MYTHCOMICS: "LEGACY" (WONDER WOMAN #45, 1990)

Less than two weeks ago, celebrated comics-creator George Perez passed away due to a long struggle with cancer. I had liked Perez's work since I had encountered it in the 1970s, where he put as much work into delineating a toss-off character like Marvel's "Man-Wolf" as he would later devote to Fantastic Four, Avengers, Teen Titans, Crisis on Infinite Earths and the 1987 re-launch of Wonder Woman. FWIW, I even reviewed the first three issues of the Amazon's rebirth for THE COMICS JOURNAL. Without looking back at the old review, I remember stating that I admired the writer-artist's updating of the Marston origin for comics of the eighties and nineties, though I found that the next two issues slumped back into standard superhero fodder-- and I tend to think most of his Wonder Woman scripts, whether he drew them or not, fell into the same rut. Thus, though he worked with superheroes for over forty years, it's my reluctant evaluation that his immense creativity was focused largely on design of spiffy looking new characters, but that he didn't bring to those characters the sort of mythopoeic personality I can find in the creations of Jack Kirby and Gardner Fox.

Nevertheless, the WONDER WOMAN title pushed Perez to incorporate archaic myths into the type of stories he told, and "Legacy" from issue #45 seems to be one of his best ventures into the mythopoeic realm-- even though, oddly, the starring character is barely in it.

One relatively obscure archaic myth-figure whom Perez brought into the WONDER WOMAN mythos in the first issue was Harmonia, daughter of Ares. The Greek war-god, usually given the Roman name of "Mars" in the Marston continuity, was a frequent opponent of the peace-loving heroine, but Marston didn't devote much space to the offspring of either the war-god or any other Greek deity. I won't explore the full history of Harmonia in the Perez Wonder Woman stories. However, issue #45 makes clear that one reason Perez chose to build up this character was because in archaic Greece Harmonia was one of many incarnations of "the Fatal Woman," one who brings bad luck to men without even intending to do so-- not unlike another Greek myth-figure of greater modern renown, Pandora.

"Legacy" opens with Harmonia seeking the counsel of the famed dispensers of mortal fates, the Moirai. Harmonia has overheard various intimations from both her father Ares and from the forge-god Hephaestus about some mysterious identity between the archaic Pandora and the modern heroine Princess Diana. The goddess's desire to resolve the mystery gives Perez the excuse to expatiate upon the heritage of the archaic Pandora, with an eye, naturally, to explaining her significance to modern readers.

Perez then weaves two stories of Pandora. The first follows many familiar tropes of the story from the Greek poet Hesiod, the main source for the tale of the lady and her box, though Perez mixes in his fair share of tropes designed to heighten a feminist interpretation. His first break with tradition is that he depicts how, following the Greek gods' triumph over the Titans, a man named Prometheus-- mortal, and therefore not a Titan himself-- infiltrates Olympus and steals fire for the benefit of his fellow mortals. As in most renditions of the traditional tale, Zeus then has Hephaestus craft a woman of clay, calling her Pandora, which name was said by some to mean, "the gift of all" because a variety of gods bestowed assorted charms upon her. (It's of some interest that when Robert Kanigher rewrote the Wonder Woman in the 1950s, he had her getting her powers from various Greek deities as well.) As in the Hesiod story, Zeus sends Pandora as a peace offering to Prometheus. Prometheus smells a rat and won't receive the gift, but his not-so-bright brother Epimetheus marries Pandora. A second divergence appears, however, in that Pandora brings with her the Box of Evil Fate to which her name was ascribed. In the original tale Prometheus has custody of the container from the first, which is why Pandora's opening of the box rates as a great betrayal.

Perez's version also spreads the blame by borrowing from the Adam and Eve story, in that Pandora doesn't open the fatal box on her own, but incites Epimetheus to do so. However, after the world becomes overwhelmed by multitudinous evils, Epimetheus is not penalized the way Adam is, by getting blamed for his sins. Only Pandora gets cast forth, and presumably dies alone, though the end of the story seems to indicate that her clay may get "recycled" into the prima materia from which Princess Diana is conceived.

