ST205 Constantine, Magic and the Occult
The answer to the Darkness: #50
The debate with the Darkness, the creature's answer, and the yin and yang: what the run believes about evil.
Reading for this lesson
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Required The Saga of the Swamp Thing #50: "The End" Alan Moore (writer), Stephen Bissette, John Totleben and Rick Veitch (art) the whole issue, twice
Once for the story, once for the debate.
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After your own reading.
Introduction
In "The End" (July 1986) the Darkness, risen from beneath creation, asks what evil is for, and each of the assembled powers answers[1]. Etrigan says it is evil, and is broken. The Spectre offers vengeance, and is broken. The creature says he cannot know: he has seen cruelty fall on the guilty and the innocent alike, and it cannot be understood. Then he remembers the Parliament of Trees, and offers a guess: that evil might be the humus of virtue's decay, the dark loam from which virtue grows strongest. The Darkness and the light meet in a two-page spread of clasped hands, and the image becomes a yin and yang.
It is a horror comic ending in a philosophical position, and the position is not a comfortable one. This lesson reads the debate as a debate, the creature's answer as an ecology turned into a theology, and the final image as a piece of visual argument.
Learning objectives
- Reconstruct the debate of #50 accurately.
- Analyse the creature's answer as a development of the Parliament's ecology.
- Read the yin and yang spread as visual argument.
Key concepts
The failed answers
Etrigan's and the Spectre's answers fail. Ask why the story needs them to: what each answer assumes about evil, and what the Darkness does with the assumption.
Humus
The creature's answer is compost. Evil as the decay from which virtue grows is the Parliament's ecology (ST204) applied to ethics, and it is the run's most audacious move: a plant's idea of good and evil. Ask whether it is a real answer or a beautiful evasion, and whether the issue knows the difference. Note that the creature says first that he cannot know. The humility is part of the answer.
The spread
Two hands, two pages, one symbol. The yin and yang is borrowed, and the borrowing is an argument: that the comic's cosmology is one of balance rather than victory. Describe the spread exactly and say what it claims that the words do not.
Questions to think about while reading
- How is the Darkness drawn as it listens? Does it have a face?
- What does Constantine do during the debate, and what does he lose?
- What is the last page, after the spread, and what tone does it strike?
Things to notice
- Three artists on one issue. Which pages belong to whom, and does the debate change hands?
- The word "evil". How often it is used, and by whom.
- The Spectre's fate. DC's embodiment of vengeance is defeated by a question.
Reflection questions
- Do you accept the creature's answer? What would you have said to the Darkness?
- Is balance a moral position or an abdication?
Homework and tasks
Draft Assignment 1: #49 and #50 as a single work about what magic and evil are, the debate reconstructed, the answer assessed, the spread read.
Next lesson
Next week: the magician. Moore in 1993, Promethea, and the Bumper Book.
References
- Alan Moore (writer), Stephen Bissette, John Totleben and Rick Veitch (art). The Saga of the Swamp Thing #50: "The End". The Saga of the Swamp Thing, #50. DC Comics, July 1986.