Other Reading About Telepathy

We saw here that a telepath who can read only surface thoughts talks to a prisoner in order to bring associations into his conscious mind.

Thus, we read, in a book received as a present today:

D'jinn, disguised as a slave girl: Gather all who serve Yussuf's ascendancy together tonight for an important meeting.

Sidi Nouman: Is that wise? In the past we've never congregated more than two or three at a time. Those were always Yusuf's orders.

D'jinn: No Matter. I simply needed to ascertain the fullness of the list which appeared in your mind the moment I inquired of them.
I've captured it complete, and so you are of no further use to me, Sidi Nouman, famous abuser of horses.
-Bill Willingham, Fables: Arabian Nights (And Days), (Burbank, CA, 2006), p. 59, panels 5-6.

A Fictional Language II

See A Fictional Language.

I know that some people are elaborating Klingon (see image) so maybe they are way ahead of us here. Let me just try to demonstrate some more of Alan Moore's ingenuity.

p. 14, panel 4
Alanna: D-duss maol olt? Fao Adam AEL? (How is he? Will Adam be well?)

Sardath: Sa. Adam fao ael. Qu dral ol VIER, tertel bu. (Yes. Adam will be well. You can see him...)

p. 14, panel 5
Alanna: Iu, Sardath-cho, Ba ONAMAO qu! (Oh, Sardath. I love you!)
Sardath: Ba onamao QU emsec, Alanna. (I love you too, Alanna.)

p. 15, panel 1
Alanna: ADAM! Iu, onamaol bu... (Adam! Oh, love they...)

p. 15, panel 3
Alanna: Qu fao zon ililoc huls CHECHEDOR Rann, di tomta ILIOCTIBANI. Olf fao doh rette RANN leps THANAGAR. (You will be able to talk to the new Ambassadors to Rann, during the Conference/negotiations. They will (or have?) come to Rann from Thanagar.)

p. 15, panel 4 
Adam Strange: THANAGAR? THOM KATAR HOL? (Thanagar? Not Katar Hol?)

Alanna: Tho. Thom KATAR HOL ool SHAYERA. Olf fao HAKKESTRANG! (No. Not Katar Hol or Shayera. They are (will be?) Hawkpeople!)

p. 16, panel 1
Keela Roo: Ael, Sardath-chat. Ol wa ililoc THANAGARRU wo? <... (It is well, Sardath. Should we speak Thanagarru?) (Her Thanagarru is represented by < and by similar signs which are not on my keyboard.)

p. 16, panel 2
Sardath: ADAM-CHI! Ol fa aeli qu fao ael! Olf fao KEELA ROO ep SCIRA EK, checheder leps THANAGAR... (Adam! It is good that you are well! These are Keela Roo and Scira Ek, ambassadors from Thanagar...)
Keela Roo: < etc.

p. 16, panel 3
Keela Roo: ...absorbacon-linked translator should simplify the discussions.
(She holds a glowing pyramid which emits the sound "Veep" as it makes everyone present understand everyone else's speech.)

p. 17, panels 5-6
Adam Strange, speaking while running beyond the range of the absorbascon: Yes, yes. It's okay. I know... "It's a dirty job... (VEEP!) ...claab APOCHAN masraut fao ol!" (Give it to the ape man.) (Or something like that.)

p. 28, panel 2
Adam Strange: Lam TALSA, Keela Roo. Qu glispi SARN. (Good morning, Keela Roo. You look "sarn.")
Keela Roo: Lam Talsa, Adam Strange. Bas Hakkestrange ETHMET glispi sarn. (Good morning, Adam Strange. But Hawkpeople always look "sarn.")

p. 28, panel 3
Keela Roo: Ba murrn ililocta-unulacon bu... (VEEP)... so that we may talk more easily.

p. 34, panel 3
Alanna: ADAM? Voryegger ilioc INGLISH? (Adam? The monster speaks English?)
Adam Strange: Uh, tra. Ol utu "SMALSH-YEGGER," aps URTH. (Uh, yes. He was "Swamp Thing" on Earth.

