Weekly Reading: Youngblood #11

Never published by Awesome Entertainment

The covers:

Title: Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams

(Later issues of Youngblood were never in print. The only way to read them can be found online. Obvious pseudo-lawyer language: If anyone who owns the rights to these issues/scripts has a problem with me linking to them or posting pages from them, let me know and I'll remove them.)

You know how Alan Moore has gotten into H.P. Lovecraft's writing, and the more you know and have read of Lovecraft, the more you start seeing in Moore's work? Something similar is happening here, but instead of Lovecraft, the fan-creators have delved deeply into Sylvia Plath's writing, notably her prose as much as her poetry. I had read some Plath before this, but I started to dig into more and more for this series, which is not something I was expecting.

All of this is to say that a healthy understanding of Plath's prose will enhance the reading of this, and I will attempt to provide that as best as I can here.

Let's dig in. We start off with two versions of the same cover. Johnny is wrapped up in a tentacle and a woman is holding him lovingly. It's a bit of a spoiler to reveal who either is, but as this whole weekly reading is a spoiler, note that it's a young version of Johnny's mom and her much darker persona we see next issue.

The issue starts with Johnny in the Azure, from way back on page 1 of issue #1, but the tentacles that are about to grab him are not the tentacles of the Veil, but of some Lovecraftian thing. Johnny's captions tell us about fear, and how it can be overwhelming. And then he wakes up from the dream.

We've seen before that the Occupant left some memories in the bodies he hosted, even from previous bodies. So it makes sense that Johnny would be having flashes from the volunteer who got occupied in issue #1.

Johnny's now living in his mother's house, having gotten kicked out of Youngblood. She calls him in while doing tarot (having drawn the fool--most likely Johnny, the tower, the reversed moon, and the star. These have significance for the story in this issue and next, if you notice them). She tells Johnny that they must send information about his dream to the Dream Administration and Research Institute of the United States (spoiler: D.A.R.I.U.S.). Johnny agrees to take one of the journals to be mailed.

We see in the background that Badrock is in Washington, DC, to film the sequel to the Youngblood movie we saw back in issue #7.

Then we get Johnny's backstory. He lived in a creepy house with his nuts mom. She used to hang out with Sylvia Plath in Boston before getting married to Johnny's stepfather, Peter Paneczik. Eventually she had Johnny via in vitro fertilization. Pretty soon Peter left. But Johnny got into chemistry and drugs. He also had a dream (with a clearly older Johnny Panic--I wonder if that'll come back) that showed him "that reality is just an illusion that we can make into whatever we want or need. So why not screw with what people think is real and have some fun?" So he made the supersuit and joined Youngblood.

But then he got kicked out of Youngblood (it's all Suprema's fault for not taking a joke). His mom tells him that his dreams make him special, so he decides to go to the dream institute to see if they can tell him why. (Note, there's an easter egg here, with a reference to Washington, DC's famous Exorcist Steps, named for the film The Exorcist, which plays nicely with the woman at the center of this issue and her demonic possession.)

Meanwhile, on the set of Youngblood 2, Badrock is having trouble remembering his lines. On his way back to his trailer, he runs across the bird we saw at the end of issue #9, and soon is being controlled by the Occupant. And he starts heading towards Washington, DC's more famous landmarks.

At the House of Wax, Sally is talking to Twilight about breaking up with Leonard and how Rachel better not be flirting with him. A phone call comes in from Lori Sanders, Maximage. The other mages at the great table (which we saw in Judgment Day Aftermath) have warned her that Youngblood must stop one of their own or the world could be destroyed. They agree to meet her at the White House.

In Omegapolis, Johnny turns up at the abandoned museum (mentioned way back in Youngblood #3 and in Supreme: The Return #2 and #5) that is Darius Dax's hideout. Note the tower with the lightning. That's tarot card #2. He quickly gets captured by Dax, who explains that he's Johnny's father. Dax asks after Johnny's mother, Esther: "As crazy as ever?"

Dax tells Johnny that he met Esther in a Boston mental institution (in a nice callback to the party scene from earlier), where Sylvia Plath was. She kept going on about Johnny Panic, the master of nightmares, the keeper of madness. Dax realized that she was seeing into another dimension, and with his assistant, Cosmo Wican, made a way to view the dimension, which he named the Azure. Dax decided that a son with this dimensional connection and his native intelligence could finally destroy Supreme. So, even though he was dead (as seen in Supreme #42), he gave her the means to have a child. But, when that child grew up to become Johnny, he decided that it was just a failure.

Dax: "Your mother still sends me these indecipherable journals, but they're filled with gibberish about towers and moons, gods and possessed rocks. Honestly, it reads more like bad poetry." (Spoiler: ha ha!)

At the White House, Maximage reveals there's a prophesy that says the "rock of the youngest blood" will open a gate that will make madness and fear ever flood. And then there's an attack at the White House. They end up in the tunnels underneath the White House, where they find the Occupant-controlled Badrock.

Twilight tells Suprema and Maximage to get back, so they don't get possessed. Shaft and Twilight try to come up with a plan as good as Johnny's from the last time they fought the Occupant.

