TW: Discussions of abuse, rape, and other nasty things.
“This isn’t about love
as in caring. This is about property as in ownership.”
-Chuck Palahniuk
 |
I swear, this is the third image I've
used for this post. |
This is the beginning, and this is
the end. They both happened at the same time, in that December of 1984. Three
years before Peter Parker died and brought himself back from the dead. This is
the story of the last loose end. Not relevant to the story, just the question
of why he’s wearing the costume he wears: a thread of terrible implications.
It began in the pages of a story
that detailed a Secret War between the three great houses of the Marvel
Universe. The Four, who wished to reform the system by expanding its
parameters, the X, who wished to reform the system by restructuring its
mechanics, and the A, who wished to keep the system from crashing down. With
them, was an assortment of villains, aligned with their fellows (so long as
they suited their purposes): The Doctor, archivist of the old; The Philosopher
King, master of time and space; The Witch; The Ghost of a Flea; The Working
Class Joes; The Mad Scientist; The Robots; and God, destroyer of worlds. In the
middle of the war was a Spider, outside of the conflict with an agenda of his
own, ones that the Great Houses repress by locking him into their fence.
They were brought together by the
Demiurge, the creator, who said unto them “I AM FROM BEYOND! SLAY YOUR ENEMIES
AND ALL YOU DESIRE SHALL BE YOURS! NOTHING YOU DREAM OF IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO
ACOMPLISH!” And they said they wouldn’t dream of slaying any of the others, but
the X had been spurned by the others, the 4 itch for a good fight, as do the A,
and the villains aren’t all bound by the whims of morality.
The events that occurred on December
1984 began with the aligned houses flying off to the Fortress of Doom. They
plan to invade this sovereign land to avenge the death of the Wasp (because it
had to be her and not, say, Captain America) and slay their foes. For their
part, the villains are tending to their wounded, being an alcoholic in a world
that gives you whatever you want, and beating up She-Hulk for shits and
giggles.
And they fight, and they fight, and
they fight, and they fight. One notable fight, for our purposes at least, is between
a Spider and the Titanic Woman (a newcomer brought in from Denver, Colorado of
all places along the Volcanic Woman and another Spider). The Titanic Woman is a
mirror of the Spider she fights: both once were scrawny and bullied by those
stronger than her. Once given powers, she used them for her own gain. This
Spider was once like that: a bullied bully who wanted to crush those who hurt
him (though with the cruel wit of a Steven Moffat protagonist as opposed to
with a pillar made of alien metal). He emphasizes with the Titanic Woman. She
responds like he would when he was young, and tries to squash the Spider.
The Spider narrowly avoids the
pillar and makes an interesting comment: “No one can lay a glove on me-- not
the X-Men, not the Absorbing Man, and not you!” Now, within the story, the
Spider has indeed had conflicts with the X and one of the Working Class Joes,
but he doesn’t remember fighting the X. Their figurehead, The Professor, wiped
that from his memory. Could it be that this is a simple subconscious memory,
one only accessible when we’re not thinking about it? Or does he remember
everything, all the stories that never were and always were? What might he
think of what he saw when he died? Questions for another project, but the fight
ends with our Spider teaching the Titanic Woman one of the many lessons he
learned back in his cruel youth: “…when your losing-- well, that’s when the
whining little wimp inside comes out.”
When the battle is over, and the
Great Houses victorious, the Spider finds himself with a costume more torn up then
he thought it would be. Seeing two of the A’s come out of a room with clothing
that isn’t battle damaged, the Spider asks them how this came to be. In perhaps
one of their cruelest methods of keeping a Spider down, they tell him of a
machine that can create any piece of clothing he could want. They leave out
which machine this is (a common failing of an A is assuming people know what
they know and punishing them if they don’t [see Spider-Man: Homecoming]).
The Spider enters the room and sees
the machine that he assumes is the machine they were talking about (interesting
note: the sequence where the Spider
finds the machine invokes a nine-panel grid. In many Spider-Man comics, this
signifies a massive change within the narrative with implications yet to come
[see Man on a RAMPAGE, The Goblin’s Last Stand, and the other comic this post
is going to talk about]). It’s not, just another one that houses something
terrible. He doesn’t know it yet, but this black creature oozing over his body
has cruel intentions towards this Spider we see before us; for it is none other
than an abuser, who wishes for the Spider to be his only lover.
