgia and challenged a guy named Johnny to a fiddle contest for his soul. Johnny, knowing it might be a sin, accepted the challenge and won a fiddle of gold.

There are a few subtleties to the song that one might not notice upon hearing the song. Firstly, Johnny’s clearly a black guy. Throughout the song, the Devil refers to Johnny as “boy,” which at the time was a derogatory term for black people. And while it could very well indicate him to be a child, the implications of the song are far more interesting if one assumes the Devil is racist. Given this, what do you suppose would happen to such a man carrying a fiddle of gold in Georgia? Sure, the Devil might not have gotten Johnny’s soul and Johnny might have bested the Devil, but someone sure as salt lost their soul for that fiddle. You might think the Devil is only after you, but the Devil is always thinking about the people around you. Something to think about…

In many ways, this is the best issue of Mister Miracle yet. It’s not as structurally interesting as the previous issue, but it nonetheless pushes the baseline quality of the series to newer heights. There are so many things to talk about the issue, from the Da Vinci story to the Mirror of Goodness to the panel where Mitch Gerads samples a Kirby drawing to highlight a character’s anger as being symbolic of said character’s return to a baser, more primal mode of being. There’s so much in this one issue that I scarcely know where to start. Plot wise, it simply tells of attempts at negotiating the end of a war that there is no way of winning through conventional means. Both sides bluster, intimidate, and bribe their way to victories until the one person not at the table changes the rules of the game from into something far bleaker.

But before I get to that, I first want to talk about the invocation of “Darkseid is.” Throughout the series, those words have been connected to solely to the character of Scott Free. With only one exception (two if you count the first issue), Scott has appeared in the panel prior to the appearance of those two words. And in that one exception, the character who does appear is invoking Scott Free in an awful pun about how screwed the President is.

But in this issue, it’s Kalibak who appears in the panel prior to the words “Darkseid is.” And all he says is “Whatever.” Kalibak, for those not reading this book, is Darkseid’s other son. The son he actually raised as his own as opposed to sending to live with his arch-nemesis (God, eldest of things) or tossing into the pit to be raised by an abusive old woman. Kalibak is the son Darkseid actually raised. And yet for all that he was raised by Darkseid… the bleak God of Apokolips never seems to care for the lad.

Indeed, more often than not it’s Orion who deals with Darkseid’s gaze. And when he’s not tormenting his flesh and blood, it’s Scott whose chair he sits on. But he never seems to care much for Kalibak. For all his monstrosity both in form and in personality, there is a sadness to Kalibak. A son who is able to avoid the physical and verbal abuses his brothers faced… but only because his father doesn’t care enough to notice him (which in and of itself is abusive). And yet, as with Scott and Granny, Kalibak loves his father and seeks his approval and his love. Unlike Scott though, he doesn’t want closure. That would imply a desire for finality. What Kalibak wants more than anything… is commencement. Given all this, though not as frequently as Scott, one must imagine Kalibak thinking to himself

Why shouldn’t I commit suicide?

Given this, the ending becomes all the crueler. On the last day of the negotiations, Darkseid rejects the offer New Genesis brings to the table for peace. At first, this is assumed to be a rejection of peace between the two warring worlds, but Kalibak (who acts as Darkseid’s emissary) elaborates that Darkseid has a counteroffer. The pessimism God of Apokolips is willing to give up everything. Not just a withdrawal of all his forces, a return of all prisoners, and a complete and utter disarmament of Apokolips, but he is even willing to give up the Anti-Life Equation, that which would give him mastery over the entire universe. All he asks is one small thing (given what that thing is, it’s hard not to notice the sadness in the way Gerads draws Kalibak before the reveal. For all his size, Kalibak looks tiny in the face of what he’s about to say): “He asks for custody of his only grandchild, Jacob Free. He asks that the boy be raised on Apokolips. That he be raised here as the one, true heir of Darkseid.”

This is perhaps the most obvious thing Darkseid could have done. The consequences of the resolution for the last time New Genesis and Apokolips went to war (Orion, son of Darkseid, was traded for the nameless son of Highfather, God of New Genesis. We know him as Scott Free) have reverberated throughout the series. Indeed, every analysis of the issue, every conversation about how this issue’s going to end, all thoughts of this issue have reflected this very event. The emotional trauma of forcing someone to repeat the sins of their father is an extremely Darkseid thing to do. Darkseid corrupts the most noble of deeds such as self-sacrifice into returning to a cycle of abuse. To do otherwise would perpetuate a war Scott can’t win.

Were he Orion, Scott would probably give up his son. Needs of the many and what not. But Scott is not his brother. He is, by his own admission, Granny-Raised. Which, for him, means Scott is broken, traumatized, and ultimately caring. Upon hearing the deal, Scott sits agape while Barda and Lightray prepare to go to war over this. This is the no-win scenario. The trap the series has, in retrospect, been building to since the very start. From the admission in issue four of Scott’s bitterness towards his father over not being given a name (does he think Darkseid would allow Scott his name when he refuses so much else) to issue one’s repeated talks of the parenthood of Orion and Scott Free all the way up to the origin of Jacob’s name being a story about the false hope of escaping Apokolips, this trap was perhaps always the way the story was going to end. And no matter what, Darkseid wins.

But is there a way out? Well… consider, for a moment, the issue of Jack Kirby’s Mister Miracle this one quotes. That issue, also #9, tells of Scott’s final days on Apokolips before escaping. As he reaches the portal to escape the world of holocaust and misery he has known his entire life, in what is perhaps my favorite moment of Jack Kirby’s New Gods sage, two of his fathers come to offer him a vision of what his escape means. Darkseid, representing Apokolips, says that should he leave Darkseid, Scott’ll still find Death. Himon, representing New Genesis, says that he’ll find the Universe should he escape. But instead of embracing Himon in the New Genesis way of thinking, Scott’s escape rejects both of them in favor of finding himself.

What, then, does it mean to find one’s self? Is there an innate self, found by looking inward? Are we the sum of the contradictory human race that surrounds us? Or is there no true self to find, merely a fiction built to deny the truth that all things are mere flesh? If so, does this make the quest to find one’s self Sisyphean in nature? And is this moment filled implications and meaning that which Tom King built his miniseries on top of? Something to think about…

“Please don’t tear this world asunder.
Please take back
This fear we’re under.
I demand a better future.”
-David Bowie, A Better Future

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