Johnny California

They would have to do it far more small scale in this type of election, if they don't want the public to wake up to what is happening.

 

It's far easier to do it in a Presidential election, where everyone is voting towards one position.

State-by-state level, for so many different people and positions, it would be far harder to get away with it, so I'd say it'd be playing it safe. Only doing it in small scale locations.

Exactly why would anyone in the United States want to rig elections when there is no real difference between the candidates?

They are all funded by the same corporations (often run by the same families), they will never achieve anything significant one way or another on the social issues they use to wedge support and distract from the real impact of their economic and political policies, and they will continue funnelling more and more valuable property and resources to the wealthy and powerful (their own class - are any of these guys middle class even in congress?) industrial interests (primarily defense). They do this by essentially bribing their constituents with decreasing wages (in actual value of the dollar) that are accepted because of the environment of fear that permeates political thought in this country - we have to give the defense industry hundreds of billions to "protect us" from guys in caves in Pakistan, we have to keep those immigrants out (while it's our jobs that are crossing the border the other way due to rampant international outsourcing), we NEED the money - any money - for our medicine and our cridt card debt (a whole con game/ racket that is so despicable it's impossible not to want to overthrow the government when you really look at it).

It doesn't matter who's "serving the public" in congress, the direction this country is going is not governed by any elected official.

It just seemed to easy of a fix and pretty anti-climatic

Considering the tight schedule PLANETARY keeps, can't you forgive Ellis just a little bit if he rushes inconsequential plot points like the deaths of the series' major villains to get the issue on the stands in a timely manner?

You have a tattoo from a deleted scene out of a shit film?

Mean, but very funny.:)

Surely Bradstreet used a reference for this cover. The guy doesn't pick up a pencil unless he sees a photo of it first.

Is it a Golden Dawn image? Goetic?

Recently picked up F. Paul Wilson's THE TOMB the first Repairman Jack novel. So far, it's pretty standard macho crap (the book was written in 1984, after all) - I'll stick with it until I hit a paragraph about either cigars, whiskey or sexy legs.

I had to brief a friend about Frank Miller who was meeting with Miller and the producers just after they'd shown the director's cut of 300 to him (Miller, that is). He said he only had four notes for Snyder, but he didn't say what the notes were. So one of them could've been, "never touch one of my books again!" ;)

Actually, Miller was very happy with the film, it seems.

Is the plan to mimic the shots from the comic book using greenscreen CGI?

Interesting tid-bit from the new director of Watchmen, amongst other things he seems to want to keep it in the 1980's as opposed to a moden day update, an approach I like.

And hopefully Nixon will still be President.

Robert Downey is an intelligent, witty actor and I will watch him in pretty much most films. As a result, I now have some vague interest in this movie.

And he's gotten a lot of indy heat lately with excellent performances in KISS KISS BANG BANG (speaking of, Kilmer would make an interesting Stark as well) and A SCANNER DARKLY.

However, I agree that Zane would be another interesting choice, but where's he been. Personally, I really liked his over the top performance in the HBO Tales from the Crypt film, DEMON KNIGHT.

The race had mentally controlled power rings that controlled their space ships.

Mandarin happened to wander upon the crashed ship (it crashed in China, and the surviving aliens were what the Chinese called "dragons"), and found the power rings. They just happened to fit his fingers and he learned to mentally control them.

Power Rings? In the Marvel Universe?

Mandarin=Sinestro?

If the movie had been completely independent of the Comic - if it had just been its own thing about an Occult LA "private eye" caught in a gang war between the angels and the underworld - and had nothing to do with HELLBLAZER in any way - it probably would've had a better story and even more Hellblazer fans would've liked it. Really, all they had to do was change Reeves' character's name and it would have had absolutely no connection to the comic book.

I'm glad you think so. Perhaps you can lay the cosmology out for me, then, using evidence from the movie, because I found it to be quite muddy:

 

What's a half-demon? Where do they come from? Is Gabriel a full angel or a halfie? Why does Hell's Bible have more words tyhan the Earth version? Was Satan in on the Counsel of Trent?