p. 35, panel 6
Alanna: ADAM? Duss ililoc qu ap Smalsh-Yegger? (Adam? What are you talking about with Swamp Thing?)

p. 36, panel 1
Adam Strange: Ep URTH, epo GOTHAMAGAR, Smalsh-Yegger faor lurshastrang. Fao ol lurshastrang ep RANN? (On Earth, in Gotham City, Swamp Thing made vegetation. Will he make vegetation on Rann?)

p. 36, panel 2 
Alanna: Mamoon. Iu, Smalsh-Yegger, MAMOON. (Please. Oh, Swamp Thing, please.)

I am starting to decipher more but enough is enough. One sentence of Planha in Poul Anderson's "Lodestar" has made me revisit and re-appreciate Alan Moore's Rannian dialogue.

The Structure Of A Series: The Boys (90 Monthly Issues)

I: The Name Of The Game (1-6)

II: Get Some ("Get Some," 7-10; "Glorious Five Year Plan," 11-14)

III: Good For The Soul ("Good For The Soul," 15-18; "I Tell You No Lie, G.I.," 19-22)

IV: We Gotta Go Now (23-30)

V: Herogasm (miniseries, 1-6)

VI: The Self-Preservation Society ("The Self-Preservation Society," 31-34; "Nothing Like It In The World," 35-36, "La Plume De Ma Tante Est Sur La Table," 37; "The Instant White-Hot Wild," 38)

VII: "What I Know," 39; "The Innocents," 40-43; "Believe," 44-47)

VIII: Highland Laddie (miniseries, 1-6)

IX: The Big Ride ("Proper Preparation And Planning," 48-51; "Barbary Coast," 52-55; "The Big Ride," 56-59)

X: Butcher, Baker, Candlestickmaker (miniseries, 1-6)

XI: Over The Hill With The Swords Of A Thousand Men (60-65)

XII: The Bloody Doors Off ("The Bloody Doors Off," 66-71; "You Found Me," 72)

Good Omens

Good Omens is a TV series by Neil Gaiman based on a prose novel by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman so it is not comic-related except that Gaiman wrote comics. However, the cartoon credits and even the visuals with live actors generate a comics feel.

A former Doctor Who acts so well as a hip demon that he is scarcely recognizable.

Is the Antichrist necessary for Armageddon? Demons can break the rules. See "James Blish And The Antichrist," here.

The Time Travel Problem In Avengers: Endgame III

See here.

Andrea argues that:

the characters time travel from the present of Reality A to the past of Reality B and return to the present of Reality A;

Thanos follows some of the heroes from the past of Reality B to the present of Reality A;

therefore, the only discrepancy is that, if Rogers remained in the past of Reality B, then he should have aged into the present of B, not A.

I think it also follows that Thanos' disappearance from Reality B prevents V in B?

New Swamp Thing TV Series

In this version, there was something going on in the swamp even before Alec Holland got to it.

He says that he has seen an alien autopsy.

Some of the characters have the same names but they are not the same characters, particularly not Abby. Are Anton and Gregori going to show up?

The Cainites

I missed a point in the previous post about "Cain." On the very next page in Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Season Of Mists (New York, 1992) -

Lucifer: Cain. You must know of the Cainites?
Cain: Can't say that I do...
Lucifer: Gnostic sect. Second century. They rejected the books of the New Testament in favor of the Gospel of Judas.
-page 49, panel 1.

Lucifer: They believed that we created the heaven and the earth, and that you were the persecuted party in that unfortunate affair with your brother. They also held that the way to salvation was to give way to lust and temptation in all things.
-panel 2.

Lucifer: And no greater percentage of them turned up here than of any other religion. Amusing, isn't it?
Cain: I wouldn't know.
-panel 3.

The Wikipedia article on Cainites mentions this issue of The Sandman as a popular cultural reference.

Now maybe it is time to return to Poul Anderson's very different Cainites?