This is made abundantly clear in
the ending of the Black Suit arc, Amazing Spider-Man #259: the other story that
came out in December of 1984. The affair is over, the abuser locked up, and
Peter is with Mary Jane. She has taken him to a park so she may open up her
heart to him. Mary Jane owes it to him, so she claims, because she’s known his
secret for a long time. But she just needs to tell someone about this. Maybe
she knows what the Black Suit was far too well…
Peter doesn’t realize who Mary Jane
is. None of us do. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, we, like Peter,
think she’s flighty, a flake who’ll flee to the next party rather than deal
with real world issues. She dissuades us of these fears directly, revealing the
artifice behind it all (Spider-Man characters tend to be, on some level, about
artifice. Felicia Hardy plays the part of Catwoman [as performed by Julie
Newmar], Qliphoth plays the role of Harry Osborn’s memories of Norman Osborn
given flesh, and Kraven the Hunter solves the narrative collapse of Kraven’s
Last Hunt by playing the part of Spider-Man). The role Mary Jane Watson plays
is Mary Jane Watson. A party girl, who could have any man she wants, but
prefers less obvious people. In truth, she has experienced trauma of her own. A
role is a good way to hide the truth of ones self, as Peter knows too well. But
Mary Jane has decided to throw away her masks, with hopes that there’s a human
face beneath.
She begins her tale before they knew
one another, before she was even born, with her parents. They met in college,
young and with dreams of being big. Her mother wanted to be an actress in New
York, but her father (who made the mistake of being an English Major) got lucky
and had a teaching position. It didn’t matter, so long as they were happy. They
got married 18 months later, and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named
Gayle. Mary Jane was born four years after that.
As a professor, Mary Jane’s father
was well liked, but he had ambitions of his own: he wanted to write the next
great American novel. Sadly, he wasn’t that great of a writer (I’d say about as
good as the one writing this blog). Rather than do the long, hard work it takes
to be a good writer (or, at the very least, let someone who isn’t as judgmental
as the writer of this blog edit his work), he decided to lash out at his family.
Despite his popularity, he forced his family to move from college to college,
until he found what he was looking for.
Sadly, the things he was looking
for came primarily from within: humility to ask for help, a willingness to
admit that not everything you write is garbage and the stuff that is usually
isn’t the fault of the people around you, and a desire not to resolve your
frustration by hitting your wife for daring to ask if you’re alright. To cope,
Mary Jane played the role of the clown, if only so someone could see her. Her sister
went inward, studying dance. All told, she was rather good at it.
One day, Mary Jane’s father struck
Gayle, as he did his wife many times over. For Mary Jane, this was another in a
long line of moments she couldn’t handle, so she ran off and made a joke for
other people to laugh at. For her mother, this was the breaking point. And so
they left while her husband received a “Man of the Year” award (as they tend to
do for people like him). During the divorce proceedings, he sued for desertion
and the courts were sympathetic towards him (as they tend to be for people like
him). They lived with family, moving over and over again, until at last they
moved into New York City, as her mother dreamed so long ago, to live with their
Aunt Anna, Mary Jane’s Father’s Sister. Anna had a good friend named May
Parker, who had a nephew named Peter. A good kid, though a bookworm in young
Mary Jane’s eyes.
We return to the present where
Peter and Mary Jane reminisce of all the lost time they had avoiding one
another in the name of what they perceived to be a rather dull person to be
around (Peter, at that age, having a very dismissive attitude towards the
possibility that plain looking people might be fine to be around). Elsewhere,
the comic makes an interlude to another plotline in the book, the Hobgoblin
(need I remind you my thoughts on that plot thread). This is mainly to keep the
reader invested in a rather action light tale about a woman (and comic book
fans are well known to be fond of those stories).
Mary Jane continues. She sent
letters to her abusive father, hoping he’d respond. He never did. We sometimes
want the acknowledgement of those who’ve hurt, if only for some level of
closure. Mary Jane is smart enough to know that will never come. Meanwhile, the
Watsons moved into their mother’s Cousin Frank’s apartment, a stern,
unforgiving man. But there was stability to this life, a fairness not based on
the whims of chance that always landed on “pain” (then again, we are being told
this story from Mary Jane’s perspective, one that would rather hide from a
problem than confront it. Maybe she’s leaving out parts of it, parts that she
never cared to look at for the sake of her artifice).
