The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1213: Enigma #8, October 1993

Yep, today's issue is titled "Queer." Guess what the story is about?

Narratively, this is a very interesting issue. The final, apocalyptic confrontation with the Enigma's mother approaches (I can't give all the details - just go read it!), and Titus, Michael, and the Enigma spend much of this issue preparing for her arrival. Michael and Titus retread the confrontation from issue 2, in light of Michael's recent conversion.

And it is recent. We find out in this issue that the Enigma manipulated Michael's mind to turn him gay, in order that the Enigma might have someone to fall in love with, and prove his humanity. At first Michael is angry, but then he relents, and when the Enigma offers to turn him back, Michael refuses. He notes that regardless of the origin of his identification, he's happier now than he had ever been, and he can't see going back as being a good move. Now, conservative critics might point to this as evidence of the idea of gay men "corrupting" and "turning" young straight men - you know, the gay agenda and all. But we can also see in this the Enigma having removed the toxic programming from Michael that results in such outbursts as the one with Titus earlier in the series. Michael has been queered, but that queering has removed from him something that channels emotion into violence.

I mentioned the narrator of this story earlier on. I don't want to give too much away, as the identity of the narrator is both wonderful and horrifying all at the same time. And I'm still trying to figure out the nature of the metaphor that Milligan and Fegredo are using in this narrator. I think, however, that's a much longer conversation, and one that can only happen if we've all read the series. Briefly, what the series considers is whether or not a narrator should be allowed to follow the whole story, of if they are simply a tool for part of the story, but not the whole thing. Or something like that.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1212: Enigma #7, September 1993

Today's issue opens with Michael Smith curled up in the Enigma's arms, post-coitus. The narrator tells us "[t]hese are two men redrawing the maps of themselves. Actually, you should have seen it. You really missed something." I'll bet. And the two men spend the next three pages lounging around in the nude, chatting. It's probably the most bared male queer flesh in mainstream comics up to the point of publication. In fact, I imagine it's got to be one of the first full-frontal (so to speak) scenes of gay men together in any mainstream comic.

Early Vertigo, and the British Invasion that heralds it, is a great place to find early mainstream queer comics. This series, 2020 Visions, Sandman Mystery Theatre, Doom Patrol, Sandman, all of these seminal Nineties Vertigo series feature wonderful treatments of queerness. I noted in my previous review of Sandman Mystery Theatre Dian's reaction upon witnessing two women having sex for the first time. Held in contrast to Michael's reaction to Titus a few issues ago, we're seeing a nice range of reactions to, and within, queerness, and a good deal of critical interrogation of all of them. Before all my rainbow readers go stalking off and tracking this stuff down, bear in mind that Vertigo was basically a horror imprint, so you're getting into some dark and bloody territory. But very often the representations of queer people in these stories is not the point of the story - it's just an aspect of one of the characters.

During his conversation with the Enigma, Michael echoes in this story what I suggested yesterday. Again, the narrator lets us know that as he dozes, Michael is thinking "how everything has changed, how even his own body feels different." The title of the previous issue was "The End of the World" - I suppose what we witness in the opening pages of this issue are the first moments of the new world.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1211: Enigma #6, July 1993

You know how all superheroes seem to have really brutal, violent back stories? The Enigma is no exception. And we're only getting some of it. Just wait 'til the rest is revealed.

Things are heating up, but Michael is starting to take more control of matters. He stops the Enigma from killing Envelope Girl, and manages to find the mysterious man's secret lair. Of course, what they do once Michael gets there probably comes as a surprise. But, from the last few panels of today's comic, it's a nice surprise.

The title of this chapter is "The End of the World." And it really is. Not necessarily in the narrative sense it's meant, speaking about the Enigma's world, more on which next issue. But it's also about Michael's world. I teach my students that language can actually change the world, and nowhere is this more apparent than in one's own understanding of oneself. Once you have a way of describing yourself, you know yourself better. And without such language to name oneself, a person can spend a lot of time searching for a better world. Once you find it, once you find that name for yourself, your old world ends, and a new one begins. It'll be just as hard, but you might not feel so uncomfortable in it.

Maybe.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1210: Enigma #5, July 1993

I think we're just gonna leave this one here. It's been a busy week, and as I noted right back at the beginning of the project, some days are going to have to be brief.

Seriously, it's a great comic. Just go read it.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1208: Enigma #4, June 1993

Michael confronts The Truth. Not the actual truth, but the villain The Truth, who looks into Michael's eyes and sees something horrific.

And then the comic starts talking to us.

