Lodbrok’s Hand: The Darkness Comic & The Dark Ages

A few months back I read a comic which has been rattling around in my brain ever since. It is a one-shot issue of Top Cow‘s horror comic series The Darkness, titled “Lodbrok’s Hand,” written by Phil Hester with art by Michael Avon Oeming. While most of the comics set in The Darkness are contemporary tales featuring the character of Jackie Estacado (current wielder of the power of the Darkness for which the series is names), this comic was set in the Viking Age. And frankly, I really wish more comics did this right.

First things first: for anyone unfamiliar with the Top Cow Universe, it is one of several branches of comics which emerged in the 90s as part of the rise of Image Comics. I’ve written about it before, but the general sense of the stories is that they occur in the present, usually in big cities like New York, and tend to mix elements of a crime drama with gothic horror. There’s no shortage of modern fantasy comics out there, but these comics are really worth checking out, especially the two flagship titles, The Darkness and Witchblade.

But as I said, this particular story was set in the Viking Age. And okay, it can seem like everyone has done a Viking story by now. It is a rich era in history that covered three centuries, just as many continents, and which has inspired people ever since from Richard Wagner to J.R.R. Tolkien to Jack “the King” Kirby. But for me, what stands out to me about “Lodbrok’s Hand” is that it actually feels a lot like one of the Icelandic Sagas.

The story opens with a crew of Norsemen seated in a longship. Several of the crewmen discuss their leader, a grim-faced, one-handed warrior seated at the helm, unsleeping, unyielding, staring into the mists ahead. In the great tradition of oral storytelling that the Viking skalds were famed for, one of the crewmen begins to tell the others of their captain’s past.

We flashback to when Lodbrok was a younger man, traveling with his sister Freydis as they lead the few members of their village to survive a massacre by an enemy king named Grimur. Immediately we get to enjoy Hester’s mastery of the language. He describes Freydis as being a woman who “HAD THE KEN OF THE ANCIENT WITCHES, AND THEIR FORGOTTEN FIRE BURNED BLUE IN HER VEINS.” The group come upon an ancient horn, which Ragnar blows upon to summon a person whose help they seek. After blowing the horn, we get another evocative description from Hester: “A BLACK LONG-SHIP, LIKE NONE SEEN BEFORE OR SINCE, GLIDED SILENTLY INTO THE FJORD LIKE WHALE OIL OVER ICE.”

The captain of this ship is the legendary “Black Captain,” a sea-king who wielded the Darkness during the Viking Age. The story continues as the captain ferries Lodbrok’s crew to where Grimur’s armies are settled. The story builds to a climactic battle between Lodbrok’s forces and Grimur, and I will not ruin the ending, as there are a couple dramatic twists and some breath-taking illustrations of battle by Oeming.

It took me a while to figure out what makes this story work. In many ways, this is a generic medieval fantasy. In Hester’s original script, he even says “Mike – This is set in some kind of kick-ass imaginary Frazetta Era- Bronze into Iron Viking  age, so don’t get hung up on historical accuracy.” As I personally tend to abhor the tendency for fantasy to supplant historical accuracy in fiction, this shouldn’t work as well as it does. Yet that’s the thing. This is a story with evocative imagery where Hester’s incredible use of language emulates the original medieval sagas, even as Oeming’s art manages to find a style halfway between the historic past and the dark gothic aesthetic. Sure, Lodbrok’s name is a bit cliché (I mean, it literally means “Hairy-Pants!” so without the context of the original Ragnar Lodbrok’s story, it doesn’t entirely make sense). And yes, many characters have horns on their helmets (something no viking ever had). But the blend of history and fantasy come together like the best of the classic adventure stories.

The story is collected in The Darkness: Accursed Volume 3 and can be ordered from any good comic book retailer, while the issue can be bought on its own at ComiXology. It has been out a while so most comic retailers probably don’t have it stocked, but trust me, it’s worth checking out.

Life After Endgame & Game of Thrones: What Now?

The 2 most popular series of the past decade are both pinnacles of geek culture.

Nowadays, everyone’s a geek. Disney princesses use the Force, Marvel films are a defining aspect of the cultural landscape, and the most popular show on TV for the past decade has centrally featured dragon riders and ice zombies as key elements of its plot.

But I remember what it used to be like to be a geek, once upon a time in the dawn days before streaming and Disney buyouts. We geeks were a rare pariah clan, outcasts living on the fringe. We’d trade comics with friends, passing on our sacred texts. We convened in covens, playing Dungeons and Dragons with whoever else was out of the broom closet as a fellow lover of that dice-throwing game of magic and murder hobos. We allowed serious authors like Margaret Atwood to write in our favorite genres while dismissing those same genres, since no one respectable would write works of speculative fiction (egads!). We accepted mediocre superhero movies because Hollywood didn’t take the medium seriously even when adapting comics for the movies. And then, ever so gradually, things began to change.

“Dungeon Master” is a title used by people in a few different subcultures.

Part of the shift was probably caused by the mass appeal of Star Wars, which was given extra staying power through its wider universe (and the novels of Timothy Zahn–masterworks of storytelling that recaptured the essence of the original films while allowing the universe to outshine other fandoms). In the early 2000s, films like Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lord of the Rings and the first two Spider-Man films directed by Sam Raimi gave superheroes and high fantasy a serious treatment for mainstream audiences. Writer and director Kevin Smith helmed a Daredevil comic at the peak of his career that inspired other major Hollywood geeks like Joss Whedon to take a crack at the comics. In The Matrix, the Wachowskis created a cyberpunk film unlike anything seen before with all the philosophy and stunning visuals only found in anime at the time. The popularity of the BBC’s Doctor Who reboot, Magic: The Gathering trading cards, and pretty much every adaptation of Batman from 1989 to 2012 all (with the exception of the 1997 flop Batman and Robin--which is the filmic equivalent of throwing diarrhea onto a strobe light and of which no more need ever be said) did their part to ensure geekdom permeated the wider mainstream culture. And of course there was just the fact that the internet made everything more accessible to people who might not otherwise have been able to find and connect with their fandoms. But the two things which did the most to make geekery the new mainstream media standard were the MCU and Game of Thrones.

Jackson on the set of The Lord of the Rings, proving he’s no conjurer of cheap tricks.

For context, back in 2008 when the first Iron Man film was released, audiences had no idea what it’s impact was. We were happy to have a superhero movie that was fun and that had more plot than the average toy commercial. But that was the summer of a different superhero film: The Dark Knight. Christopher Nolan’s epic masterpiece of grimdark noir storytelling captured the essence of Gotham’s caped crusader, his rivalry with the Joker, and the desperation of one man trying to impose his will on a city. The series took inspiration from the noir stories of Frank Miller (and echoed some of Miller’s more problematic politics, adapted for the Bush era). But compared to the Dark Knight, no one cared about Iron Man.

Even Batman’s broken helmet broods better than Tony Stark.

Both characters were superheroes without superpowers who put on a suit full of fancy gadgets, outsmarted their enemies, and had a flagrant disrespect for authority. But whereas Tony Stark is a wisecracking alcoholic who makes a living profiteering from war and has a startling naivety about his company, Bruce Wayne had a sense of gritty pathos audiences connected with. Batman is just a more interesting hero. And the Joker is a far more interesting villain than Iron Monger.

Then Marvel released another film, The Incredible Hulk, which was mostly forgettable. Except that it was directly connected to Iron Man. SHIELD appeared in both. Nick Fury appeared in both! The two shared the same universe and gave us logical consistencies normally not seen in superhero movies, something that emulated the comics (a point many others have already written about). This continued throughout the Marvel movies for both Thor and Captain America (as well as Iron Man 2), and with each of these, hype grew. By the time The Avengers hit theaters in 2012, Disney had spent a small fortune promoting the buildup of this epic shared universe over the course of five years. They had constructed an audience of superhero fans where there had not been one before. And their marketing efforts paid off after director Joss Whedon delivered a masterpiece.

It seems mean to get into a staring contest with a guy missing an eye, but my money’s on Fury.

