Written by James T Tynion IV
Illustrated by Francis Manapul
Published by DC Comics
“What purpose does a Multiverse serve?”
“I cannot speak to the purpose… though I will say I hope to please the Source of our power. I hope to make something dynamic, beautiful and striking. Something unique.”
Are you ready?
Because this is it.
This is the month we learn the new Secret History of the DC Multiverse.
In what has become a regular and welcome counterpoint to the unfolding saga of our heroes, (currently trapped in an Apolokips-level prison in a far-future bubble of possibility), James Tynion is on deck this issue, with another chapter devoted to the activities of the Legion of Doom.
There isn’t much of them however, in this issue. Other than a brief, extremely satisfying segment at the opening, when the Legion arrives on the scene of Mr. Mxyzptlk’s gargantuan-sized rewrite of reality.
Just so happens they have a 5th dimensional imp of their own to take on Mxy, a certain mighty, magical Mite bearing the insignia of a lightning bolt, who we haven’t seen in a little while.
Just here to help.
From there however, we segue over to the perspective, and the awakening, of a being who feels the foundation of reality itself being reworked from the machinations of the World Forger in the 6th dimension. A being who has a stake in seeing that he doesn’t succeed. His own aggrieved Mother, and the mother of All…
Perpetua, awakened.
And as we shift to her frame of reference, the story of her history, and that of her children, finally unfolds.
Here, for the first time, we see the birth of the original Multiverse. Here, for the first time, we discover how Perpetua gave life to her first three children – the World Forger, the Monitor, and the Anti-Monitor – to oversee to proper evolution, function, and protection of her Creation.
And here, for the first time, we are shown the sequence of events that led to the rebellion of those children, who betray Perpetua to the cosmic adjudicators of the Source itself, whose judgment is swift and brutal, locking Perpetua and Her followers in the Wall at the end of Her own creation for all time.
An act that James Tynion has masterfully recounted, to be read in one of two ways.
There’s little question that Perpetua herself is being depicted as a Goddess of terrible might and design. Her stature, the stylized touches of darkness in her garb and in her countenance, punctuated – to great effect by artist Francis Manapul, who continues to explore and refine a splendid evolution of mixed media art – with eyes comprised of two brightly burning orbs, like supernovae. She is regal, she is supreme, she is incomparably sovereign, she is grim. And she angers. Railing against her fate.
For she does not wish to die. She does not wish to merely abide in conformity to the Will of the Source, to a design that would have Her relinquish stewardship of her own creation, and of life itself.
There is undeniably something dangerous, and aggressive, and dark in all of this formulation. The simple act of creating her immortal warriors, signals that Perpetua is on a path to wage war with Creation itself. Something her children are quick (ok, relatively quick) to note.
(And as a side note, it is quite gratifying to learn that Perpetua’s warriors are not a prime, original race from which humanity and the Martian race were then separately divided. Rather it is the opposite – we learn instead that they are a breed of beings who were themselves fashioned from the mixture of these two separate races. This explanation is by far more palatable than what we have until now been led to believe, and I’m glad we’ve gotten it.)
Perpetua, we learn, is a renegade of cosmic proportions. Deemed a villainess for her ambition, willing to disrupt the design of cosmic Justice itself, willfully placing her own interests above the divinely established natural Order of things. An act she openly characterizes as the one only true sin, in a striking (and most certainly deliberate) moment of irony, as she admonishes her own child, Mar Novu, the Monitor, for over-stepping his place.
And yet…
And yet it is impossible not to read Perpetua’s story without feeling some sympathy for her situation. If indeed she is expected to merely accept her own diminishment or dismissal after fulfilling her prime generative function, rather than to follow her own true (and innate) desires, however darkly perceived, that would see her continue her work, retain her power, and protect her children.
And protect them from what exactly? Because it would appear that she wants most of all to help her Multiverse, and her children… to live.
It seems, that however aggressive her stance, and however dangerous her choices may prove to be, that Perpetua places genuine value on the impulse to honor the self, and the aspiration to become more than the strictures that a divinely inviolable Law might seem to impose.
Indeed, notably, she views the Legion of Doom with approval.
And yet… is all of this really a bad thing precisely? In typical comic-book morality the answer would be yes. In a more nuanced world, however…
For surely there is true value in having the strength to advocate for oneself? Even if one must push past the boundaries of what is expected or acceptable to do so. Perhaps especially then.
And surely harmony is not merely the be-all and end-all of what it means to evolve. Not if the goal is truly to become greater and something more than what one has been. Certainly not if that harmony comes at the price of self-determination, self-expression, and the ennoblement of all that might be seen as broken or imperfect within us?
Indeed, isn’t that exactly what the Justice League itself is unwilling to consider, in the pursuit of the World Forger’s ‘perfect’ world? A theme that perhaps will take on even greater significance in next month’s issue when the League is forced to consider an alliance of the most unlikely kind…
All questions to be explored in greater depth perhaps, in the months to come. It remains to be seen just how Snyder and Tynion et al, care to pursue these themes going forward. But the nuance is there. The potential exists.
I’ll say this much. Despite the often-times overly complex and lengthy process of getting everything to this point, there is little doubt by now that the world-building efforts of Scott Snyder, with the generous assists of James Tynion and the rest of the DC bullpen, is nothing short of brilliant.
To take all these disparate, in many cases previously unexplained elements of the DCU as we’ve known it, and to weave them all together into a greater, grander, potentially far more inclusive cosmology, one that honors what has come before, what is upon us all now at this time in our history, and where perhaps we might all wish to get to together – that is a feat that is shaping up, month by month, to be something far beyond what most of us may have imagined.
To say that it is ambitious is almost missing the point. That it is possible at all, possible at this scale, that it hangs together as it does, and points to an evolution of new possibilities and potential that is the whole point of myth-making, and good comics storytelling, and the legacy of DC comics itself…
Well, that’s amazing. Fascinating. Wondrous. Elegant. Appropriate.
To have it all fall into place like this.
It’s almost like… fate.
Next Issue: Prison break!