Essentially, it seemed apparent from the scene where Constantine threatened to save Balthazar that "half breeds" (demons and angels) were a combination of deceased human souls with the presence of spritual angels and demons. This has some precedence in Alan Moore's Swamp Thing where Arcane is able to become a sort of demon in Hell, but it is not exactly the same thing. In John Shirley's novelization, after Gabriel loses his/her wings and becomes human, Chaz takes on the role as chief of the angelic forces in Los Angeles. This really goes back to the Hollywoodized IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE and general Americana concept that people can "earn" their wings in the afterlife. On the converse side, they can earn their horns and pitchforks as well. With Gabriel and Balthazar, I'd assume as Archangels and Archdemons, they are not only ancient spiritual beings but are also combined with blessed and damned souls that are very old as well. Therefore, it is conceivable (though pretty stupid) that since he's got half a human soul, Balthazar might think it is possible he could find himself unwillingly saved. Perhaps the Angels and Devils as named are simply roles or "offices" that souls can earn in the afterlife with the Royal Families of the Trinity in Heaven and Satan, his Son Mamon and presumably the Whore of Babylon as the only true everlasting personages.

The idea that Hell has a Bible is pretty fun, but I don't know why Corinthians has more chapters than the one here on Earth. Perhaps there is less in other chapters. It could be that Heaven's Bible is slightly different as well. The point was that Hell's bible tells the same story but with different emphasis and interpretation. It's obviously propaganda, but the Devil's story is that the war with God ends with him ruling Earth in Hell.

The interesting part of the cosmology for me would be that Demons and Angels once they manifest on Earth, since they have half-human souls would also have free-will again and the ability to be damned or saved so both Heaven and Hell would want to ensure their people were properly indoctrinated to prevent a crossover. It sets up not only an occult version of a criminal underworld (like in most Film Noir Private Eye stories) but also of a kind of Cold War with double-agents and triple-agents not sure whose side their really on.

I think as far as the nature of the novel goes, SANDMAN could sit alongside Proust's work.

 

Ah, the sweet naivety of someone who hasn't read Proust. :)

 

Seriously, Sandman isn't all that complicated. There's plenty of nuance, but the basic plot is relatively straightforward, as Gaiman's 15-word summary rather neatly proves.

 

It's pretty straightforward if you simply follow Morpheus around. But really, even that is as hardly straightforward as that one line implies. It doesn't feel as if that is really what the story is about until you get near to the last volume.

How many central and pivotal characters does the book have? Probably as many as all of Shakespeare's tragedies put together. Even those who show up for only one issue suggest untold epics since most of them are very ancient and immortal. Each one has his or her own narrative (sometime with many subplots) and impact or reflect the central theme of Morpheus' journey and the changing nature of human consciousness and understanding as it begins to invade his realm.

But really I was comparing the autobiographical nature of the Sandman volumes as Gaiman uses the story to explore his own dreams and the nature of the relationship between his imagination and the even more inexplicable external world he wanders through.

Yesterday, in a hotel lobby in Turin I was asked if I could tell the story of the Sandman in twenty-five words or less. I pondered for a moment: 'The Lord of Dreams learns that one must change or die, and makes his decision,' I said. It's true, as far as it goes, but it leaves out quite a lot. Introductions always do.

That reminds me - wasn't there a Monty Python sketch about a game show where the contestants had to summarize Marcel Proust's seven-volume minutely introspective novel IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME in fifteen seconds?

I think as far as the nature of the novel goes, SANDMAN could sit alongside Proust's work.

Has anyone besides Carey used the new King of Dreams?

You know, it seems intentional that the First in Hellblazer is absolutely not Lucifer (isn't that explicitly stated?), but I'd also say that Lucifer in Carey's title seems very different from Lucifer in Sandman. Perhaps it was simply the differences in artists' rendering, but Carey's Lucifer seems much less vain and feminine than Gaiman's.

Johnny:

 

Regarding the struggle, to whatever extent, between orthodox and gnostic Christianity to define what Christianity was and became, I was referring to the process that happened in the early church, around the actual time of Christ and up to the end of the first century, perhaps even as late as the fifth, when Christianity was permitted by Constantine. It's this state, the state in which Paul operated, that I described as a "free marketplace of ideas." In other words, orthodox Christianity was assembled by its early fathers much the way we see it today, and gnosticism of its various stripes was not included, not due to some political maneuvering or preference but because the orthodox version was the most cohesive and true.

