Esoteric Comics

By Paolo Panetta

In this work the author talks about esoteric aspects more or less hidden in comic books. The survey is all-out, from Italian to American comics, franco-Belgian comics, South American, one Japanese. Copyright comics and popular, mainstream and underground. Doctor Strange, Corto Maltese, Sandman and others, works by Authors such as Alejandro Jodorowsky, Alan Moore, Jim Starlin: about 80 warheads are counted, put into a perspective that unites them and a framework that harmonizes. Those unfamiliar with the comics treated can find ideas, who already has read them new angles.


Cover Art Ambra e Giada Panetta
Translation of Douglas Swannie


Paolo Panetta is an Ophthalmologist in Treviso, an Initiate, a comics collector.
He attended one of the oldest italian masonic lodges, becoming for a period its Worshipful Master.
Over the Grand Orient of Italy he joined the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, the Grand Lodge of Italy of the ALAM,the Antiquus Mysticusque Ordo Rosae Crucis, keeping always in touch with Templar Orders and other esoteric societies.

Already published with Bastogi: Malkuth (2009), Yesod (2010), Hod (2010), Netzah (2011), Tipheret (2012), Geburah (2012), Chesed (2013), Binah (2014), Chokmah (2014), Kether (2015), Fumetti Esoterici (2017).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Horus publisher
• Release date: Feb 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9788828348757

Book preview

Index

INTRODUCTION

I've always read comics. I learned to read with Mickey Mouse (Mondadori) to which after a few years I added the comics edited by Bianconi, anthological as Il Corriere and Il Messaggero dei Ragazzi, with unique characters such as Diabolik, Zagor, Alan Ford, Lucky Luke, Asterix.

The comics punctuated days and periods and each phase left behind almost complete collections, year’s series completed by buying. Later on, it would have been the era of flea markets and Market Exhibitions, more and more frequent and widespread. Up to the university, there were no comics’ bookshops, when I arrived in Rome there were three. Internet had not been invented; to do everything from home with e-Bay or Amazon was science fiction; my life would have been different with home delivery from the start, but maybe it would have been less exciting than spending a few hours on the train and leafing the goal of the journey through my hands. Then there was the taste of the quest, of rummaging through magazines, of business.

The return of Marvel in the early years of University marks the beginning of a golden age of comics in Italy, fortunately coincided with an excellent period of mine, with a trained mind and available time. Headboards multiply exponentially in a short time in the newsstands, especially comic book magazines such as The Eternaut, Comic Art, Corto Maltese, Grifo and others.

In a crescendo of technique and content, monographic books or stories in multiple volumes are spread, Marvel ennobles itself with the Graphic Novels, and the invasion of the Manga arrives. The best of the previous years is republished, with a freedom that currently is only a memory (from Ranxerox to the comics by Crumb, on Male or Frigidaire, which few nowadays have the courage to propose).

Comics become adult preceded by the South American comic strip.

Probably I read then 80% of the comics I have ever read, over a period of about three years; which is then a good part of those I will talk about.

In the early 90s, I waited with trepidation for the stories of Miller, the silences and the tension full of pathos, the clear-cut black and white of Sin City; Watchmen by Moore was a collection of issues to be collected and bound, matched with Corto Maltese; the Incal appeared in episodes with impossible cadences. I encountered authors who have not left me since then, with publishing houses with explosive albums like the Image or deep like the Vertigo line under the direction of Karen Berger.

The master’s comic strips crossed over into the popular ones and vice versa, Bonelli was fast as a train and, after having procured all Mister No back issues, I pounced on the Nathan Never by the three Sardinian authors, Legs Weaver, Zone X, Dylan Dog when Sclavi was still crazy.

Then there was Ken Parker, whom I adored in spite of the fact that I don’t like much the western style due to the taste of cultured literature of Berardi and Milazzo, the same one I found in Cybersix.

My head was full of images and stories, continuous mental associations, colours (let's just say I was 25 years younger, I’ll start crying).

The comics world proliferated and expanded, comics schools showed up a bit everywhere directed by great authors who continued to publish, there were always new areas of the market: the Japanese erotic, the gory horror, the stapled texts of beginners.

A moment later, there was nothing left. The increase in the price of paper, the crisis, the end.

The closure, one after the other, of all headboards (except Disney-Marvel-Bonelli) starting from the master's ones because more expensive but also involving the smaller ones, the professional death of many emerging authors who didn’t manage to emigrate to France or USA.

However, apart from the economic side there was the feeling that an era was over. That everything has already been written; has been done in five years and that since then nothing has happened for another twenty years. Apart from a few sporadic cases, the same authors continue to reprint, and if they do not continue to turn out something new, there are very few.

