17/8 The Multiversity annotations Pt 2

LIBRARY artefact #025

©DC Comics

MEANDER THROUGH THE MULTIVERSE   

PART 2

Page 8 introduces our villains/monsters The Gentry. Referred to by some as ‘Lovecraftian horrors’, they’re much simpler than that, as each of the Gentry embodies a monstrous surreal distillation or twisted condensation of one or other pulp villain archetypes – the Mastermind, the Femme Fatale, the Hostile Horde etc. compressed into their most malign demonic embodied forms. They are:

INTELLECTRON – the distillation of the Evil Mastermind archetype. Cruel intellect, dark Triad personality. His visual was intended as an evil perversion of alchemical allegorical images of the perfected soul as a winged egg.

DEMOGORGUNN - the cannibal mob, the zombie horde.

HELLMACHINE – the infernal machine, the dark Satanic mills run wild. 

DAME MERCILESS – la Belle Dame Sans Merci, the Femme Fatale.

LORD BROKEN – the maniac, the Bad House, the spirit of the asylum and of lunacy.

The Gentry are primarily intended to represent the creative dead end of dystopian thinking, of bad ideas grown to seem cosmic and unstoppable (at the time of writing, I was fascinated by the way the ethos of Star Trek, a vision of the human future as infinitely expansive, had its ideological counter in The Walking Dead’s world of cancelled potential and existential futility). The Gentry are toxic living idea colonies, moving into the dystopian slums of our imaginative territory as our new landlords, intent on chucking us out and developing the place to suit their requirements not ours.

The suggestion in that story being that we have impoverished our collective inner world to such an extent that it resembles condemned property, an ideal habitat for the cultivation of our worst impulses and greatest fears about ourselves and our future. Perfect for the eviction and ‘gentrification’ our villains’ name implies.

Curiously these characters seem to invite interpretation; I’ve seen suggestions that the Gentry might, from one angle, resemble the kind of homogenizing, standardizing corporate forces that are slowly sapping mainstream comics of their cultish, counterculture oddness in favour of endless Batman product. I’ve seen the Gentry reduced at various times to a scathing critique of DC executives, a swipe at Comics Journal critics or, inexplicably, Alan Moore!

There is, however, no intended one-to-one correspondence between the Gentry characters and real- world individuals or organizations, while the sometimes-stated opinion that ‘Alan Moore ruined the DC Universe with cynicism’ is not one I share. It seems hardly controversial to point out that Moore in fact provided DC with an unprecedented jolt of energy, imagination and possibility that still sustains their threadbare continuity 40 years later.

Perhaps, and keeping in mind the salutary work of the Ape of Thoth who reliably mangles the meaning of any utterance until it’s proving the opposite, these personal readings of the content offer quirky and interesting ways of reframing the text, its meaning and objectives, but as far as the author Your Humble Narrator is concerned, the Gentry were in no way devised to represent any of the above specifics!

Which seems a relevant place to press home a related point – not every character with any kind of beard or incidental facial hair in my stories is an Alan Moore stand-in!

The only deliberate Alan Moore insert in any of my stories appears as All-Beard the mildly satirical subway pirate from Seven Soldiers; The Manhattan Guardian – ‘Can’t you see I’m walking barefoot on scalding tiles of radioactive pearl?’ - which also features a cartoon version of myself in All-Beard’s nemesis No-Beard - ‘…All-Beard was always the best pirate…’.

Incidentally, and contrary to popular belief, the end of that story does not show No-Beard as the winner of the pirate battle – the irradiated, hairless, semi-skeleton driving the train wears the same fur-collared coat both pirates wore and we make a point of not showing his hands/hooks to keep his identity ambiguous. The point being that the passage of time, the dwindling of interest, and the inevitable contingencies of folk tale, fake news and rumour have so mixed up and misremembered the reality of the pirates’ lives that, at the last, each has become indistinguishable from his old rival.

Further to that and while we’re on the subject, Zor in Seven Soldiers is no more, no less than the nigh-on omnipotent villain Zor from the Spectre story in More Fun issue #55 1940, who was chosen specifically because of his godlike power levels and, most importantly, his close resemblance to Zatara the magician, Zatanna’s beloved dad! Zor and his self-proclaimed ‘magnificent beard’ are not subbing for Alan Moore!

Likewise, the super-vampire Mandrakk from Final Crisis is not an avatar of Alan Moore, neither is Vyndyktvx from Action Comics, nor the pervert Santa Claus, (as brilliantly portrayed by comics fan and Spider-Man writer Joe Reitman), in Happy! despite what some outraged readers have insisted!

Sometimes a devouring, soulless, nihilist horror is just a devouring, soulless nihilist horror!

