Category: History

The essence of control rings out

Posted on December 9, 2024 by Marc

In some ways, the Control Ring (level Two) of the city is the most obvious of settings and, in turn, the most aptly named. Government of any kind is essentially about control: controlling who is considered a citizen, what the borders are, and how the rule of law (if any) is implemented. There are certainly differences among the various types of government and those that are nominally about “the people” are often the most insidious in the form of control which is exerted. Our own United States, once again about to be the plaything of Bronzo the Clown and his cohort of fascists, has long trended toward the type of control which is far more subtle than simply that of a monarch dictating what is good or isn’t according to their personal whims. In the US, the concept of the nation-state as religion (the flag not being allowed to touch the ground, being required to recite a pledge of allegiance in school, etc.) is the most obvious form of that control. Treating inanimate objects and vague concepts like “democracy” and “patriotism” as untouchable foundations of this society played heavily into the conceptualization of the Tribunal, which is the dominant element of level Two.

Likewise, organized religion has been an element of control in human society for as long as the latter has existed. Being able to refer to otherworldly and largely unknowable beings as the enforcers of societal law that was, of course, usually dictated by a priesthood in close alliance with the rulers of that society, has been an essential facet of almost every major religion created throughout human history. “Don’t do that because God said so” is a direct form of that control. Writing those religious laws down and then reinterpreting them to serve whatever present interest was most advantageous to those doing the interpretation is a more oblique but just as widespread method. Religion establishes a code that must be heeded if one is to be accepted within the society where the majority of people have decided that said code is the best way for society to function. Again, American democracy was largely created as a replacement for that kind of religion. When it’s combined with that outlook is when it becomes the most pernicious as, again, we are about to see with Project 2025 and so forth. This, too, was a major aspect to my imagining of the Tribunal.

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But then when it is simply all of the worst aspects of humanity that those two things- government and religion -allow to be used as weapons is where it all comes together. That, in truth, is fascism and it usually centers around promoting the interests of a small group against the interests of all other groups and is almost always rooted in fear: fear of The Other; fear of change; fear of differing perspectives. All of those things must be repelled or abolished in order to preserve the sanctity (and control) of the society that functions on that fear. The Tribunal, as masters of the second level of the City (and, really, the first, since it’s the one that doesn’t have regular, direct contact with the outside world, like the Rim) is a structure of government that is expressly about control. It wants to control who or what enters its territory (and, thus, enters or leaves the city.) It wants control over the genetic makeup of its citizenry (the Midwife project.) It wants control over what its citizens do, think, and feel as it arcs toward its collective vision of “the perfect society”; E pluribus unum, indeed. That kind of exacting control over mass bodies of people is nearly impossible if history is any indication, but many attempts have come close, usually in fiction but not always. The Tribunal is Orwell’s 1984. It is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. It is George Lucas’ THX-1138. But it is also Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union. And along with those, it’s also markedly interested in eugenics, cybernetics, and psionics as methods to implement that perfect society and extend it as far as it can.

I usually refer to the Tribunal as an “it” because, while it is controlled at the top by a council known as The Trust, the whole entity is something of a unitary existence. The control within that society is so absolute that almost everything tends to function like a centralized machine; from the Tribunal Protectors (aka Thought Police) to the Midwives to the Counselors, all of which are meant to curb the potential excesses of humanity (like, say, free will) and instead shape it into a tool to be used to, again, create that perfect society. That’s why the eugenicist program of the Midwives is so important to it. Finding the right genetic makeup to not only create “super-beings” but expressly obedient, dedicated super-beings is important to the whole mission of the Tribunal. This, of course, all rings true to the basic ideas behind the Nazi regime of Germany and, likewise, rings true to the aspirations of any number of Americans, both now and in the past. Genetic purity has been a hallmark of American society since its founding on the backs of those considered a “lesser race.” Racism has been an essential part of American politics ever since. The Tribunal takes a different tack on it, in that no ethnicity is considered superior to any other, but the object of the Tribunal is to create such a race that will be superior and, therefore, in turn create the superior (or perfect) society.