I will never forget the absolute misery of a bunch of drunken redneck bros sitting behind me in the theater the night Captain America: The First Avenger had its midnight release as these specimens of American manboy bravado chanted that George Bush was the real Captain America and obnoxiously kicked my seat. But you know what? Even before The Avengers came out, these guys were joining lifelong comics fans to show up for a midnight release of a Marvel film! And that’s because Disney had generated hype for non-comics fans to love these characters too.

It has been stated that the comics fans are not the same audience as the movie fans. This is probably true for the most part. But I became a major comic fan in college, after watching the first Iron Man film and The Dark Knight. Friends lent me their comics to read, or else told me the long and complicated histories of the X-Men, Avengers, or Batman over evenings spent awake late into the night. A large part of why I got to be a fan of the comics was because of the movies. And now, friends who enjoyed the movies are interested in which comics to pick up. But before they’ve immersed themselves into the written material, people already know characters like Thanos and Bucky or can argue about the properties of adamantium versus vibranium.

At around the same time that Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Thor hit theaters, a major TV show first aired. And even if I hadn’t spoiled it for you earlier, you’d know I was talking about Game of Thrones, because that’s the show which has been taken in by audiences the world over. When I used to teach English in Yokohama, Japan, my middle school students were fans of Game of Thrones. When I look at travel to places in Northern Ireland or Iceland or Croatia or Malta, the tourist websites insist on promoting locations that they plug as where Game of Thrones was filmed! When my liberal Jewish father and his neocon born again best friend want a conversation where they both agree, they geek out on Game of Thrones.

Some of the writers really lost their heads with the direction they took the show.

There are plenty of reasons to love the show. It’s rich cast of characters with diverse ideologies and experiences are entangled in a heartbreakingly intense yet exhilarating story! The sets are beautiful! The sex and violence were unlike much of anything else on TV at the time of the show’s release. No character is safe from death, while the various plot twists make anything seem possible. And again, I am speaking about a topic about which so much ink has been spilled (or, since everything is digital these days, about which so many pixels of text and streamed video content have been generated).

People have followed the two franchises of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and of Game of Thrones with a religious fervor. The term “fan” is short for fanatic, and that fanaticism has been waged as war in the comments sections of the internet or uplifted as reverent prayer-like praise with the release of each new installment of these serials. Beloved characters have died, and fans the world over wept. YouTubers made careers discussing the content of these franchises. These two series defined a decade.

If Disney ever buys HBO, expect this Retcon.

And now, they’re over.

Sure, we will get more content. There will be movies for Spider-Man, Black Panther, and the Guardians of the Galaxy. Game of Thrones has a prequel series being developed that supposedly explores some of the lore of Westeros prior to the coming of the Targaryens and their dragons. Various shows set in the MCU have been scheduled for release on Disney’s streaming service. But really, these shows have built up to a climax for years. And now, each has had that climax.

Part of me feels relief that new stories can grow. Will comics like The Sandman and Transmetropolitan finally get the on-screen adaptations they deserve?  Will the X-Men and Fantastic Four be given another chance? Can we expect fantasy masterpieces like N. K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season and Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed to have a level of loving respect shown to them the way Tolkien’s trilogy was handled by Peter Jackson? Look at how awesome Good Omens turned out, or the fact that we have shows for such philosophically and narratively complex works as Garth Ennis’s Preacher and Justin Cronin’s The Passage.  There is so much potential for a new era of storytelling!

If you are unfamiliar with Transmetropolitan, go read it now, or else prepare to be beaten with the chair leg of truth! THE CHAIR LEG OF TRUTH MUST NOT BE ANGERED!

Also, we might FINALLY get some good DC films. And then there’s the fact that Valiant Comics have a six-film franchise in the works with Sony! So many great works are already in development, but without Marvel and Game of Thrones dominating the dialogue, these will get a chance to shine!

On the other hand, I have some serious trepidation. Already, we have seen formulaic filmmaking become the norm with weak villains and weak stories. Disney has been guilty of queer erasure, cutting scenes from Black Panther and Thor: Ragnarok which featured LGBTQ+ characters. The desire to feature military tech in movies results in making deals with branches of the US armed services, creating contracts where films serve as military propaganda (see Captain Marvel, Man of Steel, and all the Captain America movies for reference–or check out the amazing video essay by YouTuber Just Write on the topic featured here). Warner Bros has tried to force franchises into existence without consideration for good writing, good characters, or the fact that hiring Zach Snyder results in a bunch of movies promoting fascist propaganda.

Fantasy and science fiction are about pushing the mainstream culture. Superheroes were about challenging the evils of the world. But now, we don’t have real stories with real ideas. We have brands. Disney. Marvel. HBO. Fox. Amazon. These are the megacorps right out of a cyberpunk dystopia, and as we now live in a world where the majority of dystopias feel a lot more like daily life than speculative fiction, we as a society clearly haven’t learned any lessons. Do we really want fans to be loyal to companies like Disney and Amazon with a history of abusing their workers? Do we want major companies to adapt works which ask difficult questions and then sanitize these works to make them more palatable?

Like many mob bosses, Mickey Mouse has a history of beating his workers into submission.

I’m worried about the future of geekdom.

And I don’t know what to expect for the future of geek media. But there is clearly a demand for more. People are hungry for stories about what could be possible, and companies like Disney and HBO have manufactured an audience of fans who are eager for more. But if the same old formulaic content is being produced by the big media companies, fans will look elsewhere for new stories and new ideas. Authors with transgressive ideas will get a platform–authors like Octavia Butler and Kim Stanley Robinson and Ursula K. Le Guin–and their ideas might actually challenge the status quo by helping people to imagine what is possible, and make the world into something more than the cyberpunk stories of the 80s and 90s told us it could be.

I am choosing to be hopeful for the future of geek culture. And while I love both Game of Thrones and the MCU, I am ready for them to be over. They needed to come to an end. And while they will be drawn out for some time, it is time to see what is next.

I really hope this isn’t the future of mainstream geekdom.

At the time of writing this, the last Game of Thrones episode aired only a few hours ago. I am sitting here having watched the first scene on my laptop. The episode opened with HBO promoting their other big series with a gish gallop of enticements (clearly hoping people won’t cancel the channel). In the first scene, Tyrion walks through the burnt ruins of King’s Landing, staring in horror at the broken wreckage of what is left. The first line spoken is Tyrion telling Jon “I’ll find you later”–perhaps a hint from the directors that though the show is over, there is more to come. But really, like the burnt out city which Daenerys hoped to turn into her capital, its time is over.

Now, it’s time for me to see the end. Winter has come, and I have one more episode to watch before letting this franchise go to the Many-Faced God. So, like Tyrion, I say, “I’ll find you later.”

Beginning of the End: Thoughts on the opening Credits for Game of Thrones Season 8

I recently applied for a writing job that asked me to produce some samples of work relevant to current media news. Naturally, I chose the just-released-season-premiere of Game of Thrones, since it was a topic hot as dragon-fire at the time. Well, in the game of writing jobs, you win a position or your article’s relevance dies.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get the position. However, as it still feels (mostly) relevant, I figured I’d share the shorter of the two pieces here:

 

Season 8 of Game of Thronesis finally here and winter has come at last! The final season promises all kinds of dramatic changes—something made abundantly clear before the first scene even started. To see just how different things are, you need only check out newGame of ThronesSeason 8 opening credits. Past seasons showcased different parts of the world map, but this season focuses on three specific locations. Here what the opening credits tell us.

 

The Wall

Dear American voters, walls don’t work.

The Wall has been breached. The one defense which previously separated the Seven Kingdoms from the threats of Wildlings and the Others now has a massive hole in it. The opening credits used to show the Wall from the southern side as the camera ascended along an elevator-like lift to the top, but now the cameras swoops in from the north through the breach, even as the tiles of the Earth are flipped upside down, representing how the invading army of the dead are turning the land to a frozen ruin.

