Revising the Origin Story

Every superhero, masked avenger, costumed adventurer and cosmic crusader has an origin story explaining how he acquired his powers and/or what motivated him to fight crime. The Lone Ranger's origin story is a classic. A band of Texas Rangers is ambushed, shot and left to die. One, nursed back to health by an Indian, survives, recovers and dons a mask to avenge the others. He could have been any of them: the Lone Ranger. The World War II Blackhawk Squadron comprised aviators of different nationalities each of whom had lost a family member to the Nazis. At least, I think each of them had lost a family member - unless I am now elaborating the myth. The Phantom is like a combination of Tarzan and the Batman with the extra dimension of many generations of Phantoms. Alan Moore's V wages a vendetta against those who imprisoned him in Room V of a concentration camp.

Origin stories can be revised or even completely changed when characters are revamped. Superman always comes from Krypton, grows up in Smallville and lives in Metropolis but all the details can change. Like everything else in comics, revamps have been done well, then overdone badly. DC Comics did it well to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary in the mid-'80's. Many major characters were renewed and their stories needed to be told for another fifty years, not changed again, yet again and even again as I write in September 2011. When a character is changed, the previous version should be satisfactorily concluded, not terminated mid-narrative.

The origin story, and I do mean "story," for Christian civilization was the New Testament. Hebrew prophets and Classical heroes were two series of prequels. In the Classical tradition:

Titans preceded Olympians;
the Titan Prometheus gave humanity civilizing arts;
the Argonauts saw Prometheus, bound by Olympians;
the Argonauts' sons fought at Troy;
Aeneas escaped from Troy;
his descendant, Romulus, founded the new Troy, Rome;
Caesar inspired the Roman Empire;
Constantine Christianized the Empire and moved its capital to Byzantium, renamed Constantinople.

Christ, identified with the Logos or "Word" (ret-conned from Greek philosophy to the Biblical creation), had fulfilled:

the promise to Abraham;
the priesthood of Melchizedek;
the Law of Moses;
the prophetic tradition as represented by Elijah;
the kingship of David;
the role of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah;
the role of the Son of Man in Daniel;
the roles of both purified priest and perfect victim in the sacrifice of atonement  -

- and had exercised divine power over the elements by calming a storm while walking on the waters that had been separated (we now realize by himself) at the creation. This comprehensively powerful being was able to cross-over from the Abrahamic tradition to the Promethean tradition and specifically to the Roman state religion, there to displace the Olympians who had bound Prometheus for civilizing mankind. The Homeric epics about the Trojan War and its Greek aftermath and the Virgilian epic about its Italian aftermath remained secular literary parallels to the Bible and Geoffrey of Monmouth presented the Kings of Britain, including the heroic Arthur, as descendants of Aeneas. To continue the comparison with comics, the epics resemble Golden Age back issues. (An alternative mythical history was presented by the Anglo-Israel theory that traced British monarchy back to the Lost Tribes.) 

Thus, Promethean and Abrahamic traditions converged in John, who identified Christ with Logos, and in Constantine, who Christianized the Empire. Coincidentally or otherwise, Alan Moore named a powerful fictitious magician John Constantine. If names have any power, then combining the names of the Fourth Evangelist and the first Christian Emperor, thus uniting spiritual and imperial power, must be powerful indeed. Moore's other contributions to these traditions were:

a personification of the original darkness that was before the creation;
an angel who remained neutral during the War in Heaven;
a feminization of Prometheus as "Promethea."

(Christian apologists ask: what was special about Jesus that made the earliest Christians apply every possible religious title to him? Marxists ask: what was special about social conditions that required a new ideology comprising a synthesis of all previously existing religious concepts? Christians claim that Jesus changed the world. Marxists argue that Gentile Christianity, mainly formulated by Paul, provided a unifying ideology for an already existing world empire. Paul supported slavery and a strong state.)

Narratives converge when comics publishers merge or when one company buys characters from another. Kal-El had come from Krypton in one fictitious universe. Shazam had empowered Billy Batson in an unrelated fictitious universe. Neither character existed in relation to the other despite competing for sales. Then the Superman publisher bought Captain Marvel. Now the two universes co-existed in one multiverse where interversal travel was possible so that the characters could meet. Almost anything can happen in fantastic fiction, as in religious belief. However, later changes to the multiverse strained plausibility beyond reason.

Superman's creators likened him to the Biblical strong man, Samson, and to the Classical strong man, Hercules. His Kryptonian name incorporates a Biblical word for a god, "El." The Mosaic divine name is incorporated in the names of Kal-El's Kryptonian father, Jor-El, and of his terrestrial foster father, Jonathan. Shazam combines the wisdom of the Biblical Solomon with the powers of several Classical gods and heroes, including Hercules. The Greeks had a wise man called not Solomon but Solon but this name would not have been known to Captain Marvel's readers or, probably, his creators.

 

To re-interpret Christian origins is to revise the origin story. We tell new stories in a familiar setting: 

Jesus did not die on the cross and revived in the tomb
or the tomb was found empty because the body, buried hastily before the Sabbath, had already been moved elsewhere, perhaps back home to Galilee,
or, like other crucifixion victims, he was buried in a mass grave and the tomb burial story originated in the oral tradition.
The man on the road to Emmaus was not Jesus...etc. 

But these are side-bar stories for post-Christian secular society whose prequels, starting with Thales, include Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin etc. Our world-view is part story, part knowledge, and the proportion that is knowledge has increased.

007, No 6 and V

007 = 7; No 6 = 6; V = 5 in Roman numerals. Thus: 7, 6, 5.

007 is James Bond in novels by Ian Fleming and his successors and in films starring Sean Connery and his successors. No 6 is the title character of Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner TV series. V is the title character of Alan Moore's V for Vendetta graphic novel. (Three characters in four media: prose fiction (verbal); large and small screen drama (audiovisual); sequential art (visual-verbal).)

