[REVIEWS] End of Month Reviews - December 2004 (spoilers)

Martin Phipps phippsmartin at hotmail.com
Thu Jan 6 20:19:07 PST 2005


Saxon Brenton wrote:

>      Okay, after all that, the only substantive comments I can make is to 
>compare and contrast the two different styles of using mythology in a 
>superhero setting. During the `A Devil Came Down To Georgia' arc I tended 
>towards assuming that there were lots of groups of mythologies, all more or 
>less independent albeit with interactions with each other, while Martin has 
>taken a more unified overview that ties them together as a one 
>super-mythology that's simply become fractured and distorted between 
>different cultures.

In all fairness though, the idea that there were many gods in Looniverse Y 
comes from a throw away line in DSSS #63.  There's no reason to assume that 
the idea that there are many different gods in Looniverse Y means competing 
mythologies: after all, the Egyptians had over a thousand gods throughout 
their 3000 year history.  If you assume that there all the god from all the 
different mythologies simultaneously exist then you would easily have over 
5000 gods, with at least four different gods of the ocean (five if you count 
Neptune and Poseidon as different gods) alone.  That's a few too many, I 
think.

>Of course, from a comics story telling point of view, both are as good (or 
>as bad) as one another, since they both cheerfully shred the original 
>mythologies and rearrange them into pretty patterns for your reading 
>pleasure.

I started by trying to tie all of western mythology, including Biblical 
stories, together.  I was surprised how easy it was.  For one thing, not 
only did Gilgamesh believe in demons, hell and a great flood that destroyed 
humanity but he also supposedly believed that his friend Enkidu was created 
by his gods and sent to confront him, so it was plausible to cast him as an 
angel.  Then I made the connection between Isis and Ishtar because their 
names were similar: it wasn't until I did a web search that I found people 
claiming that Isis, Ishtar, Venus and Aphrodite were all the same "person".  
If we expand out to Norse and Hindu mythology we find similar pantheons, 
whereas Chinese mythology has gods of the kitchen, bathroom and living room. 
  Apparently Indo-Europeans saw their gods as people interested in their 
politics whereas the Chinese saw their gods as spirits interested in their 
daily lives.  I consulted the following websites as references in writing 
this arc:

http://webhome.idirect.com/~donlong/
http://www.egyptiandreams.co.uk/keywords/isis/isis%20ishtar.php
http://www.halexandria.org/dward384.htm or to
http://www.gotojassminesitenow.com/goddesses/ishtar.html
http://www.coldwater.k12.mi.us/lms/planetarium/myth/hercules.html
http://web.uvic.ca/grs/bowman/myth/gods.html
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0197622.html
http://interoz.com/egypt/gods1.htm
http://www.readyed.com.au/egyptsite/gods.html
http://sobek.colorado.edu/LAB/GODS/
http://users.bigpond.net.au/bstone/egyptian_gods.htm
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/egypt/religion/godslist.html
http://www.vibrani.com/gods.htm
http://www.crystalinks.com/egyptgodsindex.html
http://home.comcast.net/~chris.s/sumer-faq.html
http://www.webonautics.com/mythology/cosmictrinity.html
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/MESO/GILG.HTM
http://novaonline.nv.cc.va.us/eli/eng251/gilgameshstudy.htm
http://www.strayreality.com/Lanis_Strayreality/sumerian_civilization%202.html
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Sumerian%20king%20list
http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/Atrahasi.htm
http://www.christianseparatist.org/briefs/sb4.05.htm
http://www.mystae.com/restricted/streams/science/flood.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2982891.stm

Of course, I found it necessary to not only conflate between mythologies but 
also within mythologies.  For example, Isis not only was the goddess of love 
in Egyptian mythology but also had dominion over the underworld so she was 
in some ways like Freyia and in some ways like Hela so Hela and Freyia 
implicited become conflated.  This simplifies things a lot, I think.

Martin

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