MYTHCOMICS: PROMETHEA #1-32 (1999=2005)

 

I’ll start off my analysis of PROMETHEA by celebrating the intricate, near-visionary artwork of J.H. Williams III. Of the hundreds of artists who have attempted to depict supernatural realms for the comics-medium, Williams deserves to be counted as one of the five most accomplished such raconteurs.

For the rest of the analysis, though, it’s almost inevitable that I must generally speak of this series as if it sprang unassisted from the fragmented brow of writer/co-creator Alan Moore. And there exist two separate but equally important reasons for viewing Moore as the project’s shaping influence.

On one hand, this series was one of several continuing features released by the Wildstorm (later DC) imprint “America’s Best Comics.” Moore founded the company, conceived most if not all the features, and wrote the majority of the scripts. The imprint ran from 1999 to 2005, concluding more or less with the run of PROMETHEA.

On the other hand, the feature was conceived as a forum upon which Moore could expatiate his views on the subject of the Western tradition of occultism. Allegedly, as the result of Moore’s 1990s research into magical concepts for the FROM HELL graphic novel, the author became fascinated with these mystic disciplines, and proclaimed himself as a “ceremonial magician” in 1993. While it’s hard to assess what Moore might have done with ABC had Wildstorm not sold the imprint to DC Comics, it seems unlikely that PROMETHEA would have continued much beyond its 32-issue run, given that the series’ continuity was clearly designed to come to a definite conclusion. Even if PROMETHEA had enjoyed “X-Men sales” in the direct comics market, an iconoclast like Moore probably would not have prolonged the title once he’d said what he wanted to say.

Now, the mere fact that a given work is produced from a hellacious amount of research into a given subject does not mean that the author will produce from that research a work strong in symbolic discourse. In this essay, I cited a Gardner Fox story in which the author reeled off an assortment of factoids about the properties of minerals, but the story as such did not comprise a cosmological myth. The same principle holds true for this work: Moore could not produce a mythcomic simply by deluging his readers with tons and tons of info about mystic systems like the Tarot and the Kaballah, or about the careers of occultists like John Dee, Austin Osman Spare and the unavoidable Aleister Crowley. Many sections of PROMETHEA feel a bit like school-masterish lectures on occultism, or (perhaps worse) the exultations of a fan desperately asking his audience, “Isn’t all this stuff cool?”

Fortunately, Alan Moore does manage to impose a loose structure on the 32 issues (compared by Moore to the 32 paths of the Tarot). The master thread of the series is Alan Moore’s celebration of all things feminine, using as his focal point an icon of heroic femininity, more or less emulating the example of the Golden Age Wonder Woman. Of course, Promethea was not designed to continue as long as readers were willing to buy the heroine’s adventures. But perhaps more importantly, Moore’s heroine is a vehicle of an adult sexuality impossible to the DC character—and in part, Promethea concerns sex because sex is also a vital part of ceremonial magic, at least in Alan Moore’s interpretation.

Though Promethea’s physical appearance conjures with the Amazing Amazon, her nature is probably closer in essence to that of the Golden Age Captain Marvel. College-student Sophie Bangs is the “Billy Batson” of the series. As the result of her research into a supposedly fictional character who appeared in various 20^th-century media, Sophie finds that she can call upon the archetype of Promethea from an otherworld known as “the Immateria.” Promethea then transforms and takes over Sophie’s mortal body in order to battle the evils of the mortal world. But even though Moore gives Sophie the trappings of a life for a “double identity” heroine—residence in a “great metropolitan city,” a handful of supporting characters—the author’s interest is clearly not focused on righting wrongs on the earthly plane, but on exploring the joys of assorted otherworlds, generally patterned on Tarot and Kaballah formulations.

Moore labors mightily to give his heroine a feminist gravitas. She seems to be an archetype who, before encountering Sophie, has conferred her power on numerous women (and at least one man who had a woman’s nature, so to speak). Moore loosely implies that Promethea may be a mythic reaction against Christian patriarchy, since the writer references the historical figure of Hypatia, a female intellectual murdered by religious fanatics during early Christendom. But at times the feminism angle makes a difficult fit with the exploration of occult traditions, since most of the well-known ceremonial magicians—the aforesaid Dee, Spare, and Crowley—were male. Perhaps to make up for this lack, Moore devotes a subsidiary thread to another of his favorite subjects: that of the intertwining history of fictional creations. Some earlier incarnations of Promethea arose from the archetype merging with mortals like Sophie. Yet it seems that some of the incarnations may have been taken on life in the Immateria because they appeared in fictional narratives, which can range from a pulp-fantasy “barbarian queen” to a gender-flipped version of Windsor McCay’s LITTLE NEMO. (Moore does not really bother to suss out this particular cosmos-building point.)

At any rate, focusing on the role of female characters in fiction helps shore up the feminism theme a bit, though Moore’s main purpose is still the exploration of magical states of being. Being a canny comics-maker, Moore probably realized that he needed to sell PROMETHEA as a superhero comic, and so he dutifully introduced many of the requisite elements—marauding villains like Jellyhead and the Painted Doll, a team of local “science-heroes” roughly modeled on the Doc Savage Crew, and even an occult conspiracy-group, the Temple. Moore even rings in a crossover of sorts, revealing that other ABC heroes exist in Promethea’s world. But Moore does little with all of these elements, because they’re essentially commercial distractions from his main concerns.

