NULL-MYTHS: "THE MAN WHO MURDERED EVIL" (SUPERMAN #419, 1986)

In contrast to the last Superman null-myth I examined, this story of the Man of Steel is probably barely remembered by fandom. Published in 1986, “The Man Who Murdered Evil” was one of the last stories prior to the John Byrne reboot. Thus it was also one of the last under editor Julie Scwhartz’s long aegis, as well as one of the last Superman stories from frequent contributor Elliot S. Maggin.

Like the “good” myth-comic I examined this week, Maggin’s story is also about the provenance of evil, at least in Superman’s version of the real world. Said story (“Evil” for short) largely draws upon Judeo-Christian notions of sin and temptation. Yet “Evil” takes the essential plot of one of the most famous Old Testament texts—that of Job—and inverts the story, more or less asking, “what if a blameless man, upon being stricken with evil fortune, ceases cleaving to goodness and becomes a literal avatar of evil?”


Readers of the Biblical Job will recall that this is the devil’s argument to God: that Job will abandon the righteous life once it’s clear to him that the universe won’t allot him good fortune in exchange for his good behavior. Something like this happens to the story’s narrator, who introduces himself by a myriad of Satanic names, such as “Old Scratch” and “Sammael,” but for most of the story settles on the Shakespearean cognomen of Iago (perhaps because the playwright calls his Iago a “demi-devil.”)

Iago, who wears a Dracula-esque outfit and boasts reptilian skin and a widow’s peak suggestive of horns, regales the reader with his story. He was once a humble fellow named Arnie Allport, who did nothing but good deeds and who looked like a shorter-haired version of Jesus. He worked tirelessly and thanklessly at senior centers and soup kitchens (what he actually did for a living, Maggin does not mention). While disposing of trash behind the alley of a soup-kitchen, Alport clashed with a costumed figure, whom Iago gives the name “Greeneyes.” Alport struck Greeneyes with a trash-can lid, and then both of them disappeared. Superman, who had been pursuing Greeneyes for reasons that won’t be elaborated until two pages later, gaped in confusion at the vanishing act.


Iago then fills in the blanks for the reader. Though at the story’s opening the narrator implies that he himself was Satan (though that name is not actually used), Iago reveals that he has a master, never named or seen except as a Satanic silhouette. This “master of all masters of evil” is the power behind Greeneyes, who is the Master’s emissary in the mortal world. It’s the Master who spirits away Alport, and implicitly destroys Greeneyes, leaving only the emissary’s cloak. The Master brings Alport down to his stygian domain and appoints him the new representative of evil on Earth.


Maggin is maddeningly vague about what’s going on. Is it a possession? Not precisely, though, with a possible eye to the Rape of Persephone, Iago remembers how he, as Alport, was “as virginal as the fresh-blown snow.” Is it a satanic contract? Well, no contracts are signed, though as a result of the Master thrusting Greeneyes’ cape upon Alport, the beleaguered human apparently gives up his soul to the lure of power. The narration of Alport’s experience-- “I was won over to the scents of brimstone, the voices of fire, the ethic of darkness”—again seems to suggest a literal seduction by evil, albeit related in very bad poetry.

Perhaps because the corrupted human has had a glancing encounter with DC’s avatar of true goodness, Iago decides he’ll try to corrupt Superman. One of the villain’s pointless actions is to visit the Daily Planet and to bring forth a few negative aspects of Clark Kent’s personality. Both aspects are banal: Clark berates Perry White for the latter’s forgetfulness and gripes to himself about having to share an elevator with some sweaty fat chicks. Iago’s long con isn’t much more ambitious. He zooms over to the local women’s prison and brings about a jailbreak. Among the female convicts is an obscure character from an earlier Superman tale: Alice Herman, a specialist in plant science. She uses her “yeast cultures” to help the other lady crooks break free. Iago waits until Superman shows up, and then causes Herman to get transformed into a plant-monster with one of her own potions. Iago hopes—for some reason never revealed—that Superman will break his code against killing and slay the plant-woman. Despite Iago’s claim that he’s researched Superman in great depth, this seems like a particularly boneheaded species of wishful thinking. The Man of Steel doesn’t fall into the trap, and Herman reverts to normal. Iago reports his failure to the Master, but remains optimistic that someday he’ll be able to destroy the hero. Given that Iago never appears again, one can fairly imagine that Iago’s master disagreed with the villain’s optimism and simply consigned Iago to the Circle of Deservedly Forgotten Characters.