When I was a child, it was the practice to reread the stories several times. I knew by heart the details of the images by Romano Scarpa or Giovan Battista Carpi (even though I did not know who they were at the time), the expressions of the characters and the phrases in the balloons of hundreds of stories. Then I started buying everything and I did not have time to do it.

Writing forced me for a few months to pick up stories that remained in my heart.

I forced myself not to use Wikipedia or Internet in any way so that it was all first-hand. Thus, it was an opportunity to reread things that I had enjoyed so much and I was thrilled with. As often happens in some cases of some works, I found new nuances, for others I did not remember how I liked them, I realized how many stupid things I read to find authentic jewels that rewarded the lost time.

Esotericism is another of my old passions, almost as much as that of comics and novels. I entered the Grand Orient of Italy, in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, in the Grand Lodge of Italy of the Ancient Free Accepted Masons, in the Ancient and Mystical Order of the Rosicrucians, having always had close contacts with Templar Orders and various esoteric societies. However, already many years before, I was chewing Qabalah, Alchemy. Hermeticism and oriental philosophies.

Let's get to the book.

I apologize to Authors and readers if any anticipation of the stories has slipped out, I have tried where possible to eliminate them by removing too explicit pieces. Maybe the comics can be read before their comment.

Thus because what really matters about this book is the Index.

The name of the mentioned authors, the characters and the series taken into consideration. The rest is just my interpretation or the collection of those that for me were the tastiest fruits.

I would like the desire to read them alone stays, in order to find what everyone can serve, which can only be different from what others see.

My thanks go to my family from whose life I have sometimes excluded myself, who saw me lying on the bed reading comics the weekend and has put up with my lack of availability, even where hearing the answer I cannot now, I'm working.

I hope you enjoy reading it as I enjoyed writing it.

THE MAGICIAN

I must start somewhere so I decided to proceed according to the Tarots.

Mandrake

For historical reasons I will start from Mandrake, one of the first comic strips wizards.

At first, his powers seem unlimited: in a 1937 comic strip he suspends in mid-air a falling tray; pulls out a knife from his ear, a pigeon from his mouth, a chicken soup from under Lothar’s fez; some crumpled clothes fly well folded inside a trunk. Then he becomes invisible and enters a room; he flies a performing ballet dancer in mid-air.

He performs part of the prodigies during magician shows: A rabbit from a hat, a hat from a rabbit, makes transparent a leopard, and transforms an animal into another. Most of the wizardry emerges during his adventures. His gaze falls on an unaware family beyond a window and just for one night, they become rich. He directs his glance towards a tree and this starts to grow fast. He even hypnotizes a character then used as a projector to expose on a screen in front of him his own memories, which are seen by everyone as a sort of filmed confession. Today, even if one accepts such a scene, the vision of these events would be considered POV.

The limited space available and the kind of storytelling through strips with its periodicity, perhaps the simple-mindedness in those days and the lack of interest in criticisms, make it difficult to suspend judgment about these stories.

Over time, Lee Falk calms down and doesn’t exaggerate so much. His wizardry is explained as illusion and hypnosis. A gesture, a flash of his hypnotic eyes, and the gun explodes. It’s like imposing a will on weaker minds as to convince them to see something that does not exist. To force them to act in a certain way: You are in my orders; you will do what I say. In this way, the prodigies are resized but they become paradoxically much stronger, more real.

Wizards appear a bit everywhere over the years, as supporting and antagonist characters. For example Mephisto in Tex , with his ability to project illusions and impose his will, to make his image visible to distant interlocutors, to look at remote environments through a mirror, but also to evoke demons and to act on atmospheric events.

One will have to wait a few years to have a series characterized by one of them.

Doctor Strange

When you think about it, all Marvel comics created by Stan Lee can be read with a reference to magic. The night combats of Spider Man, who by day has a normal life as a student and free-lancer photographer, are astral travels through New York City just as Silver Surfer’s ones are through the space; The Fantastic 4 are based on four Western Classic Elements; Hulk explores the dark side of personality; Captain America acts under a symbol. Some superpowers refer to Greek mythology, but there is also Thor with his stories about Asgard, Shang Chi with oriental martial arts, and countless other references by an author who – all alone – cranked out at the same time so many stories.

Of course, there must be a character to deal with magic on a more classic side, and this is Doctor Strange .

