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pomegranate-salad · 7 years

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Seeds of thought : Wicdiv 455AD

Hey everyone ! Fair warning, this month’s analysis is a bit heavy on the History lesson side. I try not to go all nerdy on here because I want to emphasize that this is only my opinion/thoughts and not “10 things you need to know to understand this issue” but the further we go back in time, the harder it gets to analyse things without putting them in context first. So yeah, sorry about that. Anyway, as usual spoilers under the cut. Enjoy !

FOUND ROME IN MARBLE, LEFT IT IN SHAMBLES

What in G-O-D’s name did poor Eleanor Rigby have on her face that made Ananke so pissed ? Because let’s face it, between 1831’s wannabe necromancer and 455AD’s emperor in training, her double murder ranks maybe a 3 on the Lucifers-are-a-pain-in-the-ass-o-meter. Having been a main character in the comic and both specials, Lucifer is at this stage the god we’re the most familiar with in the grand scheme of the Recurrence. And while our data is inevitably skewed because we haven’t seen enough incarnations of the other gods, it means that using him, we can begin to talk about gods not only throughout one specific incarnation, but as a succession of incarnations, and analyse their recurring traits – and their evolution – both as a character and a religious/mythological figure.

A few hours before the special came out, I wrote this short analysis of the various wheel symbols of Lucifer in which I saw a common theme of both religious inadequacy and performative value. I observed that according to their symbols Lucifers were not mystic leaders, but performers, closer to the popular idea of themselves than to themselves. Turns out I was accidentally dead on, at least when it comes to the 455AD special. This time, Lucifer is literally an actor, and although it’s unclear whether or not he was one before becoming a god, I think we can assume it is the case, seeing how vindictive “Julius” is about making people respect actors.

Contrary to Greek traditions, actors in Rome were considered the lowest part of society, barely superior to slaves ; in fact many of them came from families of former slaves. A lot of them were basically courtesans who occasionally acted. And of course, the profession was associated with “shameful” sexual practices, homosexuality first and foremost.

Furthermore, Roman theatres are not a place of worship. It is rare to see gods in plays, and there is no religious meaning behind attending a play – something that is hinted at in Dionysus’ choice of calling himself Bacchus. So when “a catamite actor boy” reveals himself to be a god, should the tables turn ? Not as much as it would have seemed : in his flashbacks with Dionysus, Lucifer’s clothes and housing remain shabby, his tone bitter. Divine or not, Lucifer is just an actor. He cannot make History, only resurrect it onstage while Rome is falling. He is loved, but not respected, hated but not feared, brilliant but not enlightening. Who he was is in constant tension with who he became and what he wants to accomplish. Can you blame him for deciding to put on his stage costume permanently ?

In fact, this entire pantheon seems to have faced the same problem : who must you be to inspire people when you have so little time ? In later centuries, and especially in modern times, the answer will be much easier : be a performer. But in 455AD, inspiring figures are not onstage, they’re in the forum or on a battlefield. Those are political times. The answers the gods gave are varied : Baal is a city leader, Inanna arranges a political wedding, Mithras is a general of some sort, Minerva is linked to a place of knowledge. But as for Lucifer, a roman actor, who better to be than the ultimate junction of man, god, acting and political power ? He will be emperor.

But adding a third facet to himself – actor, god, and now emperor – doesn’t solve his paradoxes and inadequacies ; it aggravates them. This special weaves a complex web of references linking all those facets, all of which ripe with tragic irony. There is of course the figure of Julius Caesar, who never technically became emperor and died trying, which Lucifer turns into some grand saviour of Rome. Then we have the usual suspects, Caligula and Nero, the madman and the artist, both of which wanted to succeed to the “great” emperors Julius Caesar and Augustus only to fail, finding a new incarnation in Lucifer. But I see two more emperors eluded to in this issue. First there is Tiberius, who started the practice of throwing criminals in the Tiber, and also famously forbade higher-class citizens to entertain relationships with actors. And even more interestingly, there was another emperor who straight-up forbade his priests and senators to set foot in a theatre : Julian the Apostate, the last pagan emperor.