Considerable narrative space is consumed as Sophie, accompanied by her preceptor and predecessor Barbara, journeys through the various spheres of the Kaballah in search of Barbara’s husband, though he serves no function in the plot but to provide the two females with a motive to go “sphere-exploring.” As I said, some of Moore’s salutes to Chokmah and Binah and all the rest are a bit pedantic—even for a reader familiar with the topics, as I am—but some of them succeed as rough visual poetry on particular themes, of war, of peace, of emotion and of intellect. One of the myth-images that Moore invokes most frequently is that of the Biblical “Whore of Babylon,” though naturally the author turns the Christian connotations around, so the “whore” is just the other side of the “virgin” coin, and both are seen more as vehicles through which the energy of the Godhead manifests. Indeed, in some vague manner Promethea is also consubstantial with the Great Whore, in that both are supposed to bring the world to an end. Moore attempts to give his heroine this myth-status without delivering anything but an “apocalypse deferred,” which might seem fairly original if the author hadn’t used a similar trope at the end of his SWAMP THING run.

I can appreciate that Moore’s vision of a world liberated by his feminine icon is a pansexual world, wherein the author approves of all things sexy, whether they might be despised by the Right (homosexuals) or the Left (old men sort-of getting in on with sweet young things). On the minus side, it wouldn’t be an Alan Moore production if the author didn’t take some gratuitous swipes at other authors. In issue #6 the Promethea with the “barbarian queen” persona takes on an equally fictional wizard who is the conglomeration of all the bad writers who wrote the heroine’s adventures. I’m not sure why Moore thought a jihad against pulp writers was necessary, especially since one of the writer’s attacks is unfounded. (Sorry, Alan, it’s correct to describe a breast as “heaving;” breasts, like chests, heave when the owner is stressed or excited.) And if anyone is unable to cast stones at bad writing, it would be the poet who penned numerous doggerel-lines like this one from PROMETHEA #12:

“Around and round the fable goes,

“Eternal like Ouroboros.”

In the end I remain ambivalent about PROMETHEA. It certainly does have mythic content, though in some cases the intellectual conceits rein in some of his more inspired moments. His most mythic line, and the one most in tune with his concerns, interprets the Biblical pairing of “doves and serpents” as the tension between the serpentine desire to rise and climb in the struggle for life, versus the sacrificial bird’s descent into death for some greater cause than life. If every one of Moore’s lines ventured that deep, I’d be able to talk about him in the same breath as Melville and Hawthorne.

MYTHCOMICS: "AND THERE WILL BE WORLDS ANEW" (DOCTOR STRANGE ANNUAL #1, 1976)

Since its inception, Marvel’s DOCTOR STRANGE has been such a triumph of visual design that a fair number of quality artists—Colan, Rogers, Starlin, and a host of others—sought to play baroque games of form and shape in the Sanctum That Ditko Drew. That said, though Ditko’s visual rendition of the doctor’s very strange worlds remains unsurpassed, the feature’s scripting was usually not quite as distinguished. Thus, though I’ve argued for the mythic depth of many tales from both of STRANGE’s co-creators Steve Ditko and Stan Lee, I’ve found little complexity in the Lee-Ditko stoiies of the “master of the mystic arts.” It’s been suggested that one of the two creators took some inspiration from the sixties bestsellers of alleged Tibetan monk T. Lobsang Rampa, insofar as those books introduced Western readers to complex concepts (however borrowed) of Tibetan sorcery. But if Rampa was the proximate source for DOCTOR STRANGE, neither Ditko nor Lee pursued any other aspects of esoteric tradition, Eastern or Western. While I would not have wanted to see the creativity of the feature straight-jacketed by adherence to occult doctrine—a failing of Steve Englehart’s version of the character— some metaphysical motifs might have kept the feature from having been so dominated by two principal plots: either Doc Strange goes to some alien dimension to fight tyrannical rulers there, or he defends Earth from being invaded by such extradimensional forces.

“And There Will be Worlds Anew” was ostensibly the sole creation of artist P. Craig Russell (more on that matter later), and there’s no more esoteric tradition in either his art or script than in most other adventures of Marvel’s Sorcerer Supreme. However, Russell does pattern his stand-alone story on a metaphysical motif common to Western art: the close association of Beauty and Death. Many Russell works make no bones about his narrative inspirations, often adapted from or patterned after famous (and public-domain) operas like PELLEAS AND MELISANDE and Wagner’s RING continuity. In re-reading ‘Worlds,” I didn’t pin down any specific narratives on which Russell might have modeled his tale, though I did think of Poe’s little-known story “The Island of the Fay,” in which the main character fantasizes seeing the same scene from two viewpoints: a beautiful faerie-bower and a desolate wasteland.

For the first eight pages, “Worlds” isn’t much different from the average Doctor Strange story. Brooding in his domicile after a quarrel with his lover Clea, the magician receives tidings that she’s been kidnapped by an unknown entity. The hero seeks out “the Temple of Man,” which is apparently mainly a big old occult library. Strange’s characterization carries more currents of self-doubt than is usual, but it’s not significantly different from the Strange of more formulaic stories. And after the magician’s quest takes him to a never-visited dimension called Phaseworld, his first action is to engage in battle with the dimension’s ruler Lectra, much as the doctor would in many previous adventures. Lectra only wins the conflict by a standard villain-trope: she shows the hero an image of his beloved in captivity, and he’s forced to surrender to preserve Clea’s life.

However, with the standard Marvel pyrotechnics out of the way, Russell then devotes the remainder of “Worlds” to portraying the beauties of Phaseworld. The two mages set out for Lectra’s home city, Allandra, transported across “the currents of space” (and a relatively mundane-looking ocean) in a mystical ship. On the way a sea serpent attacks, and Strange wounds the creature before Lectra can explain that the beast is meant to guide them through stormy seas. Lectra thus gets to strut her stuff by forcing the storms to cease, conjuring up the Biblical motif. Once the seas are calm, the complex golden city of Allandra rises from the depths.