 

Winterfell

I wonder what’s gonna happen to the dead beneath Winterfell when the White Walkers come…

For the first time, the credits show Winterfell as more than just battlements and a blossoming weirwood tree. The camera swoops beyond the weirwood grove through a series of castle gates before passing into the Great Hall, and then down into the crypts below Winterfell. Later in the episode, we see all the heroes have converged on Winterfell. This is a citadel about to be under siege, each gate forming a layer of protection against the Night King’s forces. Additionally, the Great Hall is where the characters gather to make their plans, even as the crypts honor the past of those dead characters like Ned and Lyanna whose legacy has been inherited by the surviving Starks. The past and present must be reconciled at Winterfell if they are to survive the siege.

 

King’s Landing

The seat of power might be built from the blades of fallen foes, but is just as likely to draw blood from anyone rash enough to sit carelessly upon the throne.

The battlements of King’s Landing clearly demonstrate the strength of the villains residing here. But now we go through the battlements, down a tower’s spiral stairway, through dungeons, and up to the throne room, where a Lannister lion is perched over the Iron Throne. Though Cersei thinks herself secure here, the emphasis on the city’s fortifications suggests the city will also be under siege, and that the strength of her armies will falter at the end of the season when a different coat of arms will appear over the throne.

War of the Realms: Making Peace With The Differences Between Marvel Lore and Norse Myth

This month began Marvel’s newest comic book event, War of the Realms. Written by Jason Aaron with art by Russell Dauterman, the two tell a story that has been building in the pages of Aaron’s work on Thor comics since he took over writing the character with Thor: God of Thunder issue 1 back in 2012. His work on Marvel’s Thor has been lauded with thunderous praise and hailed as one of the great runs of the character. That said, I have always had a problem with the character. Until now.

Let me give some context. To most people, Thor is a mythological character from the distant eras before Christianization. However, I’m not Christian. I was raised Jewish and today live a dual faith life. Part of my syncretic religious identity is worship of and honoring of the Norse gods, including Thor. While I do not consider the Marvel character created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to be the same as the deity I worship, the clear influence of the original Teutonic myths on the Marvel character make it impossible to separate the two completely. Which, as a comics fan, is often a difficult phenomenon, especially when Marvel keeps hammering in the similarities.

 

Anytime religious figures appear in works of fiction, there will be a mixed reception. Arguably, it is the duty of storytellers to try and be as respectful as possible of the religious figures and tales they represent, just as they arguably should work to be respectful of the cultures and people they portray (there are plenty of counterarguments also to be made). I love Neil Gaiman as a writer, and his comic The Sandman is what made me a comic fan, but his depiction of Thor left me feeling let down. Similarly, I have a friend whose expressed mixed feelings of authors portraying (and misportraying) elements of her religious practice with the Orishas. Any book involving characters like Jesus, Muhammad, Siddhartha Buddha, or Lucifer is also likely to be controversial. Fictional works featuring deities from polytheistic religions often tend to be less than interested in exploring the religious and ethical precepts associated with these figures as they treat the characters with the same reverence that the movie Jesus Christ Vampire Huntershowed toward a certain Nazarene carpenter. This is just the nature of writing stories about religious figures.

 

No, Marvel’s character Thor is not the god Thor. I can enjoy a comic and separate the two in my mind. What makes Aaron’s writing so difficult for me is that he makes an effort to connect the Marvel character back to the original myths in a way few authors have attempted. The first page of Thor: God of Thunder opens in Viking-Age Iceland, and throughout the run of the comic, Aaron frequently uses Old Norse words as the character sails around with a crew of Vikings, even encountering deities from the Slavic pantheon worshipped concurrently with the Norse gods by peoples who warred, traded, and sailed with the Vikings. Aaron seems to genuinely try to be respectful of the original Norse lore as much as possible within the context of writing a Marvel superhero. Plus, it’s a well-written story!

 

Later during his run, Jason Aaron met with controversy when he made the character of Jane Foster into a magical superhero who assumed the mantle of Thor. Many reacted negatively to this for a variety of reasons. The worst of fandom erupted in hateful reactionary rhetoric attacking the diversity of Marvel heroes. It should go without saying (but sadly, still needs to be said) that such hate speech is both condemnable and an invalid form of literary critique. But there were other critiques to be made about this creative decision. I personally found the decision to use the name “Thor” as a superhero title rather than a personal name to be a jarring change (the original character Thor was referred to as Odinson during this title). However, this began a new era for the comic where Aaron partnered with Russell Dauterman. The Jane Foster Thor took on classic villains like the dark elf Malekith the Accursed and god-killing monster Mangog, smiting her foes in epic conflicts. (She also fought one of my favorite underused villains, Oubliette Midas, the Exterminatrix). The greatest of all her struggles during this time was her battle with cancer, a fight which sapped the strength from her but never broke her spirit.

 

Thor (both the original Marvel thunderer and Jane Foster) became involved in numerous major comic events, such as Original Sin, Secret Wars, and Secret Empire. Perhaps most significant to the character was the Original Sin story, in which secret histories of the Marvel universe were revealed. Jason used this as an opportunity to expand on the cosmography of the comics by adding a tenth mythical realm to that planar orrery of Marvel’s Asgardian characters. This tenth realm, Heven, was home to angels, just as Asgard was home to Asgardian gods and Jotunheim was the home of the frost giants.

 

These realms are rooted in Norse myths which have passed down through the ages to us in the form of thePoetic Edda and Prose Edda. I don’t know if Jack Kirby ever read translations of these original Norse texts but their stories clearly inspired his work (meanwhile, Stan Lee, for all his talents, famously took credit for others’ work and during an interview with film maker and comics writer Kevin Smith, claimed to have just made up the word “Mjolnir,” then proceeded to mispronounce the word). Mjolnir, Asgard, Jotunheim, Valkyries, Valhalla—these are all part of the original religious cosmology of Germanic peoples, passed down orally through the generations and preserved in the written Old Norse accounts like the Eddas during the thirteenth century.

 

It is the way Jason Aaron connects his Marvel scripts to the original Old Norse lore that makes his run so noteworthy, and nowhere is this better exemplified than in the opening of War of the Realms.

 

The first page is black with superimposed text.  Now, comic writers and artists are often paid by the page. A quick way some writers have found to get more content is to put text on blank pages, often creating dramatic beats, as Aaron does here. But just look at this powerful opening where we see the words reach back into the dawning of the world and echo through the ages like the sagas of old.

 

Aaron’s narration cuts through the dark even as it reminds us that everything began in darkness: “IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS ONLY DARKNESS. THE GREAT UNENDING NOTHINGNESS OF THE YAWNING VOID.”

This is directly harkening back to the story of the Ginnungagap, or the Yawning Void, which the Icelandic poet Snorri Sturlusson described in the section of the Prose Eddaentitled Gylfaginning, or The Beguiling of Gylfi. According to Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur’s 1916 translation of Snorri, “Ginnungagap, the Yawning Void … which faced toward the northern quarter, became filled with heaviness, and masses of ice and rime, and from within, drizzling rain and gusts; but the southern part of the Yawning Void was lighted by those sparks and glowing masses which flew out of Múspellheim.”

 

Notice how Aaron’s script succinctly repeats these words for modern audiences: “THEN FROM THE SOUTH CAME ROARING FIRE. AND FROM THE NORTH SWIRLING ICE AND MIST.”

Notice also Dauterman’s map, showing the Nine Realms of Norse cosmology. There is also Heven, the tenth plane which I mentioned earlier. But what I love about this is that bothcreators are actually invoking the Eddas in this opening! That stylized manuscript page might have some familiar details Marvel fans will note (like portraying Hel with a horned helm or featuring a certain wall-crawling smart-mouthed superhero from Queens dangling from a branch), but the page is actually drawn to recreate the style of medieval manuscripts. Just look at the image below from the Codex Regius—a medieval tome containing one of the oldest surviving versions of Snorri’s Prose Edda—and tell me you don’t see the similarities to Dauterman’s illustration.

I do not want to spoil much of the story. As the title indicates, there is a war between the different realms which comprise Marvel’s interpretation of Norse cosmography.  The final battlefield is Midgard—that is, Earth—which becomes invaded by various hostile forces, such as the fire-giants of Muspelheim and the dark elves of Svartalfheim. The Avengers, known as Earth’s Mightiest of Heroes, are completely overwhelmed by the might and magic of foes far stronger than anything they can contend with. It is essentially a superhero story.