I'm not so certain about that. The Byzantine Empire also had a history of harsh treatment of what it considered heresies and dedicated itself to supressing and eliminating all traces of gnostic belief. Of course, gnostics (a general term for many differing offshoots) did not tend to write down their beliefs either (probably out of self preservation).

Wasn't Emperor Justinian's wife Theodora controversial becauseshe held one of the gnostic beliefs?

If there is any strength or power in the gnostic ideas, I have yet to see them demonstrated. There's no resurgance of them, as you suggested, only interest in them - and those most interested in them are people who want to use the ideas as a way of chipping a peg or two off orthodox Christianity. That is, gnosticism is only useful to those that wish to hold it up as way of saying, "See! Christianity is false! Why, here is a fly in the ointment."

i've seen it used that way, but that doesn't immediately invalidate it. You'd still have to address the points.

Mostly, I've seen those who hold gnostic beliefs and those who've expressed them treating it as a mystical branch of Christianity, similar to the relationship Sufism has to Islam and Kabbalism to Judaism.

I'm the only one who found the vision of Hell in the movie utterly boring then?

 

I've shat worse visions of hell than "Frances the d'rekter" came up with.

I liked the basic idea that it was our world as if it had been destroyed by global warming or a nuclear war - in other words - the worse that mankind could possibly make out of this planet. There were plenty of inconsistencies though (AND the cloudy view of Heaven at the end was a real let down since it was so traditional) but I liked that they didn't go with the usual Medieval Inferno that you see even in the comics. There really is no reason hell would look like what people thought it did four hundred plus years ago. Just as there is no more reason for angels, spiritual beings, to have wings than to have helicopter blades attached to their backs. I also liked the idea that soldier demons were the damned who'd had everything but the reptilian brain scooped out.

My problem with most of the concepts (other than the fact they just had nothing to do with the basic concept of Hellblazer) was that the filmmakers didn't commit to or really explore them and broke their own rules whenever convenient.

I can't think of anything significantly literary in the past few months. Of recent books, I think BONE is exemplary in the way it combines the literary with the feeling of classic (1930's) newpaper cartoons. Also, Paul Pope's work seems extremely novelistic. My favorite of all the "Graphic Novels" is by far Dave McKean's CAGES but it must be ten years old right?

As far as Hellblazer, I'd be interested in seeing characters that inspired him and the characters he's since inspired. Would F. Paul Wilson' "Repairman Jack" be in the same ballpark as "Jack" Constantine?

Hell in Sandman and Lucifer seems oddly subdivided. Obviously, the Greek Tartarus and Underworld as well as the Oriental Hells seem significantly separate from the Christian Hell. Also, it's never completely clear in Hellblazer and Lucifer if there is a division between the Christian and Jewish Kabbalistic entities and afterlife. It's all a kind of amalgamated Judeo-Christian (with Islam notably ignored).

Basically what James said - not only does Lucifer cameo in Hellblazer during the 'Staring At The Wall' arc, but John showed up in Lucifer during one of the relatively early issues. I would, however, stress that really, if you look too closely at either universe, the correllation falls apart - while Mike Carey's version of Hell, as depicted in 'Down In The Ground Where The Dead Men Go' is close enough to the Lucifer version to pass muster for those who really care about such things, there have been other stories in each title which either explicitly or implicitly contradict the cosmology outlined in the other. Best to take a leaf out of my book, and say "fuck it". File it (together with the fact that John used to co-habit the mainstream DCU with Batman, Superman et al, but apparently doesn't anymore) under "things which are interesting but not particularly important".

Actually, those could be some interesting elements for a Hellblazer story.

First, Hell has been shown to modify itself to the perceptions of the humans experiencing and it. The apparent contradictions could be countered with the same sort of divine logic that allows God the omnipotent creator of the universe to create a race of demons and then give them a history where they were not created by Him but emerged from uncreated darkness. Lucifer could be a perspective just one or two steps removed from the divine while John's perspective is very human, incomple and imprecise. An interesting story could involve John learning that the hell he's been dealing with, though not created or controlled by him, has been in part tailored to his expectations

As far as the superheroes, there's a book by Alvin Schwartz a Silver Age Superman and Batman writer who claims to have met Superman - he's a tulpa (Tibetan for an idea so powerful that it manifests as an entity in the real world) who lives in the "world of ideas" and interacts with our world. It would be interesting to see John moving through the world of Tulpa superheroes.