McGoohan borrowed from the James Bond films the idea of a powerful secret organisation with numbered members controlled by a mysterious "Number One." Moore did not borrow from McGoohan but did produce a parallel text addressing common themes. No 6 was so called because he was imprisoned in an island "Village" where he and his cottage were numbered 6. V was so called because he was imprisoned in Room V of a concentration camp. Later, fascist Britain resembled an island prison. V, a vendetta-waging anarchist terrorist, challenged the authorities as No 6 had challenged successive No 2's and the hidden No 1 in the Village. V was inspired by a letter passed between cells through a hole in the wall by the woman in Room IV. (Maintaining the numerical progression, Bond refers to a colleague numbered 008 and V refers to his fellow prisoner in Room IV.) We know of V only that he is male, not whether he is black, Jewish or homosexual or whether he was politically radical before his imprisonment.

Moore simultaneously wrote Marvelman and V, a superhero and a masked avenger, for Warrior magazine. Marvelman was directly descended, via Captain Marvel, from Superman whereas V was not directly descended from the archetypal comic book masked avenger, the Batman, although a Batman "Elseworld" story did show Wayne opposing an American dictatorship in an alternative history. V's appearance is based on that attributed to Guy Fawkes and he completes the job attempted by Fawkes. Like the Lone Ranger, V remains masked throughout. His face is unseen by the reader and even by his close assistant. In this respect at least, he also resembles Judge Dredd, a legalized vigilante in a futuristic city. (Moore also wrote an unpublished Dredd script, a "last Superman story" and a pivotal Batman/Joker story.)

In the Village, names are replaced by numbers but faces are not usually masked. When, in the episode "A, B and C," letters replace numbers, the previously unknown C leads No 6 to the masked D who, when unmasked, turns out to be the current No 2, but this occurs within an induced dream, thus in a "play within the play." In the concluding episode, No 6, unmasking No 1, significantly sees his own face. Prospero played by Vincent Price in the film The Masque of the Red Death had the same experience when he unmasked a red-garbed intruder who was his own personalized death.

At the end of V for Vendetta, V's assistant, Evey, does not unmask the dead V but realizes that her face must be behind the mask. She becomes V. His sabotage and assassinations have overthrown fascism. She hopefully will oversee without needing to intervene in the growth of freedom. But, like Asimov's Second Foundation, she and her new assistant will be able to intervene if necessary. In The Foundation Trilogy, an unpredictable mutant disrupted Seldon's Plan but the hidden Second Foundation existed to guard and restore the Plan. After the events of V for Vendetta, neo-fascists could seek to regain control. Evey/V might be able to prevent counter-revolution by encouraging more popular action. (She will not continue V1's strategy of individual assassinations.)

Bond conventionally contends with agents of a foreign dictatorship but does not change himself. The self-sufficient No 6 potentially frees himself. V, inspired by Valerie, and helped and succeeded by Evey, potentially frees society. Thus, the successive series form a progressive conceptual tetralogy:

 

first, Ian Fleming's twelve James Bond novels in which Bond mainly opposes Russian Intelligence (in fact, SPECTRE involvement in three of Fleming's later novels is film-derived); 

second, the first five Sean Connery James Bond films culminating in Bond's meeting with No 1, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, plus two further films with Blofeld as the acknowledged villain;
 
third, the seventeen episode Prisoner TV series culminating in the Prisoner's realization that he is the unmasked No 1;

fourth, the V for Vendetta graphic novel culminating in Evey's realization that she must be the masked V.

I exclude post-Fleming Bond novels, post-Connery Bond films, Prisoner spin-offs and the V for Vendetta film. At the time of writing, December 2009, I have not yet seen the new Prisoner TV series.

Who is V? When leading Evey to the roof of the building at the moment of her psychological liberation, he resembles a robed Christ but we should not regard a multiple manipulator and murderer as the Messiah. When addressing the public on video, he speaks as if he were mankind's creator but this is ironic. It has been suggested that V is Marvelman, who is deified in his own series. The only evidence for this identification, I think, is that, when seen in silhouette before donning the mask, V seems to be crew cut. Both V and MM result from, very different, government experiments. V's experience motivates him to overthrow that government. MM and his Pantheon are so powerful that they effortlessly displace the nuclear powers and the UN. V destroys a dystopia. MM builds a utopia. Their stories are complementary, not convergent. Like Superman (day) and Batman (night), they are archetypal opposites.

 

The anarchist V opposes all governments but has additional personal reasons to resist Norse Fire. He assassinates individuals not only because of their present positions in the state apparatus but also because of their past dealings with the man in Room V. For example, he forces the Bishop of London to consume a poisoned Communion wafer. The Bishop, who preached sermons dictated by the Fate computer to congregations including high Party members, had also previously been the concentration camp chaplain.

Much of the characterization, dialogue and plot in V for Vendetta is realistic but V's omniscience about the other characters is surreal. On the one hand, he is a particular character whose face was seen by his captors, though not by us, in the concentration camp. On the other hand, he is endlessly resourceful and manipulative and supremely confident that the state police will not find him hidden in the heart of London. Only the disaffected detective is going to find him and V somehow knows what the outcome of that encounter will be. He knows which Party widow will assassinate the Leader. Only the author can know so much about the characters. 

 

Authors can be incarnated in their stories. Very occasionally, the first person narrator really is the author. For example, CS Lewis exchanges letters with Ransom at the end of the first Ransom novel and meets him at the beginning of the second. But incarnated authors need not be narrators. The comic strip is mostly un-narrated and Alan Moore's incarnation in it is masked. Evey cannot see his face because she would have to look off the page to do so.