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Thanks to Revenger for suggesting this column after recognizing in Universe X a piece of work that, indeed, touched on themes occasionally explored within "Recycling Bin" columns.

Universe X, Eschatology, and the Messianic Vision

In my heyday as a comics collector and reader, at the close of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, the derivative nature of some comics stories seldom occurred to me. Most typically, the recognition of derivative material might invite amusement - such as the appearance of thinly-veiled DC characters in Marvel books - or annoyance, such as the previously-mentioned use of Sunday school tales in early Legion of Super-Heroes stories (for instance, here).

I doubt, however, even in light of pieces like Marvel Comics' bald faced appropriation of the Passion cycle as a Power of Warlock story arc, that I expected to encounter much strip-mining of the Old or New Testaments in superhero comics. Yet an age would come, particularly amid the inevitable obsessions of a millennial generation, where such practices might become increasingly common. From angels in the Justice League and Supergirl to Sandman's visions of Armageddon in Kingdom Come, Christian tales would become more and more typical source matter for superhero comics.

Universe X, a work that borrows conceptually from the earlier Kingdom Come, would bring with its appropriated themes a strong connection to Biblical eschatology.

Mutation as Pollution

In Kingdom Come, arrogance played the role as primary sin and source of motion of the activities of the piece. Universe X explores the notion of sin as a physical presence that marks the flesh.

Old-school notions of sin frequently combined the concept of disobedience with uncleanness and other physical manifestations, including birth defects and disease. This idea still finds expression in modern rituals like baptism (which treats sin like simple dirt and attempts symbolically to wash it away with water).

From this notion we can move to ideas of sin that equated them with physical syndromes and deformities, and birth defects in general. As a heritable flaw, mutation crosses the conceptual bridge between notions of sin and theories of eugenics. Corrupted genes can, with much strained interpretation, stand as markers for corrupted character, regardless of the spuriousness of the connection. Modern religious cults exist that indeed mix Nazi-style eugenics theory with the JudeoChristian notion of sin.

The world of Universe X straddles a gray area between mutation as evolutionary advancement and moral corruption. The Terrigen mists of the Inhumans franchise (the trigger that induces the mutations that give these humanoids their powers) have spread into the atmosphere of the earth, mutating a significant sample of humanity and dividing the survivors into factions of the mutated and the un-mutated. Bizarre physical changes in much of mankind accompany grotesque social and political change.

Mankind, ill-equipped to cope with such changes, plus menaced by climatic changes equivalent to a rapid-onset ice age, finds itself near ruination; and in this scenario, Terrigen mutation indeed correlates to the sin and shame of humanity.

Humanity - and its derivative, mutantity - face destruction from the corruption of their own souls, and, at this point, a redeemer has appeared in the form of the reincarnated Mar-Vell.

Cosmic Heroes as Messiahs

Warlock - later, Adam Warlock - would dabble in savior roles until Starlin chose to cast him as a fallen prophet. However, even though Warlock failed as a messiah more than once, and though his corruption ultimately proved both problem and solution to his dealings with the demonic anti-savior the Magus, he never completely detached from this role. Most of his changes involved secularizing the concept of a messiah.

As the first member of a post-human race, Warlock earned the name "Adam," an epithet in Kabbalistic usage that made much of the concept of a messiah - especially Jesus - as a "new Adam." Warlock, in Universe X would take this particular role in the context of his female equivalent, the superfluous "Her".

For the savior role itself, however, Ross et al chose Mar-Vell, albeit in a reincarnated form - a child's body invested with Mar-Vell's mind.

Demonic Hosts

Although human (and mutated human) fickleness would suffice to create trouble in a world where mankind transformed into numberless physical variants, humanity has more than its own perversity to fear here. Loki, as made over by an Alex Ross redesign, plays a central role in flouting the heroes who seek to restore humanity, and, indeed, the tarnished Captain America who seeks redemption through helping the messianic Mar-Vell complete his own personal mission.

Other canonical Marvel Comics demons play a role in this piece; the early-eighties fiend Belasco, for instance, has some connection to the troubles, possibly through the fate of the de-mutated Nightcrawler. Also, Surtur, from the Thor franchise, and Mephisto, prominent once as the tormentor of the Silver Surfer during that hero's heyday in the sixties, involve themselves with the ongoing troubles of mankind.

Eschatology in Spandex

With humanity divided into camps, many heroes of the previous generation dead or corrupt, and the climate of the earth decaying, combined with the involvement of evil gods and widows-peaked demons, one would expect that the characters in Universe X play not only for the fate of the present, but for the existence of the future.

The hints permeate Universe X. Characters warn each other at length of the coming doom, from the campaigns to extinguish the Human Torches (anti-mutation devices designed to revert humanity to its base form) to the doings of the Absorbing Man cult, advancing glaciation, foresight and post-facto flashbacks, the reader knows that the end of the world intends to come soon, or at least, as in Kingdom Come, come in miniature.

However, the prophecies and events remain unfocused and somewhat incomprehensible. Heroes in the world of the dead discuss the ominous signs of what they expect to come, although life in the world of the dead seems to differ from our own mostly in inversions of clothing color schemes.

With Kingdom Come, Armageddon boiled down to a prison break-out and riot that involved almost all the costumed super-beings of the world in a scrap that only ended with the detonation of a nuclear device on the battlefield. In that case, a reader expecting the kind of universal reordering - a new heaven and a new earth - promised by the New Testament would come away feeling, perhaps, somewhat short-changed by the smaller scope of the events passed off as fit fulfillment of the predictions in Revelation.

Universe X, however, plays for higher stakes, although these, too, confine themselves essentially to terrestrial affairs and do not involve quite so pronounced a metaphysical component as what one finds in the Bible.

"Themes" or "Pilferage?"

Universe X definitely borrows from messianic concepts that form the fundamental Christian cycle of the Passion. However, these books intersperse borrowed messianism with a dense complex of Marvel Comics concepts that appeared and evolved independent of theological pretense. The thickness of the Marvel legacy almost drowns out the eschatology.

Again, although one can see the family resemblance in this work (as a stepchild of the New Testament), complex character interactions and subtle moral crises detach it from its source. This piece moves with a lighter touch than (for instance) Warlock's dabbling in messianic roles, or, for that matter, Philip K. Dick's treatments of Biblical material.

The passion cycle of Adam Warlock attempted to graft the role of Christ onto a superhero and thereby disguise that figure as a prophet or savior. In essence, the piece offended by dragging down the Passion cycle to the level of a comic book. In Universe X, however, one sees less pretention; a reincarnated hero, instead, seems to need to grow into (rather than pretend to) the role of savior in spite of his own doubts about his ability to do this.

While the creators of Universe X clearly recognize the power of the Passion cycle, it promises more subtlety and less crassness. Perhaps it will work the way the "Narnia" books did, allegorically reaching to the source material, and avoiding blunt pilferages like Warlock's grotesque death on an ankh-shaped cross, followed by his literal resurrection.

However, the often-indirect approach this work uses, even when it intends an obvious connection to source material, takes the edge off much of its derivative nature, less because of a lack of debt to earlier works than to a general lack of focus and pervasive understatement. This work stands as a piece intent on delivering tone foremost, with characters and plot serving primarily as instruments to this end.

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Email the author at ouzomandias@mailexcite.com.

Column 203. Completed 10-DEC-2000.