Russell makes Allandra a true faery-dwelling, all spires and minarets, with no indication that it was ever meant to be lived in. Up to this point Strange has seen no sentient beings except Lectra and a ship-crew of undead sailors. But the city has even fewer signs of life, causing Strange to think, “It is magnificence itself, a city of floating form and sculpture. And yet, beneath the fascination, I sense death.”

Once the two sorcerers arrive at the palace, Lectra outlines her plan to make Strange her consort. She doesn’t have the usual motive of wanting to spawn offspring, though, for her purpose is to meld her sorcerous powers with those of the hero in order to preserve Allandra from doom. She attributes the decay of her world to her sister Phaydra, who then makes an appearance, and the latter remains silent in contrast to Lectra’s volubility. 

However, the silent woman keeps company with a type of bird almost iconic in ballet and opera: a lovely white swan. The swan, name of Tempus, is able to speak for Phaydra, accusing Lectra of beginning their world’s doom by usurping the throne for “vainglorious lusts.” The two sisters battle magically. Strange interrupts the fight, wanting nothing but his missing beloved. The swan metamorphoses into an angel-winged man, and reveals that Clea was never Lectra’s prisoner. The revelation causes Lectra to hurl a spell at Tempus, but when he deflects, her magic destroys a “soul mirror,” leading to the deaths of both sisters and the world of Allandra. Strange alone escapes and returns to his own world.

The conjoined but opposing natures of the sisters is the dominant theme here, though only once does Russell gloss those natures, having the hunky swan-stud state that Lectra “possesses the evil of the mind” while Phaydra “holds the truth and good of the heart.” I’d like to say that this interpretation is supported by the Classical Greek names Russell invokes, but his characters don’t parallel in any meaningful way the stories told, respectively, of Classical Electra and Classical Phaedra. My best guess is that in the story of Electra, she represents Thanatos, since she’s willing to sacrifice Orestes so that their mutual father is avenged, while Phaedra is Eros, given that her passion for her stepson would’ve harmed no one had it not been forestalled by the priggishness of Hippolytus. But again—just a guess.

The original story appears with both scripting and co-plotting credits for Marv Wolfman, but in a COMICS JOURNAL interview Russell denied that Wolfman had done anything but provide dialogue. Many years later Russell persuaded Marvel to re-publish the story with his revisions to the art and the script, and as I have not read this version I cannot comment. Still, Russell’s art nouveau approach to the master magician was at least an improvement on the character’s generally-neglected metaphysical potential.

MYTHCOMICS: "ODDBALL ODYSSEY" (UNCLE SCROOGE #40, 1963), "FOR OLD DIME'S SAKE" (UNCLE SCROOGE #43, 1963)

One of the more interesting characters introduced in Carl Barks's UNCLE SCROOGE stories was the sorceress Magica De Spell.

In this essay Don Rosa opined that "Barks... seemed to really disdain the use of a character with occult powers." I agree that this seems to be the way the villainess started out. In her first appearance (UNCLE SCROOGE #36, 1961), Magica appears at Scrooge's door, billing herself as a "sorceress" and asking to buy one of his dimes for a dollar. Scrooge, though laughing up his sleeve at the idea of a modern-day sorceress, takes her up on the offer, but mistakenly lets her take his "Number One Dime," the first dime he ever earned, and thus the foundation of his fortune. (Barks gets good comic mileage out of the rich duck's scorn for folkloric beliefs, only to reveal his own superstitions.)

For the rest of the story, Scrooge and his perpetual allies, nephew Donald and his three nephews, strive to get back the dime before Magica-- who is, interestingly enough, an Italian duck-witch, loosely patterned on Gina Lollobrigida-- plunges the Number One Dime into Mount Vesuvius, all to make the talisman into a "super amulet." In this tale and in Magica's next two appearances, the witch-lady shows no special powers, and can only defend herself with sleep-gas bombs. However, in the character's fourth appearance, Magica gains control of the wand of the ancient witch Circe, and from then on, Magica assumed the persona of a mystical powerhouse. Though Barks did not write/draw many Magica stories, it was this version of the villain that became enshrined in later comics and cartoons-- and, contrary to Rosa, I believe that Barks re-worked her to make her more "occult" so that she would prove a more formidable opponent.

"Oddball Odyssey" opens with Scrooge seeking out Donald and his three nephews to invite them to join him in seeking the treasure "that Ulysses took with him from the ruins of Troy." Scrooge's source of information is a letter written by a supposed descendant of the enchantress Circe, who claims that Ulysses left the treasure on her island. The three nephews observe that Scrooge seems enthralled by the idea of finding this mythical treasure, and that their uncle Donald, as soon as he catches the perfume on the letter, also becomes captivated with this grand quest. Once the nephews hear that the mysterious benefactor wants Scrooge to bring along his Number One Dime, they're sure that it's all a scheme of Magica De Spell. Unable to dissuade Scrooge and Donald from this exploit, the nephews go along on their one-sail boat all the way to some Mediterranean island.

The nephews' guess is confirmed when a disguised Magica tries to make Scrooge give up his dime in exchange for phony treasure. However, though the nephews rescue Scrooge, Magica's low-level con leads her to new heights. In her frustration, she kicks through a wall in the old temple where she's run the con, and breaks into a hidden room. There she finds the wand of Circe, and uses it to force the ducks to remain on the isle, just as the original enchantress did with Ulysses.

Magica also forces Scrooge to choose between his beloved dime and his beloved relations. Reluctantly, Scrooge accedes to the will of the sorceress.

Scrooge escapes being turned into an animal, but his relatives then carry the fight to Magica, using their various skills as animals-- Donald as "slow but steady" turtle, the nephews as pigs-- to thwart Magica's plan to melt down Number One.

Scrooge then shows up and manages to break the wand, thus returning his relations to normal. The ducks don't get detained on the island as long as Ulysses did, but their leavetaking is less dignified, since as they flee Magica tries to bean them with her phony treasure-trinkets.