The Time Travel Problem In Avengers: Endgame II

See The Time Travel Problem In Avengers: Endgame I, here.

Just before V, Thanos detects the activities of one of the superhero teams that have traveled from 6 AV to times before V in order to extract the Stones;

following this clue, Thanos travels to 6 AV, arriving shortly after the teams have returned;

all those who had been dissolved at V are restored;

Thanos and all his forces are dissolved.

Therefore, in this timeline, Thanos, having been dissolved in 6 AV:

does not travel back to just before V;

does not cause V;

does not live on another planet from V until 5 AV;

is not killed on that planet by Thor.

Yet these events have happened in this timeline in which Thanos arrives in 6 AV.

Contradiction.

The Time Travel Problem In Avengers: Endgame 1

At the end of Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos uses the Stones to cause 50% of living beings throughout the universe to dissolve into dust. For convenience, let us call this mass dissolution the "Vanishment"(V), let us call years after V "AV" and let us call events immediately before V "just before V."

In Avengers: Endgame (I might not have all of these events in exactly the right order):

five years elapse so we get to 5 AV;
surviving superheroes find Thanos on another planet and Thor kills Thanos;
Ant Man, who had not dissolved but had been trapped in the quantum realm for five objective years but five subjective hours (?), returns to the macrocosm;
he suggests -

superhero teams travel to times before V when it would be possible for each team to extract one of the Stones and bring them to the present which is now some time after 5 AV, say 6 AV;
use the Stones to restore all the people who had been dissolved but do this in 6 AV;
return each Stone to the moment from which it had been extracted.

Thus, the past would not be changed: the history of each Stone would be uninterrupted and the six years between V and 6 AV would not be affected.

What is wrong with this plan?

Avengers: Endgame

An ultimate feel good film. Also, an ultimate snatching victory from the jaws of apparent defeat film.

A serious attempt is made to avoid time travel contradictions. However, if the stones had to be returned to the moments from which they had been taken, then surely the same should apply to Thanos? And his memory of his trip through time should have been erased?

I had to run in and out during the credits so I do not know whether there was a mid-credits scene but will ask. It was good to sit till the end of the credits even though there was no post-credits scene. All those people deserve to have their names seen and some of the information is interesting.

Clint loses Natasha but gets his family back. Contrast this with what happens to these characters in The Ultimates. (Scroll down.)

It feels like the interminable movieverse finally went somewhere. It had legs. We now know who we will not see again.

Five Cessations Of Publication

(i) Fawcett Comics Captain Marvel.

(ii) Mick Anglo's Marvelman.

(iii) Warrior magazine with Alan Moore's Marvelman and V.

(iv) Eclipse Comics where Marvelman had been renamed Miracleman and Alan Moore had completed his story but Neil Gaiman had not yet completed his sequel.

(v) Marvel Comics Miracleman reprints.

Still to be completed: Gaiman's Miracleman.

Alan Moore's Miracleman is complete. Miracleman remembers being Marvelman who was an imitation of Captain Marvel who was an imitation of Superman.

Moore wrote happy endings for Superman and Swamp Thing and ambiguous endings for Miracleman, Watchmen and V who is a masked avenger. The others are superheroes. (Moore super-powered a swamp monster.)

Captain Universe

The previous post was meant to be comprehensive. However, although it followed a main line of development from Captain Marvel to Captain Marvel, it omitted, because I had forgotten, Mick Anglo's Captain Universe, the Super Marvel, who says, "Galap," has also been adapted by Alan Moore and also has a similarly named Marvel Comics counterpart although this time by coincidence.

Since Marvelman is "The Mightiest Man in the Universe," nothing about Captain Universe is original:

Captain
Universe
Super
Marvel
an empowering word

All The Captains And Men

Another Attempted Summary

Roy Thomas re-used Captain Marvel's original name, Captain Thunder.

Mick Anglo adapted Marvelman as both Miracle Man and Captain Miracle.