Things were coming together for the
Watsons. Gayle had found love in the form of a scholar and athlete named Tim
and her dancing career was leading towards a scholarship. Mary Jane was able to
put her years of pain and artifice to a constructive place by joining a drama
club. And, with a few performances, she was able to hone her art beyond the
work of Pagliacci.
Trouble arose when Gayle announced
that rather than go to college, she and Tim were planning to get married with
Tim going into a law program while Gayle worked to pay for it (what happened to
those scholarships, I wonder). Rather than deal with this, Mary Jane dived into
her artifice. Regardless of her mother’s protestations, they got married and
moved out of the house.
Eventually they returned with the
news that Gayle was pregnant. She gave birth shortly later, with Mary Jane the
sole witness to Tim’s silent desperation. Desperation she can relate to. He
artifice, after all, has been to keep her away from the responsibilities of the
outside world, a world that seeks to cage her with the issues of reality. True
love can’t beat the crushing weight of realizing that you aren’t the greatest.
Another fight scene happens, if
only to give Mary Jane a break. This is starting to get too close to home, as
Peter can see. But Mary Jane presses on. She doesn’t despise Tim for ditching
her sister once she told him she was pregnant again. Mary Jane also wanted to
flee the reality that was crushing her. But the world was bursting its way into
Mary Jane, and there was no way out. Gayle and Mary Jane’s mother was
hospitalized a few months after they moved in with Gayle. To pay for the bills,
Mary Jane quit her acting gigs and got a job in retail. All their mother wanted
was to live long enough to see her second grandchild.
She didn’t.
At the funeral, Gayle tries to be
optimistic; saying once she gives birth it’ll be smooth sailing. She’ll get a
full time job so Mary Jane won’t have to work after school, and she’ll get
someone to look after the kids and-
Mary Jane isn’t having it. And so,
she runs away into a story about party girls dancing in the margins of tales
about responsibility, providing the dare to not buy into the pat saying of
“with great power, there must also come a great responsibility.” Now, she looks
back on it with tears of regret. Peter suggests that she could go back and come
to terms with her sister, but Mary Jane doesn’t think that’s possible. Too much
time’s passed. She almost ran out on Peter rather than tell him all of this.
Something happened in-between then
and now, something at the heart of JM DeMatties’ later Spider-Man work. Perhaps
on another day, I’ll reveal that secret. Not today though, for there is one
more story that must be told. One also told on December of 1984. A secret story
(not typically told with the others) that haunts the others with implications
unseen outside this tangled web we weave. It’s time to tell the tale of the
Child of Omelas and those who helped her die.
Once upon a time, there was Utopia.
That wasn’t what the land was called, but it was what the people believed it to
be. For there, technology was free for them to use as they pleased. Love of all
kinds was accepted, with only the pretense of artifice. And the people of the
land were safe, protected by the corporation who owned the planet they lived
on.
Hidden within Utopia, was a dark
and cruel secret (as many capitalistic utopias tend to hide). For at its
center, there was a Child of Omelas. The child was born from the origins of
Utopia. For Utopia was built upon the ruins of a vast and alien culture. And in
the ruins, there were technologies of their ancient world, older than humanity
itself. And with these technologies, they created life. A nursery to grow Children
of Omelas.
They started with impossible
creatures: Unicorns, Jabberwockys, and Ohmus; impossible creatures for an
impossible world, a cacophony of failures. Much like the great scientist and Philosopher
King Davros, these failures were dumped into the wilds of the world. But soon
enough, they grew the Children of Omelas. They used their own temples, their
own wombs, to birth these children. They had to keep the circle closed, less it
be outside their control.
Only one of the children showed
promise to the aims of these Philosopher Kings: our Child of Omelas. She was
young and powerful. Hair green like the
curtain of a play, eyes purple like alchemy, and skin white like clouds. One of
the original scientists, who simply wanted to understand the world without
dominating it, fled from the Philosopher Kings and their schemes. The leader of
the Philosopher Kings saw this, and gave the child her first task: destroy his
airplane. To keep the circle closed, he had her destroy six others.