Not really. Gnosticism wasn't completely defeated in the early church... The Catholic victory was hardly a result of reasoned debate.

 

You're citing a 13th-century incident. Forgive me, but the 13th century is not the early church. Be that as it may, you're right in that, in this example, it was the sword that won the battle. But why didn't the Cathar ideas survive? <--That's a rhetorical question, not a hostile one.

My point was that the Gnostic beliefs did survive long after the early Church. You made it seem as if the Gnostics died out long before.

Heretical beliefs were more often put down by bloodshed than by debate throughout the history of the Roman Catholic Church. When the Protestant Revolution finally began, note that the denominations that survived were those that could count on strong support from nobles with powerful armies. You could hardly claim that Anglicanism held any ideas stronger than Catholicism - in England, it just happened that the King and the most powerful nobles were able to defend it.

In the case of the Cathars, the fact that the Catholics could not win any of the debates is what eventually led to the Crusade against them. Like I pointed out before, at one time the entire middle east was part of a Christian Empire. Is a failing of the ideals of Christianity the reason that it died out there?

Conversely, does today's resurgence of interest in Gnostic ideals give it any more credence than it had seven hundred years ago? Like you point out, it should be the ideas that are judged and discussed, not their popularity. Plenty of people carry extremely bad ideas; their number doesn't give the philosophy any more validity.

An interesting point of view, BUT if you applied that to the Middle East (and growing into Asia and Africa), then Islam must have much stronger ideas than Christianity.

 

Or will you concede that political power can and does have a significant influence on religious practice?

 

Of course. But the struggle between gnosticism and "mainstream" Christianity was fought with the pen, not the sword - at that time, these were all house churches operated by persecuted people.

 

 

Not really. Gnosticism wasn't completely defeated in the early church.

Cathars

Catharism was a religious movement with dualist Christian and Gnostic elements that appeared in the Languedoc in the eleventh century and flourished in the 12th century. It was condemned by the contemporary Roman Catholic Church either as a heretical Christian sect or sometimes as a non-Christian religion. It existed throughout much of Western Europe, but its focus was in Languedoc and surrounding areas - Occitania - what is now southern France.

---

This war threw the whole of the nobility of the north of France against that of the south, possibly instigated by a papal decree stating that all land owned by Cathars could be confiscated at will. As the area was full of Cathar sympathisers, this made the entire area a target for French nobles looking to gain new lands. The French barons of the north flocked south to do battle for the Church.

 

The crusader army came under the command, both spiritual and military, of the papal legate Arnaud-Amaury, Abbot of Cîteaux. In the first significant engagement of the war, the town of Béziers was taken on 22 July 1209. Arnaud, the Cistercian abbot-commander is said to have been asked how to tell Cathar from Catholic. His reply, recorded by a fellow Cistercian, was "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius." — “Kill them all, the Lord will recognise His own”[1]. The doors of the church of St Mary Magdalene were broken down and the occupants slaughtered. 7,000 people died there including women and children. Elsewhere in the town many more thousands were mutilated and killed. Prisoners were blinded, dragged behind horses, and used for target practice. The town was razed. Arnaud, the abbot-commander, wrote to his master, the Pope: “Today your Holiness, twenty thousand citizens were put to the sword, regardless of rank, age, or sex.” [2]. The population of Béziers was then probably no more than 15,000 but with local refugees seeking shelter within the city walls, the number claimed, 20,000, is possible.

The Catholic victory was hardly a result of reasoned debate.

This is the crux of our disagreement. You say it's mostly politics, I say it's mostly theology. Gnosticism as a whole can't accuarately be portrayed as having a unified stance. If its ideas were as strong as mainstream Christianity's, they'd still be around. Just my view.

An interesting point of view, BUT if you applied that to the Middle East (and growing into Asia and Africa), then Islam must have much stronger ideas than Christianity.

Or will you concede that political power can and does have a significant influence on religious practice?