Meanwhile, Johnny has returned home and is confronting his mother. His mother, Esther Greenwood, tells him her backstory, about how when she was a teenager, she used to see shadows: "under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people's eyes and smiles." But she was okay as long as she kept busy. But then shadow moved in and she walled herself up and overdosed on a bottle of pills (spoiler: this was something that Sylvia Plath really did, though she was in a crawlspace in her dirt basement).

She woke up in a hellhole with a seven-headed Lovecraftian beast having bound her to a rock. She promises to do anything if it'll let her live. She agrees to do his bidding to help take over the realm of madness: "Second son of a second father. dead seed in a dead mother. Name him John to fool heaven and Panic for the other. God of fear he will deem, in the land of twisted dream. Spinner of blue nightmare, he will lay the world bare."

We find out that this is Lord Sin (last seen in Supreme #46) and that he has given her the gift of immortality, to help her do his bidding.

Esther wakes up in a mental hospital. Soon, they're giving her electroshock therapy (spoiler: Sylvia Plath woke up in a mental hospital after having been rescued from her suicide attempt, and was given poorly-administered electroshock therapy. However, she wrote highly of properly-administered electroshock therapy). The electricity created a blue gateway to the Azure. But this Azure is really weird. There's a blue tentacle thing that calls her mother and says that it is Johnny Panic and that it's a god. And that she will love his fear.

When she awoke, she started to see the blue madness of the Azure everywhere: "The world is a bad dream. We're hiding from the fear we feel all around us. But it runs through our veins. it's the only true thing. And johnny panic is its god."

She ended up in the Boston Mental Institute (again, something that really happened to Plath, and that was when she wrote the real story "Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams" about her experience... but I'll talk about that later this week). But now we see that there is no Esther Greenwood, there's only Sylvia Plath.

Now that this is revealed, it's cool to note that Esther Greenwood was the name of the character in Plath's "The Bell Jar" a semi-fictional account of her own teenage bout with depression and suicide.

Dax found Plath there and helped her get out of the mental institute and told her that when the time was right, he would, "help usher in my child king of madness." Plath tried to keep busy, marrying Ted Hughes and having a daughter and a son. But the shadow returned and she killed herself, sticking her head in the famous oven. "But when that fell apart, shadow and I reunited. I can still smell the gas from the oven as it clung to my lungs. As I fell down the black well of death's kiss."

But she awoke later in the morgue in England, where Dax's assistant, Cosmo, put a fake dead body in her place and rushed her away,

Johnny is now catching on, asking if she's really Sylvia Plath, but his mother says that, no, she has become Lady Lazarus (which was the name of one of her most famous poems).

Cosmo brought Sylvia back to the Wican family estate (which is the house Johnny was raised in), and Cosmo took the name Peter Paneczik. Cosmo's (or Peter) family had devised a device that could pluck the soul from the body, which might come in handy to try to tap into the Azure. There's a nice callback to Supreme, with an issue of Kid Supreme showing the Wican clan.

In 1979, she got her package from dead Dax, but she decided to go into the Azure again to talk to Johnny Panic, who told her it was time for the child who would become the god of fear.

But as Lil' Johnny grew, he was a disappointment to his mom. So she sent Peter off to infiltrate the Veil, where he took on the codename Bishop. He helped activate the portal to the Azure, but paid the price for it with his life (as we saw in Youngblood #1). But before he died, Peter inserted a splinter into the portal, jamming the portal open.

Lady Lazarus then told Johnny about the prophesy and that it's he who will make madness and fear "ever flood!" Johnny rushes off to help Youngblood.

Under the White House, Shaft gives a knockout arrow to Twilight and tries to goad the Occupant into taking over his body, but he gets slammed unconscious for it. Then the Secret Service show up with a tank and start attacking everybody! Suprema goes to deal with the tank (and a bickering pair of Clintons). Badrock/Occupant uses a sonic boom to knock out Twilight. Leonard tells Doc Rocket to get everyone out of the way while he deals with Badrock/Occupant. But Badrock/Occupant climbs up Big Brother and pries his way in to crush Leonard.

Leonard jumps out and autopilot sends Badrock/Occupant in Big Brother heading toward the House of Wax. Suprema saves Leonard and they all swipe Marine One to fly back to the House of Wax. They debate what to do and Leonard suggests that if the Occupnt won't leave, they may have to kill Badrock. Yeek!

At the mansion, though, they find Waxey having already captured Badrock/Occupant in wax that held Supreme. They ask Maximage to see if she can get the Occupant out and send him back where he belongs, but "there's something stuck in the gateway!" she screams. Her spell breaks apart and then the whole Azure seems to break through into our dimension.

Man, does a lot happen in this issue! I really enjoy what they did with bringing in Sylvia Plath and her writing, but worry that maybe she's not the most appropriate writer to bring in to make a deal with the devil. Even at this late date, is her actual suicide too much for a lighthearted superhero series to take on? What do you think?

As always, please check out the Annotations Page for more details and references and be sure to let me know any that I missed.