And lo, the child knew this was
wrong. She did not want to be a Philosopher King, that wasn’t her business. She
didn’t want to rule or conquer anyone. But she knew there was a terrible hatred
hiding inside of her. She wouldn’t be able to control it if she stayed here. She
understands how the Ohmu felt… The hate takes over and makes him kill. And then
he cries. And so, she fled.
At first, she went to her mother’s
house: for she was not a Philosopher King, a mere scientist who wished to have
a child of her own. Surely she would be safe with her. Alas, that was not meant
to be. For the Philosopher King knew this would happen, and sent one of his
best men: a machine man with a machine mind and a machine heart. A Terminator
of life. He slaughtered the Child of Omelas’ mother. And so, the child fled to
the one place she could go, where the Philosopher Kings dare not go: The
Forests of the Night.
Unbeknownst to the child, her
mother, with her dying breath, sent a message to Heaven (where we will avenge)
to send to Utopia their two greatest angels, emanations of the trickster gods
of old. And lo, the two angels: identical in many ways, yet their differences
highlighted who they were. One was named Kokabiel, a red headed woman with a
pixie cut who played many parts in her life, most notably as herself. The
other, Uriel, was a dark haired woman who only played one role, yet so well it became
a part of herself. They loved each other very much.
And lo, Utopia saw their coming and
knew fear. For they had crueler name bestowed upon them, one known throughout
the entire universe: The Destroyer of Worlds. There were tales of worlds that
merely lost a corporation or two. Entire cities demolished by the angels. They
were the lucky ones. One world was lost entirely, land and all, leaving only
dust in the angels wake. Another faced catastrophic storms after the angels
murdered God. These were worlds of the utmost cruelty, and angels are agents of
the universe.
Less talked about by those who see
them as agents of the apocalypse, are the tales told by those who see them as
the bringers of revolution. Of how they freed men from the slavery of the
Military Industrial Complex, of lovers reunited, families healed (or at least
allowed to collapse gracefully), of childhoods reclaimed. These are tales of
angels who will always save the day (and
if you think we can’t, we’ll always find a way). A revolution is just an
apocalypse from the perspective of those who have something to gain, as an
influence of mine once put it.
Once they arrive in view of the
planet, a vision comes to them. And in the vision, they become something
entirely new: a fusion of born of their best selves. It was of the Child of
Omelas walking on a lake in the Forests of the Night, previously unaware of
their presence. She wants to know who they are. What they want with her. And
why not, everyone the Child of Omelas ever known has wanted to use her in one
form or another (a child to raise, a product to deconstruct, a target to
terminate). Seeing this, the angels are determined to help the Child of Omelas,
no matter what.
They flew down upon the city at the
heart of Utopia and saw wonder. Indeed, Utopia twas a beautiful place to live
in, as with many a utopia. The architecture invoked a city simultaneously at
one and at odds with nature and the people were free to love whoever they
wanted. (Ok breaking character for a bit to expand on this point. This is
probably only one of two bits I’m going to do this on [those who have seen the
film know why I’m breaking character for the other bit. They damn well know-].
I need to talk about this shot:
In the film, one of the angels describes the disco the
angels are walking by with delight, wanting to stop the mission in order to
have some fun and meet some cute guys. This is blatantly a gay bar. Note, for
example, the couples on the right corner of the shot: visually, the man on the
right appears to have his hand around the brown haired woman next to him while
the blonde haired woman she’s talking to is with the man slightly out of frame.
However, if you look carefully at the way his hand is framed, it’s apparent
that he is reaching out to someone rather than holding someone. You could argue
that he’s reaching out to the blonde haired woman. Except her focus isn’t on
him. It’s on the brown haired woman. Thus the man must be reaching out for the
other man. This isn’t the only example. Take the fem presenting androgynous
person in blue jeans walking with the lady in the red dress with a pink bow,
the lesbian couple in the center, or, in an earlier shot, two men looking into
each other’s eyes with loving intent. So no luck with the guys but hey, they
are bisexual swingers, so I’m sure they’d have a good time nonetheless. And
now, back to your regularly scheduled blog post.)