Then Harmonia's conversation with the Moirai provides a segue to the second Pandora story, which is far more in line with the way modern feminists would rewrite the story to contradict Hesiod's misogyny. The Moirai speak of a time before either Titans or gods ruled Earth, implicitly "caveman times." The only deity was Gaea, a goddess coterminous with the Earth, who looked upon struggling humans as her children. By some process of "virgin birth"-- yet another shout-out to Marston-- Gaea conceived Pandora, who was not the recipient of gifts but the bestower of only good things from the jar she carries. (Scholars have asserted that the "box" attributed to Pandora, "pyxis" in Greek, was in the original text a "pithos," a storage jar.) 

Yet, for reasons not made clear by Perez, the "Age of Titans" comes into being, followed by the Titan-god conflict which razes the Earth even though Later-Pandora has yet to unleash the evils of her box. Humankind at this point seems to lack any agency to be wicked, so Perez elides the traditional reason for the Greek deluge: that Zeus chose to wipe out most of humankind because of their sinful ways. Instead, most of humankind dies because kind-hearted Gaea weeps "ten thousand tears" at the carnage. Perez keeps the idea that two mortals survive the flood, a son of Prometheus and a daughter of Pandora--thus, like Hesiod, making modern humanity the descendants of a "marriage" that didn't happen between the sires of each progenitor. Perez then observes that the later Pandora story was  a repudiation of the true, earlier one, so that Woman became not "the Inspirer" but "the Tempter." Following the conclusion of the second story, the last few pages set up later WW storylines, and so aren't relevant to the mythopeic "meat" of the two conflicting narratives. 

"Legacy" has a fair number of weaknesses. The artwork-- contributed by three female artists and one male-- is only fair overall, though the artists can't be faulted for a sequence in which Perez shows fierce gryphons guarding Zeus's sanctuary, but never explains how mortal Prometheus gets past the monsters. Perez also notes that the two survivors of the flood fling stones behind them when they survey the wasted world, but he fails to explain that this is the magical method by which the two humans repopulate the world-- an omission so major than one suspects editorial meddling. But overall "Legacy" is still a creditable entry into the ranks of modern mythcomics, and a tribute to George Perez's own legacy.

THE COVID PANDEMIC AND THE RACE-HATE PHARMAKON

Liberals have attempted to paint the events of the past two weeks as a vindication of their emancipation ethic. However, said events have several differences from the entirely rational quest for the civil rights of colored persons in the 1950s and 1960s. The death of George Floyd on May 25 was more akin to the sowing of a dangerous and unpredictable wind, resulting in the reaping of an even greater whirlwind (Hosea 8:7, if your’re curious). As I listened to funeral eulogies attempting to confer positive political meaning upon the death of Floyd by such luminaries as Al Sharpton and Shelia Jackson Lee, I had no sense that any of the speakers had examined either the political or philosophical aspects of emancipation as thoroughly as did Martin Luther King. George Floyd was just more grist for their political mills, and their message was, as it has been with so many modern progressives, “give us what we want or there will be trouble.”

The specific injustice of George Floyd’s death need not be questioned, even were it demonstrable that Floyd in some way provoked or assaulted the arresting officers. There is reason, though, to question whether or not Floyd’s murder was racially motivated. Though the specific cop guilty of Floyd’s murder was white, his three accomplices break down as white, black, and Asian. As hard as Kamala Harris may try, she can’t quite make this incident equivalent to an entirely racially motivated killing, as with the example of Emmett Till. Indeed, the base image caught by the phone of a Minneapolis resident—that of a white cop forcefully kneeling on the neck of a black man—has such visceral appeal that it transcends the racial divide. For blacks, the image may well connote “what all whites would really like to do to all blacks.” However, no matter how often pea-brained pundits claim that whites never get killed in police incidents, many if not all whites are likely to imagine themselves being similarly victimized by the police.