“Evil” is easily one of the most brain-fried Superman stories, in part because the author is attempting a serious theme but doesn’t give any evidence that he knows what he wants to say. I would think that by the time Maggin submitted the story, he would have known that the Schwartz stable was on its way out, so why attempt to create a new nemesis for the hero; one whom subsequent writers proceeded to ignore? My best guess is that Iago was an inventory idea that Maggin conceived long before he knew his days on the feature were numbered.


Did Maggin have some notion of exploring the way in which pure evil might be born from pure goodness? That too is my best guess, and it’s slightly supported by a line on page five. Superman’s computer tells him that there’s been an “abnormal proliferation of villainy and disaster since Earthfall of the unit Kal-El.” Since this oracular pronouncement puts Superman on the trail of Greeneyes, the conclusion might be that Greeneyes stepped up his game to compensate for the goodness of Superman—but the phrasing almost implicates Superman himself in the evil. Certainly Arnie Alport is, like the Man of Steel, a “blameless man.” And that in itself doesn’t prevent the seduction by evil—though Maggin never really specifies the nature of the evil to which Alport succumbs. Even one moment in which Alport showed some “green-eyed jealousy” of another person—which would have justified the puzzling Shakespeare-citation—would have lent a little more coherence to this disjointed mess. 

And don't even ask me what the heck the title means. Maybe it's a reference to the fact that Greeneyes apparently "dies" as the result of Alport's clash with him-- though the Evil One is the real murderer, so Iago's claim to  being evil's murderer is, to say the least, overstated.

MYTHCOMICS: "SECRET ORIGIN OF THE GUARDIANS" (GREEN LANTERN #40, 1965)

In my discussion of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, I observed that the series was greatly indebted to the use of parallel universes in the Silver Age DC titles FLASH and GREEN LANTERN, both written by John Broome and edited by Julie Schwartz. I didn't note that CRISIS also derived much of its continuity-shaping concepts to a single Broome/Schwartz issue of GREEN LANTERN-- illustrated by Gil Kane-- which not only gave, as the title suggests, an origin to the title hero's Guardian mentors, but also touched on the origins of the DC Universe and the provenance of evil in that universe.

Though this sounds like the stuff of comic-book epics, "Secret Origin of the Guardians" is wrapped up in one issue, and for good measure throws in the first meeting of the Golden and Silver Age Lanterns, outside the pages of their initial Justice League encounter. A bare summation of the plot also sounds like par-for-the-course with DC story-lines:

"An evil alien, imprisoned as an energy-form inside a meteor for his crimes, enters Earth's atmosphere and suborns one of Earth's heroes to carry out new crimes. The alien even makes one Earth-hero fight another one until they join forces and overcome the evildoer." True, in "Origin" the two heroes come from different versions of the Earth, but the parallel applies nonetheless. The cover seen above is also extremely familiar, as even by 1965 DC Comics had published innumerable covers in which a featured hero found himself about to be marginalized or replaced by a rival. However, the quality of the mythopoeic is much like the saying about the Devil: "it's in the details."

The first four pages of the story proper deal with Alan Scott, the Green Lantern of Earth-Two, coming into contact with the meteor. The object's radiation temporarily nullifies the weakness of Scott's power-ring-- a vulnerability to wood. Immediately thereafter, rather than testing the meteor's properties, Scott decides to go to Earth-One and see what the Hal Jordan Green Lantern thinks about it, in case the meteor might be able to banish the weakness of Jordan's Guardian-given ring. 