You have to admit that gnosticism was inherently mystical and denied material concerns, whereas mainstream Christianity tied itself to more spiritual and less tolerant views when it became part of the imperial government.

Ironically, the first book was only recently released here (in English at least). Oddly, it doesn't look like the publishers took advantage of a movie tie-in to market it.

I'm sure this has been asked somewhere in the 39 pages, but-

 

Vertigo Continuity - is there any real consistency between Sandman/Lucifer and Hellblazer? Considering the conclusion of Carey's Lucifer series, it would seem that the entire occult world would be fundamentally different.

Apparently there was initially, but with the dawn of "Season Of Mists" Ennis was asked to make it clear that his Hellish triumverate bore no resemblance to Gaiman's Hellish triumverate, and since then there's been little overlap between the two.

I did notice that Lucifer appeared briefly in Hellblazer during Carey's run on the book. I also thought that Carey's antagonist in that run was very similar to Ennis' The First of the Fallen (or was it the First Evil - I get that confused with Buffy Season 7) - another rebel against God to be a surrogate non-Lucifer devil.

I'm sure this has been asked somewhere in the 39 pages, but-

Vertigo Continuity - is there any real consistency between Sandman/Lucifer and Hellblazer? Considering the conclusion of Carey's Lucifer series, it would seem that the entire occult world would be fundamentally different.

We'll have to agree to disagee, Abi. Everyone commenting on anything has an agenda.

This is a good point. Secular scholars would never accept an explanation requiring the actual existence of a divine being, for example.

Johnny, dammit! :D By "less sophisticated" I meant pre-industrial and "a long as time ago."

Well, okay, then.

Another interesting point of view would be to look at them from the perspective of politics. In Babylon, Bel Marduk started a cult diety and became the supreme being as his worshippers gained political clout and converts. Once he displaced Ea and Enlil to become the principle Sumerian Diety, they had to write a sacred text explaining his rise to power as he was chosen by Anu to be the champion of the Gods against Tiamat, a rebel goddess. BTW, this may have some connection to the stories of God and rebel angels (lucifer). Also, in the same rebel gods/angels motif, the Jewish book of Enoch denotes two angels, Semyaz and Azazel as leaders of the rebellion - Semyaz wanted to have sex with human women and Azazel supposedly revealed the secrets of heaven to mankind (Prometheus like). However, it should be noted that the rebellion in Heaven is a generally Christian story. Marduk's war of the Gods also resembles the war ebtween the Olympians and Titans in Greece (in fact, it's likely Marduk was the direct source for Jupiter or Zeus). Divine wars may simply be a theme reflecting actual political upheaval in the prehistoric world.

With the Jewish God, it is possible that there were many El's or Ba'als associated with each city or community in Canaan but not all the people were necessarily Jewish. When the Hebrews eventually conquered the land, their El would have gained the attributes of he other Gods. So, before, it may have been one Canaanite God (YHWH?) was associated with the Garden of Eden story and another (Adonai?) with Noah and so on. However, rather than have their God take the powers away from the others, the Jews simply could have said that their God already WAS all the other Gods OR their God performed all the tasks attributed to the others and the other gods were simply false idols, not really real dieties. This may explain why Elohim was used - by making the plural into a singular it encompassed the idea that all the Canaanite gods (Elohim) were actually the One Jewish God (Elohim).

Even today, we see this usurpation - some Christians claim that it was actually Jesus who created man in the Garden of Eden (from that point of view God was talking to his Son when he says "Let us make") and Muslims claim Jesus is but a prophet of Allah - not God or the Son of God.

Not for me, Abhi, I think it would be more like Congress doing the investigating - you'd still hold its findings and conclusions with suspicion, I think, but it'd be a start. I mean, who would dig into the JFK mystery without consulting the Warren Report?

 

I don't see how this would work, Charlie. There is absolutely no way to get round the fact that it benefits any body affiliated with the RC Church to come up with findings that cast it in a positive light. There is absolutely no way to reconcile that inescapable fact with objectivity/accuracy.

On the other hand, that in itself is not a reason to discount the Church's perspective. No matter their interest, they would still have to cite references and justify their points of view to a scholarly level.

However, I agree that you will never see the Church take a point of view that runs counter to its conception of divinity. However, that in itself does not disprove its conception.