MYTHCOMICS: JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE DARKSEID WAR (2015-16)

 

In the thirty-something years since 1986’s CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, DC Comics has published many similar multi-feature crossovers, few of which have possessed any mythic content. But the subject of this essay—henceforth WAR for short—not only achieves such symbolic amplitude but does so through some inventive riffing on many of the myth-tropes of CRISIS. (Note: I’m not reviewing here any tie-ins to this Justice League series.)

The purpose of the 1986 CRISIS was not purely artistic, for its purpose was to merge the many parallel worlds of the diverse DC universe into one cosmos, patently emulating the successful business model of Marvel Comics. As I observed in my CRISIS review, the authors did so by interweaving two loosely related concepts from DC’s Silver Age. The first was the idea of parallel Earths in which the archetypes of DC heroes took on somewhat different configurations—a Flash named Jay Garrick on one Earth but named Barry Allen on another, or a world where all the characters who were heroes in the Justice League became instead a group of criminals called “the Crime Syndicate.” The second was the notion of universes that were made either of “positive matter” or of “negative anti-matter.” The Earths of the Justice League and all their congeners fit into the positive universe, while the negative universe was represented only by the irredeemably warped world of Qward. In CRISIS, the positive universe gave birth to a protective super-being, the Monitor, while the negative continuum spawned the Anti-Monitor, an entity obsessed with annihilating all other realities (and thus serving the purpose of the authors). It’s interesting that DC’s way of getting rid of all the unmanageable doppelgangers from their company’s long history was to spawn a pair of cosmic twins, though both are dead by the end of the series like the other troublesome duplicates. The authors also threw in at least one other new doppelganger: a good version of Lex Luthor, who also gives rise to a son, Alexander Junior, who took on something of a “secular savior” role by story’s end. In addition, the reordering of the DC cosmos gave the company the chance to debut brand new versions of Superman, Wonder Woman and others.

WAR was not such a reboot, but it followed in the wake of a 2011 crossover event in which the DC cosmos was once more re-arranged, this time to allow for the return of many of the alternate worlds, including (most prominently) that of the “Crime Syndicate” Earth. During that reboot, familiar franchises were once more rebooted, but only two are relevant to the WAR storyline. First, Wonder Woman no longer enjoyed an immaculate conception via clay statue, but became the offspring of the deity Zeus with Amazon mother Hippolyta. Second, Cyborg’s artificial body, originally the invention of the hero’s scientist-father, became interfused with the technology of the New Gods from the classic Jack Kirby series. Both the good and bad gods of that franchise—respectively from the worlds of New Genesis and of Apokolips—sat out the events of 1986’s CRISIS. In contrast, the new origin for Cyborg insured that the revised 2011 Justice League would be strongly linked to the New Gods sub-cosmos. To be sure, the New Genesis gods barely figure into WAR, except that one of their kindred becomes the hero Mister Miracle. In WAR most of the authorial attention goes to the mythos of Apokolips, to whose activities Cyborg becomes attuned. Aside from the modifications to Wonder Woman and Cyborg, the rest of the starring characters—Superman, Batman, the Flash, the Hal Jordan Green Lantern, Shazam, and Lex Luthor—are broadly recognizable. The newbie in their ranks is one Jessica Cruz, who bears a complicated relationship to the evil Green Lantern from the Crime Syndicate cosmos, which I’ll forbear to discuss here.

Johns wastes no time in doubling down, so to speak, on the presence of doppelgangers. A flashback reveals that on the night that Hippolyta birthed Princess Diana on the island Themiscyra, another Amazon, Myrina, produced yet another female child, but her father was Darkseid, more or less the obverse of Zeus’s role in the Wonder Woman cosmos. Myrina names her child Grail, referencing the mystic Celtic vessel that restores life, because the Amazon mother believes that Grail will save the universe from the evil of Darkseid. (This idea may owe something to the mythology of Achilles, a child whom oracles claimed would overthrow his father— which prophecy restrained the usually randy Zeus from having sex with Achilles’ mother.)