Three issues later, though, Magica's back with a restored wand, and she evinces almost godlike powers. Scrooge's money bin is repeatedly assailed by lightning bolts and cyclone winds, and Scrooge explains to his relatives that Magica's still trying to acquire Old Number One.

For her part, Magica provides exposition for the reader about her great new powers, about having "scrounged secrets" from old temples and caves that have given her control over the elements. Most interestingly, Magica advances a fairly sophisticated theory for the origin of the Greek pantheon: "those gods were more likely live sorcerers than figments of ancient dreams." This theory allowed Barks to have his cake and eat it too: he doesn't have to show his witchy villain garnering power from either old gods or, for that matter, Satanic sources. Instead, it's implied that ordinary mortals can generate magic powers from study of the universe's secrets, which is certainly an odd thing to find in a Disney comic book of the period.

Magica journeys to Duckburg and makes more direct assaults on the money bin, but Scrooge counters her efforts with advanced technology. On top of this, one of Magica's assaults even makes Scrooge richer, thanks to the luck given him  by the dime.

At last Magica uses her wand's shape-changing power on herself, capturing Scrooge and becoming his double in order to gain access to the bin.

However, once again those smart little nephews suss out the deception. Scrooge intervenes as well, stealing back his dime from her, only to get a few painful "souvenirs" of his tilt with the witch.

Barks didn't use the character much longer, but these prove his best stories with Magica, in that they show a clever opposition between the days of modern-day science and the eras of ancient mysteries.

MYTHCOMICS: "THE SUMMONING" (IMAGINE #4, 1978)

The Lee-Ditko collaborations on DOCTOR STRANGE are justly celebrated as one of the comics-medium's best renditions of a "magician-hero." However, with the exception of the hero's origin, most of the stories are not complex enough to qualify as mythcomics. Aside from the creators' use of a few occult practices like that of astral travel and a few camouflaged deity-names ("Oshtur" in place of "Ishtar"), Lee and Ditko seem largely innocent of occult traditions.

Whatever the genesis of the Levitz-Ditko collaboration in IMAGINE #4, Ditko's "Doctor Strange" reputation surely contributed to the story's evolution. However, whereas the Marvel concept is principally an adventure-series with metaphysical content, "The Summoning" is right in a tradition I'll term "the metaphysical riddle." While the visuals of "Summoning" are as replete as the "Doctor Strange" feature with weird magical designs, Levitz's dialogue and captions reflect a transparent familiarity with the enigmatic language found in sections of the Old and New Testament.

The tale begins by focusing on a solitary male character in some abstract dimension. He stands within a room "that exists, or doesn't." The captions establish that he has a name, though within the scope of the story, that name is never divulged. I will style him as "the First," since one of Levitz's first lines states that "It is enough that he was the first, and will ever be the last," which seems to be the author's reworking of Revelation 22:13, in which Jesus says, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End." The First then leaves his room, having apparently received a summons, even though the captions are ambivalent about whether or not he can be summoned.

In contrast to the First's abstract cosmos, the remainder of the story takes place on an alien but "real" world. On that unnamed planet, three wizards descend to a lonely glade. None of these characters-- who also appear on Ditko's cover to IMAGINE #4-- are named, so I can only distinguish them by appearance: as "Old Male Wizard," "Young Male Wizard," and "Female Wizard."

The three have come to the planet-- their homeworld, now no more than a "desolate sphere"-- in order to summon the First. However, though they agree to pool their powers in summoning the First, each wizard has a different wish that he or she wishes the First to fulfill. Their dialogue establishes that they are all concerned with doing something to correct the status of their homeworld, which has fallen into chaos thanks to the magic used by the now-vanished populace to make "this world into our image" (presumably an act of hubris, given the phrase's resemblance to God's creation of man). Old Male Wizard wants the dead planet to be turned into a monument to the folly of its inhabitants. Young Male Wizard wants the First to rekindle life upon the world. Female Wizard does not want a race identical to her own to thrive once more, since her race destroyed itself, but she does want to make it possible for the "children of the stars," i.e., alien visitors, to colonize the world. Having stated their purposes and their disagreements, the wizards depart the glade to replenish their energies, leaving behind a solitary tree, somewhat scorched by their magical incantation.

The First shows up in their absence, and begins examining the world through his mystic senses. The Young Male Wizard shows up, and the First tells him that he plans to "see what gifts this world can bear." Beyond that, the First will not explain himself, or even reveal whether or not he was truly summoned by any of the fractious wizards. Young Male Wizard attacks the First with his magic, trying to compel the otherworldy being into obedience. The First easily repels the wizard's attack with a weapon that looks like a shepherd's crook, and then he disintegrates the wizard, whose "demolished cells" continue to drift about the glade like fairy-dust.

The Female Wizard appears, and again, the First will not disclose whether or not he will fulfill her desires, giving her more double-talk like, "All things are possible, and that is all that matters," The lady sorcerer immolates herself, and in so doing creates a beacon of light, though it's unclear as to whether she did so purposefully.

The Old Male Wizard then arrives, and confidently observes that since the First has not fulfilled the requests of the other two, the First must have manifested in order to fulfill the old man's desire for a planetary monument. The wizard considers the failure of the other two as proof that "I was indeed te mightiest of the triad." The wizard barely acknowledges the First's circumlocutive speech, but almost immediately changes himself into a huge escarpment of rock, in effect becoming the "monument" he desired.

The First then comments on the "presumption" of the three dead wizards, and reveals-- to the reader alone-- that he responded to another summons: that of the almost leafless tree in the glade. By indirectly causing the deaths of the three wizards, the First has annihilated the last of the world's human natives, and so the world is returned to the non-sentient flora and fauna. The First speculates that the three wizards' transformations may accomplish the goals they set for the world, but also says that he doubts that these possibilities will come to pass.

