Ghastown's Toku Blog?

Look, there’s a lot going on, I’m not gonna get to all of it. This is the second-to-last issue of a book where every issue was packing with metaphor, analogy and triple entendre; it’s firing on all cylinders for the finale and you could probably write a dissertation about a lot of things in it. For the sake of argument, just assume that if I didn’t get to the most interesting part of the issue in your opinion, it’s because I didn’t have time, but I know, and I love you, and you’re seen.

As far as what I want to talk about, let’s start with the fates of the Anti-Social Avatars, as coined by the Martian: Rainbow and G-Man meet their brutal, extremely ironic demises in this issue, and it’s all a really fun metaphor about the fall of the American empire. I mean, fun because I’m not American. It seems like it’s not a good time, to live beneath the kill line.

Specifically, each of them suffers a fate related to their position within the Great American Machine. G-Man, wielding the Idea of a Gun and shooting Red White and Blue, gets physically manipulated like a puppet into killing himself, shooting himself right through his own head. It’s a dramatic enough death that even John points out he didn’t think the Martian was capable of that kind of anger, and then he realizes he probably learned it from John himself. The only thing that can happen to someone when they use a gun enough, especially when they use it not in self-defense, but in oppression, is to one day be on the receiving end.  

Agent Lowe manages to escape, but Rainbow, the crazed veteran of too many wars, gets shot to death by his own infinite soldiers— all the Martian has to do to neutralize the American industrial military complex is to inspire the concept of revolution and actual freedom in it. It’s instantaneous: in one panel the Martian is physically injecting empathy into the soldiers, in the next Rainbow is being betrayed. There can be no endorsement of the actions of an army like that when you have the slightest shred of the concept of horror still in your heart, because you realize your role in maintaining horror in other people’s lives.

And I don’t feel like this is all me waxing philosophical about two or three panels on this thing, I think this is the climax of one of the main themes of part 2 of Absolute Martian Manhunter: the direct consequences of America’s specific brand of power. Part 1 was, in many ways, concerned about the community of the city John’s in, and the White Martian’s attack on its structures: the concept of Home, of Safety, Paranoia, hating your neighbor.

Part 2, not in contrast but in elaboration, extends the attack on the human condition to the national level, and there is no bigger enemy of the people than state-sponsored violence. The prison system, legal executions, invading armies, propaganda and Milgram-esque delegation of guilt, just so the individual doesn’t have to feel like they’re the ones who are oppressing anybody. The government, like the Agency crew sometimes reminds us, only holds the power of consensus.

This is what having a consensus that violence is sometimes necessary ends like. Death and misery, and brains splattered on pavement.

Parallel to what’s happening with John, we have the actual reveal of what’s happening with Tyler: the kid is dead. The kid died in part 1 when he ate poisoned chocolate, and the White Martian is the only thing inhabiting him at this point. And he’s completely taken over the house, basically enslaving his mother Bridget and inviting personifications of the worst kinds of people you’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting at a party.

There’s a very consistent, easy read of the White Martian as, among many things, literal white supremacy as understood through American lenses. Bridget makes that subtext entirely textual— the White Martian’s influence is such that she becomes a Stepford Housewife, doing nothing all day but serving the man in the house and his guests. She doesn’t have agency, free will or any unapproved opinions. White supremacy, after all, is also inherently patriarchal.

The kind of damage the White Martian has attempted to perform in Part 1 is happening on a micro-level in Part 2, and it’s entirely focused in the Jones household. He has transformed a real home, capable of harboring a loving (or not) family, into a den of hedonism for the worst people-shaped things imaginable. He turned a strong woman full of opinions into an empty-eyed servant. He made sure John was kicked out and then blamed him. And John believed it, because god, if it doesn't sound like nothing he does matters.

It’s the kind of insidious threat that’s much harder to fight. The ones that make you feel like you don’t actually have a choice in anything, that someone else is thinking for you, acting for you, choosing for you. And Despero, embodying every doubt John has about himself, loves the entire thing.

How do you even fight the fact that your son is getting radicalized into weird shit, completely parallel to every bad thing that’s already happening to you? How do you convince someone who’s dead inside that there’s more to life than control and misery? How are you even supposed to act when you look at someone, someone you’re supposed to know intimately— your mother, your son, your best friend— and not only do you not see the spark of joy you expect in their eyes, but instead you see hatred and bigotry and all that’s wrong with society? Right in your house?

It’s the kind of horror story that only really hits after we’ve all experienced loved ones getting taken over by these ugly, angry versions of themselves that don’t believe in vaccines and don’t think women are people anymore. Like, personally I think it would be far too dark if this story ended without Tyler coming back to life, I think it’s gonna be fine—but did you get your father back after the internet was done with him? Did you get your friends back after they started sending you weird podcast clips that no one in their right mind would agree with? Did you get your kid back when he fell in with the wrong crowd, and didn’t come back home one night?

It’s horrific, and it compliments the American Nightmare side of the story beautifully. This only happens if people aren’t safe at home, safe at work and safe at their leisure. It’s only possible to radicalize a population that has reasons to be radicalized, and the core of all those reasons is that they need more than they have, because it’s denied to them by those high above in any way. Whether that’s political or racial divides, class warfare, religious oppression, the fucking war, anything—something has been taken away that people need, and there are infinite threats of the mind that are ready to take advantage of this structural weakness of the human communitarian spirit.  

Because yes, it’s all in your head, but you live there, too.