Suddenly, the Law drives past them
in a hurry. They follow, knowing what they’ll find, and see the corpse of the Child
of Omelas’ mother being brought to the morgue. Knowing who they are, the Law is
ordered to bring the Angels to the Chief. Now, the Chief is neither Scientist
nor Philosopher King. And yet, she too knows the secret of the Child of Omelas.
It has been a burden on her conscience for years, but she presses on. How else
do you survive in this utopia we call capitalism after all, if you don’t ignore
the screams of the Child of Omelas?
When they meet, the Chief tries to
send the Angels to the Forests of the Night, under the belief that that is
where the Child of Omelas is. She claims her upfrontness is to get the Angels
and their destructive powers out of the city as soon as possible, but this is a
ploy. In truth she knows the other thing never talked about: no matter what,
the Angels never fail at whatever they do. They will bring the Child of Omleas
back to Utopia.
With nowhere else to go, the Angels
fly to the Forests of the Night. But the forests themselves trouble their
travel, for they do wish to be invaded by creatures from the outside. The alien
life that lives within has found time and again hat the outside is ruled by
cruelty and commerce, ideas that see others as things to be subjugated or
disposed of. And so they used their magicks to prevent the landing of the
Angels. Regardless, the Angels are able to land safely.
They make camp by their wreckage,
and search the nearby land. They see the life that lives within the Forests of
the Night, strange and new creatures, and also the ship the child used to fly
into the forests. It did not crash, for she was more akin to the forests’
creatures than those who lived in Utopia. One such creature, a Unicorn, appears
before the Angels. She summons the rain, and drives them back to their shelter.
The plants within the Forests of the Night dance with jubilation.
And lo, the Angels dream. There is
a tunnel in the mind, one without end. At the center of it all, there lies the
angel Kokabiel. She is naked within this unending grave. But she is not alone.
For there is blackness made flesh following her: a Goo of ill intent,
manifesting the psychic terrors that have befallen the Child of Omelas (for
this is another vision sent by the child, to push the angels far from her freedom).
And what are those terrors? Why the capitalistic greed that tortures and abuses
her made flesh. It wants to dominate and control all those it sees, for profit
and personal gain. It sees a naked woman before it, and it wants her. She tries
to escape, but its tendrils grasp at her form like a black glove, and proceeds
to rape her into submission: to tame her transgressive nature and make her
comply with the capitalist world around her. It does this for its own personal
gratification, to be seen as the dominant, even if it’s only by her. And it
will spread its cruelty onto others, turning everyone into children of Omelas.
And they will love it for it, as it happens with all capitalist systems. (Ok,
now that that’s out of the way, Fuck This Scene. I love this movie, but this is
objectively the worst part of it. It literally only exists to placate the
hentai viewership it could have some gratification in seeing a sex scene in
this semi-avant-garde film that’s mostly about a pair of bisexual ladies
wandering the woods looking for a lost child before destroying the world that
wishes to torture her [that, and to set up a later scene, but that could have
been done with a different dream than this one]. This is gratuitous beyond
belief and should be skipped whenever you watch it. The fact that they went
with the angel more seen as being strong willed [i.e. less homely and more
tomboyish], implies some rather nasty things about how the filmmakers view
gender that really don’t fit within the context of the rest of the film, let
alone the rest of the franchise. When the best defense for it is “well, it
allows me to write a psychocronographic essay where I connect it to
Spider-Man,” you know you’ve fucked up royally. And to add insult to injury,
the end credits decide to highlight this scene in the clip show set to the love
theme of the movie [along with another scene of mental torture]. Ugh, moving
on.)
She wakes up in terror. Uriel has
also dreamed this nightmare and offers sympathy. She tries to laugh off the
horror she has experienced, but to no avail. Instead she simply falls back to
sleep. Meanwhile, the Philosopher King has sent the Law into the Forests of the
Night. Immediately, they are hostile to the creatures of the land and, unlike
the Angels (for whom they viewed with caution and bemusement), they respond in
kind.
