Wednesday, June 12, 2013

The Phantom Stranger #9


Cirque du Soleil presents Cannibale!

Last issue we were introduced to The Sin Eater that I would say is the stupidest character so far in The New 52 if The Infernal Core hadn't already claimed and staked and married and sodomized on his wedding bed that title. And now that I've mentioned the worst new character so far in The New 52, you probably want to know the best, right? Easy! That prestigious title goes to Batcow!

This issue begins with The Phantom Stranger strung up in a tree in Hell while Etrigan sits nearby fiddling with his mouth organ. I'm not sure how he got here. Maybe this is the story in-between The Phantom Stranger being stabbed by the Spear of Destiny and The Phantom Stranger arriving on the doorstep of The House of Mystery! But it's not. It's just one of those comic book pseudo in media res openings that comic books love. By the fourth page, all the ducks are back in proper chronological sequence (at least when perceived through the illusion of time allowed by our organic thought machines).


Constantine stole that "damn good imitation" line directly from Deadman last issue.

The Stranger has learned that his family...well, Philip J. Stark's family is in Hell. With the help of Justice League Dark, he descends into Hell to rescue them.

Speaking of people that descend into Hell to rescue their loved ones, have y'all ever read Shel Silverstein's "The Devil and Billy Markham"? Of the handful of Playboys I'd gotten hold of as a youth, one of them contained this poem. At some point I got rid of the Playboys (perhaps when I went off to college? I was optimistic I wouldn't need them anymore!) but I tore out and kept the poem. Not long after, I sent the poem to my friend Bob while he was in Iraq during the first Bush's Iraq War. He and his fellow soldiers loved it but their main concern was where the rest of the Playboy was. Anyway, it's a terrific poem by one of my favorite writers.

The Phantom Stranger is greeted by Etrigan and The Sin Eater once he enters Hell. Etrigan then takes them on a tour to find Philip J. Stark's family.


They find them and everybody lives happily ever after. Especially the octopus.

Meanwhile, Terrance Thirteen is pouting in a bar ironically suffering from the belief that he's done something so awful that he can never be forgiven. It's ironic because the something he did was betray the man that gave rise to the psychological syndrome that Terrance Thirteen is suffering from right now. So if you betray the Son of God, you feel like you can never be forgiven. And if you betray the man that betrayed the Son of God, you feel like you can never be forgiven! The trick, though, is to forgive yourself because there is no ultimate arbiter of universal right or wrong. This is why The Phantom Stranger has entered Hell through his own mind. Because that's the only place that Hell exists. We punish ourselves. Unless a person is a sociopath. And then they either turn into full blown psychopaths and kill indiscriminately or begin to believe in God and The Bible because they have no empathy to determine right and wrong on their own and believe people can only determine right and wrong when told by a Higher Authority. This is also the same reason why some religious zealots are so adamant that sexuality is a choice. It's usually because those people are gay and denying it because of religious reasons. So they need to believe it's a choice and they're just fighting temptation. They must think everybody struggles with sexuality the way they're struggling with it because they simply won't accept their own sexuality and live with the knowledge that choice isn't a part of it.

Well, okay, choice can be a part of it! I can choose to fuck a guy! But I'm not sure my penis would cooperate.

The Sin Eater says he took away Philip J. Stark's family's love to torture them because he once read a line in a Dostoyevsky novel that said that Hell is "the suffering of being unable to love." And everybody knows that if it's in a Dostoyevsky novel, it's automatically true. So if you take love away from a person, they turn into naked husks of humans that eat rats and lose all sense of their humanity.

That doesn't seem right. I don't eat rats!

To save his family, The Phantom Stranger offers Etrigan a deal!


Wait a second! You're already supposed to be in Hell! Sharing a ninth level, unheated three room basement apartment with Brutus and Cassius.

The Phantom Stranger ends up strapped to a tree. But his suffering is hardly suffering when he's doing it for the love of his family. So The Sin Eater refuses to let Philip J. Stark's family go until The Phantom Stranger lets them go first. He has to give up his love and his memory of them if they are to be set free. Fuck, that's an easy decision! He gets to save them and be rid of the obligation of them all at the same time! Win-win!

But then The Stranger finds out the awesome deal is off the table because Etrigan wasn't really Etrigan.


I think I already covered this.

So The Phantom Stranger gets his love and his memories back. But he doesn't get his family back because they're now in heaven where they should have been many years ago before The Phantom Stranger saved their lives against God's orders. Now Dog is offering to take The Stranger up to Heaven if he's willing to go. But that'll have to wait until next month.

The Phantom Stranger #9 Rating: +1 Ranking. I don't know why this issue was called The Trinity of Sin. It doesn't feel like it's really going to connect to the Pandora story later this month and The Question story whenever that comes out. Maybe the shit The Phantom Stranger just went through with Justice League Dark will be the reason the JLD get caught up in The Trinity War. I bet it has something to do with the Nightmare Nurse demanding payment. And oral sex.

3 comments:

  1. Your stuff is a lot of fun to read. I'm a "retired" comic book fan, and I only buy regular issues with the Phantom Stranger in it.

    There is a wide variety of interesting layers in this book. For example, there is an interplay in the book between Biblical concepts and the author's own views. How can rejecting the word of God by letting the Stark family live result in the absence of permanent severe punishment? Moses' striking of a rock instead of talking to it (to get water) got him banned from actually going into the Promised Land, and no acts of contrition were going to change that. And what of the rejection in the Bible towards collective punishment (the Stark family) for the acts of an individual? Then, there's the interplay between free will and predestination.

    Really good stuff. Reminds me of some of Gaiman's and Moore's best work.

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    1. Thanks for reading!

      I'm not particularly religious (if you call being an Atheist and having been raised without religion by lapsed Catholics "not particularly religious") and have never given The Bible a thorough reading. I do have a literature degree so I'm more familiar with The Bible than maybe the common heathen and I have, on my own, read many parts of it. So I don't always focus on what are probably huge religious themes within this comic book. You should drop regular comments on religious items to note in each issue!

      Over the last few years, I've been trying to read The Bible while working on this project: Lyle's Study Guide for the Literal Interpretation of The Bible. For people with a good sense of humor, I don't think it's too blasphemous! I think it's more whimsical and fun and, in a stupidly innocent way, an actual serious reading of what is being said and what could be being said.

      I think I once compared myself to Moses wandering the desert while reading the first twenty issues of Green Arrow and then wondered why God let me arrive at Lemire's promised land after I was such an insolent bastard.

      As you may have noticed, I'm also long-winded! Thanks again for reading. And listening!

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  2. Actually there anonymous, Moses was banned from the Promised Land due to him breaking the ten commandments due to his disgust at his own people who were just liberated from God, worshiping another god/false idol. Although I'll admit even that doesn't seem fair. So what else did Moses do that got him black-balled? Maybe he represented the old ways, and thus Gold felt Joshua was a different kind of leader that his people needed vs. Moses. And yet Moses was a liberator of his people. How sad he didn't get to see the fruits of his labor in person.

    But anyways, I get the point though. Blame the writers. If the writing doesn't lead to a logical conclusion you can agree on, blame 'em;)

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