Frankenstein 4
From Barbelith
"Frankenstein in Fairyland"
Barbelith thread: All in a day's work... for Frankenstein! (http://www.barbelith.com/topic/22291/from/210)
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Background and General Commentary
Synopsis:
Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E., has trekked to the heights of the Himalayas to hunt down the Time Monster of Tibet. Slaughtering a living universe on the gravesite of an Unknown Soldier to save a lost colony of flying horses is only the beginning of Frankenstein's busy schedule, however. With the world in Crisis and parasitic fairies plotting to bring about the extinction of our civilization, Frankenstein finds himself quickly called away to keep a date with destiny ...One Billion Years in the future! In the distant desolation of the far-flung future, a Fairy Queen is massing her scavenger armada and it is Frankenstein's job to scupper the fleet and drag the story-book despot home for trial ...And Judgement! Fortunately, such a task is all in a day's work...for Frankenstein!
Annotations
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Page 1
The Setting is high in the Himalayan mountains of Tibet. It appears that, in the end, Frankenstein decided to take Father Time up on his offer to go hunt the Time Monster of Tibet. Tibet is the location of the hidden Arthurian citadel of Gorias, mentioned in Zatanna #4. The winged horses depicted here and on subsequent pages are the descendents of PegaZeus and relatives of The Shining Knight's loyal steed, Vanguard. They guard Gorias. After Neh-Buh-Loh's attack in this issue they shuttle Misty Kilgore to safety and meet up with Zatanna at the end of Zatanna #4.
Page 4
PANEL 2: "I failed to slaughter Errrhiahchnnon, daughter of the deposed King Mhwuuiiielmethhh. Do these names mean nothing to you?"
Mhwuuiiielmethhh must be the true Sheeda name for Mister Melmoth, whom Frankenstein killed in Frankenstein 2.
Errrhiahchnnon must be the true Sheeda name of Misty Kilgore, who was revealed to be the lost Sheeda Fairy Princess in Zatanna 3. Misty's name ("Arhiachnnon"?) seems to be derived from a combination of Arachne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachne) and Rhiannon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhiannon),
Page 6
PANEL 2: "Read the FBI Girl's Report!"
The FBI girl is Agent Helen "Sky High" Helligan, Meta-human Specialist. Agent Helligan encountered Gloriana Tenebrae in Shining Knight 3 and deduced the origin of the Sheeda in Bulleteer #2.
"Manhattan's Chaos Central!" ... "I'm going in!"
Currently in Manhattan, the Guardian and Baby Brain are taking the fight to the Sheeda in the streets outside the newspaper's headquarters, Guardian Heights. Klarion is racing towards the surface world in a stolen subterranean drill. Mister Miracle has just arrived back from his transcendent experience inside a black hole with a new purpose in life. Bulleteer has quit the superhero life and is driving Sally Sonic to the hospital. Hurricane Gloria is bearing down on the city. The Bride is diving out of the sky to join the action.
"Congress just voted in emergency session to reopen the S.H.A.D.E. nerve center under United Nations Plaza."
Coincidentally, United Nations Plaza is the site of the founding of the Newsboy Army.
Page 8
PANEL 1: "You're losing heat to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Becoming colder... Unnh... slower, less organized. Supermen from this universe invaded you long ago. They could not heal you. Instead they gave you medicine to hasten your end. The Flaw... the Doubt you feel... is the presence of Death..."
If what Frankenstein says about the Ultramarines is true, they may be the strangest superheroes of all time. The second law of thermodynamics states the total amount of entropy or disorder in the universe increases over time. The Ultramarines are working from within Neh-Buh-Loh to increase the amount of disorder in their universe, for the explicit purpose of bringing about the entropic heat-death of the universe. They're Agents of Chaos trying to hasten the End of the World. That's pretty atypical behavior for superheroes.
Neh-Buh-Loh also says that the flaw the Ultramarines introduced into his body keeps him small. The only way I can think of to slow the rate of expansion of a universe, from the INSIDE, is to increase the number of black holes inside the universe, so that the intesified gravitational forces would slow the rate at which matter drifted apart. I suppose, if you were a technologically-advanced race of star-faring superhumans, you could travel around colliding large stars together until they reach critical mass and collapsed into new black holes. In fact, Neh-Buh-Loh mentioned "galaxies colliding within him," so maybe the descendants of the Ultramarines are doing exactly that. A space-faring race could spread through Neh-Buh-Loh from star to star just as a virus spreads through a body from cell to cell. The Ultramarines and/or their descendants would have plenty of time to put a plan together, since Neh-Buh-Loh ages at the rate of a universe and is three billion years old.