Holding Christian beliefs became legal in the Roman Empire in 313 under Constantine, who also became the first emperor to convert. Christianity then quickly became the dominant religion all over the empire, extending to the various Germanic tribes who had started integrating themselves to Eastern territories in search for cultivable lands, and had adopted roman culture for sometimes more than a century at the time of the special (if anyone was confused by Genseric being a Christian, here’s the explanation). But in 362, Emperor Julian briefly tried to restore paganism before dying from a battle wound. Only a few years after his death, paganism was outlawed for good in the Roman Empire.

If there’s one invader hovering over this entire special, it’s not Genseric, it’s Christianity. A subject I find fascinating but hadn’t been touched much before by the comic is the relationship between the worshipping of the pantheon and the status of monotheistic, worldwide religions. In modern times, the two seemed to coexist in relative peace, as the cult of the pantheon didn’t seem able to transcend its members’ death. The Pantheon is an event, Religion an institution. But here, four centuries after the birth of Christianism, we are at the end of a cultural shift : Christianism has become the dominant religion while paganism is quickly disappearing. What this means is that this generation of pagan gods is experiencing, maybe for the first time, what it’s like to exist in a world that no longer worships you. Paradoxically, as these gods get farther away from the times they were actually dominant figures, they’ll have an easier time drawing from those sources and adapting them to match the current taste. But in 455AD ? The Pantheon is suffocating in the shadow of the Christ, not relevant enough anymore to sustain a cult on their own, not syncretised enough to resonate within the context of Christian culture.

And this brings us to our poor Lucifer. Of all the members of this pantheon that we know of, he’s the one that will be assimilated most directly and most textually to Christianity. You could argue that Inanna found some sort of syncretism with the Virgin Mary, but if only by their names, all of them save for Lucifer will remain decidedly more pagan than Christian. Lucifer, on the other hand, will see his pagan origin completely erased by his Christian recuperation. From a minor god presumed to be the divine incarnation of Venus, he will gradually become one of the most important figures in Christian iconography, a position that will allow him a degree of changeability in concepts and role that will make for an incredibly rich series of incarnations. Eleanor drew from the evolution of mores and morality to create a supremely cool and even areligious devil, yet one that had the tang of a crisis of faith ; XIXth century Lucifer was both the devil of Romantic artists, a tragic incarnation of creativity and also the remnants of popular beliefs, the grotesque figure of evil philosophy quickly being replaced by higher concepts.

But in 455AD, Lucifer is a difficult one, “this time most of all”, because he finds himself in the middle of an identity crisis. He is being robbed of his traditional divinity and turned into something else. Something that, according to most interpretations, is not even divine, just “a dog shivering from the Divine’s whip”.

Taking the mantle of the emperor is not just an act of hubris, it’s an act of desperation, not only to stay alive as a member of the pantheon past two years, but as a divine figure past his time of worship. It’s interesting to note that if some emperors were indeed deified, they were so after their death ; to Lucifer, they are the proof you can retain divinity even after your time is over.

But of course, you cannot escape programmed death, in more ways than one. Christianity is pertaining at every corner of this issue, dooming the gods to obscurity. The final destruction of the library of Alexandria is said to have been ordered by Pope Theophilus ; the figure of Ildico, the wife suspected to have assassinated Attila, will get overshadowed by Saint Genevieve, said to have stopped the Huns’ march in Gallia. As for Mithras feeding his army with his own flesh, I’m afraid we’ll only remember its famous precedent.

Ananke herself seems to incarnate the unstoppable march of Christianity : draped in a blue shawl reminiscent of the Virgin Mary herself, she is referred to by Lucifer as “the most necessitous mother”.

And as for Lucifer himself… he might try to be an actor, a pagan god, an emperor all at once, but at every turn, he is Christian. I joked that his own symbol, the upside-down Chi Rho, has never been associated with him, but indeed, his own symbol has never been associated with him. Upside-down or not, a Chi Rho is a Chi Rho, and it only ever refers to the Christ. In 455AD, you cannot even signify Lucifer anymore without using the Christ. And then we have Lucifer’s last moments. Like the actor he is, the builds his scene to evoke both his pagan origin (with Jupiter as his father) and his chosen personality Julius Caesar with his last words a direct reference. But while Caesar’s last words “Et tu, Brute ?” were addressing his son, in this context “Et tu, Jupiter” is addressing the father. A father who has abandoned him while he was trying to sacrifice himself for a people. Father, why hast thou forsaken me.

