Shining Knight 2
From Barbelith
Categories: Seven Soldiers Issues
"Mood 7 Mind Destroyer"
Barbelith thread: No. Not while one knight of Camelot endures. (http://www.barbelith.com/topic/20484/from/70#post446170)
| Table of contents |
Background and General Commentary
Synopsis:
Young Justin/Ystin escapes from police custody and wanders the streets of LA dogged by Guilt, a dark, shambling entity who introduces itself as a piece of Sheeda technology called a "Mood 7 Mind Destroyer."
Unable to shake Guilt, Justin encounters a group of delinquents harrassing a rather familiar looking bald man, and springs to his defense -- thus dispelling Guilt. After a brief, fractured conversation with the bald man, Justin decides to turn himself in to the police.
Meanwhile, we are introduced to Vincenzo the Undying Don, a much-scarred mafioso with intimate knowledge of certain kinds of magic. He has come into possession of a seemingly restored Vanguard, and soon learns that the winged horse also talks. But before he's able to do anything with that information, he is attacked by a Sheeda spider-rider and is pierced by a venom-tipped arrow.
Annotations
| Featured Characters | Featured Locations |
|---|---|
Page 1
Mario -- "Ystin, Arach Avallach" = "Justin, Dragon(Knight?) of Avalon" "Fir Sheeda" = "Men of the Sheeda"
Justin evidently understands modern English (or at least is pretty good with context), but thinks the LAPD are agents of the Sheeda.
Page 3
Mario -- "Lloriana" is almost certainly "Gloriana" (the Sheeda Queen) "Y da" means "the good" "Du" means "Black" I don't have a clue about "llamfada", unfortunately.
Page 5
Is it worth noting that Bianchi seems to have followed Italian license plate formatting?
Page 7
Panel 2: I can't translate the Chinese (or kanji) characters in that sign, but top one is a "dong," or "East." It pops up again later.
Mario -- The Cup of Blood is almost certainly a referencee to the Holy Grail. And "Stella Maris" is a name with strong resonance in pagan worship, going all the way back to Isis. The fact that "Suli" was the lover of Darkseid in his youth is probably a coincidence, tho.
"Stella Maris" literally means "Star of the Seas" and is a popular epigram of the Virgin Mary. It's also the name of a character (and avatar of Eris) in Robert Anton Wilson (http://www.rawilson.com/)'s Illuminatus! trilogy.
Superman once dated a mermaid named Lori Lemaris (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lori_Lemaris). The similar name construction suggests that Suli is a genuine mermaid, and not simply a human actress in a costume.
Suli Stellamaris will appear in person in Bulleteer 3.
Page 8
Mario -- Pegazeus = Pegasus + Zeus. And, as mentioned elswhere, "The Spoils of Annwn" is a real Welsh poem.
The "density" or compression implied in the Pegasus + Zeus idea fits in with the "layers of reality" idea discussed in the Seven Soldiers Locations (http://www.barbelith.com/faq/index.php/Category:Seven_Soldiers_Locations) page.
Enter Guilt, who kills with words. Note that as well as being a science-fantasy motif (the intelligent weapon), he is also functioning here as an allegorical figure -- as in, the same kind of character as those personified emotions and virtues you'd find wandering around in medieval literature like passion plays and Piers Ploughman.
Page 9
PANEL 4: "He turned your beloved apple country, Avalon, into a dungheap."
It is significant that Guilt refers to Avalon as Ystin's "Beloved Apple Country." According to one etymology, the name Avalon comes from the Welsh (ynys yr) Afallon, and means "(island of) apples."
Page 10
Mario -- Lots of stuff in here, but the part that leaps to the eye is a store called "My Hero".
Page 11
PANEL 1: "...Now did I tell you how Sheeda Yeth-Hounds dug your honored ancestors from their grave-mounds? How we made of them undead slaves, toiling fovever in the great mills that power the City of Despair in Last Country?"
Sounds like the Sheeda revived the corpses of Ystin's ancestors for use as slave labor using the same process that the Witch-Men use to create Grundies. In Frankenstein #2, we will learn that the Water of Rebirth contained in the stolen Undry Cauldron is the key ingredient that makes the Grundy-fication process possible.
"Last Country" sounds like another name for Summer's End, the homeland of the Sheeda.
PANEL 3: “And the Queen of Terror rode an eight-legged mare across a wasteland of ash and bones that was the graveyard of Camelot.”
We know that the Sheeda ride spiders, but the description ‘eight-legged mare’ sounds like a reference to Odin’s horse Sleipnir, who had eight legs and who was the greatest of all horses according to Norse Mythology.
Page 12
Notice that Justin's clothes have been transformed, possibly by the intercession of the bald dude (who is confirmed to be Ali-Ka-Zoom in Zatanna 3).
He's wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with that same character as the store sign as he enters Chinatown. It's very similar to dong (http://zhongwen.com/d/170/d70.gif), which means "east" or "owner" and is, etymologically, the image of the sun rising behind a tree.
"Dong" is also part of "dongxi," which is a word that literally means "thing" or "something" and is really really common word in Chinese speech. ("I'd like a little something" = "I'd like to go out for lunch/for a drink.") If this symbol was just chosen for looks, it'd be a common enough character to pick up on. But it may have been intentional.
Page 17
Strato's emblem is *also* a "dong," (pronounced the same way)... but with the addition of that little stem to the right, it means "wood"... which is one of the traditional Five Elements in Chinese esoteric systems. I'm guessing Bianchi chose this at random, but... maybe not. See Helligan's pendant in Shining Knight 3.
Mario -- It's possible this air-golem is connected to the earth-golem from Guardian.
The line about the air golem is, as Vincenzo addresses Crazyface, "Today, I don't want the air-golem of the East raining on my shorts, thank you." Strato will be described in later issues as a "synthetic cloud man" and a "cloud with a face like a dead Japanese guy."
I think it's safe to say that Don Vincenzo’s bodyguard, Strato the Air-Golem, is a former member of the Golems Four, a crimefighting team invented by ‘Ed’ Starguard in his youth. Brutus the Earth-Golem appeared in Manhattan Guardian #1.
Also... there's "the East" again, "dong"... so who knows?
Page 18
Mario - Is it me, or does that closeup of Crazyface look a LOT like Grant himself? Certainly, "supercontacts" are the sort of thing he'd wear. It also seems that Vincenzo has the Cauldron of Castle Revolving, which explains the Undying part.
Page 19
Mario -- I'm not sure if that's supposed to be Ne-Bu-Loh himself or just a minion. Morrigu, aka Morrigan, is indeed a Celtic war goddess.
Oh, it is Neh-Buh-Loh alright, and he causes major trouble for the Don and his men in the subsequent issues.
Page 21
Mario - Page 21 is absolutely beautiful. Very Andrew Wyeth.
Page 22
Mario - Yeah, looks like the old guy was one of the Unknown Men.
Nope, the man is Ali-Ka-Zoom. Vanguard says in Zatanna #3, "The wizard saw him alive two days past." The bus Ali boards is no ordinary bus. It carries the ghosts of the dead to their final destination. We will see both Ali and the bus again in Zatanna #3.
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