As soon as the two Lanterns meet, Jordan reminds Scott (in a totally nice way) that Scott could have verbally asked his ring to analyze the meteor, since the ring can do almost anything, including communicating info like a miniature computer. The ring then informs the crusaders that within the meteor was the imprisoned villain Krona, who hails from a time from the race of Oa, the race that later involved into the Guardians-- thus allowing author Broome a quick way to communicate said history. 

"Ten billion years" ago, the Oans were a race of blue-skinned super-scientists, who were immortal and did not need food or rest. They lived an untroubled, pre-lapsarian existence, not yet evolved into a coterie of aged blue dwarves (they even have women and childbirth at this point, which would lead to a complicated set of retcons in later GREEN LANTERN stories). But one among them, Krona, aspires to "probe the beginning of all things," despite a legend that claims that the universe will end if the Guardians learn their origins. 

As the excerpt shows, Krona does get a peek at the cosmic beginnings, and sees what one must presume to be the Hand of God Himself, shaping the cosmos. However, this peek isn't enough to wipe out the whole universe; it unleashes "cosmic lightnings" that zap Krona but don't kill him. The non-immortals of the cosmos pay the real price, for "evil was loosed on the universe," which presumably had existed in some sort of Edenic state up to that point. Because the Oans feel guilty over Krona's actions, they imprison in the aforesaid meteor and hurl him into outer space-- after which they decide to organize the Green Lanterns in order to quell the evil in the universe. 

Scott's ring also informs him that the only reason that it gained immunity to wood was because Krona wanted Scott to have a reason to cross into the Earth-One universe, because only in that universe can Krona continue his forbidden researches once more. Once the ring finishes its story, one of Jordan's Guardian-mentors shows up on Earth-One, informing the two heroes that Krona's activities will soon cause an outbreak of disasters, even before he finds out the Big Secret. The Lanterns spend a few pages fighting natural cataclysms, and are then summoned to the base the Guardians have made on Earth-- where the Guardians suddenly justify the cover and announce Alan Scott to be Hal Jordan's replacement.

The solution of the cover-conundrum is weak at best: for some reason Krona decided to steal a march on the heroes before they came after him, by possessing the body of Scott and mentally manipulating the Guardians. This questionable strategy leads to a battle of the Lanterns, which Krona easily wins. Krona then transports the paralyzed Guardians to his hidden lair, boasting that he will make them watch their own "secret origins" on a viewscreen, and then use "a duplicate of Alan Scott's power ring" to flee to Earth-Two with his forbidden knowledge, while the Earth-One universe is annihilated. However, the two Green Lanterns team up and defeat Krona, who is once more consigned to the outer depths of space.

As noted earlier, the base plot is nothing special; what's impressive is the way Broome had merged several myth-motifs into one cohesive story. 

At the time of the story's publication, Broome surely knew that most of his readers would stem from a Judeo-Christian tradition, so that he also knew that he would not rock any boats by suggesting that the Hand of God had shaped the universe. To my knowledge there are no canonical stories in that tradition in which God punishes mortals for looking upon him or his works, though a few stories, particularly that of Noah, loosely suggest such transgressive tropes. In the other myth-tradition best known to American audiences-- the interwoven threads of Greek and Roman mythology-- mortals are also never in a position to look upon the creation of the universe. However, since the Greco-Roman gods are anthropomorphic, mortals are able to invade the gods' privacy in other ways; not least being the tale in which the mortal Actaeon intrudes upon Artemis while the goddess is bathing.

However, the one relevant myth shared by both traditions is the origin of evil, and in both cases, a female did the dirty deed. I've already referenced mankind's fall from Edenic peace, which was laid upon Eve, but the Greek myth of Pandora is morphologically closer to the Green Lantern story, in that evil is actually released as a miasma that infects the cosmos, if not as specific demons. And yet, the first metaphor Broome uses to typify the polluted universe resonates with one of the prime narratives that befalls Adam and Eve; that of "brother killing brother" (page 8). 

No less mythologically intriguing is the name Broome confers upon his villain. Krona is almost certainly derived from the Greek god Cronus, whom the Romans later conflated with their deity Saturn. 