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That endeavor is, like many things throughout history, a direct response to the circumstances around them. The Collapse was enough of a shock to create the idea in the most outlying portion of the city (but still inside the city, unlike the “lawless” Rim where those “others” live…) that a government/religion like the Tribunal is the only proper response to this disaster. And there are a couple elements external to the state that contribute to that idea. Back in the early 90s, it was common knowledge that the older portion of the population were more likely to be conservative voters, which made the idea of the Dawn Patrol- a group of pharmacologically-enhanced, elderly men, longing for “the good old days” -an easy one to countenance as one of the few manifestations of the “gang” phenomenon on the second level. Another one of those groups is the Anarchrists, who take the religion example to an extreme; each one of them believing that they could be the promised messiah if they can only sacrifice themself in the fury of conflict against the control enforced by the Tribunal. We’ll run into a few of them in one of our upcoming stories.

But I also don’t want to neglect the religious angle in all of this talk about government control. That’s a deep-rooted aspect of the Tribunal’s makeup. As a Marxist and classical Stoic, I’ve always been fascinated by those who are devoted to this or that religion and the extremes that they’ve been driven to throughout history in the name of “God.” Much of the technology involved in the makeup of the Midwives, as well as the very network that the Tribunal maintains independent of the ShadowNet- TrinityNet -is rooted in that religious perspective. Entities on TrinityNet and within the very structure of the society carry names from religious texts like ophan and nefeshim. The iron fist of that society is inherently portrayed as something extending from the heavens and rooted in imagery of much greater significance than one gated neighborhood on the edge of a former metropolis. Also, one of the interesting things about the Tribunal that sits in the deep background is how similar much of its approach and essential makeup mirrors the society of the Walkers, much deeper in the city and much farther in our future than any tales about the second level…

Anyway, again, that’s for the future. For the next couple months, we’re still on the Rim and perfection is a distant vision. But we can still see the Tribunal Protectors lining the wall. They’re right there, hiding in plain sight. 

Plans for the moment

Posted on July 21, 2024 by Marc

When Jeff suggested that we try to get back into comics (him drawing and me writing), he immediately suggested the Dystopia material that I’ve been regaling you with in these first few posts. When he did that, he asked me to send him everything: the “bible”, the scripts, future story notes, and so on, as he hadn’t read any of it in years. What I also sent were a few short stories that I’d been writing in more recent years on the suggestion of my friend, Margot, that Jeff had never seen. Years ago, Margot had read the bible and a bit of the other material and reasoned that, if I couldn’t find an artist to do it in comic format, I should just write (or rewrite) the stories that I had and do everything in prose. That way, I wouldn’t have to rely on anyone to enable their seeing the light of day other than me. I’d become so fixated on the material in a visual sense that I’d never considered trying to change format and approach them from another angle. Some of that fixation remains, since we used to do everything in black-and-white at Fifth Panel because color printing was yet another expense that we (meaning: Jeff) couldn’t really afford. Consequently, I imagined almost every concept and character for Dystopia in black-and-white and that perspective remains to this day. Jeff has talked about adding color to the finished panels for the first story, which is based on one of those short stories that Margot suggested- written over a decade after the studio had ceased operation -and I find myself still imagining everything in black-and-white, such that adding color to anything feels foreign. I think Into Darkness could probably remain black-and-white, although I understand that adding color to it will attract more eyes and allow us to reveal some more details about things like the Netwights and so forth. The next story, though, will definitely benefit from a little chromatic accessorizing…