Just as Grail is deeply implicated in the New Gods mythos, so too is the new version of the Anti-Monitor. In Kirby’s original series, he includes the character Metron, a relentless quester after knowledge, who moves about the cosmos in his “Mobius Chair.” Kirby never implied that anyone but Metron constructed the miraculous mobile throne. In Johns’ world, Mobius is the mortal inventor of the chair, as well as an inhabitant of the Qwardian anti-matter universe. In addition to gifting Metron with the chair, Mobius duplicates the function of the Guardian Krona in CRISIS, being a man obsessed with peering into forbidden secrets. As the result of Mobius’ prying, he beholds the “anti-life equation”—another NEW GODS concept, now tied to the “anti-matter universe”—and is thus transformed into the Anti-Monitor. Some story extrinsic to WAR causes the newborn fiend to annihilate the Crime Syndicate world, and this will eventually lead to the surviving super-criminals of that world making common cause with the Justice League. However, in the early chapters the cosmic colossus doesn’t immediately rush out looking for new worlds to destroy. Grail is the agent who calls him into conflict with both the Justice League and with Darkseid, the father whom Grail wants to murder.

To make things even more complicated, throughout the story most of the heroes undergo assorted transformations into god-like beings—a tacit response to the many superhero fans (like me) who view superheroes as recapitulations of archaic myth-figures. Some transformations are merely functional in nature. Batman becomes bonded to the Mobius Chair because Johns needs one of the good guys to tap into the chair’s ability to endow the sitter with copious knowledge. More promisingly, the Flash becomes bonded to the Black Racer, Kirby’s “New God of death,” which plays into the fact that Flash is one of the heroes who dies during CRISIS. Johns’ best scripting deals with the quarrelsome team of Superman and Lex Luthor, who get teleported to Apokolips and have to work together, but not with very positive results. 

On top of all that, the main subplot with the Crime Syndicate, out to avenge themselves on the Anti-Monitor, involves their one female member giving birth to a sort of anti-savior. Said female, Superwoman, is an alternate-world mashup of both Wonder Woman and Lois Lane, and the father of her demon-kid is a nasty version of Alexander Luthor, who was a good guy in CRISIS.

Whew.

I’ll forbear to discuss the very involved denouement here. I’ve long been aware that Geoff Johns knows his DC history inside and out, but this is the first time I’ve been strongly impressed by his artful repourings of old wine into new bottles. Not everything works, of course. Near the beginning Johns tosses in references to Brainiac and to Aquaman that may relate to some extrinsic stories, but which have nothing to do with WAR. Also, the deific names Johns gives to the transformed characters are lame. Shazam becomes “the God of Gods”—why exactly?

But I do like other playful recastings of continuity points. Luthor, abandoned on Apokolips by an evil-ized Superman, is taken in by a group of anti-Darkseid rebels, and they’re led by a woman named Ardora. In the Silver Age this was the name of an alien woman who fell in love with Luthor, and it’s through contact with the new Ardora that Luthor usurps the destiny of his enemy Superman and becomes the potential savior of Apokolips. Johns even has the Crime Syndicate version of Superman mention a woman named Luma Lynai, who in the Silver Age was a potential lover for Superman, for all that she looked like an age-appropriate version of Supergirl, as well as not being in any way related to the Man of Steel.

I freely admit that only a continuity-hound would get much mythic impact out of this highly referential opus. But for those so invested, the game is definitely worth the candle.

CROSSING GODS

 As in "crossing guards," get it? Ah, well.

Thus far the only thing I've written on the interaction of deities from different mythoi is this section from COSMIC ALIGNMENT:

In conclusion, I will admit that full-fledged myths are harder than folk-tales to judge in terms of alignment. Suzanne Langer and others have noted that in mythology proper figures like gods and their monstrous antagonists often become set in their own "continuity," however often this or that detail may change. Yet some gods and heroes, theoretically in the same universe, never really cross paths, despite "continuities" like those of the Iliad or the Argonautica. Does it count as a crossover if Perseus and Jason, who never meet in the old myths, appear in the same story? I would not tend to consider it a crossover if some ordinary schmuck conjures up the goddess Venus. But Venus crossing over with the mythology of Satan would certainly be a different matter. More on these matters later, perhaps.

Before going into further discourse on the crossovers of gods, demigods, and other characters from myth proper, I want to re-emphasize my earlier statement that a given character does not accrue either stature or charisma just because he either assumes, or is bestowed with, the name of a mythic character. A quick example is the Two-Gun Kid villain Goliath, who was simply a big, strong man who'd acquired the nickname at some point.