The Angels walk into the wreckage
the next day. They find only death and destruction. This brings Uriel to much
distress, and so she passes out. When Kokabiel tries to comfort her, creatures attack
her. The forests have had enough with these outsiders and want them dead. The
tendrils return from the depths of the sea (OH GOD WHY!) for another round,
because the angel owes it to it, so it says. Kokabiel flees with her fallen
companion, her partner, her one true love, her Uriel. She tries to fight back,
but the never-ending barrage of capitalistic cruelty keeps adapting and healing
itself, sustained on nothing save its own cruelty. Kokabiel flies with Uriel,
only to discover that the rot inherent to utopia has made its way to her home.
A rot that will surely kill the both of them. And so the rot consumes the both
of them.
She wakes up in terror. Kokabiel is
back home, in Heaven. Angels with no names are restraining her from hurting
herself and others. Before her stands Metatron, who sent her and Uriel to
Utopia on behalf of the Child of Omelas’ mother and the orders of God. He
informs Kokabiel that she has been resting for three days, and was rescued from
the Forests of the Night. When she asks where Uriel is, Metatron tilts his head
towards her naked body, covered in tendrils (NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NOOOOO!).
She wakes up in terror. Kokabiel is
back to where she was when she awoke from her first nightmare: in the shelter
with Uriel. She once more offers Kokabiel sympathy for their shared dream.
Kokabiel flat out rejects it. Not because she doesn’t want her love’s sympathy,
but because she knows this to is a dream. She rejects the reality she finds
herself in, of eternal suffering for the whims of a capitalist system that
makes monsters of us all. And the Child of Omelas lets her go. Perhaps she
realized what she had done to Kokabiel, and regretted it.
She wakes up, calmer and free.
Uriel is there, and they are back at the beginning. Surrounded by the death the
Law has bestowed upon the Forests of the Night. She is horrified by this and
realizes that this is still a dream. Kokabiel fears she is trapped within a
never-ending labyrinth of pain and misery, never to escape, never to return to
her true love. Uriel is there to help her realize that life isn’t a barrage of
pain and misery. Pain and misery exist within life, but there is also love and
hold on tight. To communally close their eyes with and make the pain go away. It
works for the moment, and it might not work again. But then their love is
everlasting.
The Angels return to their shelter
and slowly realize the nature of the Forests of the Night. Trapped outside and
terrified, the Law is being slaughtered by the rejected Children of the
Philosopher Kings. One such child, a unicorn, is fatally wounded. Kokabiel and
Uriel follow its trail of blood. On the bloody path, they find the ruins of the
ancient civilization. And past that a lake, at the center of which is the Child
of Omelas. She helps the Unicorn die and then leaves.
Uriel, realizing the nature of the
Child of Omelas, decides to stop trying to capture the child and instead live in
the Forests of the Night with Kokabiel (really, this is just their excuse to
have a honeymoon on an alien world). Confused, the Child of Omelas tries to
frighten them off with the tamer terrors of being in outer space or the
apocalypse happening around them. The Angels find this to be quite fun. They’re
aware of the artifice (for they live for and in it), and they roll with it.
Meanwhile in Utopia, the Chief
receives a phone call from the Philosopher King. He asks if the Angels have
completed their task, but the Chief hasn’t heard a thing. The Philosopher King
informs her that the Terminator will be sent to the Forests of the Night, much
to her chagrin.
Eventually, the Child of Omelas
makes herself known to Kokabiel and Uriel. She has seen that they are not the
cruel monsters she has grown up with. Who have trapped her, tortured her,
treated like cattle. These are kinder monsters, who give monsters nightmares. But
because of a slip of the tongue on Kokabiel’s part, the Child of Omelas
realizes that they still don’t understand. She realizes that she’ll have to
open up her heart to them.
The Child of Omelas gives the
Angels a waking dream of what has been done to her: of the cruelty, of the
pain, of the misery. And they understand completely and are mortified to
witness the child gunned down mid vision. The Terminator has come, and he’s
brought the Chief with him. The Chief lies to the Angels, and tells them that
the Child of Omelas is the true villain of the piece. That she murdered her own
mother in cold blood and ran to the Forests of the Night to escape the Law.
They don’t buy it of course, but
they have appearances to keep up. Kokabiel plays the part of past self,
believing this to still be the never-ending labyrinth of pain and suffering.