In conclusion, this is a fairly extreme look at the human sin of presumption, going much farther than any Judeo-Christian tradition. In effect, it's as if the First doesn't just "mark the sparrow's fall," but actively prefers the humble creature of nature-- a tree, rather than a bird-- over the vaulting ambitions of human beings.

ANATOMY OF A PSYCHO KILLER NARRATIVE PT .3

In Part 2, I attempted to better define the psycho-killer subgenre by contrasting two classes of monster: one whose roots are in psychological processes as modern culture understands them, and one in which the monster originates from processes allied with either archaic folklore and magic, or with innovations in science. However, it belatedly occurred to me that my distinction drew on one made by Stephen King in his 1981 essay-book DANSE MACABRE. Having realized this, I chose not to go back and reread the King passages on this subject, since it's probable that I'd deviate from his theory in any case. In this 2013 review of several CHILDREN OF THE CORN films, I said:

In his nonfiction work DANSE MACABRE, Stephen King made a distinction between "inside horror," dealing with the sort of horror stemming from human motivations, and "outside horror," dealing with horror stemming from the nonhuman.  

Without implicating Stephen King further in my own theorizing, suffice to say that for me, "outside horror"-- or any comparable fictional affect, for that matter-- is based on human perceptions of nonhuman forces or entities. These perceptions include discovering the nature of the nonhuman, which can only be comprehended through one of two cultural concepts. If it's something that seems to hearken back to the earliest times of humankind, it's "magic." If it's something that is better allied to the advance of current human knowledge, then it aligns with the cultural concept of "science." In fiction the concept of magic give rise to such forms as "high fantasy" and 'supernatural fiction," for which there is no handy portmanteau term, while the concept of science has given rise to two non-identical portmanteaus: "science fiction" and "speculative fiction."

Now, based on these brief descriptions, one might expect everything in the latter cultural concept, "science," to also align with the concept of modernity. However, in the history of literature both "fantasy" and "science fiction" have been traditionally rejected by critics who claimed to represent the spirit of modernity, ranging from Edmund Wilson to Theodor Adorno. My interpretation of this phenomenon is that the apostles of modernity emphasize the status quo of current existence to such an extent that anything that either "goes back" or "goes forward" is often rejected out of hand. Thus, even though the concept of science has proven vital in modernity's rejection of the concept of magic, the apostles must reject fiction about science that has not happened yet just as much as they reject fiction about magical forces and entities.

I mentioned in Part 2 that in the domain of cinema, the most common iteration of the psycho-killer monster is a human being whose evil stems from his psychological motivations. Further, I asserted that most films about such monsters generally pursued either a naturalistic or an uncanny phenomenality. However, there are a few monsters who have marvelous aspects, even though I find that these do not explain their evil, as Dracula's evil is explained by the folkloric tradition of vampirism. The most common form of the marvelous psycho-killer is usually a revenant of some kind. Freddy Krueger is the most famous ghostly killer, though sometimes one sees the body rather than the soul survive death, as with the Maniac Cop--

And "Uncle Sam" from the 1996 video of the same name.

And then there are also psycho-killers whose spirits become embodied in nonhuman objects, like the celebrated Chucky.

Occasionally marvelous psycho-killers don't technically die, but are possessed by unfathomable forces that make it impossible to kill them, as with Michael Myers--

While Jason Voorhees is noteworthy for starting out as an uncanny psycho-killer who graduated to marvelous status once his producers decided it was just too complicated to revive him the old way.

What all of these marvelous psychos have in common is that there's usually very little expatiation on the "rules" that make their existence possible, in contradistinction to the type of rule-based narratives one finds in fantasy and science fiction. Again, the aberrant psychology of the psycho-killer, the thing that makes him kill and kill again, is the main feature of these films. I would say this probably applies to psycho-killer fiction in general, but can't claim to be deeply read in the history of prose psychos.

It's also noteworthy that when ordinary humans have to battle marvelous psycho-killers, only rarely do they use any rule-based strategy. The Dream Warriors of the third Freddy Krueger film articulate some very vague rules about forming "dream bodies," but one simply doesn't see a strong emphasis on such abstractions.

Part 4 coming up next.

MYTHCOMICS: "DADDY LOST HIS HEAD" (VAULT OF HORROR #19, 1951)

In one of my old articles I don't wish to look up right now, I cited EC's 1953 story "Foul Play" as a mythic story, purely because of its imaginative-- if extremely improbable-- gore-met conclusion. These days, though, I'd dismiss the tale as something of a one-trick pony, at least in symbolic terms.

These days I believe mythcomics ought to suggest a greater play with symbolism than many of the better-loved EC stories do, and thus I find that VAULT OF HORROR #19 yields one such story.

"Daddy Lost His Head" doesn't seem to have been one of the more lauded EC-tales, nor did it earn the opprobrium that Frederic Wertham devoted to similar stories in which nasty adults got their comeuppance. Possibly the story lacked a certain impact because a young child deals out the punishment in all innocence, rather than, say, plotting to do away with Mommy and Daddy. Yet, given that "Daddy" was created entirely by male authors in a mostly-male bullpen, it shows a certain pro-feminist outlook.

Kathy is a doe-eyed eight-year old whose real father is long deceased and whose sickly mother married what the opening caption calls a "mean old stepfather." Kathy is first seen weeping because her stepfather Martin Blackson had just given her a beating, though the story never directly depicts corporal violence.

In a rapid-fire exchange between Martin and his wife, he's given a motivation for his hatred of his stepchild: Kathy resembles her original father, and her presence constantly mocks Martin's status with his wife. "I know you never loved me-- that you only married me for security!" The sickly wife doesn't deny this state of affairs. Way to encourage his wrath against your daughter, Mom!