Now, when dealing with a character who is supposed to be even a strong template deviation of a myth-character, that character possesses at least some minor charisma. In ACTION COMICS #320 (1965), Superman uses a time-travel device to draw three famous strongmen of myth into present-day Metropolis for some damned reason.

Writer Otto Binder doesn't make any effort to emulate more than superficial aspects of Atlas, Hercules and Samson, and he even gives all of them special powers that they didn't have in their original stories. (Two years later, Binder would show somewhat greater myth-fidelity in the three-part Zha-Vam story.) Yet the extra powers are Binder's clue to the reader that the three strongmen, who immediately start trying to take over Metropolis, are not from Earth's past, but from a parallel world where the trio were evildoers. Nevertheless, because even evil parallel-Earth versions participate in the charisma of the original innominate myths, these dumbbells have more charisma in their first appearance than, say, Brainiac does in his first appearance, or the aforementioned Goliath.

The same principle holds for the first adventure in which Marvel's version of Hercules appears in Thor's first annual, also in 1965. Had this version of Hercules only appeared once, he would still have a degree of innominate charisma because he's linked to the classical Greek hero, in contrast to some other first-time villain, such as the above-shown Radioactive Man. However, when Hercules begins to appear as a guest-star in various THOR tales, he doesn't accrue any more charismatic value than any other character making one or more return appearances. But once he begins to be used repeatedly, Marvel-Hercules makes a transition from an innominate figure to a nominative one. Successive writers may continue to draw on the myth of the archaic Hercules to gloss the exploits of Marvel-Hercules, but he's become nominative because readers can trace exactly where he began as a comics-character, and the allusion to the legendary past of the original myth-figure is not as significant.

During this period, Hercules is aligned with the mythos of Thor, so when he "crosses over" into a  mythos like that of the Hulk, he becomes even more firmly imbricated within the greater Marvel Universe. The icing is fully on the cake when the demigod becomes an Avenger, which is the first time Marvel-Hercules accrues the stature of a starring character. (I should note that Thor also becomes a nominative character as the creators elaborate his history apart from that of the archaic Thor, but the process is easier to illustrate with Marvel-Hercules.)

Given that Thor and Hercules become nominative characters rather quickly, they don't have as much of a "myth-crossover" aspect as my earlier post suggested one might find in the conflicting mythoi of Venus and the Son of Satan, if only because the latter character never makes another appearance. Innominate charisma tends to remain stationary in non-serial formats, such as the Neil Gaiman novel AMERICAN GODS. I can't speak for the streaming series-adaptation, which I've not seen. But the stand-alone novel would be high-charisma-- unlike any of the works I've discussed here-- because even though they may be gods in decline, they are supposed to be the real things, and Gaiman ups the charisma by showing intersections between mythoi as different as Odin and Anansi.

Kevin Hearne's novel HOUNDED also takes place in a world where all of the archaic gods still exist in modern times. The first book in this series, entitled "The Iron Druid Chronicles," focuses not on the gods but on Atticus, a druid who's become immortal enough to live into contemporary times. In the first novel, Atticus' mythos is almost entirely made up of Celtic deities, and since Atticus is Celtic himself, they are all aligned to him in a "Sub" relationship. One of the more entertaining allusions to gods from other mythoi is a reference to how a bunch of death-goddesses-- the Celtic Morrigan, the Nordic Valkyries, and the Hindu Kali-- allegedly hang out together. But since the meeting is merely talked about, there's no crossover-charisma. Hearne only works one myth-crossover into HOUNDED, and it's a minor one. Atticus's Celtic enemy Aengus Og makes common cause with a bunch of demons from the Judeo-Christian Hell, though the demons only appear for a few pages. In addition, when Aengus is slain he's claimed by a Christian myth-figure, the pale horseman of Revelation. That's not much myth-charisma to be had, but I imagine later books in the series will expand on Atticus's encounters with figures out of other myths-- though I expect them to be as lightweight as HOUNDED is.