But the Floyd image, horrific as it is, may not be the main source of the current social upheaval. On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor, a young med-tech resident of Louisville, Kentucky, was shot by police who invaded, without warning, the apartment she shared with her boyfriend. Taylor was far more of a model citizen than Floyd, who had served five years in prison for robbery with a deadly weapon. Yet while the litigation arising from her death continues, Taylor’s tragic death did not galvanize both blacks and whites across the U.S., to say nothing of having impact upon foreign countries.

The most immediate difference is that no image was captured of Taylor’s suffering, while every moment of Floyd’s final struggles for life was committed to video. Chauvin’s actions, whatever their intent, bring to life the memorable phrase Orwell puts in the mouths of his tyrants: “a boot stomping on a human face, forever.”

Yet I think a more pertinent difference is the timing of Floyd’s death with respect to the tensions of the Covid pandemic.

By the power of strange coincidence, the date of Breonna Taylor’s death is the same day President Trump declared a national emergency. Throughout the remainder of March and all of April, the majority of American states locked down to some extent, as did the majority of countries afflicted with Covid. The lockdown, whatever its merits in terms of curbing the spread of the highly infectious disease, wrought almost unprecedented havoc upon the American economy. The psychological devastation stemming from the rigors of lockdown may have been even greater, though, requiring huge adjustments in customary behavior to counteract the disease.

Both Left and Right were not slow to politicize the disease. Joe Biden accused Trump of racism when the president shut down borders. Later, when some states failed to follow Trump’s advice on re-opening, the president’s intemperate rants did little to calm troubled waters.

The notion that Covid victims of color were more adversely affected than whites seems to have gained ground in early April. On April 10, Surgeon General Jerome Adams responded to the assertion by stressing that Covid had its most deleterious effects upon victims with pre-existing conditions, and urged the communities of colored persons to take better care of themselves. This did not sit well with liberals who wanted to blame systemic racism. To my knowledge no one ever produced a study proving that poor whites were being given better health care than poor persons of color, which might have given the lie to the political mendacity. Instead, Trump’s regime found it expedient to sideline Adams as a spokesperson, which unfortunately allowed the Far Left to claim their political assertion to be proven fact.

May was marked by tremendous conflicts regarding the termination of the lockdown. Some states re-opened with relatively little trauma, but others prolonged the safety measures, sometimes with commandments as irrational as those of a Roman emperor, as with Michigan governor Kathryn Witmer’s injunction against people planting gardens. The prolongation may or may not have slowed the pandemic, but it certainly inculcated a variety of reactions about the nature of authority. For once, the liberals were championing the authority of the states regarding the lockdown—a marked change from earlier attitudes toward issues like slavery and abortion.

Nevertheless, by May 23 most of the country had re-opened to some degree. But for many, the pandemic was like a curse upon the land after the fashion of old Greek plays. On the conscious level, everyone knew that there could be no reason; it was all just the rampage of a nasty little virus; something beyond human control.

But when there arose a new spectre of white-on-black race-hatred—that was something that the society could seek to control. To be sure, though, the “control” was less a rational act than a ritual of expiation. The ancient Greeks used such rituals in festivals like the Thargelia, wherein the authorities would sacrifice one or more citizens to the gods. The sacrifice was termed a ^pharmakon,* a cure designed to cast out the evil infecting their society.

Liberals have been attacking the systemic racism of police departments for many years, and unfortunately, policemen have committed enough acts to give the Left fodder for the fire—even if some events, like that of Ferguson, generated more heat than light. But none of the earlier attacks or the fulminations about them led to widespread calls to “defund the police.”

I’m not particularly worried that any major city will make any major changes. The people on top know that they need cops to defend them against the sort of yahoos who rioted all week following Floyd’s death. All the dutiful admissions of systemic racism are no more than the usual virtue signaling, designed, like the shield of the aegis, to ward off the spears and arrows of outraged pundits. Some specific good works may proceed from this tsunami of aggrieved sentiments, but again, there are no Doctor Kings here, attempting to foster a new understanding between the haves and the have-nots. There are merely people who claim to be have-nots, attempting to get more slices of the pie for themselves. The of of the have-nots will not be appreciably improved, and the racial divide will be ruthlessly exploited throughout the coming presidential election.

In other words, a second wave of Covid will be the least of our problems.