Fortunately the weakling wife isn't the only representation of femininity around. The Blacksons' next door neighbor is an elderly woman with the coy name of "Mrs. Thaumaturge" (Greek for "miracle worker.") Martin doesn't like his neighbor any more than he likes his wife or stepdaughter, and he's quick to accuse her of being a witch, if only to subject Kathy to greater psychological terror. Kathy is thus caught between being curious about the old woman and being scared that, as Martin says, "She'll bake you... in her oven..." Writer Al Feldstein probably didn't mean the reader to assume that Martin seriously believed that his neighbor was a witch. Still, the mean stepfather's evocation of the cannibal crone from "Hansel and Gretel" turns out to be the key to his undoing-- especially when one remembers that the crone of the old tale was also something of a kitchen-witch.

The mother has another attack of her unspecified illness, and passes from this world, leaving Kathy entirely in the hands of the man who hates her. But providentially Mrs. Thaumaturge reaches out to Kathy, and makes her a special doll, made out of some sort of candy, and given a slight resemblance to the mean stepfather. (The colorist makes it look like chocolate.) Because the lonely girl becomes engrossed in playing with her new toy, she fails to do her chores. Martin sends her to bed without supper-- and in so doing, sets himself up for his timely fate. Kathy is so hungry that she can't resist biting off her doll's hand-- at which point, Martin just happens to be using a wood-saw, and well--

And then comes the typical EC "just desserts"-- for once, using a real dessert.

I won't waste a lot of time with Freudian noodlings about the equivalence of beheadings and castrations, though I would venture that such equivalences were much in the cultural air around 1951. But I rather like the empowering wrap-up proffered by the Crypt-Keeper, where the ghoul tells the reader that Mrs. Thaumaturge adopted the girl, and is "giving Kathy flying lessons-- on a broom!"

Though there's some reference to fetish-doll magic here, there's no real metaphysical symbolism of any importance. But when you've got the psychological chutzhpah of a little girl biting off the head of her bad daddy-- who needs metaphysics?

MYTHCOMICS: "DANCE WITH THE DEVIL, MY RED-EYED SON" (SON OF SATAN #8. 1977)

“Son of Satan” may well be the oddest comic-book title to host any sort of Christmas story, much less one with an impressive level of mythicity.

To be sure, the  “Son of Satan” feature was always centered upon the creation of a pop-cultural Satan-mythology, as opposed to delving into purely Christian tropes. A fannish anecdote claimed that once Marvel Comics began to pursue horror-themed features in the early 1970s, Stan Lee noticed all the “Satan” films in the movie-houses and suggested the idea of a series about the Big Bad Devil himself. Though comics had sometimes dealt with Satanic emissaries as main characters—notably, Timely Comics’ original “Black Widow”—a title starring Satan himself probably would have proved an epic fail.  The follow-up idea-- that of a “son of Satan”-- at least allowed for the main character to maintain some reader-sympathy. To be sure, the origin-story for Daimon Hellstrom—the offspring of the Devil and a mortal woman—was badly drawn and badly written. Yet this ignoble beginning didn’t keep “Rosemary’s Superhero Exorcist” from developing a fairly intelligent hero-mythos of his own, particularly through the efforts of writers Steve Gerber and John Warner. Marvel’s editorship didn’t allow the use of many Judeo-Christian concepts beyond the name of the Devil himself, so the writers tended to employ names and images taken from paganism or ceremonial magick. The one major exception is the last issue of the original “Son of Satan” title, ”Dance with the Devil.” This is a Christmas story only in that it takes place on Christmas Eve—“the night Lord Satan sleeps,” as one of the Devil’s minions helpfully informs us.

“Dance,” the letters-page of SOS #8 tells us, was a stand-alone inventory story assembled over a year before its publication, against the possibility that someone would miss a deadline in the ongoing continuity. At a 1990s convention I asked Russ Heath for any memories of the story, but he didn’t seem to remember much; not even the way he had artfully emulated, for his portrait of Marvel’s hell, the paintings of the 16^th-century artist Hieoronymus Bosch. Based on that conversation, I speculate that the main plot for “Dance” came from writer Bill Mantlo. Of course, since the two of them would almost certainly have been working “Marvel-style,” Heath was probably responsible for all of the layouts and dramatic pacing.

One advantage of “Dance” is that because it stands independent of any ongoing storylines. There’s an indirect reference to Daimon’s then-current love-interest, probably inserted by an editor. But aside from that reference, the story concerns nothing but Daimon’s relationship with his devilish dad, and with the image, though not the reality, of his mother, who was deceased and “out of the picture” when the series began. Daimon’s “daddy issues” are a major aspect of the ongoing series, but “Dance” is the only 1970s story that deals with the character’s “mommy issues.”

The entire adventure takes place within the dream of sleeping Satan, though apparently his trident-toting son is physically drawn into it, and into a dream-version of Hell itself. At times Daimon himself is swept along from one setting to another, as if he is the dreamer, thus suggesting a similitude between the hero and the father he rejects. However, the first entity Daimon encounters is a robed figure, the one who has summoned him into the dream. Daimon gets pissed and zaps the summoner with “soulfire” from his trident-weapon. The robed individual removes her cowl and shows herself to be his mother, whom Daimon has never seen, in any form, since her passing from the mortal coil. The cowled woman-- who is never called by the name given her in the hero's origin--accuses her son of having sinned by “aspiring to humanity,” and alludes to her own sin—the sin of lust—for having cohabited with the Devil. Daimon promptly faints—a fairly typical response to the association of the ideas “mother” and “lust.”