Where the only escape from the master’s pleasure is a death that will never
come. But as a means of hope and comfort this time, as it is to all the others
who have been tamed. She pleads with the Chief to reject this reality, under
the assumption that the Child of Omelas is a child who would never do such a
thing. The Chief refuses, preferring the comforting lies capitalism. Uriel, who
played no role in this story, instead hides her furious eyes under the gaze of
professionalism. She’s not as good as she believes herself to be and almost
gives the game away to the Chief by flat out saying “The Child of Omelas was
about to open up her heart to us… And nothing more.”
Fortunately, the Chief has a long
history of ignoring obvious red flags, for she is the Philosopher King’s
concubine. But the Chief has grown weary of being one of the master’s tools.
She doesn’t wish to rebel, merely live her life outside of her master’s grip.
But the Philosopher King wants everything, and plans to send the Terminator for
her.
Suddenly, the Angels crash into his
office and confront him about his cruelty. They are furious and condemn his
desire to control life. He laughs at them for their “naïveté”. “What is “good”,”
he questions, “Goodness is the desire for power, and everything which boosts
that power. Then what is “bad”? Evil is everything that comes from weakness.
The weak cause nothing but harm for us. What we should wish for is more power!
Not peace, but war! The weak and the failures need to be destroyed! This is our
foremost right, as ones who love humanity! We will be the ones to weed out-“
but the Angels know the horseshit believed by all Philosopher Kings. If the
right kind of master were to hold the whip, we’d have colonies on the moons of
Jupiter. If the fascist dictator with his own Singular Vision were a scientist
instead of a soldier, we’d be in Utopia. They refuse this lie, and understand
that this man is the black goo that haunted their nightmares.
Meanwhile, the Chief overhears
their attack, and goes to defend her master (more out of habit than desire). He
rejects her and runs away to start his plans all over again. Uriel chases after
him while Kokabiel deals with the Terminator. In the end, as the Terminator is
about to lay the killing blow, the Chief fires at him, wounding him enough for
the two of them to escape. They head to free the Child of Omelas.
A civil war breaks out in Utopia,
between those who stand with their Philosopher King and those who stand with
the Chief, with the citizens of Utopia trapped in the middle. In the end, the
Chief tells Kokabiel where the Philosopher King would be, while the chains that
bind the Child of Omelas are being loosened. She knows what this means and
wants the Angel to make sure the Philosopher King doesn’t escape.
Kokabiel once more faces after the
Terminator, while Uriel slays the Philosopher King like the dragon he is.
Suddenly the world starts to fall apart. The Child of Omelas has awoken, and
she will not be chained again. She, and failures of Utopia, will destroy the
world and all those upon it. Even those who stood to free them; for they could
have done this coup at any time, but chose the luxury her suffering provided
them until they were forced to acknowledge her. The only ones who make it out
of Utopia alive are the Angels. For she knows they are good within the universe.
As for the Chief, she knew what would happen once the child was freed and died
anyways. And in their final moments together, the Child of Omelas knows
sympathy.
As they fly back to heaven,
Kokabiel and Uriel reflect upon what they have seen: of the inevitability of
entropy, of philosopher kings, of love, of dreams and nightmares, of Utopia, of
the Forests of the Night, and of the Child of Omelas… no. Of Missne of
Nolandia.
(Next Time: What Lurks Within the Forests
of the Night?)
[Photos: Porky Pig VS. Ryan North by Jason Latour; Spectacular Spider-Man
#182, 189, and 200 by JM DeMatteis and Sal Buscema; Dirty Pair-Affair of
Nolandia, Directed by Masaharu Okuwaki Script by Kazunori Itō]
…But what makes it all the more galling is that one of Trek’s major influences explored this territory so much better. That influence being the Dirty Pair. For those unaware, Dirty Pair is a series of light novels, anime, and comics about a pair of trouble consultants who work of the World Welfare Works Association (3WA) named Kei and Yuri, who are hired for various jobs from investigating the disappearance of a child in a city owned by a corporation who does weird experiments involving the remains of a long dead race of aliens to infiltrating the mob to chasing a cat around the city as The Lovely Angels. It should be noted that their escapades typically end in high body counts as a consequence of completing their missions, giving them the derogatory nickname “The Dirty Pair.”
