FIRST ISSUE: SUPERGOD

FIRST ISSUES: An admirable first issue must, above all else, contain such matter as will compel a reader to buy the second issue. At the same time, while provoking curiosity through mysteriousness, a good first issue must avoid being so mysterious as to be cryptic or incomprehensible. And, thirdly, it should introduce the title’s principals, preferably in a way that makes us care about them. Fourth, a first issue should include a complete “episode” — that is, something should happen, a crisis of some kind, which is resolved by the end of the issue, without, at the same time, detracting from the cliffhanger aspect of the effort that will compel us to buy the next issue.

God in Comics: Part Two

Warren Ellis’ Supergod is a somewhat stronger cup of tea than God Complex. Herein, Ellis plays with religion as a subject of philosophical investigation. The issue opens on an old (but not ancient) man, probably some sort of scientist, sitting in the midst of an immense urban ruin and talking via cellphone to Tommy, to whom the old man is explaining how it all crashed and burned. At the heart of his explanation and Ellis’ concept is the axiom that if God didn’t exist, we’d have to invent Him. “Some say we’re actually hardwired for religion,” the old man says. “We look for something to worship.” And we usually make the gods ourselves. “The whole of religious history is about us trying to build amazing creatures that will save the world—,” the old man continues. And then we turn the page and see a two-page spread of a devastated city, buildings smouldering in ruins, and the old man finishes, “ — so that worked out all right, then.”

            Ellis’ formula seems to be that in our desire for something to worship, we created gods, and in the latest effort along these lines, we created super-beings that destroyed the world as we know it. The first issue of the title is devoted to the old man’s descriptions of various superheroes, gods, invented by modern science — Krishna, an Indian god, for instance, cloned from artificial intelligence. With the British invention, Morrigan Lugus — “the names of two ancient celtic three-headed dieties” — concocted by Project Lughnasa, “named for the Irish holiday when the god Lugh declared a wake for his dead mother and a feast for the task that killed her” —  Ellis takes his inventive concept into high dark comedy, deploying lingo and syntax for mad, antic purposes. Morrigan Lugus was created in space when three astronauts fused together with “alien mycological mass ... Sometimes it spoke using sound. Sometimes it would communicate by emitting radio signals. On other occasions, it would eject spores, a 4-phosporolated indole full of digital code. And the Lughnasa team’s response to this creature in their midst was instant and profound. They began to worship, and to pray, and to masturbate with an entranced and furious intensity. One poor old man found new strength, such was his devotion, and tore his own todger entirely off — mushrooms began growing on it almost immediately.” Typical Ellis, in other words — fantastic invention coupled to grisly imagination and a wonderfully shocking opening.

            Giving visual reality to Ellis’ concept is Garrie Gastonny’s superb talent as illustrator. As usual with an Ellis artist, the pictures are copiously detailed, but Gastonny knows when to stop laying in feathering linework; his pictures are markedly clear, even those depicting vistas of destruction. The issue offers not one but three complete episodes—each one the history of the invention of a god and its ultimate demise, and the old man is witty enough to hold our attention. Ellis, who may be the Christopher Hitchens of the comics industry, has taken the notion of the superhero to its logical extension—superhero as God.  His premise emerges almost at once. He intends, I think, to show how religion (an invention of mankind, remember) will destroy the world when its gods run amuck. And Jerry Craven—the cliffhanging character the mention of which concludes the first issue—will be the pivotal creation. In the next issue, we learn that Jerry Craven is apparently another of the gods, this one devised to destroy the others. And the consequences of that? Stay ’tooned.