Turn On The Radio

Going into this series as a big Jack Knight fan, I wasn't expecting to like Will Payton as much as I eventually did.

Roger Stern brings all his Spider-Man experience to bear on his #Starman run, creating a character who is likeable and believably heroic like few capes are these days. Channeling the 80s cape fad of salt-of-the-earth heroes, Stern's Starman makes its space oddity of a hero more convincingly grounded than many writers - and filmmakers - manage with their realistic, grim 'n' gritty masculinist fantasies.

Stern's Starman is by no means revolutionary - whether in its politics or in its storytelling - but Payton's thoroughly working class family (industrial worker single mother, schoolteacher daughter, copy editor son) and his concern for people on the ground - construction workers, cooks and store clerks, the disabled (and, sadly, a few cops) - makes the entire thing reverberate with a kind of ethics that has been missing in mainstream cape comics since Geoff Johns' #Flash run (outliers like G. Willow Wilson's #MsMarvel come almost close at times).

Payton's - and Sterns' - Starman does not share the fondness for esoterica or the art deco energy that lent the Robinson/Jack Knight run much of its greatness. Payton is also a decidedly more bland character than Jack Knight - while he's much less of a white guy whiner, much less entitled, and thus much more likeable than Knight, this also means that he gets a much less well-rounded character arc. Nor is it an underrated or hidden gem in the same way as, say, Peter Milligan's #XStatix. But it is what it is - a familiar, comfortable, yet sometimes surprising and even wild ride that flows like the hazy cosmic jive of a David Bowie bassline, taking its lead to that haven for all great but forgotten legacy characters that Grant Morrison described - that hallowed ground where all the children boogie.

Look out your window, and maybe you can see his light.

I wish I could ask you what death is like.

Jawab al-Azrael

This is a continuation, a beginning, an ending.

It is only after the ground has been marked with many a hoofprint, the fire has been sated,
and the headiness of the Majlis-al-Djinn has been expelled in degrees, that Ashrin
remembers the babble-birthing cacophony that was being suppressed in those quarters of
wisps, even as the Djinn carved their hazy walls out of those voices. The quotidian no longer
blends with (is no longer consumed by) the surreal, the multitudinous nature of the Djinn no
longer suppresses all other multiplicities, and the starkness of the earth-smells solidifies his
own place in between adm and Malak, and he sees, for the first time, the
many worlds the Djinn had shown him. The fire is not greater than the clay, there is no unity
in sin and no shared innocence, and the choice the Djinn  had offered him was no choice at
all. But it is too late. His Buraq has not abandoned him, but the reins have. 

Slip

Like a thousand unmarked needles, invisible, but incessant,
in their chatter, the rain falls, and outside the sky is an unlit white, space but not quite. The
room is eerie in the light's dead glow, soaking in the darkness, which taints the windows as it seeps in,
but the laptop screen is bright. As is the TV as it shews a bizarre colourful diorama, a rape-justifying number from the 90s that holds my attention,
me, arrested,
for the sheer randomness of events and characters on the screen,
 bathed in this dead light tinged with darkness,
transports the room somewhere beyond the normal even as a suited, sunglassed actor chases an impossibly clad actress and the lyrics, mixed with the chatter, try to stimulate some shamefully repressed corner of my brain.
The room, and me in it.

But then the chatter, just the chatter, takes me. I hear other sounds, as I do every night, and I wonder vaguely what they are, but mostly I
let myself be carried by the chatter,
swayed, driven, drenched.
I get up, leave my bed;
right outside my room, the roof is leaking, there is a pile of water on the floor,
not yet blood.
The darkness has completely taken the other rooms, but
nothing is making those other sounds that I hear. 

I am in the verandah, staring at the rain, at the street outside, barely protected by the senile streetlamps,
The chill nips at my flesh, the wind brushes against my bones. The chatter grows ever louder.
I am alone.
But then,
as the vision of buildings, ringed by trees, imposing themselves on the wet, coiling, fullerene-coloured streets, and all of it, the entire scene,
struggling to eclipse the dead white space beyond,
threatens to overwhelm my attention, I turn around.
It is there in the darkness, a figure that is not me yet me.

Against all of my better judgement (if there is such a thing), I move towards it;
It turns, heels up in the air, toes pressing against the cold, ahistoric floor,
It walks, and unwilling, unwitting, I follow.
It moves down the stairs, as do I,
The soles of my slippers burning up in the cold.
The darkness inside grows.

Soon I am on the street,
The buildings on both sides like giant stairs,
The road a wet vomitorium.
The rain, needles and necessary backdrop.
The darkness outside, slightly more knowledgeable though less conversant.
And on both ends, and on either side, in the endless wet, the abundant dark, the unfading cold,
There is me. Many mes.
I run.
Afraid that I might slip, fall face first into the muddy pitch, devoid, at this point, of annotations,
towards and away



The rain never stops.