A fog that transfers a house to another dimension after wrapping its model; dark demons evoke with their supply of tentacles, teeth, giant insects, silhouettes with claws; oval shapes that shrink and immobilize. Then, telekinesis, levitation (even useless, twenty centimetres from the ground maybe in order to not dirty his shoes!), hypnosis to show non-existent things, teleportation, remote commands. All to concentrate the minds of a mass on one goal to better manage it, to enforce its will with formulas and names of power, to apply psychic seals, for example on disappearance spells.

The lion's share is done by the Eye of Agamotto, a medallion given to him by the Ancient One, his spiritual master. Among foresights and demonstrations of power it reveals that there are spells in action, what’s the right answer, what’s happening far away, but is also used to erase everyone else’s thoughts.

Apart from a natural willpower and a fair open-mindedness that marks the end of his former life as a surgeon, magic is a matter of knowledge for this series. However, it doesn’t have the characteristics of a truly esoteric knowledge: it doesn’t start from the knowledge of oneself and of his own parts, from improving perceptions, from beginning to break barriers of preconceptions. Leaving out isolated episodes such as concentrating on a gem to understand its nature, for Stan Lee, what makes a difference is that it is placed in Tibet, there is a master with the right information, and a secret book: this magic has to be studied.

There is a mention to meditation on ritual spells, but then it turns out to be the taking on of rules, the preparation for an examination. The duration is a candle flame, the portal to be crossed has laws that govern it, the path to follow is the indicated one; the attack against an enemy begins fixing him in the eyes; concentration must be maintained until the end, a neglected spell is a broken spell; phrases and names have to be learned. Everything is all said and done on the Book of Vishanti to be studied every night between an adventure and another.

The best part are the drawings. This seems obvious, considering that we are referring to a comic strip, but it isn’t; those from Steve Ditko's first story series have an evocative power that will remain unattainable for decades in the hands of other authors. Roy Thomas’ stories (I prefer the ones about Conan), illustrated by Dennis O’Neal and others, who certainly have a better technique and a more typical and less volatile trait (I personally go crazy about the elegance of Gene Colan’s trait), with the identical environments and powers – exploited in different ways – in the same story, don’t have the impact of the first series. The latter appeared as simple fillers in different headings and have so much inspired different artists, for example in psychedelic music.

We can see barriers pushing to a side people in a crowd to get in the middle; lights glowing from the chest; flames enveloping the whole body. Moreover, forms that come to life in order to block, during duels in the magic or in the real life: rib cages that wrap up to dissolve, ponds with concentric lights appearing in the air and making what they find topple into them, from the bottom upwards; stripes surrounding houses and imprisoning occupants; cages made of fog immobilizing them; iron muzzles appearing out of nowhere; metal balls handcuffing by embedding the hands; columns of untidily piled up circles in order to lock, a cylinder inside them to defend oneself.

These images over time become more and more complex and combined. A sphere that compresses, rolls and disorientates, and is thrown through parallel walls of different colours and fantasies. An antagonist is overturned, petrified, thrown into a bottomless pit, and chained. Holes in which one falls to reappear somewhere else, wizardry that immobilizes, dazzles, and multiplies.

The rays these characters emit are not the linear ones of all the other superheroes, defined as made of plasma even decades after their appearance: the latter at most have different colours. There are curved rays, filled with multiple bubbles, accompanied by mists or radiating light, others that wrap up and compress. They can be accompanied by emission of shapes, of balls with for example a curved tip, crystals, shiny puddles, red spires, round shields, vaporizing lights. There are simple half-lines or fluid lines that interweave out of nowhere or circles around the hands, with different colours each time.

The rays are used to strike or even to create barriers and defend himself, block an attack, penetrate to take control, precise as spires, evanescent as smoke, hard as rocky armours that occasionally appear.

The emissions can be single or double, coming simultaneous from both hands or from one only, and they are directed, blocked, diverted. Spiky bands propagate from a circle around the hand and form a pattern that widens to form a wrapping up sphere, with tips and lines on the surface. Talons of cosmic fire, white spots with yellow filaments adhering to the body and generating spasms, radiations irradiating from the whole body, absorbed by visualization of concentric squared walls, suitable to inactivate those of others. Strange emanates them aplenty, knots them together as an oriental marquetry, expands them, colours them, and it’s all a peculiar move, which blocks bodies and hands in precise positions that remind very much Indian mudra. The forearms in form of a cross (Sign of the Seraphim) protect him, shields are created by casted curved lines with wide movements, steady hands in certain positions irradiate: now hands are clasped, then palms are pointing towards the object, then it’s the tip of the fingers.

A round green halo or a cloud with lightning appears around his hand when he’s about to strike a blow, prepared by a clenched fist and an arm bent, or straight hands, with some fingers folded like horns or otherwise. All with consequent emissions of heat and light, exorcisms, and beneficial waves.