Alan Moore put a dead Miracleman in Captain Britain before he adapted Marvelman, then renamed him Miracleman.

The original Captain Marvel was revived but then lost his name to a Marvel Comics character.

Since Mick Anglo had used the word "Miracle" twice, this was an appropriate name change by Moore.

Captain Marvel/Shazam says, "Shazam!"
Marvelman and Miracleman say, "Kimota!"
Miracle Man says, "Sun Disc."
Captain Miracle says, "El Karim!"

Miracleman And Captain Marvel

Although I recognize Alan Moore's Miracleman as the ultimate culmination of a superheroic lineage from Superman through the original Captain Marvel and Mick Anglo's Marvelman, I now accept the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) Captain Marvel as a spectacular addition to that tradition. Like MM, CM is a human being enhanced by alien technology.

Whereas Miracleman starts in Thatcher's Britain and changes the world, this Captain Marvel starts in 1995 and pivotally affects the MCU. She is not in the same league as Miracleman but no one is, not even Doctor Manhattan who is an adaptation of Captain Atom.

Captain Marvel And Blockbuster Video

It was appropriate that Captain Marvel fell to Earth through the roof of Blockbuster Video. Apart from the fact that videos of the film will be sold in such shops:

in the Ultimates (scroll down) comics, people watch videos of superhero fights;

in the movieverse, films might be made of real superheroes like CM;

in the Ultimates, the Ultimates (a better version of the Avengers) discuss who should act as them in films and Nick Fury says that he should be played by Samuel L. Jackson.

Two levels of fiction interact with reality.

Names And Origins

The name of the Fawcett/DC Captain Marvel was appropriated by a Marvel character who, after changing both identity and gender, has become the Marvel screen equivalent of Wonder Woman with a pivotal role in the movieverse.

Some Origins

ET
Superman
Alan Moore's Marvelman/Miracleman
Marvel Captain Marvel
Silver Age Geeen Lantern
Silver Age Hawkman
Martian Manhunter
Silver Surfer

Other Scientific Origins
Mick Anglo's Marvelman: "atomic"
Silver Age Atom: atomic
The Flash: chemical
Spider-Man: radioactive
Firestorm: nuclear
Captain Atom: atomic/quantum
Doctor Manhattan: the intrinsic field

Mythological
Wonder Woman: Amazon
Aquaman: Atlantean
The Submariner: Atlantean
The TV Man from Atlantis: Atlantean

Supernatural
Fawcett/DC Captain Marvel: magical
Golden Age Green Lantern: magical
The Spectre: a ghost
Deadman: a ghost
Golden Age Hawkman: reincarnation

Captains Marvel

I was warned that the Captain Marvel film was feminist propaganda but it's not. I was also told that Brie Larson said that she was not making the film for 40-year old white men (or something) but this is ok if she meant not only for 40-year old white men.

It is a quadruple origin story:

CM;
Nick Fury as we know him;
the idea of, and name for, the Avengers;
the Tesseract.

SHIELD already exists with Agent Fury still with two eyes.

Are the Skrulls and the Chitauri two different species in the movieverse?

Also shown was the Shazam trailer although I missed the beginning of it. The original CM keeps failing to say his name. Is the boy who is criticizing him Billy Batson, i.e., have they split?, or someone else?

Marvel Comics had a male Captain Marvel and a Ms. Marvel who became the Captain. In the film, CM is female from the start.

Captain Marvel has two credits scenes. CM will return in the next Avengers film.

Onward, Earthlings! And every other kind of beings!

Big Brother/Little Brother

Death to Dream: Hiya, big brother.
-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Season Of Mists (New York, 1992), p. 102, panel 3.

Death to Dream: ...but the dead are coming back, little brother.
-op. cit., p. 103, panel 5.

Which?