 

Except, this doesn’t feellike just another superhero story. On the surface, it could be compared to The Kree-Skrull War or Secret Invasion or Age of Ultron or Infinity or however many other Marvel stories where an invading alien force wreaks havoc on Earth and completely overpowers the various superheroes sworn to protect it. There are, after all, a finite number of stories out there, and an even more finite number involving costumed superhumans solving their problems with violence. What makes this feel unique is the way Jason Aaron and Russell Dauterman really work to root this tale as much in the Old Norse tradition of the lore as the rest of the Marvel Universe. Often, when comic creators try to draw on medieval elements, it feels hackneyed. Not so here. Rather, all the elements seem to fall into place with huge battles, tragic twists, and a deep history all unfolding on the page.

 

At no point has Jason Aaron delivered a bad or even mediocre story in his run on Thor. Even when I’ve had personal reasons not to love the work, it has been consistently strong. But the clash of blades and the maelstrom of battle featured here make War of the Realms a cut above most comic events. The story has just one issue out at the time of my writing this, but in that issue, Aaron and Dauterman have achieved something worthy of the skalds’ praise.

Dealing With Climate Change

According to the UN Climate Report released last summer, we have just 11 years to address climate change.

So, it’s a good thing the US government’s taking this threat seriously and acting accordingly. Oh, wait…

For some reason, pointing out the scientific studies on man-made climate change is controversial. This shouldn’t be so, as we’ve known the facts for a while now. Agencies like NASA and companies such as Exxon Mobile have actually been monitoring the devastating effects of climate change for decades—with warming oceans, rising sea levels, and rising global temperatures being just some of the notable effects. Then again, Flat Eartherstraveled from around the globe to meet for an international conference in Colorado last year, so all bets are off when it comes to people accepting the scientific method.

Sadly, humankind’s greatest lasting achievement might be the destruction of this planet’s ability to sustain life. (Sorry, but the pyramids, the Renaissance, Sputnik, and even cat-memes just don’t compare to the last effects of planetary engineering achieved in a century of irresponsibly bombarding the atmosphere with CO₂).

Climate science is not something up for debate. People can disagree with each other—not with nature itself. There is no arguing with science (and those who argue about how to interpret scientific data need to be scientists). Denying science is like trying to stop a bullet by saying you don’t believe in Newton’s Laws. Objective reality is just one of those things not up for debate. And objectively, the facts are simple: either we act now to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2° Celsius above what they were prior to the Industrial Revolution by the year 2030 or it will be too late.

Some might imagine unwashed crazy doomsayers carrying signs reading THE END IS NIGH. To anyone worried about this, let’s be clear: the end isn’tnigh. It’s already started. Climate change has increased the oceans’ acidity, created refugee crises, and is a major factor in the extinction of thousands of species in the Sixth Extinction.  But it’s not all despair. Oh no, see, total despair is what we have to look forward to in the near future. Experts at organizations ranging from World Health Organization to the United Nations the World Bank agree that the threat will devastate humanity.

This is not fearmongering or hyperbole. This is a consensus reached by the world’s experts on the topic. From William Vollman’s two-volume book Carbon Ideologies to David Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth to the UN-backed global community of climate scientists have described looming apocalyptic scenarios.

We should listen to the experts. We pay trained doctors or lawyers for their specialized skillsets. It shouldn’t be any different for climate scientists–just as you wouldn’t trust some rando voicing strong opinions on the internet to perform open heart surgery, maybe don’t trust them when they claim to disprove the scientific consensus reached by the world’s climate experts).

However, for those unaware of the specific science, here are a few data points. Since 2001, the planet has had 18 of the 19 hottest years ever recorded. Carbon dioxide in the air has risen from 338 parts per million in 1979 to 405 parts per million in 2017—something never previously achieved in the 800,000 years observed in ice core records. Half of all of the carbon dioxide emissions ever put into the atmosphere have been released since 1989.

Reactions to the realization of climate change by experts and non-experts have been varied. Oil and gas companies have invested millions annually in suppressing the information despite being aware of the relationship between climate change and CO₂ levels since the 80s. Politicians in the pay of oil companies have likewise dismissed the phenomenon, as was seen with James Inhafoe famously claiming a snowball was proofthat climate change was a hoax or Diane Feinstein, who dismissed the pleas of children begging her to preserve the planet for a viable future. Children across the globe are striking in mass protests.Trump’s appointment to head NASA, Jim Bridenstine—a former denier of climate science—looked at the vast collection of data the agency had accumulated and changed his stance when he realized the data proving the effects of man-made climate change were undeniable.

Still, the scientific claims of experts in the field continue to be dismissed with the same callous ignorance with which Americans disregard the human rights violations the country perpetrates on a daily basis. What’s the end of the world next to quarterly profit margins and building a medieval fortification along the southern border, right? And tragically, attitudes seem unlikely to change. While the famous image of a stranded polar bear floating alone on an ice drift has become a cliché and people have lax attitudes about melting permafrost, it is hard to imagine what it would take wake people to action.

(Seriously, the permafrost is melting! PERMA-frost! Which we expected to be a permanent feature to the point that humanity built our seed storehouse meant to survive the apocalypse in Norway’s permafrost—it’s melting!)

The Green New Deal seems to be the best answer anyone has proposed.

The Green New Deal proposes to both create jobs and improve America’s infrastructure by promoting green technology. New technological developments have made green energy cheaper to produce than coal, creating an opportunity for economic growth—since saving the planet from destruction apparently isn’t enough incentive.

Critics of the Green New Deal have cited a report from the conservative think tank American Action Forum, which claimed that the proposed Deal would cost somewhere between $54 and $93 trillion. This claim has repeatedly been dismissed. And even if it did cost that much, this would be money that 1. is invested into the economy 2. to prevent a climate apocalypse that 3. would be much cheaper than the costs of the damage done if we fail to prevent climate change.

This last point was made by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez(AKA, the legendary AOC) during a recent interview with MSNBC host Chris Hayes:

“We could solve all the environmental issues in the world. If those climate policies and solutions are drafted onto the existing framework of economic injustice, then we will perpetuate our social problems…The Yellow Vests in France are a perfect example of what happens when you do not address economic and social justice in the same sweep as climate police, because what happens is A. the policy becomes unsustainable, B. society starts to fall apart—which is what happens in income inequality, and then C. we don’t actually solve the environmental issue.”

So, that’s the problem. If we solve climate change, we might also have to challenge our economic models that allow some people to profit from systemic injustice and income inequality. Well, better not let the poor have their way. Much better to let the world end, eh?

During the discussion, another panelist, the Policy Director for the Union of Concerned Scientists Rachel Cletis, followed up AOC’s comments by pointing out the direct link between climate change and class suffering as those who have the least are already suffering some of the most visible effects of climate change.

Other proposed solutions to climate change appear less productive. Republican Mike Lee’s unhelpful claim that babies are the answer to climate change ignores two major realities: 1. humans have a huge carbon footprint and 2. those babies will die horrible climate-related deaths if we don’t stop climate change in the next 11 years. The rising popularity of ecofascism has its followers advocating for racially discriminatory and often genocidal solutions, apparently believing that killing enough people will reduce the global carbon footprint. (Note: if your solution to reducing the CO₂emissions is genocide, you’re wrong. In fact, if your solution to anything takes its inspiration from Hitler’s Final Solution, you are actually the problem and eco-friendly).

And then there’s the most Matrix response that’s been proposed: blocking out the sun (no, it won’t STOP climate change, but could delay the effects, and it’s in keeping with the current trends to turn the planet into a grim sci-fi dystopia, which is an improvement to other solutions for even marginally rooted in science at all.)

The issue of tackling climate change (and acknowledging science is real) is now a partisan one in the US, with Republicans famously tied to Big Oil and denying the claims of climate scientists. President Trump has repeatedly denied the effects of man-made climate change, suppressed the publication of scientific findings on the topic, and appointed climate deniers to key positions in his administration. In her book No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years In Washington, the former Secretary of State Condoleeza Ricecriticizes then-President George W. Bush for knowing climate change was a threat but not taking it seriously enough. Sadly, such denialism clearly did not end with Bush.