The techniques are accompanied by their own definitions, which very quickly become themselves a spell, a kind of 'power names' that make them even more evocative. Among the curses and formulas, the Eternal Vishanti, the Eye of Agamotto the All Seeing, the twelve moons of Munnopor, the Fearsome Dormammu, the Hoary Hosts of the venerable Hoggoth, the Omnipotent Oshtur are quoted. One swears on the Seraphim’s shadows, evokes the flames of the Impeccable Faltine, and visualizes surrounding Cyttorak’ Crimson Bands, the hiding vapours of Valtorr, the seven blocking wandering Rings of Raggadorr.

After Stan Lee, curses will be pronounced in Satannish's name, demons will be evoked from the Darkness of Denak, there will be more detailed definitions, such as the Wand of Watoomb, but the names will not be as evocative as the beginning ones, with references to India and Lovecraft.

Perhaps Dr. Strange gives the very best of himself with the astral trips. The first time he appears is exactly in this way: he visits another person's dream to find a murderer. But with time, new opportunities and uses of this power will emerge, allowing to move to distant places and then to explore other worlds, first oneiric like the one of Nightmare, then more and more defined, with rules of composition and passing through ways and timing (the flame of a candle ...).

His astral form is a duplicate of his physical body, set free from it with more and more ease: with it, he can go and find his master across the world, fight with his enemy Mordo, engage the attention and free those who are controlled by others. Over time, this becomes more and more physical, because, apart from being able to enter another's body to control it, it is also perceived on a real level, it can be moved at the same time with the body, and it can control the Cloak and the Amulet. Even if it continues to obey to certain rules, such as the fact that the physical body remains in the meanwhile defenceless, and can be filled up by someone else, we can see an evolution of its applications, in correspondence to the screenwriters’ imagination.

For sure, the most striking part is when he leaves the real world to move into alternative universes, worlds where realities obey to different physical standards. Proper trips, if they are dreams, these are comparable to those conscious ones.

Sometimes the Journey starts by staring at a jewel, in some verbal descriptions and suggestions are specified about how to feel a weightless body, then pure haze and more and more evanescent until he becomes pure thought but retaining his consciousness in this gradual modification. Nevertheless most of the time this passage is immediate, the jump takes place when he decides to do it.

Not that it's always so easy, though. Many times, he finds barriers to overcome, as when he must enter into the mind of the Ancient in catalase and break through his defences. A shield often in front of the head, power resetting sudden flashes, telepathy blocking net, and a green grid with curved irregular lines with a yellow space in the weave that gives hallucinations and does not allow distinguishing reality from imagination. The technique is always different and adapts to the circumstances: for example, in a specific episode, he sends out his own image and, in order to be recognized, he takes some risks lowering his own defences.

Most often the direction is not even linear, instead of trying to break through, the defences are bypassed. Or the passage is swirling, disorienting, traumatic: Strange finds himself in a rolling and constricting sphere which is hurled in contiguous worlds; he is turned upside down, petrified, thrown into bottomless wells, chained; ends up in certain holes against his will.

Moreover, since these are alternative worlds, the physical laws governing them are quite different; for example, there is no up and down. The authors (Ditko in primis ) exceed the limits of drawing and division of the tables and, trusting only on imagination, they represent this state: the graphic techniques will be not the same as decades later but the lysergic spirit at the time (the building where Strange lives is in Greenwich Village) can compensate just fine.

Therefore, the passages can be anywhere: sinking rugs, doors in the air, or streets like winding up ribbons. There are passages in the void among shapeless beings, cobwebs and abstract images, or a blast-off towards multiple dimensions with different colours and appearance, passed through like if they were superimposed but also conflated spaces, as parts of the same reticulate or which turn up out of the drawing folds and curved lines. Then different suspended planes or altered perspectives, shapes that are outstretched by widening from a base, like a flame. Passages through red converging spirals, black reticulates on a green background, a space with so many planets that becomes two-dimensional like a wallpaper in which he dives, complete with squirts.

One of the last stories of Stan Lee's series is centred on the above mentioned, a long turn that the Doctor does to release Clelia from her imprisonment in a world and bring her back to the earth going through several worlds. There are grey worlds full of stars with streets that look like suspended rivers, deserts to fly over, flying roots. Yellow halos jump out while he proceeds at full speed, there is an evidence of his own double in different temporal continuum, all becoming black and white and then merging together. At last, other adventures (overflying a coastline, breaking loose from trapping soil, increasing his defence by means of fire circles, following a glowing intertwined ring chain driven from outside) follow with the