A Letter to His Majesty

SEPTEMBER 1939
3rd INDIAN ARTILLERY BRIGADE, CALCUTTA
We have been stationed here a while. Long enough for me who is not a man of letters, or pithy reminiscences, to crave the lost comfort of fog and fireplaces, the familiar, filial, and appetising scents of a hearth replaced by the oppressive gunpowder-and-metal foulness of howitzers. They have modelled this city after Home, but it is as far from my home as these thousands of fresh boys, nestlings, being shipped off to fight in a War they have no stake in, crossing forbidden waters, are from theirs.
Forgive my rambling. My time is drawing to a close, in a city of lost men I cannot recognise, and I feel I have much to say and naught but these last few hours to say it. Yet I must do my duty first.  I feel I must warn Your Majesty. A spectre is haunting the Empire. The spectre of Death.
It is not the War, or not just the War: I mean that our time has ended, though all of us may not know it yet. We are but Flying Dutchmen.
That is not idle metaphor. I believe that this spectre is following me, His only reason for not claiming me sooner being to savour my prolonged torment. He thrives on yearning and memories and tears and lost causes as much as on myths and legends and superstition. And I believe He has already claimed several of my men and brothers, though we, blind as we are, did not see it at the time.
I only now wait for Him to arrive, so that I might ask Him His Name, and if He does not answer me I shall scream, "Very well, Demon: then say my name and drag me to Hell" and He shall.
I apologise if it seems that I am wasting your time, or that you have trusted command of your forces to a raving madman (I have killed with and without cause, but never as a madman- this you must believe). But I sit here, now, in my bare alien quarters with only the light of a candle and the chirp of crickets, painful memories, the scratch of my pen and an unfamiliar, uncomfortable rustling for company, to report only what I believe- know- to be true, as is my duty, and to you directly because it is your misfortune to bear the crown and thus, despite all the protection we can offer, to stand at the gates when the time comes.
As is your sacred duty.
We created this spectre; we may have done it in Plassey or in Waziristan or in this very city, in May.
 Poor imitation of home it may be but in desperate times you relish whatever small comfort you can extract: perhaps from a stroll through the corridors of this still fledgling City, or the riverside. Buoyed by the announcement of the new Socialist congregation under one of their native sons (who I believe shall be confined soon), there was unrest, but not enough that I would not steal a chance to gauge how unsafe the city had become in the evening, for us and for them. A few months later death from the skies would ensure that.
A few paces out from the river I came upon what seemed to be a theatrical performance on the streets; the congregation was not big enough for the local Constabulary to notice. My eyes were drawn to what I presumed was a Bengali family: husband, wife and young son, dressed in finery and thus conspicuous in their choice of company, time, and place, despite the assertion that revolution does not follow the maxim of class. I had seen far too many instances to the contrary to believe in this: even the rebels and politicians of the higher classes adopt the vestments of the lower ones in a futile attempt at unity (which works no better than segregation: we tried both and failed). I followed them at a distance, being possessed by a wild curiosity; maybe the morbid and fatal interest one has in the instruments of his own failure.
The play began, stirring the crowd, perhaps shaping their spirits: zeitgeist, as the krauts would call it. The players shouted rhetoric, the crowd answered in kind. There were no guttural screams, or cheers, or bold declarations, as I had witnessed elsewhere, and it was all the more terrifying for it. I watched as they killed us.
Later, when the butchering was over, and the crowd had disappeared, only the conspicuous trinity was there, waiting for me. Evening had seeped into night, and in that mostly calm yet only very slightly troubled, mostly silent yet only very slightly whispering breeze, and in the glow of buildings that did not belong here, I could see myself in a clarity that I had been denied before: as a terrifying yet pathetic being from another world.
They were waiting to deny me, or perhaps to welcome me into their bosom. I do not remember the order in which I killed them then, in my mind, or even if I did: perhaps the boy knew where to strike, and knocked the gun out of my hand, and saved his family; perhaps he joined them in oblivion or a better land. Or perhaps he knelt among their bodies, weeping at the violation of his world.
I watched them leave. I already knew where they would go. And the streets were empty, but for the buildings and the owls and the bats.
And the spectre has been following me since that night. Sometimes it whispers the names of murdered dissidents and denied orphans who do not exist merely in my mind. It tells me of how this edifice raised on the soil of sacrifice and suffering is crumbling. But I am not the only one who is guilty, or with blood on his hands. And so I believe that this spectre, or their own spectres, has claimed so many of my brothers and my men. Soon it- they- will claim us all. Even you, Your Majesty- especially you. God save you.
I hope this reaches you. My night is tonight, and so I made this final effort to collect myself, my thoughts, and do my duty. There is much left to say, but the time has not been granted us. The night has grown quieter, the crickets have silenced their chirping in anticipation, and we, the bastard children of giants who dared to stand on their shoulders, shall now go to sleep.

The rustling grows louder. In distinctive beats, like the flapping of wings. Perhaps it is nothing more than a furry, fickle pest stuck in some corner of this empty room. It does not matter.
All that remains for me now is to blow out the candle.
It has been an honour.
I remain, your most faithful servant,
Major Joseph Chillingworth.