Have I mentioned how strange a comic Enigma is? It was one of the inaugural titles in the Vertigo Comics imprint, and was coming off the heels of the British Invasion of the late 80s. A lot of criticism looks at these comics in light of the fact that they were coming from Brits who had grown up during Margaret Thatcher's reign, and were speaking back to her and her conservative policies. And it's a culture that produced a good deal of strangeness. Mr. Milligan accompanies Messrs. Gaiman, Moore, Morrison, and Delano across the Atlantic and revitalizes American comics in a way that we are still (literally in the current Doomsday Clock series) dealing with. They were kind of like the continental philosophy of the mainstream comics scene. We can't seem to leave them behind.

So, yes, the comic starts talking to us, and the voice of the narrator becomes increasingly important through this series.

Oh, and Michael has a dream of the Enigma dressed in the skimpiest of bondage gear. Throughout the comic, through the narrator, we hear Michael asking the questions: "What is the truth?" "What is he so afraid of?" When I started teaching queer theory to my classes, I found a version of the initialism that included the idea of Questioning as a queer identity. I think that Michael is going through a version of this identity in today's comic, though it's one inflected by the vitriolic rhetoric of early 90s America. Mr. Milligan is doing a really nice job of portraying a person wrestling with an emotional identity versus a rational identity, in that the rational identity is the one speaking with the voice of culture, but the emotional identity speaks from Michael's heart. When he picks up one of Titus Bird's (the writer of The Enigma and outspoken homosexual!) bondage mags, he is appalled at the way his balls tighten, calling them traitors. His emotional, or physical, identity attempts to assert itself.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1207: Enigma #3, May 1993

There is one scene in today's comic that stands out. Michael is at a bar with the man who originally wrote the Enigma comic, the fictional one that Michael read as a child. After a heartfelt conversation, the writer suggests that he and Michael return to Michael's motel room. Not understanding, Michael asks why, and the writer places his hand on Michael's thigh. Michael's response is to punch the writer, and immediately question why there had been an assumption of homosexuality.

This anger at even the suggestion that one might fall outside of heteronormativity comes from fear. And it's not even necessarily fear of being gay. But it is fear of how being gay will fundamentally change the way that you can live your life. I was teaching my students about the ways that self-loathing can manifest in queer people, through the use of language that teaches us that we are flawed somehow. Michael's reaction isn't justified, but perhaps it's understandable. Had he grown recognizing queerness as a perfectly normal thing, his reaction this may have been shock at the forwardness, but certainly not anger(fear) at the suggestion.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1206: Enigma #2, April 1993

Enigma is, occasionally, an allegory. We have characters called The Enigma, The Head, and, in today's issue, The Truth. Granted, as is revealed in this issue, these are in fact characters from an old short-run comic from the Seventies, but in that cosmic time, just about everything was an allegory. I suppose the question becomes what is Enigma an allegory for? What is the truth, what is the mystery?

This isn't an easy comic. Unlike other metaphysical forays into the superhero genre (thinking here of something like Man-Thing, maybe, back in the Gerber days), this one embraces post-modernity head on, not even remotely denying its awareness of itself as a construct. Everything in this story is construct, and, in true Baudrillardian fashion, we're not entirely certain if there is an original lurking anywhere in the depths of the narrative. And just wait 'til we find out who's narrating the story. Honestly, this is one of those works that needs a really good, solid critical reading. Peter Milligan is a very, very smart writer.

We've not, to this point, seen much to convince us that Enigma is worth including in my month of queer comics. Not to worry. Things get explicit next issue. But then there's that question of what the allegory is trying to communicate. Is this an extended story of someone stepping out of the closet? Interesting idea.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1205: Enigma #1, March 1993

I hope you'll forgive a shortish post today. My brain is tired. And we're going to be spending the next 7 days with Enigma, so we'll have plenty of time to talk about it.

I've actually only recently re-read this series, as I've started (re)discovering the works of Peter Milligan. I read his early Batman stories a few weeks back and was really quite taken with his work. Enigma is a very different kind of superhero story. I first read Mr. Milligan in his follow-up to Grant Morrison's Animal Man, a short (7 issues, I think) little tale about a very strange alternate reality. And his turn on Shade, the Changing Man ranks as one of my favourite comics ever. So I figured it's about time I checked out some of his other work.

Today's issue is very much set-up. We meet Michael Smith and his very normal life, described by one character as so normal that it's weird. Which is a fair assessment, actually. But things cease to be normal very quickly. The Head appears on the scene, sucking out peoples' brains, and a strange masked man is seen around the crime scenes, a man that Michael is sure he used to dream of as a child.

More to come...