The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1814: Eternity Girl #6, October 2018

So, it all works out in the end. I mean, of course it does.

Caroline isn't Caroline anymore. Looking back, we can see Madame Atom's assertion that "Chrysalis" was the only name of Caroline's that mattered being prophetic - through the events of the series, the series as chrysalis, really, Caroline has transformed into something else.

Also, I will have to go back and see if I missed any explicit references to Dani, Caroline's friend, being trans. That adds something else to the story, another perspective on transformation. And, really, it's perspective that this series comes down to. The old saw is that our lives really can be better if we simply change our perspectives. I'm having trouble with that these days myself. What does it take for a person to change their perspective in such a way, to go from wishing only to die to being an agent of change in the universe? I would very much like to know.

This was a great series. Truly great. Sonny Liew did some insane things with panel construction and page layout, as well as offering some really emotional moments in the narrative itself. The series also convinces me that I should be reading anything Mags Visaggio writes. And you all know how much I love a good hunt.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1813: Eternity Girl #5, September 2018

Okay, just who the heck is Madame Atom? At first I pegged her for a Virgil-style guide to Caroline's Dante, but she literally beats up a Lord of Order, one of the fundamental forces of the universe, in this issue. That seems a bit powerful for a recently-dead super-villain.\

There is some discussion that it is Chaos's turn to reign in the universe, and I'm now wondering if this whole thing is simply a ploy by the forces of Chaos to bring about destruction and ruin. Is Madame Atom one of the Lords of Chaos? If so, I hope it's Shivering Jemmy.

The series continues to impress - I wondered if any of Caroline's time with Madame Atom was hallucinatory, but I think that's the wrong question to ask. Or rather, it doesn't matter if they are or aren't. They're obviously happening at a higher level of reality, something part way between metaphor and reality. It kind of nicely sums up the ways that metaphor, or language, can actually have a palpable affect on reality. I used to tell my students that, that it really was like magic. Only a few of them believed me.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1812: Eternity Girl #4, August 2018

Iterations upon iterations upon iterations.

Throughout the series Caroline has been told by her mysteriously-resurrected nemesis that she is stuck in a cycle, that every time she dies, she is simply reborn into suffering again. It's this aspect of the story that I'm reading as a metaphor for comics, of course, though the views of the different cycles that we get in today's issue also gives some sense of the scope of the misery that Caroline has endured.

There's even a version in the style of Peanuts. Guess who keeps missing the football, pulled away at the last second?

The other thing I love about this issue is we get to meet the Never Man, definitely one of my favourite superheroes now. His power is that he can reach into alternate realities where the event he's trying to counter never happened. He appears to be an old comrade of Chrysalis, and we even get to see a few different iterations of him. I think I'm going to be sad to say goodbye to these characters when the series ends. I've grown quite fond of them.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1811: Eternity Girl #3, July 2018

Location questions and hallucination questions become more interesting in this issue. The actual Lords of Order show up, though I can't actually identify them with any of the established characters from mainstream DC. Further, these Lords are reacting to Caroline's quest with Madame Atom, which I'm still not convinced is not a hallucination. I suppose it doesn't really matter if it is or isn't - it's the actions Caroline is taking, metaphoric or otherwise, that interests the Lords.

This issue we see forces beginning to move against Eternity Girl, both metaphysical and physical, whose impetuses are for a greater good outside of Caroline herself. There is something to the clinically depressed person that causes myopia. Though Caroline has been told outright that the only way for her to die is for the universe to end, and that everyone else will die too, she still pursues the path. Depression can become overwhelming, to the point that it's hard to see that other people have lives and worries and sadnesses too.

There is also something to the notion that, from Caroline's perspective at least, when she dies, so does the universe. It's the same with all of us, really. We experience existence from a singular point of view that will never repeat exactly, so when we die, that particular perspective of the universe dies as well. I guess we'll find out whether it's a personal or a public universe that is scheduled for demolition in the series.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1810: Eternity Girl #2, June 2018

I had meant to address the world upon which Eternity Girl takes place yesterday, but I forgot, so we'll do it now.

At the end of Milk Wars, Caroline appears to slip out from her brief origin stories and into the main series, exiting the story through a panel that offers no clues as to location. It's fair to assume that she exited into the DCU that had been restarted at the end of the crossover, and Madame Atom, Chrysalis' nemesis and guide toward death, implies as much in today's issue. However, in the first issue of the series, we see Caroline sitting in her living room in front of a television that is quite clearly playing an episode of The Batman Adventures, notable for its unique aesthetic. So where exactly is the story of Eternity Girl taking place? Madame Atom makes reference to the forces of Order and Chaos in today's issue, further cementing the link between Element Girl (who was a champion of Order) and Eternity Girl, but also with the DCU itself. We can assume that the Lords of Order and Chaos operate in all realities, so perhaps Eternity Girl is taking place on another of the DCU Multiverse worlds, but the explicit links tend to point one toward the prime DC universe.

All of this could be moot, of course, since the story is about someone dealing with depression and suicidial thoughts, not about superheroes and their world. Well, except for the fact that superheroes and their world are the root cause of Caroline's depression. What's interesting is that, at this point, it's hard to say if Caroline's mission to end the universe with Madame Atom is anything more than a hallucination or fantasy that is helping Caroline figure out how to die.

The real truth is that the story is all of these things, all at the same time. Like any good story, it is its multi-facetedness that makes it excellent.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1809: Eternity Girl #1, May 2018

This one is just so good.
We first meet Eternity Girl in the pages of the Milk Wars crossover (which I would love to see in the Arrowverse). Chrysalis (her hero name)'s story is told to us in two-page back-up features in each of the issues of the crossover, though she demonstrates something close to self-awareness at the end of the series, and manages to escape from the gaps between panels and into the world. Which world is an excellent question though.

There are certainly aspects of the character of Eternity Girl that align with Urania Blackwell's Element Girl, and part of me wonders if she had been the original character intended for this story. Element Girl goes through a very similar story and process in an issue of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, but Eternity Girl delves much more deeply into the processes that begin to overrun a person in the throes of depression. Caroline (Eternity Girl's name) admits to throwing herself off a bridge once a month, even though she knows she can't die, just in case, for some reason, this particular time works. Those who suffer from depression, and who have had suicidal thoughts, will perhaps recognize in this story a metaphor for their own mental wanderings and wonderings.

The series is also, however, about comics and comic book heroes. Frye once noted the stagnation of comic strip characters, and Eternity Girl is dealing with that idea head on. The only way Caroline can die is by ending her universe, thus halting the cycle of death, decay, and rebirth that she appears to be trapped within. That cycle is something that well describes the "life" of a superhero, and is something that Grant Morrison chats with Animal Man about in the final issue of his run. Eternity Girl hasn't quite come to the realization yet that her reboots are for the entertainment of readers, but the language being used to describe her experience of life is equally applicable to the experience of the life of a costumed hero.

Not a happy series, by any stretch, but a great one, I think.

More to follow.