Waking, Daimon finds himself in the Boschian version of Hell, which horrifies him far more profoundly than any of the cut-rate Dante-scapes that he’s beheld in other Marvel visits to the inferno. An unnamed young beauty appears as his guide, and tries to persuade Daimon that he ought to take over Hell while his father sleeps, and become a more merciful overlord to Hell’s residents. (Whether dreaming-Satan himself is manipulating the female guide is never made clear.) Of the many demons Daimon sees, he’s only introduced to two of them: the witch-queen Morgane Le Fay and her son Mordred. These characters are indubitably the most famous mother-and-son pairing in Arthurian narratives, and thus provide an implicit analogue to Daimon and his own mother. Mordred, of all the condemned in hell, is not in any way malformed, but Morgane is, having been stripped of her beauty by Satan (whom Morgane curiously calls “Lucifer”). Morgane evinces some off the guide-woman’s hostility to Satan as well, and then the guide persuades Daimon to dance with her (hence the title). She kisses him and tries to make him pledge himself to them—but he holds off long enough to see her beauty dissolve into the face of a skull. Daimon flings her away and all of the demons attack him, trying to defeat him with carnage once cajolery has failed (as Stan Lee more or less said elsewhere).

A blow on the head allows for another dream-transition, and Daimon winds up in a vaguely Middle Eastern world. Joining a pilgrimage of robed people, he enters a city, where a guide tells him that “events are enacted in endless repeat.”  Inside the city, Daimon sees a man wearing a crown of thorns, being rousted by Roman-looking soldiers, but this man has Daimon’s own face. While the real Daimon watches, the crowned figure breaks his bonds, becomes a tailed red demon and assails the people with fiery chaos.

Daimon faints again, and wakes in a chamber with a medieval tapestry. Though he never comments on his birth having been a parody of the Immaculate Conception, he’s shaken to have seen “himself” cast in a demonic parody of the Passion. At this moment, he notices the figure of a unicorn in the tapestry—and sees that the unicorn has the face of a woman, with her tongue lolling lustfully out—and that it’s the face of his mother. Then two more figures appear in the chamber: Daimon’s devil-father, and his unnamed mother, lustfully caressing her demon lover. Daimon’s spirit almost succumbs to the notion that if his mother was as purely evil as his father, then he too must be purely evil. But with the eleventh hour he throws off the deceptions of Satan’s dream, and he sets the dreamworld on fire. This action apparently “exorcises” Daimon himself back to the real world, while in the “real Hell,” Satan awakes from his dream. A minion tells Satan that “Christmas Eve is past,” ending what the female guide has called “the madness above.” One might think that Christmas Day, rather than Christmas Eve, would be the last moment before “humanity is returned to its normal posture of petty evils and greed.” But maybe Mantlo just liked the image of Satan’s enforced sleep ending with the coming of the day, which is certainly a common enough trope elsewhere.

I deem this a metaphysical myth in part because it dwells upon such Judeo-Christian concepts as sin and damnation. But it can also be read as a psychological myth with heavy indebtedness to Oedipal wreckage. True, the main conflict throughout the story is still centered on Satan’s attempt, whether conscious or subconscious, to suborn his rebellious son. Still, the Devil’s dream centers not upon male posturing, but upon the idea of female desire, which is made synonymous with the corruptions of the flesh. It doesn’t matter whether Heath or Mantlo had the idea of inverting the traditional association between the unicorn and the Christian virtue of virginity. What matters is that even though the Son of Satan rejects the attempt to recast his “saintly mother” as a slut, the reader is given the chance to meditate on the truth-value of one of the aphorisms from Satan’s dream:

“Purity, Daimon, may exist both in its light—and dark forms.” 

WITCH SLAP PT. 2

OK, on to my reaction to Curt Purcell's reaction to the TRUE BLOOD mini-controversy.

Curt advised me to be cautious as to how I represented his views here, which is certainly his prerogative. I can't think of any better way to do that then to do a line-by-line refutation.

From this 8-18-11 post:

Is there anything more stupid than "Wiccans" getting all pissy and offended at fictional depictions of witches?

Actually I can think of several thousand things. The first thousand all belong to the American Republic Party.

In WITCH SLAP PT. 1 I stated that there were sound and unsound ways to protest fictional depictions of any group, religious or otherwise. The particular complaint that started this-- a modern Wiccan/witch's complaint that TRUE BLOOD misrepresented the way witches do magic-- was one about which I have reservations, though it rated a little higher with me that the guy who got torqued at Charlie Sheen's use of the word "warlock."

Nevertheless, I also asserted that there were some fictional depictions whose negativity deserved sanction. Except under the cover of satire, no contemporary television show could get away with asserting that the old medieval canard that Jews eat Christian children. In essence society regards this sort of misrepresentation as the equivalent of "hate speech," in large part because the representation may incite violence against the minority.

Now, no one is going to go on a literal witch-hunt because of a warlock who curses Charlie Sheen. However, not a few Christians still abide by the fallacy (also medieval in origin) that witches are Satanists, a common motif found in fiction. I certainly don't think Wiccans are incorrect, much less stupid, to protest such depictions, because they have just as potential to incite violence against a minority.

If I understand correctly, the term and concept have traditionally been employed as attempts to explain misfortunes like disease, infertility, crops not growing, etc., by blaming/scapegoating someone, and as pretexts for persecution.

This is a partial truth. Many tribal societies, even those outside the mainstream of Judeo-Christian-Islamic influence, fear witches for this reason. However, most of the proselytizing religions persecute witches purely because they don't adhere to the outlooks of said religions. In Exodus 22, we encounter at verse 18 the famous:

"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"

And two verses down, we have:

“Whoever sacrifices to any god other than the LORD must be destroyed."