However, it is unfair to criticize just one party for failing to act. Some Democrats oppose the Green New Deal as unrealistic, such as Senator Diane Feinstein, who has received in excess of $250,000 from the oil lobby. Hillary Clinton received a backlash from many on the left for her attempt to stay neutral regarding the brutal tactics employed against protesters trying to protect the Standing Rock Sioux from the Dakota Access Pipeline during her 2016 Presidential Campaign; that Clinton received $1.5 million from the Oil Lobby may explain some of this. (the Dakota Access Pipeline has also leaked five times in six months, so maybe we should’ve listened to the protesters instead of paying mercs to quell their last sparks of hope with freezing fire hoses.)

Thankfully, almost every Democratic candidate running for President supports the Green New Deal.

It is no longer acceptable to be on the fence about this because we are quite simply running out of time. For thirty years, the effects of CO₂emissions on the environment have been known. Now, the planet has 11 years to cut emissions in half.

There are many reasons to act now with a proposal like the Green New Deal. Green energy is easier and cheaper to implement now than ever before. The jobs created will stimulate the economy and combat systemic income inequality.  It will make Trump really angry when it passes (which is like a million good reasons for every rage-Tweet he makes on the topic). But those are all political reasons, and politics is a matter addressed among people with differing opinions. As we said before, science can’t be argued with.

The hard truth is this: we act to save the planet in the next eleven years or most of life on Earth will die. The choice shouldn’t be a hard one.

Alien World Trees: The Future of Trees by Warren Ellis

Warren Ellis is a living legend. To quote the man himself, “I am a messiah. Ask anyone on the internet.”  Among his works are the Hunter S. Thompson-inspired postcyberpunk comic series Transmetropolitan which predicted everything from 3D printers to the 2016 Presidential Election and the series Planetary which remains perhaps the greatest exploration of twentieth-century pop culture since Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons released The Watchmen back in 1987.  Ellis is a genius, and—once again letting him describe himself—a “perpetually disappointed optimist.” I have personally heard him tell a stranger they should be drowned in the River Thames for asking a stupid question, and yet I can also vouch for the fact that the man gives surprisingly good hugs (though revealing this may very well get me thrown in the Thames) . But most of all, Warren Ellis is a man who stared into the cataracts of the future’s omnivisional potential and didn’t blink.

Warren Ellis: writer, comic guru, internet Jesus.

Which brings me to the future of one of his ongoing series: Trees.

In his newsletter, Orbital Operations, Ellis recently wrote the following:

“I started writing TREES Volume 3 recently.  It will be five issues long.  Probably.  Sometimes TREES stories add issues in the telling of them.  But I’m aiming for five, and I’m a couple of issues in.  It’s a slight change of style.  I was bogged down in it for a long while, and then realised I was writing the wrong story, which was why it wasn’t taking on life.  It didn’t want to be written.  A few days later, I had the right story come to me, and, after a single note from Jason [Howard], I had the whole shape of it and it flew together.”

Ellis and Howard have an upcoming book, Cemetery Beach, which they describe as “an action book,” and “a palate-cleanser from TREES.”  So whatever Trees volume three will be, it won’t be an action book. But to understand what comes next, let’s recap on the series so far.

Image from issue 1 of Trees by Warren Ellis & Jason Howard.

Trees explores the idea of what would happen if aliens invaded Earth and they were so much larger than Earthlings that they gave us no more mind than we give ants. In this case, the aliens are giant pillars reaching high into the clouds, commonly referred to as “Trees.” So far, the series has spanned two volumes and fourteen issues, focusing on different people around the globe going about their daily lives in the shadow of these giant alien pillars from outer space. Among these are a Norwegian research team studying the one of the Trees, a corrupt politician trying to run New York after the landing of a Tree turned the city into (even more of) a dystopian police state, and two young lovers in a Chinese artists’ commune.

Because this is Warren Ellis, pretty much all of these stories come to a dark ending (though, truth be told, many of them have not yet ended, it seems).  Police brutality, military attacks against civilians, fascist youth gangs, and illegal military operations against neighboring countries are central plot points in the book.  These are favorite themes which Ellis returns to frequently, but they also tie into another concept which I got to hear him speak about back in 2016 while he was on a book tour in the United States for his novel Normal.

The concept is exopolitics, the field of study interested in political policies concerning extraterrestrials.

While speaking in North Carolina, Ellis mentioned this was a major point of research for his work on the then-upcoming comic book series The Wild Storm which he was writing for DC Comics. It is true that exopolitics features heavily in The Wild Storm, but it is just as important a theme in Trees.

Part of the cover art for issue 1 of Trees.

Any time writers examine other cultures and how humans interact with them, they are really interrogating humanity. To define what is not human, one must understand what humanity is.  Exopolitcs is therefore a method of interrogating—and legislating—our own humanity as we are forced to make contact with things that are other from ourselves.  Ultimately, legislation must preserve that which needs preserving and defend against threats that could destroy it.

This then raises the question of what are the dangers threatening humanity—both from within and without.

Again, Ellis has stated this won’t be an action book, but it looks like it will continue to explore violence. His critiques of police violence, the rise of fascist gangs, and military abuses of power will probably continue, but there is another element in his work that has been woven through these narratives that seems likely to be further explored: gender politics.

There have been a number of strong women who appeared in the first volume of Trees, including the Chinese trans woman Zhen in the aforementioned artists’ colony and an Italian cis woman named Eligia whose boyfriend was the local fascist gang leader.  Both women’s stories were almost absent from volume two. During the first volume, one triumphed over her violent abuser, while the other barely survived a military strike.  But it seems that this is the perfect place to pick up the story. Because the story of Trees is about facing the unknowable—something which doesn’t acknowledge the value of one’s humanity. Whether that something is a giant alien Tree, or a fascist, or an abuser, or the military, the struggles are real. (Okay, giant alien Trees are a fictional threat, but these towering erect pillars make one helluva great metaphor for the real world threat of the patriarchy.)

It’s not just narrative potential that makes me think Ellis will go this route and Ellis’ own political interests, there is also evidence from the books he has been plugging. Ellis has a habit of recommending books to his fans, and on his Amazon recommendations is the 2017 book Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring the Sex Positive by Kristen J. Sollee.  Notably, a number of books here seem to be attached to the inspiration for other projects (such as The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett, which Ellis has said inspired elements of his comic Shipwreck).

The cover of Kristen Sollee’s book, which Ellis recommends on his Amazon page.

Additionally, there is a feminist narrative arc that many of Ellis’ best works seem to gravitate toward. Some of his other current ongoing series such as The Wild Storm and Injection feature female leads throughout the titles’ large ensemble casts.

Furthermore, one should consider the metaphorical narrative of challenging the giant phallic symbols of power and violence dominating the land which could be countered by the strength of deep roots (archetypically associated with the feminine).

Of course, I could be wrong totally about this.

I have not spent as much time staring into the future as Ellis has, nor even contemplating all the forms of violence that can be inflicted with a selfie stick.  He could decide to focus more on migrant crises to discuss the displaced peoples of his fictional world paralleling ours, or the isolationist tendencies populism espouses to showcase his contempt for BREXIT. Or he could take it in some totally different direction.

Whatever Ellis does with the series, it will be interesting to see how the story branches off in new directions.

Easter’s Origins: Eostre, Ishtar, & Pesach

Most major Christian holidays have cultural traditions rooted in older pre-Christian faiths.  This is not controversial to anyone who has studied religious history.  Part of the success of Christianization was adapting to the cultures it spread to by assimilating some of their traditions.  And so with every major holiday, posts make the rounds online about the true origins of a particular holiday.  Thus, this Easter, I stumbled upon this post:

 

So, yes, this image does appear to represent the either the goddess Ishtar,known as Inanna to the Sumerians,—both Mesopotamian goddesses associated with sex and fertility.  And yes, Emperor Constantine I did contribute to the Christianization of the Roman Empire.  But that is about where the truth in this meme ends.

