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I took that to be a reference to the existence of life in the Multiverse in general. In the Superman Beyond portion of Final Crisis, life was shown to have arisen in a "flaw" in the heart of the original, primordial Monitor/Overvoid -- which is an analogy for our imagination and the creative process. These characters, which began as imaginary constructs, are now "alive":Morrison, from the Wired interview posted:People have this idea of canon, but there is no canon... To me, it’s all real. Every comic you ever read is real. The anthropomorphic Monitors who descended from the Overvoid (Nix Uotan, Weeja Dell, Mandrakk, etc.) explicitly did become parasites who evolved to feed off of imagination and emotion. More accurately, they drank vampire-style the raw story-stuff - the potentiality of the fictional Multiverse - in the form of Bleed.
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Aug 14, 2014 17:44
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I think it's too simplistic to say that this is an attack on DC Comics editorial, or even popular narrative techniques. This is an attack on purism. The Gentry demonstrate their power by constricting the fictional space around Nix Uotan -- crushing him by limiting what is possible, which includes but is not limited to the narrative conclusion that is death. It's an attack on fans, commentators, and creators who, say, can't abide the slightest divergence from "their" specific favourite version of Batman, forgetting that Batman is a 75-year-old collaborative idea interpreted hundreds of times by hundreds of creators through a dozen media -- none of which have any definitive claim whatsoever to be the "real" Batman. Naturally, the only opposition to such ludicrous and selfish strictures is a disparate array of alternative and analogous possibilities -- some black, some gay, some wacky cartoon rabbits. What really bears discussion is the matter of Nix Uotan -- arguably Morrison's fictionsuit in Final Crisis -- making the transition from idealistic, innocent Monitor to cynical, corrupted Gentry. Is this the Superjudge confessing?
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Aug 20, 2014 19:48
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Okay, so young Harley accidentally shoots his superhero father (Yellowjacket) in the head, thus prefiguring his own assassination by his superhero "son". Yellowjacket is the Major Comics artist who drew Janus the Everyway Man. So why the hell is the dialogue on panel 1 of page 19 ("The solution's right here"...) coming from Captain Atom? That's a printing error, right?
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Nov 19, 2014 23:40
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Although I'm pretty sure that the dialogue attribution I mentioned earlier is an error, I can't shake off the idea that Captain Atom is President Harley. He begins to develop his higher awareness (Algorithm 8 = awareness of the fourth wall/fourth dimension = existence as comic book) at the graveyard following a visitation from his more highly evolved self. Possessed of this higher awareness, he realises (albeit probably not with absolute clarity) that with the help of Peacemaker and his own sacrifice, he can ascend to or create Captain Atom by making his life symmetrical in time. He killed his father, the first superhero, as a child, so it makes perfect sense that his death at the hands of his "son" gives birth to the ultimate superhero. At the park, he talks about mythology - perhaps this is Harley's way of becoming a myth, which as we all know, is Morrison-speak for superhero. Perhaps Captain Atom's sedation prevents him from realising that he and Harley are one and the same. And of course there's Harley's penchant for Manhattans. Assuming that Earth-4 continues to proceed in linear time, we're left with a more hopeful future than that of Watchmen. Instead of Rorschach's notebook sitting in the tabloid slush pile threatening to destabilise Ozymandias' peace and Dr Manhattan abandoning Earth, we have Captain Atom's potential miracle: his return from the superposition of life and death to revive the concept of superhero (and possibly the dead superheroes themselves). The Möbius strip motif echoes the epitaph in Superman Beyond: it never really ends. E: more symmetry: more or less the last thing young Harley sees before he kills his dad is a drawing of Janus the Everyway Man: a man with two faces presumably capable of perceiving everything (including time) in both directions, and a prototype of Captain Atom. Wachter fucked around with this message at 12:50 on Nov 20, 2014 |
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Nov 20, 2014 12:33
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head58 posted:If the whole point of Harley's sacrifice was to bring back Captain Atom, did it fail? We see Senator/President Eden talking to Nightshade after the assassination and Atom hasn't returned. If that wasn't the point of his sacrifice, what was it? Captain Atom is atemporal, so I think bringing him back isn't the purpose of the sacrifice. The sacrifice creates him, the first post-superhero, even though (from a linear perspective) he has "already" been "killed" in the particle accelerator. His potential "return" following Harley's death would simply be another instance of time travel.
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Nov 20, 2014 15:50
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