Into Darkness was intended as the opening segment of a serial novel. Even doing prose, I couldn’t escape the comic roots of the concept. What I wanted to do was a series of connected short stories- nine of them, in fact -that could stand on their own but still be a part of a continuing presentation; kind of a serial novel, with each segment taking place on one of the city’s nine levels. I realized in thinking about the whole concept that the later stories would more clearly be really long chapters in an actual novel, since the characters would be reflecting on previous events and interacting in a manner that involved that continuing story. But the first three or four or five could easily just be “days in the life of Dystopia” that spoke to one corner of the differing nature of each level. The central plot of the novel was an eruption by the Netwights/Jackwraiths in both the Real and the Now, respectively. You’ll see me regularly using that little catchphrase that is commonly wielded by the inhabitants of the city to talk about the outer world (the “real”) and the inner world (the ShadowNet or the “now.”) It was something I thought about when developing the concept of the city as I noticed how quickly news traveled on the then-nascent Internet, compared to the everyday world which still depended on newspapers, TV networks, and word-of-mouth. That phenomenon expanded beyond anything I was considering 30 years ago, such that, on today’s date that I’m writing this, the current president of the United States announced that he was not running for reelection not via press conference or delivering a letter to the New York Times, but on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. That was inconceivable 30 years ago. There was the real and today there is the now. The entities that are the wights and the wraiths exist in those domains, respectively, but they’re just one of the most outward examples of how intertwined those domains are, which is why the catchphrase exists.

All of that said, Into Darkness is about just one aspect of The Rim, which is Force Command. The previous post talked about a few others, so there are still many directions that we could go if we decided to venture back to the top level. It is, of course, also only the first half of that story and we will finish it, but we’re going to sail down to the second level for the second one: Midwife, aborted which is, again, one of those short stories of the serial novel but involves a concept that’s been with me from the very first imaginings of the setting, which is The Tribunal, the dominant presence on the second level, and the Midwife program, which is a key element of the Tribunal’s genetic purity efforts. I’ll do a post about level Two as I mentioned at the end of my post about The Rim, so I won’t go into too much detail here. But there’s no hiding the fact that one of my favorite concepts within the setting is that of the fanatical, fascist, ultra-religious, Kafkaesque Tribunal and its various manifestations, including its own network, known as TrinityNet. So we decided to switch off from completing the full story of Bradson and Frazier up on Point and figured we’d engage at least the first part of how that surge of wights and wraiths is impacting at least one of the other levels of the city. I’m not sure if we’ll follow through the entire plot of the novel just yet; mostly because I never finished it. I completed the first three stories (although there’s room for them to be expanded) and got about halfway through the fourth (Stake and the Knightshift on Four, key characters in that story, are among my favorites of the gangs that are everywhere in the city) before losing the flame for it. Now that Jeff and I are back at it, this may turn out to be the compelling factor in its completion; not least because it’s a solid look at every level of the city all the way down to the Well. (Just as an editorial aside, I’m still debating about constantly capitalizing the articles before proper names that are major elements, rather than personal names. In other words, I’m questioning whether I should keep writing things as “The Tribunal” or “the Tribunal.” It may just be a question of me saving one keystroke (e.g. not pressing Shift more than once when writing those names.))

I kind of detest doing survey work, which is what I feel like “introducing” people to the concept is. I don’t want to be writing a guidebook. I want to be writing stories. But the serial novel was intended to be both an introduction to the overall concept AND a solid story, so beginning where we do is a convenient opening, but I’m not really concerned about holding people’s hands on the way down, either. One of my all-time favorite comic writers is Howard Chaykin, who basically never stops to give people any kind of introduction to plot or setting or characters. He just dives right into whatever story he’s writing and assumes that you’ll catch up as he moves along. There are pros and cons to that approach (Howard has never really been a “hit” comic writer) but it’s always felt more “honest” to me and I want (need, really) this project to be compelling, rather than seem like a chore, since it will end up producing better material from my end if I’m enthusiastic about what I’m doing, rather than feeling like I’m writing yet another guidebook to all of the amusement parks in my head. I’m not trying to imply that Into Darkness isn’t compelling. On the contrary, I hope people find it to be a great springboard into everything else that we’re doing. But I just don’t want to feel, again, like I’m letting people in easy. There’s nothing easy here, in the real or the now. So, next time, level Two. Maybe.