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Post by dans on Apr 16, 2024 23:42:14 GMT
Wotan’s origin as a human female is only Post Crisis. That's good to know, thanks. It helps make a little more sense out of things. I guess Nabu is a Lord of Chaos now. I guess the way to write comics these days is to tear apart the old characters, just rip them to shreds, and glue them together again upside down, inside out and bass-ackwards.
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Post by DocQuantum on Apr 17, 2024 0:27:45 GMT
Wotan’s origin as a human female is only Post Crisis. That's good to know, thanks. It helps make a little more sense out of things. I guess Nabu is a Lord of Chaos now. I guess the way to write comics these days is to tear apart the old characters, just rip them to shreds, and glue them together again upside down, inside out and bass-ackwards. Yeah.... I guess in adding dramatic tension to Doctor Fate's story, the writers also ended up destroying his character and that of Nabu as well, something that was made irreversible Post-Crisis. In The Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman, a flash-forward to near the end of time shows this Doctor Fate pushed to his logical extension in which he is now completely indistinguishable from a Lord of Chaos, no longer believing in the tenets of Order at all. I prefer that characters intended to be noble and good remain that way.
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Post by redsycorax on Apr 17, 2024 4:01:27 GMT
I always thought that Doctor Chaos might have been empowered by an antithetical entity to Nabu (say, Abun, Buna, Anub or other designation). That entity might have come into existence at the same time as Nabu, but serve polar opposite moral objectives. That would keep Doctor Fate's moral compass securely focused and keep the character distinct from Doctor Chaos. I got the idea from gnostic religious beliefs, which posit two equally powerful supreme good and evil deities (and the evil entity is creator of matter and humanity). What say something like that is the case with Nabu and "Abun" (or whatever you might want to call it?)
In my Earth-500 Justice Alliance series, Satanna (its evil Zatanna analogue) travels to Iraq to get her hands on the Helm of Abun, which transforms her into that Earth's Doctor Chaos. Thereafter, it's a constant dilemma for her sister Quonjurea to resist the imperative to assume the mantle of her universe's Doctor Fate, and undertake the responsibilities of wearing its Helm of Nabu. To add complexity to this situation too, these Helms erase the wearer's original identities. Satanna gladly relinquishes hers because she wants the power above anything else, but Quonjurea has her relationship with Hippolytus, Wonder Woman's brother, to keep her grounded.
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Post by dans on Apr 17, 2024 9:41:05 GMT
it has never been clear to me that a Lord of Order would necessarily align with the human concept of Good. Too much order is not good for humans. But it is quite possible that if Nabu were strictly an Order guy, that he might have aligned with the Axis instead of the Allies in World War II. After all, ever since then, there has been a saying about Mussolini - '... you can say what you want about Mussolini, but at least he got the trains to run on time...'. (Not sure how true this is, but I've heard it throughout my lifetime...) I know this has been explored somewhat in the comics, but just sayin'...
sounds like an interesting story. Was Hippolytus created from mud by the gods?
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Post by DocQuantum on Apr 17, 2024 18:42:21 GMT
it has never been clear to me that a Lord of Order would necessarily align with the human concept of Good. Too much order is not good for humans. But it is quite possible that if Nabu were strictly an Order guy, that he might have aligned with the Axis instead of the Allies in World War II. After all, ever since then, there has been a saying about Mussolini - '... you can say what you want about Mussolini, but at least he got the trains to run on time...'. But it doesn't really fit with what we've seen Doctor Fate, our chief example of the Lords of Order, demonstrate in his actions. Far from concerning himself in politics (at least any more than any other JSA member), Fate primarily concerns himself with occult threats to humanity, with the occasional non-occult threat here and there. That whole idea of order being a source of evil was done with Sinestro, where he ended up taking over the government and encouraged the people to basically venerate him as their leader. But that's never been Doctor Fate's deal.
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Post by dans on Apr 17, 2024 20:47:16 GMT
This is mostly theoretical. I don't want to rewrite Dr. Fate, just suggesting that if we were actually to encounter a Lord of Order, to whom the pursuit of order were the most important thing in the universe, that Lord of Order might seem very inhumane to most of us.
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Post by DocQuantum on Apr 17, 2024 21:17:31 GMT
The Order Lords appear to have some kind of non-interference rule that would prevent them from just taking over. They are also not the highest power by any means and couldn’t just take control. All beings operate under a set of laws and agreements in any sphere they are allowed to operate in even if those rules are not all spelled out for us.
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Post by johnreiter902 on Apr 18, 2024 0:22:59 GMT
I get the impression from Dr. Fate's stories that the Lords of Order are mostly concerned with threats to the mystical order, not human affairs. From their perspective, Dr. Fate taking time out of his schedule of mystic threats to fight crime or the Axis powers is probably seen as a hobby, something for his "off-hours"
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Post by lawrenceliberty on Apr 18, 2024 16:00:31 GMT
I like that way of looking at their perspective.
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Post by dans on Apr 18, 2024 19:25:39 GMT
Are all the Lords of Order and Lords of Chaos magic users? Could there be a Lord of Chaos who flies around in a spaceship? An AI Lord of Order?
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Post by redsycorax on Apr 18, 2024 22:36:43 GMT
No, Hippolytus is actually the natural son of Queen Hippolyta and Theseus of Athens, her husband, in Greek myth. In this iteration, though, he was gifted with immortality after his father's death on the battlefield, as well as sharing in his sisters powers. I've dispensed with the classical myth that has Hippolytus unjustly killed because his stepmother Phaedra lusted after him, and in Earth-500's scheme of things, he gets brought up by Hippolyta on Hephaestion Island, one of the outlier settlements of the Amazons, where a friendly male neoclassical Greek community exists alongside them.
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Post by dans on Apr 20, 2024 14:40:12 GMT
I think Redsycorax's answer above was somehow shuffled into the wrong thread...
Anywho... apparently Wotan has 'seen the light' and is now a follower of God and is living in a monastery. I wonder how long it will be before it is revealed that Superman has been a mass murderer all along and Lex Luthor is the living embodiment of all that is good, kind, and just?
Not that I am mocking someone for seeing the light, please don't take away that impression. I am mocking writers who seem to feel they have a sacred duty to absolutely destroy the backstories of characters that were created earlier in the history of comics... dumping all over the memories of older readers.
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Post by DocQuantum on Apr 20, 2024 19:28:34 GMT
sounds like an interesting story. Was Hippolytus created from mud by the gods? I think this comment of yours is what Red’s response was for.
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Post by redsycorax on Apr 20, 2024 22:48:02 GMT
Getting back to Dr Chaos for a moment... clearly, they do bear some antithetical relationship to Dr Fate, given their identical uniforms and inverted colors. Why would that be the case unless they were bound together somehow?
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