So depictions of someone using magical powers malignantly would be correct usage, since that's how this mythical figure was imagined.

First of all, the TRUE BLOOD complaint is not about the depiction of witchcraft as so much "malignant" as "irresponsible," a point one can only validate if one subscribes to the complainant's beliefs about magic. Second, it's debatable as to whether ALL archaic depictions of witches come down to pure malignancy, and even if they were, most if not all of these depictions would be informed by the animus of a dominant, opposed ethos. Therefore, there's no viable rationale for saying that modern witches should be defined by this negative archetype, any more than saying that real Jews must be baby-eaters.

It's not like there was, historically, some actual oppressed religious minority corresponding to the term.

Also debatable. In 1921 Margaret Murray's THE WITCH-CULT IN WESTERN EUROPE posited that the "Satanist witches" persecuted during the medieval era were actually the underground remnants of the European paganism displaced by organized Christianity. And although Murray's evidence was widely criticized, some researchers have found support for Murray's basic thesis through more rigorous investigation, notably Carlo Ginzburg in his 1989 book ECSTACIES.

Now, as I stated on GROOVY HORROR, one may posit that all or most of this authentic pagan tradition was gone by the 20th century, and that no modern witches have any *literal/historical* connection to that "oppressed religious minority." However, even if one agrees to this view, I still have problems with Curt's final summation:

So it's not like this silly New Age "spirituality" that got made up within the last half-century is actually carrying on any such tradition. The fact that these people decided to call themselves that doesn't give them any real standing to dictate how witches should be portrayed in fiction, nor to be offended by portrayals that don't meet their approval.

Do silly witches and New Agers exist? I've affirmed as much above. However, one can find fools in any belief-system, including the sort of intransigent materialism I've criticized in PSYCHIC, FAIRLY. It's quite possible that every modern witch today is entirely the result of a faux Romantic-style revival, on a par with William Morris' attempt to revive medievalism.

But that in itself does not invalidate the religion. I said that there might be no literal/historical connection, but that does not mean that there can be no spiritual connection. Curt suggests that it may be considered "correct usage" for fiction to subscribe to the negative "mythical figure" of the witch. I don't deny the existence of this negative archetype but I think that even had there never been a single recorded positive archetype of the figure, modern witches would still be justified to come up with their own take on the figure, to make a positive archetype of their own.

WITCH SLAP PT. 1

Curt Purcell recently did a blogpost reacting to this news-item,
"Wiccans are Displeased with TRUE BLOOD." I'll probably react to his reaction in another post, but for now I'll confine myself to the substance of this complaint, in which one practicing Wiccan is quoted as disliking the HBO show's depiction of a fictional witch, Marnie Stonebrook:

I'm absolutely disappointed with the portrayal of Marnie. When Marnie gives up her 'power within,' which is a witch's ability to practice the craft without harming others, it allows possession by Antonia who becomes the controlling entity. Marnie lets it happen. It's unconscionable a witch would act this way.

And also:

Since the new season of 'True Blood' began, I've seen an increase in new members who are in their teens and may be easily impressed by Marnie's display of power. It's dangerous when viewers think witchcraft, as Marnie does it, is so easy. For this reason she's a bad example.

Before analyzing the substance of this complaint, I'll state that I'm not acquainted with how this particular fictional witch is or isn't portrayed. I've watched the first season of TRUE BLOOD on disc and was so under-impressed that I thought of writing a blogpost entitled "True Blah." I don't think there was a witch in the episodes I watched, unless she was so unmemorable that I forgot her.

It goes without saying that there exist both sound and unsound ways to critique fiction's depiction of factions, whether of race, creed or religion-- though I'll confine myself to religion here.

The most reputable complaint is the argument from consensual fact. If a TV show depicts a Buddhist ritual in which the high priest pounds on a tom-tom, and a verifiable Buddhist high priest calls in to say, "We don't do that," then the TV show is at fault for sloppy research. In this particular example the fallacious portrait probably doesn't cause any literal harm, especially given that the viewers of the TV show probably don't take the program as a depiction of reality in the first place.

It is certainly possible to imagine, though, to imagine more offensive representations that would earn the program a lot more censure-- say, showing a synagogue holding a barbecue whose featured delicacy is "Christian baby-back ribs." The producer who allowed this level of distortion probably wouldn't work in that town again (one hopes).

The complainant here (who seems to have taken her witch-name from the HEAVY METAL movie, incidentally) doesn't quite have this level of consensual fact on which to draw. She claims that TRUE BLOOD's Marnie Stonebrook is practicing her magic in a way that is dangerous for young up-and-coming adepts. The immediate objection-- necessarily assuming that the complainant is absolutely sincere in her protest-- is that witch-cults in the U.S. are something less than centrally organized. Even if one had the utmost sympathy for the stereotyping and/or victimization of witches in modern American culture, it strains all credulity that any single witch could speak for all witches, or even all American witches.

I like to think I can understand why a modern witch would be no less aggrieved than the imagined Buddhist high priest to see a religious ritual misrepresented. Nevertheless, despite the complainant's declaration of serious consequences, she might have considered that to the vast majority of TRUE BLOOD's audience, the inaccuracy doesn't even register, or affect anyone's beliefs for or against Wiccans.

Similarly, the fear that The Kids Might Get the Wrong Ideas from any fictional production is a reactionary notion dating back to Plato's REPUBLIC. It remains wrong in most if not all applications-- see the "baby-back ribs" scenario for a counter-example-- whether the subject addressed is magical rituals or interracial dating.

The complainant may be utterly sincere in believing that somewhere, some young ritualist is going to fuck up his life by doing Bad Mojo. But regardless as to the reality of magic per se-- anyone who patterns any aspect of his or her life after a television show is looking to get kicked in the teeth by SOME aspect of reality.