Rather than begin with Ishtar, I want to begin with Christianity in the Roman Empire and with the rule of Emperor Constantine.

 

Constantine I is one of my favorite controversial figures in history.  Born in 272 CE, and gaining the title of “Augustus” [Emperor] after his father died in 306 CE, Constantine was one of the greatest military tacticians and a political strategists in all history.  He assumed the rank of Emperor while in England, and then proceeded to conquer his way across all of Europe until taking up residence in the city of Byzantium (where he built a new residence).  At the time, Rome had four emperors, but he was having none of that and so did away with his rivals, as well as pretty much anyone else he saw as a challenge to his primacy.  He redefined history in a big way, and many historians consider the Byzantine Empire (also called the Eastern Roman Empire) as beginning with his reign (though culturally, Justinian should probably get more credit for the change.)

Constantine is considered the first Christian Emperor of Rome.  This is true.  He did apparently convert on his deathbed, though considering he spent his entire life prior to it being a Pagan, I’ve personally always been a bit skeptical of the circumstances of his conversion.  But credit where it is due.  After him, all Emperors save one (that one being Justin I) were Christian and the Roman/Byzantine Empire was a predominantly Christian state.  Furthermore, under Constantine’s rule, Christianity was legalized though it should be noted that just how persecuted Christians were prior to his coming varied drastically from one emperor to the next.

But his brilliance was actually in his coinage.  He minted coins with his image on them—great golden Solidi which he used to pay his armies, on whose face was the image of himself as Sol Invictus (the Victorious Sun, AKA Apollo).  But on the smaller coins used in the markets, he included Christian symbols.

Christianity had spread like wildfire in the major cities of the Roman Empire, where ideas could spread  quickly and gain adherents.  Meanwhile, in the countrysides, the old polytheistic religions thrived.  The armies were Pagan, which is to say the soldiery were both predominantly polytheists but also from the villages and rural areas (“Pagus” meaning “village” or “rural community” in Latin).

Now, this is where things enter another territory of Pagan worship, but not one involving Mesopotamian deities.  The Empire was at this point becoming fully Christianized, and just as Christians had been persecuted by the Pagans of Rome, the new state-backed Christians continued that good ol’ Roman tradition of persecution to try and stamp out any of the older Pagan religions.  Of course, some trace elements of pre-Christian tradition survived.  Romanos the Melodist and Jacob of Serugh were two sixth-century Syrian Christians who seemed to liken Mary’s grieving for Jesus to the ways in which Ishtar grieved for her husband Tammuz.  But that is not the same as to say that these ancient Mesopotamian traditions honoring Ishtar—rooted in the more Eastern territories of the Empire that were often contested over with other nations—were changing the major holidays as practiced at the heart of the Empire.

Furthermore, while Ishtar’s worship did continue into the 8^th Century CE, this mainly seems to have been in regions known as “Upper Mesopotamia,” an area corresponding with Northeastern Syria, and Northwestern Iraq—areas with more Persian influence than Byzantine influence, showing little reason why the worship of Ishtar should influence such a major Christian holiday so widely when the closest church centers were in Constantinople and Antioch.  While I am not willing to rule it out as possible, I do not know of any rituals involving eggs or rabbits as connected to either Inanna or to the Mesopotamian spring equinox New Year’s holiday called Akitu (a holiday of significance to Ishtar’s worship).  Rather, animals associated with her were lions and doves, and among the symbols with which she is associated, I have mainly found references to eight-pointed stars, various astral shapes, rosettes, and a cuneiform ideogram with both reeds and the doorpost of a storehouse.

Instead, it was a different Middle Eastern springtime holiday that was relevant here.

For proof of this, we need only look to the word used today for Easter in the languages where the Church was at its most powerful.  Constantinople (today Istanbul) was the heart of both the Byzantine Empire and the Orthodox Church—both of which were culturally Greek.  The Greek word for Easter is “Pascha.”  In Latin, too, the word is “Pascha,” taken from the Greek.  Other variations of the holiday’s name include the Dutch “Pasen,” the Norwegian and Danish word “påske,” and the Rusian word “Pascha”—which is to say the Russians basically have the same exact word as Greek and Latin; whereas the other countries at least tried to make it their own a bit.  Even other languages in the British Isles have words like “Pasg” in Welsh while the Cornish and Breton word is “Pask.”

Which is basically etymology’s way of telling us what the holiday really is: the Jewish feast of Pesach (called Passover in modern English, because modern English keeps being difficult).  This should be no surprise.  As anyone who studied the Bible (or watched that awful anti-Semetic film by Mel Gibson) will know, the Last Supper was a Passover Feast.  Hence, the Aramaic word “Pesach” became rendered as “Pascha.”

Cool.  Problem solved.  No reference to Ishtar.

Did someone remember to leave a seat open for Elijah?

Except then where do all the memes come from?

The answer is, once again, in English.  Or at least older Germanic languages that eventually became part of what we now call English, because English is the drunken promiscuous lout of languages.

Venerable Bede

There was an Anglo-Saxon monk named Bede who lived in the eighth Century and who wrote a number of major works which earned him the respected titled of “Venerable Bede.”  In one of his works, entitled De Temporum Ratione (The Reckoning of Time) he wrote the following:

“Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated “Paschal month”, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.”

[citation: please note, I lifted this translation right off of Wikipedia, and it is credited to Faith Willis’ 1999 edition of Bede: The Reckoning of Time]

 

Now, it should be stated that Bede is the only source available for describing Eostre, and some scholars have suggested he invented her.  However, there are a number of places in England which bear the goddess’ name, with such toponyms, including the Yorkshire sites of Austerfield (formerly spelled Eostrefeld) and Eastrington (Eastringatun), as well as Eastry (Eastrgena) in Kent.  She has also been linked to the Germanic holiday of Ostara and to a number of inscriptions found in what is today Germany from the second century CE dedicated to the Germanic goddesses called the matronae, and in particular to one of them identified as “matronae Austriahenae.”  (To those unfamiliar with Germanic languages, I will quickly note that “East” in English is derived in part from older words in Germanic languages like “Aus-“ and “Os-.“)

Though the eggs and rabbits are often ascribed to the goddess Eostre, I genuinely do not know enough to connect them.  Eggs were painted in Mesopotamia and in the Christian East for reasons that would be wholly unconnected to Eostre’s worship in any recognizable way, while Slavic paganism also practiced the painting of eggs for spring rituals in a practice that later became absorbed into the Christianized peoples’ worship of Pascha.

But in England, where Eostre was honored during the Eostre-month (Eosturmonath, as Bede called it), the goddess lent her name to Easter.

So there we have it: The holiday we call Easter is named after an older goddess worshipped during the spring, and the “Paschal season” is named after her.

The word Easter is not inspired by the goddess Ishtar, but by the Germanic goddess Eostre. So can we please give each goddess their due, and not mix up who gets credit for what?  Seriously, they may be goddesses of sex and fertility, but mixing up the attributes of the two and conflating their characteristics could very well get one smitten—and not in the fertility-related ways.

 

Phoenix Resurrection: Return of the X-Men’s First Great Female Character

Marvel Comics is in the middle of releasing its series Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey.  The importance of this story—and of Jean Grey as a character—cannot be overstated.  The X-Men franchise has always been known for championing diversity and those whom society has oppressed, marginalized, or misrepresented.  And the original character to establish this legacy of representation is Jean Grey.

Why?  Jean certainly doesn’t represent the most diverse or marginalized of demographics.  She’s white, financially well-off, American, and almost the poster child for heteronormativity.  In fact, for a woman who is one of the most powerful forces in the Marvel Universe, she spent a long time being written as just “the girl.”

In an industry where heroics were so often the purview of cis- straight white men, the X-Men franchise offered a place of diversity in the pages of mainstream comics.  It gave us strong female characters like Kitty Pryde, Storm, and Danielle Moonstar.  The two authority figures leading mutant-kind were Magneto and Charles Xavier, who were supposedly inspired by Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  And it cannot be understated that in a time when the Comics Authority forbade open portrayals of anything other than heteronormativity, Chris Claremont offered a voice for LGBTQ+ narratives with the use of queercoding for several characters, which set the precedent for Marvel’s first same-sex marriage to appear in the pages of Astonishing X-Men issue 51.