NEAR MYTHS: "THE COMING OF THE YELLOW CLAW" (YELLOW CLAW #1, 1956)

 Following up on my post about "Marvel's" first Yellow Claw, I looked over the four issues devoted to the 1956 version, presumably the first Asian villain to get his own title at that particular company (previously "Timely," changed to "Atlas" in the 1950s). In the previous essay I speculated that it was probably Stan Lee who remembered the title of  the Sax Rohmer novel YELLOW CLAW and *possibly* from the Captain America story that re-used the name, which Lee edited whether he wrote it or not. This speculation is somewhat supported by an anecdote on this message board, where one poster claims that credited writer Al Feldstein did not brainstorm the 1956 Claw, but simply took the job as another assignment. It's also possible that Lee decided to center a title around the adventures of an Oriental mastermind because he'd heard that Rohmer's devil doctor was going to get his own syndicated TV show, THE ADVENTURES OF FU MANCHU, which would air in September 1956. YELLOW CLAW #1, dated October 1956, probably appeared on newsstands two or three months prior to that cover date.

Lee probably had the idea to emphasize the new character as a mysterioso figure whom hostile Chinese Communists attempted to unleash upon the democracies-- little knowing that the Claw, an immortal man and a master of strange powers, planned to dominate every government on Earth. Possibly Lee had read Rohmer's 1948 SHADOW OF FU MANCHU, in which the devil-doctor first established Fu's animus toward Communist China. Later post-1956 Rohmer novels included a few scenes in which Fu Manchu used the Communist Chinese for his own purposes-- though it would appear that the Yellow Claw got the idea first.

Since all of the Chinese characters in the story are colored yellow-- as well as being given realistic depictions by artist Joe Maneely-- there seems no particular reason for the main villain to be styled "yellow." The Claw is also drawn realistically, with no special emphasis on the longness and boniness of his fingers, as one sees in many other Asian villain-depictions. The story meanders somewhat as it sets up the intersection between the Claw, his grand-niece Suwan, and modern FBI agent Jimmy Woo, with whom Suwan falls in love.

The restrained depiction of Asian physical characteristics suggests that Lee, Feldstein and Maneely were consciously avoiding the old stereotypes, and the depiction of Jimmy Woo clinches the deal. Woo is to all intents and purposes a "regular American Joe" who just happens to be Asian, and to a small extent he represents a trope in which a modern Asian opposes the archaic evil of China, a trope which the MASTER OF KUNG FU comic mined so impressively.

Since the FU MANCHU show was not a great success, it's no surprise that YELLOW CLAW tanked by the following year. Neither Feldstein nor Maneely contributed to the last three issues; instead, Lee assigned Jack Kirby to both write and draw all of the Yellow Claw stories.  Kirby made precious little attempt to emulate either Sax Rohmer or even just generalized "Asian menace" stories. Instead, he simply used the villain as a conduit through which assorted wild and woolly sci-fi menaces manifested-- a giant Mongolian warrior (actually a robot), a naive alien called "UFO the Lightning Man," a microscopic army. These stories might be seen as precursors to Kirby's CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN, which had a similar orientation, but clicked better with readers. 

Next up: the Silver Age Claw.

MYTHCOMICS: "DAYS OF FUTURE PAST" (X-MEN #141-142, 1981)

 

It's a mark of my long-retired investment in the seventies X-MEN franchise that I can still recall the experience of reading the first pages of DAYS OF FUTURE PAST. 

A few months earlier, Chris Claremont and John Byrne had concluded the ambitious "Phoenix Saga," which, despite its tragic climax, also sported a couple tons of "sense of wonder" elements. Then came X-MEN #141, depicting how, thirty-six years later (than the comic book's cover date), all of America would be reduced to a doomed world bereft of wonders. In the future, the robotic mutant-hunters known as The Sentinels, whose potential had never really been tapped in their first stories. took control of the United States (at the very least) and killed all the Marvel superheroes and most of the X-Men. Only a tiny handful of the mutants survived, kept in power-dampening collars and dressed in jumpsuits designed to evoke the sufferings of real-life WWII Jews. DAYS OF FUTURE PAST addresses the desperate attempt of the survivors to cancel out their dreadful future. Not until re-reading DAYS, however, did I perceive one reason why this dystopian fantasy seemed so much better grounded in reality than dozens of others. 

