Way of X #2: The Gorgon’s Shape

In the Eumenides, the playwright Aeschylus (one of the best of all time) has a character demand “An answer which is plain to understand.” But we, the audience (sitting safe in a theater, or now at home) know better than to ask for something as story-destroying as that. We want something bloody. We want our stories to have guts, and we want them knotted so that we might have the pleasure of untangling them. You all know who, and what, the furies are. If you’re reading this site you’ve probably read about them in the Sandman series. But just in case, here’s a refresher: the Furies are (were?) supernatural spirits, not quite gods, who could be called upon to punish those who have broken their oaths — specifically and particularly those oaths which were given to their families. In the play, a man named Orestes has murdered his mother and the Furies chase him down in order to bring him to justice because “Nothing forces us to know/What we do not want to know/Except pain.”

And what the holy forking shirtballs does any of this dusty old talk of gods have to do with a comic book featuring a conflicted religious guy who was named after a worm? Well, it seems like Nightcrawler has found himself drawn into a classic “family” story. I say “classic” in the broadest sense because what we’ve really got here is a conflation of several myths, retold with a lot of snappy dialogue. We’ve got Nightcrawler as potential Fury (why else is he constantly referred to as one of the “Kindly Ones”) who has been called in to sort out a massively dangerous family matter that centers around betrayed trust. We’ve got David Haller, Legion, playing the role of Absalom (who rebels against his father, and is then killed by that same man), we’ve got that old, old story about the fall of humanity, the introduction of sin into a perfect, immortal garden, and we’ve got a taste of Cain and Abel evidenced by… things you’ll have to buy the book to discover. 

There’s also an example of the healthy evolution of faith, some good old fashioned Nazi punching (courtesy of our favorite Science Bastard), a peep into the culture of Krakoa, a warning about the Sixth Petal of Orchis, and an absolute shit-ton of insane visual jokes.

There’s an awful lot of vomit here, for a book so concerned with metaphysics. And that’s exactly the way that it should be. As Legion himself would tell you, bad things happen when you wrench the mind from the body. I’m sorely tempted to slather some Rabelais onto this review because if anyone would love what Spurrier and Quinn are doing here, it’s that dude. Oh what the heck. Here’s a quote for Orchis (Dr. Nemesis has found his soul in Kurt): “Science without conscience is only a ruin of the soul.” With science, they are attempting to excise the soul of Krakoa. Let’s see if they get away with it. 

Now, let us talk of artist Bob Quinn. I honestly can’t remember when I’ve seen an artist bring so much virtuosity of mood to a comic. The spread of Kurt’s unconscious struggle with the Kraken was laden with both detail and dread. There was an incredible amount of acting, here, and it wasn’t hammy save for when it wanted to be. Vomit jokes. Fart jokes. Blood, spattered brain matter, grimaces and grins. Oh yeah, and a gooey lump of cerebellum-coin. I’ve gone back and examined the book twice and every time I find something new and different that I previously missed. I can’t think of a time that I enjoyed art more in this medium. 

I don’t think that I need to sum up my feelings about this book, except to say that it’s exactly what we need, right now, in comics. 

And, oh yeah, one more quote from the play that I’ve been harping on. I think that we can scry Krakoa’s future in it:

But there is a cure in the house,

and not outside it, no,

not from others but from them,

their bloody strife.