To
my knowledge, no written work of fiction provides a mythopepic
discourse denser than that of Herman Melville’s MOBY DICK. This
sprawling tale is replete with many threads of mythopoeic vertical meaning,
ranging from the relationship of white men to colored men (which
theme preoccupied Leslie Fiedler) to the nature of fate (Fedallah’s
MACBETH-like prophecies). But all of these meaning-threads are
subordinate to the master thread, which, if removed, would unravel
the whole kit and kaboodle. The master thread for MOBY DICK consists
of the myth of the Hunter and the Hunted—with the additional fillip
that the Hunted is either God or the agent of God’s inscrutable
will, so that the Hunt itself is inevitably doomed.
All
of the subordinate vertical threads of MOBY DICK are so well
developed that the author could have made stand-alone stories out of
any of them. This is not generally the case, however. Of the
thousands of other narratives that possess strong mythopoeic meaning, most
of them possess no more than a single strong master thread.
Case
in point: CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. When I wrote my mythcomicsreview of CRISIS, I was more than a little aware of the serial’s
numerous flaws, from the bland scripting of Marv Wolfman to the
drably functional manner in which the story tossed together nearly
every famous or semi-famous character in DC Comics history. Those
subplots that even came close to vertical meaning were frequently
botched, as with a maudlin encounter between Kamandi—Jack Kirby’s
“Planet of the Apes” swipe—and Solovar, one of DC’s seemingly
endless supply of intelligent gorillas. However—there was one
master thread I discerned, one in which Wolfman built upon the
“devilish” character of Krona, and contrasted this character’s
impiety with a “holy trinity” of characters implicated in the
death of the old cosmos and the birth of the new.
On
the more positive side, some master-threads receive support in
unpredictable ways. Jack Kirby’s NEW GODS saga, reviewed here, has
one obvious master-thread: the prophecy of an eventual confrontation
between the tyrant Darkseid and the hero Orion. I wasn’t entirely
pleased with Kirby’s years-later wrap-up of his epic series. But
even though the author went down a somewhat unsatisfying path, HUNGER DOGS
wasn’t without mythopoeic meaning in itself.
But
I’ve recently noticed one particular subordinate thread, one so
subtle that one could barely even assign a didactic meaning. In my
review I had no space to examine the curious relationship between
Darkseid and his mother Heggra.
The reader only three things about the wizened queen: (1) that she rules Apokolips before Darkseid ascends to the throne, (2) that her influence obliges Darkseid, against his will, to wed a noblewoman named Tigra, who ends up being the mother of Orion, and (3) at some time, Darkseid has his mother killed, probably because she blocked his rise to power.
But in recent months, I noticed that the given names of Heggra and Tigra are not dissimilar, suggesting a symbolic identity between them. Visually, they’re opposites, for Tigra is lean and given to overt violence, while Heggra is sedate, like a brooding hen sitting on her “hegg.” But despite these differences they collude to create Orion, whom Darkseid will make the mistake of casting out. The result is that Orion becomes dedicated to his father’s defeat, and though Orion’s primary mission is to keep Darkseid from gaining the Anti-Life Equation, it would not be incorrect to say that the conflict of father and son ends up avenging the maltreatment of two maternal figures. It’s a subordinate vertical thread that in no way diminishes the master thread of the father-son conflict, but because of this mini-discourse, the master thread is made yet denser and richer.
The reader only three things about the wizened queen: (1) that she rules Apokolips before Darkseid ascends to the throne, (2) that her influence obliges Darkseid, against his will, to wed a noblewoman named Tigra, who ends up being the mother of Orion, and (3) at some time, Darkseid has his mother killed, probably because she blocked his rise to power.
But in recent months, I noticed that the given names of Heggra and Tigra are not dissimilar, suggesting a symbolic identity between them. Visually, they’re opposites, for Tigra is lean and given to overt violence, while Heggra is sedate, like a brooding hen sitting on her “hegg.” But despite these differences they collude to create Orion, whom Darkseid will make the mistake of casting out. The result is that Orion becomes dedicated to his father’s defeat, and though Orion’s primary mission is to keep Darkseid from gaining the Anti-Life Equation, it would not be incorrect to say that the conflict of father and son ends up avenging the maltreatment of two maternal figures. It’s a subordinate vertical thread that in no way diminishes the master thread of the father-son conflict, but because of this mini-discourse, the master thread is made yet denser and richer.
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