Lucifer dies closer to a failed Christ as he does to his own pagan roots. But how could he have not failed ? It wasn’t that he was bad, or powerless, but he was inadequate. As an actor and as a god, in a time that had no use for the old him anymore and no use for the new him yet. More than anything else, Lucifer is battling the invincible push and pull of History. Being born in the wrong time and place, practicing the wrong profession, loving the wrong person. Being the wrong god. When you’re out of place in History, there is no changing the stage. You can’t create your own atmosphere. When you’re not in tune, you’re not in tune.

And through Lucifer, it’s the death of Rome itself that’s told. Deified emperors were not just additions to the pantheon ; they were the divinities most closely associated to Rome as a political entity. In pagan times, when they invaded other regions, Romans famously let people keep their religion, but all had to be present on the days of celebration of deified emperors. They served as a unifying cultural fabric throughout the Empire. The emperors were the gods of Rome. Lucifer, like Julian the Apostate, tries to reinstate paganism, but with a particular target : the very spirit of the greatness of Rome. He vows a cult to the idea of the Empire more than its gods.

But the Empire is done. And so will be, in barely 70 years, the Vandal kingdom, reconquered by the Eastern Roman Empire. As for what vandal will come to mean… In her final speech to Genseric, is Ananke purposely lying or is she just as ignorant of the future as he is ? Most of all, I think she does not care. In her own words, gods are meant to burn bright to light humanity’s path, but each and every god of this pantheon accompanied the end of an era. If the gods serve any purpose, they do not ensure that the path will remain the same, only that there is a path to continue on. Failure is just as significant as victory ; the pantheon walks alongside History, they do not shape it. The 455AD pantheon’s purpose was to bear witness to the fall of the old world, of their world, and Ananke would not let them deviate from it.

In fact, we are two specials in, and so far have we witnessed anything but endings and falsification ? The events of the summer of 1831 did not just remain a mystery as Ananke destroyed Inanna’s journal, they also coincided with the end of the golden age of the Romantics. 455AD does not simply marks another step towards Rome’s rapid fall, but what really happened is now mere “wilder theories” according to David Blake. So far, it seems a successful pantheon to Ananke’s standards is one she managed to almost erase from History. Once again, ironically, this special IS our Sulla : we’ve seen Ananke rewrite History once, we know she can do it again. How many times HAS she done it ?

“Lucifer was only an actor made great by History” and, as Ananke hints, so is everyone. But Lucifer in the History she rewrote is neither great nor part of History. If truly we are all actors on the stage of History, then every generation is playing for the future ones. The actors do not know their role and the audience does not know the truth. And if the play goes wrong, Ananke will there to sweep the stage after each performance. Alea falsata est.

WHAT I THOUGHT OF THE ISSUE

So, before anything else, can we agree that if Wicdiv ever gets to make figurines of its characters, Lucifer with his homemade harp needs to be one ? Because I have a figurine of the Hieronymus Bosch knife-penis from The Garden of Delights that needs a friend. Cool ? Cool.

I do admire the wicdiv team’s will to have the special be their own thing instead of a simple extension of the normal wicdiv canon. They read like a completely different series, with its own language and rhythm. This one had even fewer kieronisms than the last one and the style is almost antithetic to McKelvie’s. But what this also means is that this reads like the issue #2 of a series more than an outgrowth of the main one. Meaning, it’s a series that’s still finding its footing.

Wicdiv 455AD is much better than its predecessor Wicdiv 1831, but as part of its series I have a feeling it’s not quite what it has the potential of being yet. The story 1831 was trying to tell simply didn’t work for the one-shot format : it felt rushed, with stakes minimal, and its referencing didn’t seem to add up to anything. 455AD, despite technically happening on a grander scale, tells a much more personal story. The limited number of pages certainly works better with one character and a straight timeline than it does with four on multiple storytelling levels. And if the references forced me to take maybe one too many trips by Wikipedialand, it felt purposeful, adding to the text instead of subtracting from it.