‘The Gentry’ was one of various nicknames used to describe the so-called ‘fey’ or ‘fairy’ race back when people took them seriously enough to avoid talking about them directly and preferred to use euphemisms such as ‘The Tripping Darlings’, ‘The Good Ones’ or ‘The Gentry’ in much the same way, and for much the same reason, as the Mafia are often referred to as ‘Goodfellas’ or ‘Wiseguys’ etc.

The giant robot President Superman of Earth-23 has just defeated when we encounter him is a Sivana design – smaller versions of the same retro mechanical man show up again in Thunderworld - and here is our first hint that parallel universe counterparts of Sivana are supplying weapons and transmatter plans to various worlds.

To fill the roster of Earth-23’s Justice League, it occurred to me that using already existing black super-characters from the DC stable would demonstrate how the influence of President Superman had encouraged DC’s heroes of colour to take centre stage on this world.

On the JLA satellite, we see Cyborg graduated from the Titans, the Nubia/Beyonce version of Wonder Woman introduced in Final Crisis #7, Jake Jordan, the Manhattan Guardian is there, John Stewart is Green Lantern, Black Lightning has the JLA spot he always deserved, Steel takes the tech genius role, and Vixen brings the animal powers.

Batman/Bruce Wayne is the token white billionaire while there’s a more obviously Italianate Zatanna and the android Red Tornado rounds out the team (the character only appears once but I love Ivan Reis’ sleek contemporary design here).

The House of Heroes is the Monitor Satellite from Crisis on Infinite Earths clearly somewhat damaged by the passage of time.

Captain Carrot was created by Roy Thomas and artist Scott Shaw. Shaw objected to the Captain’s portrayal here as drawn by Ivan in classic modern comics style, but this was my fault, as I directed Ivan to draw Captain Carrot to look like he’d been through an ‘Ultimates’ style makeover. It was a throwaway idea to suggest how Carrot’s malleable cartoon form was simply adapting to suit its surroundings. Our intention was to bring Captain carrot to a new readership, especially after Carrot and the Zoo Crew had been transformed into ordinary animals and abandoned in a previous story. We were trying to keep the character alive and viable and no malice was intended but such is comics; where even the precise depiction of a super-rabbit can provoke unexpected ire!

Dino-Cop should have sported a triceratops frill to make him look less like Erik Larsen’s Savage Dragon upon whom he was based but I gave the wrong instruction to Ivan Reis and he wound up with stegosaurus plates!

I really liked the brief Red Racer/Flashlight relationship we glimpsed and, as I’ve mentioned before, I was disappointed when writer Peter Tomasi killed Red Racer for no great reason and robbed DC of a gay character with a lot of potential. I hope someone brings him back from beyond the Speed Force or whatever – ideally his boyfriend Flashlight could do it...

The Bleed, a reference to the page margins that exist outside a comic story, comes from Warren Ellis’ Planetary where it described the space between universes.

Here it is used to denote the hyperdimensional fluid medium in which the DC multiverse vibrates, otherwise known as the blank page – the monster here, the Hydra-headed horror native to the Bleed appeared first in Superman Beyond – here it’s something of a Chekhov gun as well as a demonstration of the opening assertion that life will come to fill any and all available cracks and gaps, and is shown here ahead of its re-appearance in The Multiversity #2 where it consumes Hellmachine of the Gentry.

Thunderer decks Wundajin with a single punch, putting the case for more accurate cultural representation going forward.

DAMON VAN DEE AKA LORD HAVOK was our Doctor Doom analogue – originally created by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis for the aforementioned Justice League Europe #15 in 1990. I imagined him as a cyborg with an Ultron- like casing to preserve what remains of his body after Frank Future saved and rebuilt his former friend after an accident. I gave him a civilian name to echo Marvel’s Viktor Von Doom. Technically however, his secret ID should be Alexei Nikolai, which I overlooked, and subsequently Max Lord, but that guy gets enough exposure.

The Omni-Gauntlet stands in for The Infinity Gauntlet while the Genesis Egg is the Cosmic Cube.

The Retaliators are transparent analogues for Marvel Comics’ (or Major Comics, as they’re known here) Avengers.

The G-MEN or ‘Geno-Men’ mentioned here are X-Men equivalents of course – instead of mutants, they are a breed of genetically modified super-people, bred with an altruistic moral code then betrayed and abandoned by their creators – a Frankenstein race facing persecution. The Cyclops analogue was repressed Stentor with his deadly acoustic voice blasts. Stentor can be seen in battle in The Multiversity #2 and we’ll come back to him there.

STUNTMASTER is the Daredevil equivalent – a movie stunt man injured and gifted with ultra-senses.