Neh-Buh-Loh describes the Flaw as something that causes him to feel Compassion. It moved him to spare the life of Misty "Errrhiahchnnon" Kilgore. Frankenstein describes the Flaw as the presence of Death. The awareness of his own mortality makes Neh-Buh-Loh capable of feeling compassion for others.
PANEL 2-3: "But many shapes of Death and many are the ways that lead to his grim cave... All dismal."
Frankenstein is once again quoting from his favorite book, Paradise Lost (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Lost) by John Milton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Milton). This time the quotation is from Paradise Lost, Book XI, lines 467-469.
Repent, Papers! - "I betcha bean dip to boron that there altar's the final resting place of Wing, the original Dead Soldier of Victory. He was, I believe, buried in Tibet and that looks to be where Franky's been sent, yeah?"
The stone monument in PANEL 4 looks exactly like the Tomb of the Unknowns (http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/tombofun.htm) at Arlington National Cemetary in Washington, DC.
Justice League of America #100 revealed that there is a tombstone high in the Himalayas dedicated to "An Unknown Soldier of Victory." In Justice League of America #102, the JLA and JSA eventually discover that The Crimson Avenger's partner, Wing, is the Unknown Soldier buried at the gravesite. For more details, check out this summary (http://members.aol.com/censulj/dcu/SSOV1C.htm).
Page 10
In PANEL 3, Ystin, the Shining Knight, is spying on Gloriana Tenebrae and the Sheeda from behind the landing gear of one of their helicopters. Ystin swore an oath to bring about the death of Gloriana after the events of Shining Knight 4.
Ystin will next appear in Seven Soldiers #1, at which time we will learn why she is watching the loading to the Undry Cauldron with such interest here.
Page 11
PANEL 1: "One Billion Years Later!"
At the same time that Frankenstein #4 was published, all of DC's titles were experiencing a line-wide event called "One Year Later." Following the conclusion of Infinite Crisis #7, the plot lines in all of DC's regular comics jumped forward one year in time, leaving readers to wonder what events transpired during the unchronicled, "missing year." The caption identifying the Sheeda time period as "One Billion Years Later!" is a playful reference to this event.
PANEL 2: "The continents lie suffocated below a crackling shroud of vampiric black flowers..."
Both the Terrible Time Tailor in Manhattan Guardian #4 and Misty Kilgore in Zatanna #4 predicted that black flowers would one day cover the earth. Now we see that their predictions were indeed correct.
PANEL 5: "At her command, six gigantic world-wrecking harvester dreadnoughts commence rotation in the senile, filthy twilight."
Gloriana has six flying castles at her command, in addition to Castle Revolving. As we have seen in this series, six is a very unlucky number. However, the arrival of Castle Revolving brings the total to seven, and teams or groups of seven seem to be unbeatable.
Page 16
PANEL 1: "In your bright world, there is Black and there is White, yes, we've seen it. But here, in the Red Smoke, there are only subtle shades, deceptive appearances. Words that slither."
In many ways, Summer's End is the exact opposite of Ystin's Camelot. In the distant past of primordial Avalon, there is not one knight who's heart is less than pure and the word of an impeccable knight was never in doubt because all men spoke the truth. In the distant future of Summer's End, there is no Good and Evil, no Black and White, and words are slippery and slither. Ystin's world is one of moral clarity and Gloriana's is one were moral distinctions are hazy or non-existent. The present-day world falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between the two. Gloriana sees it as black and white and accuses Frank of being a "very moral monster", but Ystin complains of our "mangled human tongue" and sees the present as a age when "virtue would vanish from the world".
Page 17
PANEL 1: "My Glass Giants will foul the water supply and enter lethal contagion into the food chain."
Are these Glass Giants a futuristic version of the same technology that produced The Water, whom Frankenstein fought in Issue #3, and Chemo? Could the giant green creatures seen attacking Avalon alongside the Sheeda in Shining Knight 1 have been Glass Giants?
Page 20
PANEL 3: "Shriii! Off with his head!"
Gloriana Tenebrae shares many characteristics with other Evil Queen characters from folk tales and literature. In the past, we have seen that she has a talking magic mirror and fondness for poison apples, like the evil step-mother in Snow White. Here Gloriana seems to be channeling The Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, who also liked to scream "Off with her head!"
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