The two issues are cover-dated January and February 1981, though the whole adventure as such is internally dated as occurring on "Friday, October 31, 1980... the final Friday of one of the closest, hardest-fought Presidential elections in recent memory." To be sure, since one might argue that Marvel-reality may not always line up with our reality, one can't be entirely sure that Claremont is talking about the 1980 victory of Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter. But even had Claremont wanted to address a real political situation, it's unlikely that any Marvel Comics editor, least of all Jim Shooter, would have allowed a Marvel writer to editorialize about a living political figure. That said, given the lag time between comic-book production and the comics' availability to customers, it's not impossible that Claremont plotted DAYS before he actually knew of Reagan's victory-- which may be a reason why, when the new President does appear in the story, he's only a shadowy figure with no name or distinguishing characteristics. In fact, DAYS might be Claremont's projection of what might happen if America went down "the wrong road" that most liberals of the time associated with the Republican Party.

From the conception of the Sentinels, they incarnated the idea of isolating a subgroup of human beings from the rest of humanity. This science-fiction motif was pointedly compared to the human history of racism and chauvinism by many comic-book readers and creators, not least Claremont himself. To my knowledge no one from 1976 to 1980 accused Ronald Reagan of wanting to impose some version of the Nuremberg Rules upon the United States, though at least one of his campaign speeches back in 1980 was accused of recrudescent racism. But it's still interesting that on the very day that the new President of Marvel-Earth was announced, a set of circumstances arise that will bring about the destruction of civil rights-- not only for mutants, but for all human beings.

In 2013, there are six surviving mutants. Five are older versions of Storm, Wolverine, Magneto (now crippled and out of the action), Colossus and Kitty-- now "Kate"-- Pryde. The sixth is a new character, a psychic named Rachel, whom Claremont will explore in great detail over the next decade. The X-survivors intend to erase their doleful era by using Rachel's mind-skills, projecting the consciousness of 2013 Kate to inhabit the body of 1980 Kitty. Then, rather than simply watching over Kate's comatose body to see what happens, Storm, Colossus, Wolverine and Rachel-- joined by the last surviving scion of the Fantastic Four, Franklin Richards-- plan a frontal attack upon the Sentinels.

The mind-transfer succeeds. Kate Pryde takes over Kitty's body and informs the X-Men that a new incarnation of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants is out to assassinate Senator Robert Kelley, a politician obsessed with legally restricting the activities of mutants. Kate informs the heroes that in her world, this murder doesn't cow humanity, as the Brotherhood intended. Instead, in 1984, a new President-- carefully unnamed-- approves the creation of a new set of Sentinels, who carry out their draconian plan to corral all mutants, which extends to keeping all humanity under control as well. Kate also asserts that the Sentinels in her era plan to extend their control to other countries, which will certainly bring about nuclear Armageddon. After overcoming a natural reluctance, the X-Men-- then consisting of Storm, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Colossus, Kitty and guest-star Angel-- zoom off to prevent the Brotherhood's dirty deed.

The battle of the X-heroes and the Evil Mutants isn't particularly mythic in itself, though it's in this narrative that Claremont and Byrne decided to give the ranks of the villains a makeover. The new roster includes only one old-time X-foe, The Blob, and debuts three new malcontents, Pyro, Avalanche, and the oracular Destiny. Lastly, Claremont re-purposes a character he created for the MS. MARVEL series, Mystique, as the new leader of the Brotherhood. Mystique's reasons for believing she can intimidate all of humanity with one assassination are not explored at all, possibly because Claremont, following up on a plot-thread introduced in a 1980 story, was preoccupied with suggesting a connection between Mystique and Nightcrawler. (Eventually she's revealed to be his long-lost mother, FWIW.) The heroes triumph, Kate departs the body of Kitty (who has no memory of the events). and Robert Kelley's life is spared. However, the concluding clincher is that the heroism of the X-Men means nothing to the obsessed politician. In a coda, Kelley is seen conferring with the President-elect-- as said before, given no name and depicted in shadow-- as the new President does what his 1984 successor originally did: authorizing a new series of Sentinels. 

The fact that 1980 present-day events are only partly rewritten may have been Claremont's rationale for not erasing the Sentinel-future from Marvel continuity. I don't remember what happens when Kate's mind returns to 2013, by which time the future-versions of Storm, Wolverine and Franklin Richards have all been slain-- though I have a feeling that the threat of nuclear doomsday somehow gets taken off the table. Unlucky 2013 has to continue, though, because Claremont has introduced the telepath Rachel for the purpose of having her time-travel back to Marvel-present. In due time it will be revealed that she comes by her psychic talent honestly, for she's the child of Cyclops and the recently-deceased Jean Grey a.k.a. Phoenix. For many years to come, Claremont will get a lot of mileage out of Rachel Summers, though DAYS is probably more notable for all the stories Claremont and other Marvel writers generate from Kelley's "Mutant Control Act," which will morph into the Superhuman Registration Act underlying the CIVIL WAR continuity of the 2000s. 