Wood

It usually goes like this: I imagine all the people, straddling the bus-seats in peace, riding to their prizes like veritable Nimrods, legendary huntsmen of yore, and woe be to those who find the other meaning of the word more fitting for the flock. They are, each of them, prophets and oracles in their foresight, having armed themselves for they can’t deny that the prize may never fulfil them, as M menacingly sings to 007 just as the FM station cheekily reminds this flock of 70-odd Orions. They, each of them, every single day, endure and survive the wiles of Our Lord Yog-Shoggoth who shall one day be displaced. And like them, as I imagine, I travel upstream, to mount the much vaunted seats of wood most finely varnished (in this world, unlike in many others), and learn, imbibe, be inspired by the polished craft and degenerate art of the trade, the foxtrot of puppets. Call me Sashi, call me Ishmael, call me what you will, but call our conductor Herzog as he guides us upstream through and beyond the wrath of Yog. Aboard the bus I imagine infomercial screens that lend to our apparent quotidian odyssey a sense of the Cosmic: on this day Pete Best shot Richard Starkey in broad daylight and by the will of the Throne became The Drummer, the most silent and shadowy and deadly of the four enforcers of her Music Regiment; on this day, Chacha woke up to a New Dawn minus the Throne but still subservient to the Resistance, for Yog must be overthrown. You are special for being born on this day; you are mundane for you have been denied all of these other things that happened on this day. Nevertheless you are Orion, on the Hunt for Varnished Wood, and you belong to the World. As the Omnibus, Pequod 101, moves past the New Gates of the Police Station (bright airy music playing at the crossings) we read, as we do every day, the inscription on those Gates: “koro snan nobodhara jole”, and we glimpse, in the distance, the sea that now fills the crater upon which there was Land once, and a Fortress of Commerce, and the sea swells like Hokusai on Coke, and a common thought sweeps through the Hunter Collective: “Oh Shit, the Maderchods will rise again today,” and as commuters in this city, Dis city, they are prepared for assault. 
Yet, I imagine, I embark hurriedly at the Fourth Gate, for beyond lies shelter, varnished wood, and the promise of tools of vindication and vengeance and warm companionship and, say it already, a better life. 
I imagine, and then I board the bus. And I look around, but there isn’t a chair.           

Yes Father

 “- Eaten well,” he finishes.

Terrified faces. Shaking hands. Foul smells spoiling sweet aromas of gourmet meal. First victory.

As the words finally escape his mouth he knows that he has created legend.  A myth that is already writ large on these faces that are as clear to him in the darkness as the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. As clear as the Narrows, as the mad, as the poor, are not to these people.

He allows himself a moment of gloating, a moment to soak in his victory. He is no poet, as his friend and father back in the Mansion would attest, and perhaps later, Bards and Balladeers and Sensationalists shall embellish his Legend. For now, he shall fall back on the clichés. On his many vulgarities.

It is a Chilling thought.

He is but one of them. He has his Mansion. But he has journeyed to the depths of his Palace, to an altogether different kind of depravity from theirs. The only depths they have plumbed: decadence. 

Resting on their gilded table, counting down the time, sweat heavy on his brow under the stuffiness of his cowl despite the unearthly chill in the room, he makes his excuses, he makes his penance. 

Nice chandelier.

Pretty plates.

Tempting food. Sharp teeth, finely honed over the ages.

“But your feast is nearly over.” 

Finely stained trousers.

And in that twilight moment of his birth, before he puts out the candle, he thinks, just once, of legacy. A long line, one of the oldest con-jobs in the world, and not philanthropy- that is their word. No, he knows, he asserts, that he is no champion,

That

She is no-one’s saviour. She is not offering emancipation. Salvation. She is here to help. Disregard circumstances of birth, Disregard Parity of Purchasing Power, Disregard Equitable Distribution, Disregard the Iron Heels: She is here, simply, to take back what was plundered. 

This city. Its wealth. Its spirit. 

This Haven of Goats that have, for far too long, had wolves living among them. 

The cowl rests uneasy on her head, and thus its likeness to a Crown makes her uncomfortable. As she climbs through the window, as the room is plunged into darkness, as the smoke becomes a shroud she thinks of the years of preparation and the months of planning that it took to come here. 

All of which culminated in throwing the smoke bomb, a swift jerk of the hand, in breaking the window, the tinkling of glass, in moving through the tiny mirrors darkly. 

Who benefits? Who is she helping? Who, in her arrogance, has she forgotten? They do not need saving, but do they need, or want, her help? 

Does little Jason from the Narrows need or want the secret hand of a cloaked beneficiary, the little Jasons of the stolen tyres and the venom pellets whom generations of her forebears have failed to show anything but crowbars and Death?

Is she not the one wearing the cape?

No higher purpose. Maybe just the thrill. The terrified faces. The mixed aromas. The stained trousers. The satisfaction of creating legend.

Fulfilling the circle.

As she lands on the table, and through the darkness sees clearly their faces, the thoughts clear, to be replaced by one single word of power and purpose. The cowl is no longer a crown or a twisted reflection of their ugliness, but an ancient, beautiful face from beneath the ground, a comfort; the cape is now a swirling mass of terror, unfurled.

Sweat drips from her brows. “Ladies, gentlemen,” She begins. “You have-“

When she finishes, there will be Legend.