In Greek myth, Cronus can be compared in some particulars with God-the-Creator. Cronus doesn't spawn the cosmos, but he makes the ordered cosmos possible through the slaying of his father Uranus, who refuses to let Cronus and the other Titans come forth from their mother Gaea (at least in one version of the myth). After Uranus is deposed, Cronus and his sister Rhea rule the world of the Titans and maintain a Golden Age for a while-- another pre-lapsarian period, which appears in Broome's story as the "ten billion years ago" era of the Oan people, who apparently start out as immortals and live in a universe free of evil. Broome even furthers the comparison to the Greek Titans by saying on page 7 that "[The Oans] strode [their] planet like giants," though there's no suggestion that any of them are literal colossi.

The end of Cronus' Golden Age comes when he hears a prophecy that one of his offspring will overcome him, at which point he more or less emulates his father-- this time, not confining his offspring to their womb but devouring them as soon as they come out. Thanks to some trickery by Cronus' wife Rhea, Cronus' destined usurper, his son Zeus, survives, kills Cronus, and frees his siblings from Cronus' stomach.

So Cronus' transgression against the orderly cosmos is that he, like his father, tries to cut off the next generation. In one sense, this seems a very "male" thing to do, on a par with alpha-male gorillas who take over a tribe and slay any children born by alphas other than him. Certainly it seems to be opposite to the sins of Eve and Pandora, which both boil down to feminine over-curiosity. And yet, though Broome's Krona has no interest in spawning children, or even ruling anything, he does seek to destroy the entire cosmos in a manner analogous to Cronus' suppression of the newborn gods-- and he does it for the same sin evinced by Eve and Pandora: that of curiosity. Yet in many ways Krona is also in the tradition of the curious male-- not so much bumbling swains like Actaeon, but more along the lines of Victor Frankenstein, whose name has become synonymous with that of a science that trespasses on the precincts of God.

I should note also that Zeus does not slay Cronus right away as Cronus implicitly slays Uranus: once the other gods are freed from Cronus' gullet, Zeus leads them against the Titans. This results in the cataclysmic war of the Titanomachy, from which the gods emerge as the new rulers while the Titans are consigned to Tartarus-- once again, imprisoned within a womblike Earth. The cataclysmic battle between "the favored gods" and "the gods no longer in favor" is arguably translated into an ongoing battle of "good" and "evil" in popular fiction, not least the "Lensmen" novels of E.E. Smith, alleged to have been a strong influence on the Hal Jordan corner of the DC cosmos. It's almost surprising that Broome, who had created Qward, a "universe of evil" in GREEN LANTERN #2, did not reference that universe in "Origins." And yet it's not truly surprising, given that comic-book creators avoided overly complicated scenarios, since they were writing so as to catch the vagrant attention of kid-readers. Later writers would inflate the opposition of the Oans and the Qwardians to the point that the two groups became the structural kindred of E.E. Smith's warring alien races. But to his credit, Broome, unlike many later comics-writers, had some intrinsic understanding of the myths he evoked. A lot of comics-writers have conjured up disasters for their heroes to fight, but few, aside from Broome and maybe Stan Lee, have been able to give them mythic resonance:

"Wracked by invisible waves of evil, spreading from Krona's presence on Earth-One, the planet itself goes berserk, seeking in fury and hatred to destroy the humanity that has spawned on its surface."

And this line of thought takes us back to tales of world-wide cataclysm, whether spawned by God or by Zeus-- but that's probably enough myth for now.

A SUPER-SUBCOMBATIVE PSYCHO

I've recently finished reading Thomas Harris' 1981 novel RED DRAGON, destined to be remembered evermore as "the book that birthed Hannibal Lecter"-- even though Lecter's role in the book is in my opinion far more marginal than it is in the first film adaptation, 1986's MANHUNTER

I don't intend to discuss RED DRAGON in detail here: only its ending. So-- obviously big-time SPOILERS for anyone who doesn't miss to have said ending spoiled.

In my review of MANHUNTER, I gave consideration to the possibility that it might be a combative film based on the movie's final showdown between Will Graham and the serial killer Dollarhyde. Ultimatelly, I decided that the "brevity" of their match did not represent a conflict between two megadynamic forces.