Various Comics Converging On The Sandman

Cain hosted The House of Mystery.
Abel hosted The House of Secrets.
Lucien hosted Tales of Ghost Castle.
An unnamed woman with a raven hosted Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love.
Eve with a raven appeared in Secrets of Sinister House, Secrets of Haunted House and Plop!
The Three Witches hosted The Witching Hour.
Matt Cable, Cain and Abel appeared in Swamp Thing. 
A tall man in a frock coat was Adam and becomes a raven in Lilith by George MacDonald.

Thus, nine comics and one novel with Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel all present.

Cain and Abel and their Houses are in the Dreaming.
Lucien wears a frock coat and was Morpheus' first raven.
Ghost Castle was Morpheus' castle during his imprisonment.
The unnamed woman is Eve who lives in a cave in the Dreaming.
Matthew, Morpheus' current raven, was Matt Cable.

Thus, Neil Gaiman weaves diverse strands together.

36

Stieg Larsson's "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" (here) survives one very light bullet in the brain. It is possible. Some Gazans have survived multiple bullet wounds. One man, interviewed by Joe Sacco for Footnotes In Gaza, was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier standing directly above him while he lay on the ground. The man claims that he survived thirty six bullets in the head although Sacco does not believe that number.

Telling The Tale

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: Worlds' End and Joe Sacco's Footprints In Gaza, characters tell stories. In Footprints In Gaza, the drawn characters are real people describing real events. I am unfamiliar with Chaucer although we know that the Tales is a literary template for stories told in an inn and that Gaiman follows Chaucer.

It is possible for the reader to become at least as interested in the narrators' setting as in the stories that they recount. Joe Sacco and his friends are in present day Gaza when they are told about incidents in Gaza in 1956. (The "present" is the period of the Iraq War.) We need to know about the events researched by Sacco but we also appreciate his drawings of present day Iraq and its inhabitants. The pictures starkly depict social interactions, division, oppression and physical dereliction. We see an Israeli settlement in the distance but do not see inside it.

Hard Rain

Joe Sacco, Footnotes In Gaza.

"A hard rain has begun as everyone hoped.
"While Israeli bombers roar low and unseen overhead, it washes the blood from the streets." (p. 145)

He means the blood of bulls slaughtered for the feast of Abraham's sacrifice but maybe this passage also expresses an aspiration for a future without the shedding of human blood?

Bob Dylan used the phrase, "a hard rain," with a completely different meaning.

What I Missed

Rereading Joe Sacco's Footnotes In Gaza, I realize that I had accidentally skipped past pp. 116-117. P. 116 immediately follows Sacco's question:

"What are we to make of this?" (see here)

He suggests three possibilities:

that Omm Nafez, distraught at her husband's death, blocked her memory of Khamis' presence;

that Abu Antar was too young to remember;

that Khamis heard the story of his brother's death so often that he internalized it, feeling, in his guilt and grief, that he should have been there.

Sacco reminds us that:

Israeli soldiers shot Khamis' three brothers on 3 November, 1956;
the UN alleges that the Israelis killed 275 Palestinians in Khan Younis on that date.

Footnotes In Gaza: Versions II

Joe Sacco, Footnotes In Gaza, p. 301.

These quotes lead in to the The Legend Of The Doves. We are not told what happened after the intervention of this foreign officer.

We also read some interesting views at the beginning of the Iraq War:

"Saddam will be victorious.
"The entire Arab world and the whole world in general will change owing to the American defeat." (p. 369)

"Saddam Hussein 100 per cent!" (p. 371)

However, Khaled, wanted by the Israelis, says:

"It's not a matter of victory.
"It's a matter of resisting to the end." (ibid.)

Sacco calls Khaled's view philosophical, stripped of illusion and self-reflective.

Gathering Facts

Footnotes In Gaza by Joe Sacco is about facts and gathering facts:

"The more we hear, the more we fill in our picture of that day in '56, the more critical we become of each tale we hear.
"'I think he's exaggerating.'" (p. 203)

"...I remember how often I sat with old men who tried my patience, who rambled on, who got things mixed up, who skipped ahead...how often I sighed and mentally rolled my eyes because I knew more about that day than they did." (p. 385)

Joe and his friends are referred to a man who might be able to help them but the guy talks about a different event on a different day in a different year. They do not stay to listen because that is not their story and they are pressed for time.