AMERICAN CRUSADER is Captain America (I imagined American Crusader renouncing his identity during the Gulf War like Cap did after Watergate  - he becomes Stateless than returns as American Crusader with a whole new fusion aesthetic) but as I said before, he would have been Americommando if I’d done my research properly.

MACHINEHEAD is Iron Man (who fears that he’s losing his humanity to gradual machine prostheses but like former UK page 3 model Katie Price AKA Jordan’s addiction to ‘Barbie’ surgery, Machinehead’s hooked on the post-human upgrades. Where does he stop, and the machine begin? Joshua Williamson wrote this character as a villain, but I hope he can return, and that Earth-8 stays as a more faithful reflection of the Marvel Universe and its characters so that DC always has a place to comment on the competition’s direction)

The blonde WANDJINA is the original character from Justice League of America #87 – he’s never been drawn by a better superhero artist than Ivan Reis but sadly it’s in the moment of his defeat – and I changed his name to the more Kirby-ish WUNDAJIN to take him away from cultural associations he could not live up to and into made-up sci-fi. I imagined him starring in an Eternals/’Him’ mash-up of man-made science gods emerging from their hidden experimental city to fight reawakened ancient ‘Dark Gods’ (other characters conceived for this wholly notional Major Comics series included KOSMECHA, LILOTUS and villain SUNNDETH)

BIG BABY is the HULK but where Hulk is a personification of Bruce Banner’s repressed anger, Big Baby is what happens to a man when he gains Hulk strength and endurance with all the impulse control of a giant toddler!

DEADEYE is Hawkeye combined with Daredevil – a blind archer whose senses are developed by super-human monks, blah blah Tibetan Shangri-La blah blah to such superhuman levels sight would seem merely an affectation.

RED DRAGON is Black Widow. Here a malfunctioning Russian super-soldier with an enhanced R complex ‘lizard brain’ that endows her with various reptilian ‘traits’ and abilities as well as reducing her empathy and increasing her ruthlessness. Except sometimes it heightens it…  

MAJOR MAX is Captain Marvel, with her name including the Major Comics branding.

KITE is Falcon but here a young woman.

LADYBUG is Spider-Woman, as THE BUG is Spider-Man.

The Future Family of Earth-8 shows up, and here we meet the ‘real’ main universe Major Comics Future Family, facing a struggle against a newly empowered Lord Havok. If not for the arrival of the Retaliators and President Superman’s crew, they may have been in for a re-run of the fate of their Essential Universe counterparts –

The cliffhanger, with Nix Uotan’s shock reappearance as a cadaverous vampiric spit of his corrupted dad Dax Novu, (who became Mandrakk the God of Vampires, as seen in Superman Beyond issue #2), towering above his blinded, tortured monkey pal came as a surprise to me. At the outset of the story, I imagined Uotan surviving the Gentry and joining forces with the superheroes, but this turn to monstrosity made for a scarier and more satisfying outro with Uotan, the enthusiastic, engaged fan become the jaded, sneering critic.

I first encountered the word ‘ingrates’ on the cover of Superman issue #240 from 1971 - another classic Neal Adams illustration from a golden era that produced what, for me, is an unbeatable run of the weirdest, most provocative and evocative Superman and Action Comics covers in the character’s history.

On this one, an exaggerated perspective puts our point of view somewhere around the Man of Steel’s crotch of iron while the stark white background and the newspaper in Superman’s hand give the cover shocking documentary overtones.

Superman clutches a crumpled copy of the Daily Planet with its headline ‘SUPERMAN FAILS’ – anguished and on the verge of tears as a crowd of churlish citizens jeers and harangues him from the background.

‘ONE FAILURE AND YOU FORGET ALL THE GOOD I’VE DONE!’ he whines. ‘YOU MISERABLE INGRATES – I’M THROUGH WITH YOU!’

God knows I share the pain of the Man of Tomorrow and I experienced similar emotions following the publication of my WONDER WOMAN EARTH ONE project, but I am merely human, and I expect a little more backbone from Superman.

The idea that Superman would ever be so petty, so needy and defensive seemed foreign to me, even at the age of 11. What happened to the Superman who asked for no thanks and no reward and did what he did because he knew it was right?

It smacked of an older generation’s cry - ‘We fought a war for you lazy ungrateful hippies! Now all you can do is laugh at us!’ and like so many covers of this era presented Superman as a symbol of the establishment, the reactionary embodiment of flag-waving American exceptionalism forced into a difficult, unwelcome self-examination by Vietnam, Watergate, civil rights and youth revolt.

That precise feeling of wrong was part of the effect I was trying to create on the final page...

To be continued… with SOCIETY OF SUPER-HEROES!