But in the conclusion of the RED DRAGON novel, Graham is far less prepossessing than in the film. As in the film, Dollarhyde fakes his death so that he can ambush Graham later, though in the book the killer goes after Graham's family as well. Dollarhyde catches Graham, his wife Molly and his stepson while they're fishing at the beach. Graham manages one quasi-heroic action--kicking a gun out of Dollarhyde's hand-- but when they fight, Graham is wounded in the face by the killer's knife. Not only is he so wounded, the trauma causes him to run off in a panic-- an action for which author Harris does not condemn Will, though an earlier generation surely would have done so. Dollarhyde is shot down like a dog, but the gun is wielded by Molly. In the novel's coda,Graham is seen recovering in the hospital, and it's suggested that he's been permanently scarred by the attack. According to Wikipedia, Graham is never again appears in any of Harris' Hannibal novels, though SILENCE OF THE LAMBS adds one minor detail: by the time Clarice Starling hears of Graham's fate, he's become a drunk who lives in disfigured solitude, and his family is not referenced.

Presumably Michael Mann, writer-director of the 1986 film, vetoed Harris' scenario to allow for the moviegoer to allow for a little more catharsis. I plan to screen the 2002 adaptation of RED DRAGON in the near future to see how close this film comes to the Harris novel-- and whether it and subsequent Harris adaptations possess any combative characterisitics.

NULL-MYTHS: "A CHRISTMAS FOR CAROL" (HOWARD THE DUCK #3, 1979)

Since the theme of this week's reviews was "Christmas stories in comics," this presented me with a dilemma. The medium plays host to many simple, sentimental Xmas-stories, but few of them have any symbolic depth. I'm not aware of any pro-Christian comics that have the symbolic depth of, say, C.S. Lewis' Narnia books, and the satirical, anti-Christian comics are usually superficial, along the lines of Justin Green's BINKY BROWN.

Most of the aforementioned Xmas-stories are about candy canes rather than crosses, but they don't do much more than rehearse the usual routines. Superman meets Santa. Wonder Woman meets Santa. The (Golden Age) Sandman gets a hoodlum to play Santa and change his ways. The Spirit won't fight crime on Christmas Eve because "the spirit of Christmas" takes care of it for him. (I wonder if that worked for Jewish people, like Will Eisner himself?) Many of these provide simple pleasures, but no complex ones. The "myth-comic" selected this week is an adventure-oriented parody of Christian themes, but for a comic to be a null-myth, it has to demonstrate at least the potential for symbolic complexity, but done badly.

Oddly, Bill Mantlo-- the same writer who wrote the "Son of Satan" story extolled this week-- also wrote the perfect "bad Santa" story-- or at least, perfect for my purposes.

I'll pass quickly over the business conflicts that caused the expulsion of Howard the Duck's creator, Steve Gerber, from the title. Bill Mantlo inherited the feature because of these behind-the-scenes occurrences, but my only concern here is whether or not Mantlo did a good job in presenting the character of Howard and his generally ironic universe. Even putting aside the resentment of readers who might've championed Gerber over Mantlo, it seems evident that Mantlo's version did not win any hearts and minds, for when the HOWARD feature was switched to Marvel's black-and-white line, theoretically to reach a more adult audience, the magazine only lasted a paltry nine issues, after which Howard's publication at Marvel became increasingly checkered.

Though artist Gene Colan continued to draw Howard's adventures in several of the b&w stories, Mantlo's version of the character undercut Colan's art in that his stories were neither funny, nor satirical, not even touchingly sentimental. The cover above is by Jack Davis more or less captures the lameness of Howard-the-magazine. What's all that funny about an angry duck sitting on a store-Santa's lap while presumably reading from his Xmas want-list? It might have been a little funny if Howard had been fawning, or if someone had caught him in such an embarrassing posture.

The story is essentially another "disbelieving-protagonist-meets-the-real-Santa" tale, and the "Carol" of the title is a little girl who's become disillusioned in Christmas because of her family troubles. The duck is pulled into Carol's orbit in a fairly hackneyed manner, after which both of them are almost flattened by a crashing sky-sleigh. Occupying the sleigh are the Big Claus himself and one of his elves, who is, like most elves, a sardonic type to balance Santa's jollity.