But before all of that, there was Jean Grey.  She was the only girl on a team of men.  And, until recent controversial retcons identified founding X-Man Bobby Drake (AKA Iceman) as gay, this made Jean the only member of the original X-Men who wasn’t a straight cis- white American male of middle-to-upperclass origins.  Because, in the 60s, whiny suburban teenagers is what passed in mainstream comics for a marginalized group hated and feared by society but still palatable enough to be marketed on newsstands.  Like the Invisible Woman in the Fantastic Four or the Wasp in the original Avengers lineup, Jean served a mandatory role as the girl of the team rather than being a fully formed person with a developed personality and backstory of her own.

Worse, as the girl, Jean was often portrayed as the object of others’ desire, rather than a character with agency or desires of her own.  The boys fought over who would claim her, and her mentor, Professor X, harbored feelings for her.  Of course, many of these problematic tropes can be understood as being simply the narrative conventions of the time, and (like all literary works) must be viewed within the cultural context of that era.

The Silver Age of Comics in which the X-Men were conceived came to its end, and the original team matured.  And eventually, as new characters like Storm and Kitty Pryde joined the team, the old ones had to struggle to redefine their roles in the world (both as superhumans and as ordinary people struggling with the typical financial and emotional dramas of the day).  Jean might have begun with less personality than the average Barbie, but she grew into an independent woman who asserted herself over her male counterparts, balancing loyalty to her companions with self-interest, and in time, she soon became the most powerful BAMF the X-Men had ever known.

That’s right, I’m talking about the Phoenix.

While flying around on a cosmic mission in space (as one is wont to do in the Marvel Universe), Jean took control of a powerful cosmic entity known as the Phoenix Force.  In taking this power into herself, she died, but managed to save the lives of her teammates (among them her love interest, Scott Summers, AKA Cyclops, AKA “Slim”).  Apparently, Jean couldn’t be a cosmically empowered being for more than an instant before the editorial glass ceiling fridged her.  But for a moment, Jean Grey was the most powerful being in the universe.

Boyfriend Scott got to grieve her, and X-Men moved on to new stories.

But then, Jean came back from the dead, now calling herself the Phoenix.  And while this set in motion some of the most iconic stories ever told by Marvel, it also addressed a real issue with her character from the beginning, which is to say that Jean Grey had one of the stupidest superhero names since someone over at DC Comics came up with Arm-Fall-Off-Boy (which is in fact a real thing, because comics).

Jean’s original name on the X-Men, Marvel Girl, sounds a lot more like a gimmicky marketing ploy for Marvel Comics than an actual representation of her powers or personality.  Especially when compared to the evocative names of her counterparts Cyclops, Beast, Angel, and Iceman.  (Admittedly, Professor X isn’t a great name either, but Marvel Girl literally sounds like an advertisement).  She spent a good bit of her time as Marvel Girl overlapping with other superpowered billboards like Captain Marvel, Ms Marvel, and the alien hero Mar-Vell.  This is probably why she’s often known simply by her given name.  But for a while, she changed her superhero name to “Phoenix,” and this is around the time she began to kick some serious mutant ass.

Ask any group of comics fans to name the greatest X-Men story ever written, and probably half of them will tell you The Dark Phoenix Saga.  I’m not going to get into all the reasons it’s a masterpiece here (since doing so would be longer than the rest of this blog combined), but it completely revolutionized both the X-Men series and comic storytelling as a whole.  Suffice it to say, by the end of this story, no one would be talking about Jean Grey as “the girl.”  They’d talk about her as the great cosmic entity who destroyed worlds, reshaped reality, and transcended the limits of death.   Of course, her katabatic exploits meant that Jean would kickstart the trope of superheroes pulling a good ol’-fashioned Nazarethean resurrection every other Sunday.

Since then, Jean would go on to star in  number of the great X-Men epics.  She battled the evil omega mutant Apocalypse as a member of the X-Factor, married childhood sweetheart and redhead-obsessed Cyclops, and fought the psychic entity called Onslaught (who turned out to be all the repressed evil tendencies of Professor X, including his inappropriate feelings for a young Jean Grey).  Jean took part in some of the greatest stories the X-Men ever had, including the Grant Morrison run of New X-Men and Greg Pak’s miniseries Phoenix: Endsong.  The legendary Astonishing X-Men run by Joss Whedon dealt with both Wolverine and Cyclops grieving the loss of Jean.  And then she was just gone.

After being killed at the end of New X-Men, Whedon’s Astonishing run immediately predicted her return.  Which isn’t much to be surprised at, as in one way or another Jean Grey and/or the Phoenix Force replicating her had by this time resurrected a half dozen times.

But Jean didn’t return.  When most of the world’s mutants were depowered by the Scarlet Witch, Jean stayed dead.  When the original X-Men lineup shared an adventure together during the first superhero Civil War, she was notably still dead.  When a magical mutant girl, Hope Summers, appeared and immediately began to alter the fates of mutants and control the Phoenix Force, Jean was absent.  And then when she did return, it wasn’t even the Jean everyone knew and loved, but a time-displaced version of the teenage Jean Grey from the first few issues of X-Men.

After more than a decade, Matt Rosenberg is bringing her back in Phoenix Resurrection.

Rosenberg ends the first issue with an Afterword, whose first line reads “I never got to properly mourn Jean Grey.”  This truism, one felt by many comic fans, is further explored as he summarizes his experiences with the character, and his expectation that she would just come back one day.  Considering the resurrection of dead heroes isn’t only a trope, but one that Jean is more or less responsible for, it feels wrong that it’s taken so long for her to return.

Since Jean’s death at the end of New X-Men, her comrades Wolverine, Angel, and Nightcrawler have died and resurrected, as has Cable (who, in keeping with the convoluted family dynamics of an X-Men story, is the son of Cyclops and a clone of Jean Grey who Cyclops married after the original Jean was dead).  Other non-mutant Marvel heroes such as Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye, the Punisher, the original Spider-Man, and the second Ant-Man have similarly pulled the zombie Lazarus routine and sprinted through the afterlife’s revolving doorway.

But Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey is so much more than its oh-so-on-the-nose title would have you believe.  And also so much less.  It is not a large scale event to the same extent that other major stories featuring the Phoenix have been.  As the plot goes, the story is a fairly standard affair, if perhaps a bit more surreal than most.

But in its surrealism we see the value of the story as Rosenberg tells it.  This could have been just another apocalypse, any one of a dozen going on simultaneously in different corners of the main Marvel Universe.  Instead, the main focus of the story seems to star a teenaged Jean Grey working as a waitress at a 1950s-style diner in middle-of-nowhere suburbia in a hallucinatory sequence as she tries to reassert her grasp of reality.

This sequence evokes some of the worst chauvinist stereotypes of early comics and American culture, a mental prison that Jean appears trapped in.  And yet, breaking free of such a prison of conventions is the destiny that took Jean Grey from being “the girl” of the X-Men lineup to the mighty Phoenix she is now.

Many of the other characters seemed crammed into the story to fill out the team line-up of the various X-books, but Kitty Pryde stands out as the X-Men’s current leader, as does the presence of Laura (AKA, the All-New Wolverine), Psylocke, Storm, Rogue, and Rachel Summers, showcasing a cast of strong X-Women who either had close ties to Jean or have character arcs directly impacted by her legacy.  Plus, there’s a poignant reveal of Emma Frost reclining in a decadent throne that seems like a moment out of her early supervillainous career, echoing old tensions between the two back in the aforementioned Dark Phoenix Saga.

So, here we have a story with strong characters and a surrealist psychosymbolic mindscape bringing back one of the most important and iconic characters in the Marvel Universe.  If the tone of this book is any indication, the shift in focus on Jean Grey and the Phoenix in coming years will be away from her portrayal as either a repressed woman shoved into a gender role, or as an apocalyptically overpowered force of nature.  Instead, we might finally get some good stories that focus on her as a person, and allow her to grow in a new direction as an individual.