So the most obvious problems from 1831 have clearly been fixed. The story of 455AD works wonderfully as a one-shot, albeit one that requires a decent baggage on both the Wicdiv canon and ancient History. This is one of those “the less you know about the character, the better” cases, and reading the reviews I find it very telling that everyone seems to have different levels of empathy for the main character. Over the course of the one-shot, he appears both extremely sympathetic and insufferable. But the shortness of the plot never allows us to form a meaningful connexion with him, meaning we always keep a certain distance from the story, which in this case is a good thing : this special is about the movement of history, the towering feeling of hindsight, the spectacle of failure. Having such distance to the characters allows us to seize the foolishness of his quest while also finding room for sympathy ; if we were more involved, we’d resent his failure. In that perspective, we are more on Ananke’s side than his. We come from a place so far away in History that we cannot possibly root for his success, because we cannot envision the dramatic change that would mean for our own history. Just like Wicdiv #27 took a time limit and turned this limitations into an asset by embracing frenzy and confusion, Wicdiv 455AD took its limited number of pages and used it to tell a story on ineluctability. It had just the right level of story not told to get us just as involved as we need to be.

However, the format of the one-shot still feels a bit too short for its story. It focuses on the character, which was the most important element, but to the detriment of the rest. Rome is falling, but we barely see it ; the most we get is burning rooftops and murdered courtiers. It’s hard to feel the toll and stakes of it all when the camera is zooming so closely on the main character. And call me greedy, but I would have liked to see more of Araùjo’s depiction of Rome. I just love this style so much. I’m not sure if that’s a common type of style in Anglo-Saxon media, but for me in Europe it’s a huge nostalgia bomb. I grew up on French/Belgian comics and this kind of super detailed, expressive and somewhat cartoonish style is basically my childhood. Plus, coincidentally, this type of comics was obsessed with Ancient Rome. Here however, the story happens mostly in geometrical interiors, and save for the triumph scene, the city feels almost empty. Of course, part of it is intentional : Ananke’s walk to the Tiber, from the magnificent streets though walls too small to be intimidating, to a dirty river under dirty stone exudes maybe the most powerful pathos Wicdiv has ever wrung out. But as a whole, the setting lacks scale and life. I think I’ve already said before that locations are maybe the least interesting graphic aspect of Wicdiv, but goddamn, if you give me Rome before the fall and I don’t get a little bit whiplashed by the setting, I feel robbed. Clearly the décor had to be kind of sacrificed for the characters, and the expressions here are just fantastic. They achieve a level of ugliness that’s completely foreign to McKelvie’s style ; even when his characters are pissed, they never stop looking like perfect cut-outs from magazines. The expressiveness of Araùjo’s drawings immediately plunges us in something realer, more tangible and grounded. I just wish there had been more of a balance between character and background.

As for the writing, it still occasionally feels like there was way too much going on in those scripts and what made it onto the pages is what won at eeny meeny miny moe but as a whole there’s much more breathing room in the dialogues. Lucifer and Ananke’s discussion is the one bordering the most on overbearing, but it’s too much of a delight to see Ananke’s manipulative ways to really mind. Of Gillen’s habitual writing style, this special retains its disjointedness (which as usual works when it works and lets you roll with it if not) but adds a substantial touch of natural that’s not that common in the main wicdiv run : bizarrely, despite the complex speech patterns of Antique Rome, this special feels more intimate and direct than the average Wicdiv issue.

Overall, I did really like this special. I think it was starting with a bit of an advantage given how interested I am in Ancient Rome. The Art is to die for, even though it still felt like it could have been showcased even better. The story is purposeful and all the googling didn’t feel like a waste of time. Still, I feel like there’s still some wiggle room to make a truly great one-shot in which the limited space and the conceptuality won’t hinder the emotional connexion. I’d also like to see the specials mix it up by maybe getting away from the “end of the pantheon” motive, and given the next special should be the modernist pantheon and we’ve already seen their end, it feels like the perfect place to do it.

Yeah, I’m aware my opinion is not all that interesting this time, as for me this special falls in the “very good but not great” category, and I’m not that clear on what could have been done to make it great. Most of all, I think it tells us that standalone issues are hard, and when they have to do with a completely different historical context and revelations on the main canon to cram in somewhere, it’s not every day you’ll get something as rich and enjoyable as this.

#wicdiv #seeds of thought #455 AD special

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