One last myth-point: though a lot of superheroes are mentioned as having been slain by Sentinels by 2013, only the Fantastic Four and their mythos has any direct impact on DAYS OF FUTURE PAST. I've noted that the survivor-mutants are briefly aided by Franklin Richards, but not that he's also the boyfriend of Rachel, and that he's killed early in the story, His presence seems to be nothing more than a foreshadowing of the revelation that Rachel too will prove to be the offspring of superhero parents. The Sentinels, when attacked by the 2013 mutants, have made the Baxter Building their HQ, which would carry a sense of irony were the occupants not unfeeling robots. Finally, a scene in which Kate walks by the tombstones of dead superheroes displays only the names of either X-Men or FF-members. Much later, Kurt Busiek's MARVELS would comment on how the transformed foursome of heroes were lauded by the public while the mutant crusaders were despised for being fundamentally different from the rest of humanity. But Claremont anticipated the same contrast. The Fantastic Four is the "first family" of Marvel-Earth, and the fall of those heroes could be interpreted as the demise of Silver Age Marvel. In contrast, though most of the 2013 mutants also perish, the future of Marvel turns out to be more aligned with the children of Xavier than the buddies of Reed Richards. Claremont was at the top of his game when he plotted out this challenging opus. The downside, though. was that he kept churning out less resonant visions of nightmare realities, most of which were as bad as DAYS OF FUTURE PAST was good. But such is the conundrum of talent: praise a writer for doing one thing well, and nine times out of ten he'll run the same idea into the ground.

THREE WAYS TO BREAK OR BEND THE WORLD PT. 2

Continuing the conceptual thread from the previous essay, I reiterate that whenever I analyzed the phenomenality of a work that falls within the domain of the uncanny, I'm looking for phenomena which do not overtly violate causal coherence but nevertheless create a sense of "strangeness" through violating intelligibility: the reader's sense that regular causality can only yield a sense that the world is understandable and therefore intelligible. The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate some examples by which authors use the three rationales I formulated in Part 1 to create that sense of strangeness.

The rationale of science is probably the most common one in the domain of the uncanny. Arthur Conan Doyle's novel THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES sports one of the most famous examples of a "phony ghost." Back in Doyle's time, the parameters of the mystery-genre would have suggested from the first that any intimation of a ghost, much less a spectral demon-hound, probably will not be validated. Yet for the greater part of the novel Doyle creates a strong sense of a supernatural threat before revealing that the titular hound is just an ordinary trained canine covered in phosphorescent paint. In contrast to many critics, I would say that the aura of strangeness is not entirely dispelled, because even if the hound is not a real demon, the person who orchestrates the Hound's existence is strange in its own uncanny right.

While HOUND uses a scientific principle to create an illusion, numerous heroes and villains utilize fairly simple scientific gadgets to give themselves an edge over their opponents. In contrast to the original Ian Fleming novel, the 1973 LIVE AND LET DIE includes a scene in which James Bond, suspended over a shark pool by ropes, cuts through his, er, bonds by unleashing a miniature rotary saw from his watch. Whether any gadget like this would work in the real world is as immaterial as whether one could build an actual FTL drive; the point is to create the sense of Bond having a special "ace in the hole."

It's not quite as easy to use the magical rationale to generate uncanny strangeness, but it can be employed in relatively mundane worlds. Wilkie Collins' 1868 mystery-novel THE MOONSTONE is built around the crime of an Englishman who steals a sacred jewel from an Indian cult , flees with his booty to England and secures the gem in a bank deposit box. The cultists follow, seeking to recover the jewel and kill the thief, but they have no way to break into the bank. Collins thus set up a situation in which the cultists, who don't precisely look like your average Englishmen, must find some way to monitor the thief's movements. Therefore, they use their own knowledge of a simple magical procedure, which Collins does not name but is usually called "scrying." The cultists buy the services of an English boy who has a talent one might call "psychic" or "magical" as one pleases, but Collins' description has more of a "magical" vibe in my view. Eventually the thief checks the gem out of the bank with the idea of escaping, and when he does, the cultists pounce and recover their property.