 

 

Warren Ellis, UPG, and Current Events

It’s been a while since I blogged and a lot has happened, from signing a publishing deal for a short piece coming out next summer to moving four times (once internationally). I want to cover a lot with this blog post. But time is finite, so I’m going to keep it relatively short.

To begin with, let me open with an absolutely true (and thus not appropriate for work) story, and build to a religious studies critique of sensitive bipartisan political controversies (a topic that will no doubt have my few readers either unsubscribe or attempt to douse me in gasoline before starting a flame war).

One week ago, I got to sit in on Warren Ellis giving a talk as part of the book tour for his new novel, Normal.

If you’re one of those unfortunate souls who is unfamiliar with Warren’s work, then I’ll what you need to know is he’s a futurist best known for writing comics like Transmetropolitan, which successfully predicted the 3D printer, Google Glasses, and our current Presidency. He also writes about things like drug-addicted kitchen appliances, protagonists who add dog urine to their coffee, and among his more famous characters are Apollo and Midnighter—two superheroes who answer the question of “what if Batman and Superman finally got serious about their romantic relationship?” So, with that in mind, it should come as no surprise how the interview went.

They’re such a cute couple.  

Among the first questions asked was the following: “How fucked are we?”

Now, this is where many futurists might tell you about problems and options, and different trajectories of the future. But here’s Warren, sitting in front of us, having just read some passages from his book on the lives of futurists, and he just stares into the void as he laughs maniacally. The answer, or the gist of it, was we as a country, and as a species, are pretty fucked.

Reason given varied, from climate change to human rights violations.

But I want to address a different reasons—one all over the news, but which I have a different take on, a take tied to Heathenry and religious studies as a whole.

Except here I come to the part of my blog where I always delete and rewrite it. This isn’t a blog about politics, and I want to keep it that way (I take stands for what I believe in pretty much everywhere else I post on the web). So the issue I address isn’t one of right or left, but which exists across American ideologies, and seems deep-seeded within the human condition. It is, in fact, not a normal political issue, but a religious studies phenomenon.

I am referring to a phenomenon called unverifiable personal gnosis, or UPG.

UPG is personal religious experience an individual or group has that feels divine and possibly even magical in nature, but which cannot be verified one way or another. This can range from a person going into an ecstatic state and speaking in tongues to the shamanistic out-of-body journey quest to a prophetic dream one has. If, for example, Odin Alfather visited me in my dreams and proclaimed me the Heathen Pope, and said I must wear a tall hat with spiky horns as Pope of All Midgard, that might be an example of UPG (it would also probably demonstrate a complete ignorance of Odin, Heathenry, the Pope, and all manner of historical headgear).  My hypothetical dream might feel real to me on the most profound of levels, but it sure wouldn’t give me any divine right to force my truth on others.

Not actually me. Also not my hat.

I have had actual moments of UPG that are important to me and have dramatically impacted my life. In college, for example, I climbed Mount Olympos, bringing an offering of wine and gyros, and as I gave the offering, I felt like I communed with the Twelve Gods of Olympos. I’ve had similar experiences at important sites throughout Greece, Japan, and Iceland. These experiences were powerful emotional moments for me and many of them dramatically impacted the course of my life. But they are my experiences, and not something I could ever use to tell others how to use.

Because part of Unverifiable Personal Gnoses is that they’re personal, and thus not relevant to anyone who didn’t personally have them.

So why do I bring this up? Well, UPG has an uncanny ability to appear in politics. Every time someone says God told them to run for President, for example, they’re saying that they had a case of UPG (which again, is only true for their personal truth), though in this case I’m pretty sure 12 out of 10 times they’re lying (and no, I didn’t get the math wrong. I just REALLY don’t trust anyone who says their god wants them to rule over others).

Of late, it’s come out in how people relate to facts. Sure, we’ve got easy examples with fake news and such, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

Personal beliefs are increasingly being used as though they were facts. And I won’t knock someone for their personal beliefs (okay, I won’t do it for most beliefs. I have limits).

But personal truths are not greater than facts. Period.

And we’ve forgotten that it seems. A great example right now is that comment Scottie Nell Hughes, who said “there’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore, as facts.”

The problem seems to be that increasingly, people aren’t interested in things that they disagree with. Thus, if you don’t believe something, it must not be true. IE., you are putting your personal truth ahead of facts.

Which, when it comes to voting and recent policies being developed, is essentially political UPG.

Sadly, I don’t have any solutions to fix this. I can observe that when people let their beliefs, rather than facts, become the system by which they rule, we get events like the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and the rise of Jihadist groups in the Middle East. It’s not an original phenomenon.  But it has always been a regrettable one, and seldom ends well.

To conclude, I want to bring this back around to Warren Ellis. Warren’s most famous comic is probably Transmetropolitan, a piece I alluded to earlier about a Hunter S. Thompson-inspired gonzo journalist living in a post-cyberpunk society, in which said journalist (named Spider Jerusalem) uses cynicism, a wide array of mind-enhancing drugs, and the truth to do the kind of journalism that breaks through institutionalized corruption and changes lives. Spider isn’t a particularly moral character by most people’s standards. Or a particularly stable one. Or likable.  But he values the truth. And so, as I value the truth too, let me end by leaving a picture of Spider with text about the importance of truth:

The Chair Leg of Truth is one of life’s great teaching tools.  

Wait, no! Not that quote.

This one:

The truth matters. And that includes personal truths. But right now, we as a society desperately need to separate personal truths from facts and start to value the latter a lot more. And for those who won’t, well,  that’s what the Chair leg of Truth is for.

 

Blog Repurposed

Back in August, I promised an article on Osaka and Kyoto for everyone. That article has been written and edited many times over. It will in all likelihood not be posted here.

I realize you must be heart-broken.

The reason for that is simple. I am trying to streamline this blog more.

I’ve wanted to do several things with this blog, but keep getting pulled in different directions. I’ve thought about making it more about history, or more about stories, or more about Heathenry. I’ve thought it could cover more of my experiences in Japan, and more of other things important to my personal life. In part, I might still add personal details about Japan and daily life, but I don’t think that’s what this blog needs. But I feel I was juggling too much and trying to force too many things in here, which meant nothing got posted.

For inspiration on the new direction, I’m looking at the name of the blog: The Modern Skald.
In the Viking Age, skalds were the poets who recorded the deeds of kings and heroes. They were the reporters who recorded current events, and they were the inventors of bold new tales glorifying great heroes, the Heathen gods, and kings rich enough to pay poets for good PR. They were masters of metaphor, and skilled in improvisational performances on the battlefield and in the feasting hall. Much of what we know of the Viking Age comes from their words that were transcribed and passed through the ages.

And they inspired me, as they inspired uncounted others through the centuries. i

I am a writer, and identify as a skald. Now, some might contest this, as I have yet to be paid by a king to stand amongst his men and record the events of the battle in a play-by-play I compose in freelance verse. So until I’m hired by one of the few remaining royal monarchs to serve as their army’s warrior poet (and said monarch has me trained in the warrior part so I can survive the first day of the job), this blog will only deal with some of the elements of skaldcraft.

Somehow I feel a linden shield wouldn’t be as much protection if I record poetry in modern war zones.

I will be writing about three topics predominantly. Stories, history, and Heathenry. Mostly, Heathenry and stories. And by stories, sometimes that might be ancient sagas, or modern pieces of literature, or trends of how Viking mustaches appear on TV. But a lot of it will be about books.

So yes, this is a book blog.

But I will keep it much more than that. I’ll post articles on the actual details of skaldcraft and cool little tidbits of linguisitics and cultural evolution like I did with my articles on “Bigotry” and “Shamanism.” But those articles seem to be what people liked the most, as well as my review of the book “Of Ghosts and Godpoles.” So I’ll be building on that.

If you want to read of my travel writing, I will try to have more on that soon, and at least provide a link. But I want to make this a fun blog for me and for my readers. And I think I went in way too many directions to keep anyone interested for long.

Thanks for understanding. And if you have things you like, or thoughts on what I write, leave a comment, and I will take your feedback seriously.

Hail,

Theo