Howard reluctantly helps Santa gas up his sleigh, but then both he and the girl must take a ride to the North Pole workshop for reasons I won't bother detailing. Once there, Mantlo decides that the perfect way to celebrate the Christmas spirit is to-- launch a screed against nuclear power? Yes, Santa was a dope who let himself be talked into using nuclear power in his workshop, by a reptilian fellow called "the Pinball Lizard"-- though the Lizard is only the story's subsidiary villain; a henchman of a nuclear madman named "Greedy Killerwatt." 

I won't dwell on the obvious awfulness of these pun-names, except to say that Harvey Kurtzman at his worst would never have deigned to use either one-- particularly since the reference to the "Pinball Wizard" of the 1975 film TOMMY was about four years out of date. Worst than that, though, is that Mantlo's anti-nuclear screed isn't even true to the scientific knowledge of the time. Santa's elf claims that he tried to talk Santa into using clean solar power. Where was this completely problem-free solar power in 1979? Maybe on Marvel-Earth it existed, but even there, I doubt how much efficacy solar power would have had at the freaking North Pole.

As seen in many other null-myths, real symbolic play takes a backseat to speechifyin' and preachifyin'. There's no spirit, Christmas or otherwise, to be found in such pseudo-intellectual pretentiousness.

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.” 

IN THE EIGHTH YEAR OF ARCHE-MASS

Since formulating the idea of domains as a more viable term for all of the varied principles I've been exploring for the last eight years, I thought of compiling a list of these domains for easy reference. I decided to put it in more seasonal terms, though not quite everything I've listed here is a domain.

And so it was, that in the eight year of Arche-Mass, my theory gave to me:

TWELVE PILLARS OF WISDOM.

ELEVEN PLAYFUL PARADIGMS

[(1) validation /dynamization, (2-5) work and play, and their dual functions in "adult" and "juvenile" art, (6-7) the resulting principles of thematic realism and thematic escapism, (8-11) the four potentalities, which sort out Jung's four functions in terms of their application to "work and play."]

TEN TITANIC TROPES.

NINE AWESOME AFFECTS.

[(1) the concept of will, (2-5) the abstract goal-affect of "glory" and the concrete goal-affect of "persistence," and their relation to the types of will described by "acquisition" and "expenditure," and (6-9) the four persona-types.]

EIGHT FUN FUNCTIONS

(four from Joseph Campbell, four from C.G. Jung)

SEVEN THYMOTIC THRILLERS

[(1) Plato's theory of *thymos,* (2-3) Fukuyama's concept of *megalothymia* and *isothymia,* and (4-7) the four forms in which thymotic validation manifests through either the activities of pure violence, of pure sexuality, or two possible combinations of both activities.]

SIX DICEY DYNAMICITIES.

FIVE CAUSAL CONUNDRUMS.

[(1-2) The two aspects of causality, "coherence" and "intelligibility," and (3-5) the three combinations possible from these causal aspects.]

FOUR FRYEAN MYTHOI.

THREE NUM-INOSITIES.

TWO SUBLIMITIES.

And a UNIFIED FIELD THEORY.

COMBAT PLAY PT. 4

As the Nietzsche citation in Part 3 should make clear, the philosopher believed in the principle of mastery, or "overcoming" (German *uberwindung*) as a necessary aspect of the human spirit. At the same time, he believed more profoundly that the possessor of a "master morality" should also practice *selbstuberwindung,* usually translated as "self-overcoming." As I observed here, Nietzsche expressed a marginal preference for the corrupt, real-life Cesare Borgia over the simon-pure fictional character Parsifal, essentially because Parsifal had no real "self" to be overcome. For similar reasons, Nietzsche expressed disgust at those whom he deemed adherents of "slave morality" because he felt that they weren't really any more free from the impulse of aggression than the representatives of "master morality." Rather, adherents of "slave morality" merely projected the illusion of self-mastery. Only those who consciously admitted the allure of mastery, of wielding power over others, had any true capacity for self-overcoming.