In the previous essay I gave an example of a marvelous "just because" rationale taken from a magical realism novel, so for this essay, I will invoke another magic-realism work for this category. China Mieville's novel THE CITY IN THE CITY supposes an unspecified locale on "our" Earth where two cities, Beszel and Ul Qoma, occupy the exact same physical space, with the buildings of one city cheek-to-jowl with those of the other. Further, Mieville posits  that the inhabitants of one city willfully pretend not to be aware of the citizens of the co-existing city. The author does not provide any rigorous backstory as to how this state of affairs came about, and so its underlying rationale is that of "just because." Ironically, though its parameters in no way resemble either mainstream fantasy or mainstream SF, Mieville's CITY was welcomed by various awards-committees associated with those movements, since the novel won a 2010 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel, and was also nominated (but did not win) a award named for the famed SF-editor John W. Campbell. 

THREE WAYS TO BREAK OR BEND THE WORLD PT. 1

 My posts on the NUM theory have gone into great detail as to how literary metaphenomena, whether uncanny or marvelous, are created through the use of story-tropes. In both cases, the author of a fictional world seeks to diverge from the world of the naturalistic, the domain in which all phenomena are unified (and therefore are termed "isophenomenal.") In the essay LIKE A TROPE, ON THE WIRE, I said:

The domain of “the naturalistic” emphasizes conformity with whatever idea of “natural law” an audience may expouse, whereas the domain of “the marvelous” conforms to whatever concepts are seen as transcending natural law, be it through Christian miracles or futuristic inventions. The domain of “the uncanny,” though, endeavors to perform a high-wire balancing act between these two literary phenomenalities. 

My general metaphor for the difference between the two metaphenomenal domains has been the difference between breaking down normal causality or simply bending it.  However, I have not supplied a list of rationales that authors use to justify the tropes that either bend or break causality. The three rationales are as follows:

(1) The rationale of science.

(2) The rationale of magic.

(3) The rationale of "just because."

Most of what fans view as "mainstream" fantasy and science fiction deals with phenomena that breaks down the viewer's sense of causality, or, in my system, "causal coherence," by evoking either the fictional logic-systems of either science or magic. There is no limit as to the extensiveness of the tropes open to either the magic-rationale of mainstream fantasy or the science-rationale of mainstream science fiction. Fantasy has elves, SF has aliens. Fantasy has doors into fairyland; SF has faster-than-light space travel. Fantasy has Doctor Strange; SF has Iron Man. The distinction is not between any hypothetical limit upon either rationale, for in effect there is no limit. Rather, the distinction is between the ideas attributed IN FICTION to the system of magic as opposed to the system of science. 

Both magic and science operate to manipulate commonplace causality. In science, the logical ideal is that the scientist produces causality-breaking miracles by discovering new principles that underlie those phenomena, and he manipulates those principles to explain FTL travel or transistor-powered armor. In magic, however, the logical idea is that the magician transcends the overt principles underlying commonplace phenomena in order to create faery-doors and magical spells. Human will of some type, whether for good or ill, directly impinges upon reality within the magical rationale, while in the scientific rationale, the will acts indirectly, creating re-arrangements of phenomena.   

Now, whether or not a reader subscribes to the rational explanations as to how a fictional faery-door or a fictional FTL drive exists, the reader should perceive that both explanations appeal to a system of logic regarding potential change of phenomena. The third rationale, "just because," ceases to appeal to any system of logic, and it's possible that this is why its use far more fiction-categories than either of the other two. "Just because" is used to justify everything from a magical-realist premise like that of Jose Saramago's 1994 THE STONE RAFT, in which the Iberian Peninsula breaks off from the European continent and starts floating into the Atlantic, to an animated cartoon in which Bugs Bunny can pull a hammer out of nowhere to crown Elmer Fudd. 

I conceived the idea of the three rationales some time back, but I recently realized that all of them were configured with respect to the phenomenality of the marvelous, the one that breaks causality. In my second essay, I will deal with how the same such rationales appear within the domain of the uncanny.