Refashioning the Gothic for a Final Crisis

"We took the breakdown of the rational enlightenment story of progress and development as it succumbed to a horror tale of failure, guilt, and submission to blind authority"- Grant Morrison, Supergods, p. 36

Prometheus Bound by Scott Eaton (2006)

No matter the culture, we take the stories that have been passed to us and read, listen, and/or see them in the moment, the historical epoch to which we belong. In doing so we take old stories, stories of adventure, romance, good and evil, and re-fit them to fit our needs, our temperments, our desires and dreams. This is the purpose of story-it is what stories do, and have been doing for thousands of years. The messages of the medium are really never new, just slightly tweeked.

The myth of the American comics hero/heroine has so often struggled with this, as the nature of the myth of the good versus the evil ends with good triumphant.So how could a writer working in the genre of  comics heroism tweek the story enough to actually make good lose and evil win, with only a slight reprieve at the end?  It would take a combination of two elements. First, a deconstructed and fragmented post-modern narrative structure to cause oft times confusion and dread in the reader. Second, utilizing a type of literary genre or even motif that can support such a story.  I believe that comics writer/artist Grant Morrison does both in his often maligned multiverse epic Final Crisis as he approaches it as a modern re-fashioning of the gothic literature genre and sensibility to fit the comics medium in a major event.

The primary definition I used for looking at Final Crisis as a Gothic story comes as a bit of cross-pollination between traditional mythology, art studies and literature. Much of what I was looking for was, according to Murfin and Ray (2003), the gothic genre as "characterized by a general mood of decay, action that is dramatic and generally violent and otherwise disturbing, loves that are destructively passionate, and settings that are grandios, if gloomy or bleak" (p. 191).
A General Mood of Decay
The story of Prometheus is one of the oldest myths. As it has been passed down it has endured cultural changes and numerous new breakthroughs in mediums of communication. But yet, it still has resonance due to very primal ideas of fire, creation, power and knowledge. Many of us are first exposed to the idea of Prometheus through various literary allusions, most notably via Mary Shelley's romantic/gothic masterpiece Frankenstein, it being sub-titled "the modern prometheus".

As noted in the above quote from Morrison's talk about Final Crisis in his book Supergods (2011), he was aiming for a sense of failure. The DCU of this story is one beset by red skies and darkness with only brief glimpses of the light. Light itself, fire, that power stolen by Prometheus from the gods to bestow upon man, is the central metaphor/allusion used in great detail by Morrison to establish the duality of it as both as a bringer of knowledge and element of power. Fire is utilized in the very first issue of the series in a number of ways: The god/spirit Metron presenting fire to neanderathal man as knowledge; Fire as a harbinger of self-defeat and excess when Dan Turpin comments on lighting his cigarette; Fire as the weapon of gods to strike down the powerful and good as when Martian Manhunter is struck down by Libra while a ragtag quasi- Legion of Doom looks on in shock (which is also a prime example of the disturbing, dramatic violence of the gothic sensibility). It takes Morrison and artists J.G. Jones a handful of pages in the first issue to communicate a darkness, both environmental and embedded in character motivation and demeanor that will not break until the very end of the series, with a very important fire shedding light for a very important person.
Love In The Time Of Apocalypse
Often overlooked in Final Crisis is the subtle parallel narrative of the love of the monitors Weeja Dell and the exiled Nix Uotan. What makes the love destructive (and powerful), is they had never felt love before encountering the stories of the multiverse. Love as a destructive and powerful force is a popular sentiment of the romantic/gothic period. This discovery of love (and subsequently knowledge and emotions) by the monitors is also much like a major point that Shelley communicates about the creature in her story-- it also knows so little until it observes and learns while in exile about feelings and emotions in what it begins to percieve what it is to be human or alive.  Knowledge (in the form of a name, as mythical powers are often bestowed) will help to save us and re-unite the lovers, albeit it after so many have fallen and even, like Bruce Wayne, been lost to time. Love from beings who have just realized its beauty, and one simple harmony from our greatest comic creation, in the end gives the DCU a chance to live again.
Grandiose Settings
In fashioning this story as having a visual aesthetic sense of the gothic, Morrison and the artists of the series create the environment of gloom and doom effectively with buildings associated with gothic architecture (especially in writer Greg Rucka and artist Phillip Tan's Final Crisis: Revelations arc). It's not just red skies and raining blood that are enough (and it does happen near the end). A few examples are:

1) The stronghold of the heroes are castles, watchtowers, and churches/cathedrals.

2) The monitors multiversal orrey, which contains not only the bleed (lifeblood) of the multiverse, is fashioned by artist J.G. Jones as a giant gothic test tube.

3) Superman in Limbo is surrounded by the desolate, the trash of ideas and debris of that which is long forgotten. The book of the multiverse stands in the middle of a library of limbo, a non-centralized structure of tall spires and arches.

What I have talked about above is just a few bits I observed while re-reading Final Crisis recently as an attempt at the gothic archetype for the comics medium. Upon completing the cycle this time (which was, I think  my fifth time), I uncovered many more layers, but I leave those up to all who read this to post below in the comments section (or on your own blogs and wikis of course!) about what they perceive about the story through the lenses/experiences that they have with it. As part of my own belief that fans of comics need to continue to push for more wide-ranging criticisms from diverse cultures and fields, I always try to encourage healthy outlooks and avenues of discussion. After all, it is the greatest thing we can give to stories (and that they give to us)--keep them alive with our own "music" for others to engage in discussions about.

References

Morrison, G. (2011). Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, And A Sun God From Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human. New York: Spiegel & Grau

Murfin, R. & Ray, S.M. (2003). The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, 2nd ed. Bedford St. Martin's: New York.