Stories that circulate but are never corroborated are classed as "legends."

Out of this process, the truth emerges.

In Gaza

"Eyeless in Gaza" is a phrase in a dramatic poem by John Milton and the title of a novel by Aldous Huxley. Footnotes In Gaza is a graphic documentary by Joe Sacco.

Since Milton's dramatic poem, Samson Agonistes, applies the form of a Greek tragedy to content taken from the Biblical book of Judges, these three works cover an extraordinary range of literary and narrative forms.

A welcome fourth work in this sequence would be one to be entitled Peace In Gaza.

Merciful Angels

Joe Sacco with Chris Hedges

Saleh Mehi Eldin El-Argan, who saw the three doves, said:

"These are merciful angels who've come to us."

But the man sitting beside him said:

"Where are those angels? There is no mercy here."

Maybe there are two kinds of spirituality:

the belief that supernatural beings intervene on our behalf;
the belief that each of us has the potential for an inner transcendent state without supernatural help.

Footnotes In Gaza: The Legend Of The Doves

For reference, see here.

In Gaza in 1956, Israeli soldiers forced hundreds of Palestinian men into a school yard (see image) where they had to kneel for hours with their hands on their heads and soldiers sometimes firing above them. In the afternoon, an officer, not Israeli, maybe British, arrived, stopped the firing and told them to raise their heads.

A dove came and stood on his shoulder. Three doves flew up and down near the men.

People hallucinate under pressure. We remember Biblical visions and the significance of doves and of the number three. I always thought that, at Jesus' baptism, the Spirit descended as gently as a dove, not in the form of a dove, but who knows?

Footnotes In Gaza by Joe Sacco: Versions

Joe Sacco, Footnotes In Gaza (London, 2009), pp. 114-115.

Stories (myths, legends and fictions) have different versions. So do news stories, even including eye witness accounts:

Khamis recounts in detail how he saw his brother, Subhi, die in agony from bullet wounds in his stomach;

Subhi, lying on his back on the floor, asked to be taken to the clinic;

Khamis tore down a door and put a mattress on it;

Subhi tried to move himself onto the mattress but gurgled and said that he couldn't;

pointing at his family, he asked Khamis to take care of them, then he died;

Abu Antar and Omm Nafef, also present, confirm Khamis' account of Subhi's death except for one detail;

both say that Khamis was not there;

Abu says that Khamis returned two months later when everything had calmed down;

Omm says that Khamis retuned four months later after the Israelis had left;

Sacco asks in the concluding panel of p. 115, "What are we to make of this?"

We know that:

the massacre happened;
Subhi died from bullet wounds;
there was a single sequence of events even though we do not know all its details;
the past is not in a superimposed quantum state;
it is more likely that the others forgot that Khamis was there than that he imagines that he was there;
we do not know everything.

The Arab Of The Future by Riad Sattouf

Observations
(i) A cartoon-style comic strip with words and pointing arrows in some panels.

(ii) Intensely autobiographical.

(iii) Riad Sattouf, like Neil Gaiman, remembers what it was like to be a child.

(iv) Riad seems to lose his artistic gift when he prefers to emulate his peers' scribbling.

(v) Amazing, eye-opening information about living conditions and life styles in Libya and Syria.

(vi) An extremely unflattering account of the author's father.

(vii) Riad's French mother seems to have put up with everything.

(viii) Very slow-paced: Riad remains a child on the concluding p. 154 and there are further volumes.

Fables: War Stories

Fables: War Stories reworks The Creature Commandos.

The Big Bad Wolf is a werewolf and the Wolfman. For the war effort, Bigby has let some mundies know that he exists.

It looks like Frankenstein was a Fable who existed in the mundane world.

Bill Willingham, like Garth Ennis, incorporates war stories into a contemporary fantasy series.

Dig it.