In other segments of COMBAT PLAY I've sought to provide somewhat more personal motives for advocating the importance of combat-fantasies, and for arguing that they can represent "positive compensation" when dealing with the travails of ordinary life. I would add-- without bringing in all the Hegelian arguments about the nature of freedom-- that it's psychically necessary for any individual human to feel as if he or she can, as the occasion demands, fight back against oppression of any kind. At the same time, the notion of "fair play" becomes important within the sphere of fiction and fantasy, possibly more important than it can ever be in the real world of political negotiation and compulsion. In my own lit-critic cosmos, the ideal of "fair play" assumes the role of "self-limitation" that is, in Nietzsche's philosophy, occupied by "self-overcoming." Clearly the importance of this concept has led me to author essays like this one, where my main concern is to account for certain pop-culture figures, such as the Golden Age Spectre, who seem to know little if any "self-limitation." In the original series, whose tone was set by scripter Jerry Siegel, there's no question that the Spectre is positioned as a hero-- and yet only occasionally does this hero encounter opponents able to wield forces equal to his own.

In the aforesaid essay DECIDEDLY SEEKING SYMMETRY, I argued that occasional heroes who worked without the limitations of the "fair play" were a "natural, and probably inevitable, counterpoint" to the statistically dominant type of hero who tends to meet his foes on a level playing-field. I say that it's inevitable because it's the nature of affective freedom that individual authors can diverge from any statistically dominant model of a given concept, be it "the hero" or anything else. The model I've established is one in which heroes and villains alike align themselves with *glory* by championing either the positive or the negative forms of the "idealizing will," while monsters and demiheroes align themselves with *persistence* by pursuing the negative or positive forms of the "existential will."  But the existence of this model, while statistically dominant, does not prevent individual creators from diverging from it. For whatever reasons, Jerry Siegel conceptualized the Spectre as having such near-omnipotence that he could "overcome" most of his villains without the limitations of fair play. I wasn't entirely serious in SYMMETRY when I labeled such heroes as "sadists," for a true sadist would not possess the Spectre's empathy toward ordinary humans oppressed by mortal evildoers. That empathy, as well as the determination to better the world through the positive form of the idealizing will, still qualifies the Spectre as a hero. Later versions of the Spectre conformed to the dominant model, giving the Ghostly Guardian more high-energy foes to combat. But had the character never appeared anywhere but in his Golden Age adventures, I might have to view him as a "subcombative superhero," in that only rarely did the original Spectre combat megadynamic entities like himself.

By the same parallel, the nature of affective freedom also makes it possible for individual authors to diverge from the statistically dominant model of "the monster." In contrast to the hero, the monster often appears as the sole megadynamic entity in his universe, and his opponents, usually demiheroes, are not usually able to stand against him. In SYMMETRY I mentioned Freddy Krueger as an exception to this rule, in that the majority of his films end when another megadynamic entity-- usually the so-called "final girl"-- manages to defeat the dastardly dream-creature with her own display of dynamicity.

However, a better-known example would probably the combative relationship between the starring monsters of the original ALIENS film-franchise and their most "persistent" demihero-enemy, Ellen Ripley. Ripley starts out as a typical demihero, and in her first appearance she only manages to stave off the assault of one monstrous extraterrestrial by getting him in the right place for his elimination, rather than beating him one-and-one.

In the second film, however, Ripley resorts to mechanical aid to fight a Queen Alien on its own terms, and even though Ripley loses that battle and must once more trick the creature into defeat, the narrative places far more emphasis on Ripley as a megadynamic figure.

Though the character also does not directly defeat any Aliens in the last two films in the original franchise either, Ripley continues to display a megadynamic formidability, so that she is, unlike most monster-victims, a combative demihero. The fact that the Aliens' most prominent human foe can fight them back doesn't alter their persona as monsters, but their divergence sets them slightly to one side of the dominant model for monsters, just as Original Spectre's divergence sets him slightly to one side of the dominant hero-model.